Sheldrake dissertation

Actually, I think it implies that Wiseman was the primary investigator, and that Sheldrake followed up Wiseman's work, but that's by the by. Taken at face value, that statement isn't factually incorrect.

I think the problem is that it's very misleading, because anyone who didn't already know the history would naturally interpret "additional" to mean that Sheldrake's work was started at about the same time as Wiseman's and was additional to it. Rather than that Sheldrake had been working with Jaytee for nearly a year, and that Wiseman had heard about the alleged phenomenon as a result of Sheldrake's work, and had contacted Sheldrake to ask about it, and had been invited by Sheldrake to work with Jaytee, including being offered the use of Sheldrake's video equipment.

Sheldrake has this blurb on his website about Wiseman:

"The two biggest attackers of Rupert's research on dogs are both magicians with no experience of research on animal behaviour. James Randi and Richard Wiseman are experts in misdirection, but their attempts to vanish scientific evidence fall short."

Wiseman, of course, has a PhD in psychology and is the Professor of Public Understanding at Hertfordshire University. He is also a parapsychologist with multiple research papers investigating psychic abilities (even before he investigated Jaytee).

Would anyone here regard Sheldrake's blurb deceptive and misleading? (I certainly do.)

If you click on the link, it brings you to another Sheldrake blurb on Wiseman:

"Conjurer and professional skeptic, Richard Wiseman is Professor for the Public Understanding of Psychology at the University of Hertfordshire, England. He's also a Consultant Editor for The Skeptical Inquirer, and a Research Fellow of CSI (the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry)."

The impression Sheldrake gives is not that Wiseman is a fellow parapsychologist, but that Wiseman is a debunker without expertise in the field. Would anyone here regard Sheldrake's blurb deceptive and misleading?

Sheldrake finishes with:

"He replicated Rupert's results with a dog that knew when his owner was coming home, obtaining positive, statistically significant results, and then claimed the opposite."

He could not have "replicated" Rupert's results, since Rupert had no results at the time Wiseman performed his tests, and wouldn't for several years after. This misdirection alone is at the very least equivalent to the single example we have of Wiseman's "deceit" when Wiseman uses the word "additional". Would anyone here consider Sheldrake's use of "replicated" deceptive and misleading?  

Wiseman also did not obtain statistically significant results and claim otherwise. At the time that Wiseman made his claims, Sheldrake had not yet published his novel outcome measure, so it would not have been possible for Wiseman to claim that his results were positive on that basis. In fact, the first paper which Sheldrake published on the matter, which was published around the time that Wiseman's paper was published, used the same kind of outcome measure Wiseman had used - making note of Jaytee's "signal" to see if it corresponded to Smart's return. Wiseman could only make claims based on the outcome measure he and Sheldrake had used to that point. And as a matter of good scientific practice, it would have been invalid for Wiseman to up and change his outcome measure after the fact, in order to obtain a positive result. Were Sheldrake's statement to be accurate it would read:

"Wiseman did not alter his claims about his results post hoc. I (Sheldrake) later did so, so that I could claim the research gave "positive, statistically significant" results."

If these blurbs from Sheldrake are not "deceptive and misleading", how is anything which Wiseman wrote deceptive or misleading?

If these blurbs from Sheldrake are "deceptive and misleading", why is it Wiseman who is derided when Sheldrake was much worse?

Linda 
  

Ah, the old "well what about what the other guy did over here" trick!

Ah, the old "well what about what the other guy did over here" trick!

No surprise there. It's never been the case that proponents even pretend that the standards are remotely equitable. Proponent parapsychologists can be caught in outright lies about how they obtained their results and we're expected to look the other way. But if a non-proponent says something which an uncharitable (or even overtly dishonest) reading can turn into a falsehood, they are pilloried ad nauseam. It's an interesting phenomenon, so please, do carry on.

"Lying for Jesus"

Linda

I think the problem is that it's very misleading, because anyone who didn't already know the history would naturally interpret "additional" to mean that Sheldrake's work was started at about the same time as Wiseman's and was additional to it.

I don't deny that. I think that Wiseman's work with Jay-tee wasn't great, with only three trials yielding any usable data it's simply too small to draw a conclusion. Then again, if the argument is that Wiseman's misleading statements render his work invalid (rather than arguing his work is in itself invalid) then you are running a real risk of rendering large chunks of parapsychology invalid. The whole "Dog Who Knows.." episode has too often been reduced to Wiseman vs Sheldrake, with little actual attempt to look at Sheldrake's findings on their own terms. Discussing the controversy over the data is not the same as discussing the data. I expect you already knew that, but I just wanted to make myself clear.

I don't deny that. I think that Wiseman's work with Jay-tee was great, with only three trials yielding any usable data it's simply too small to draw a conclusion. Then again, if the argument is that Wiseman's misleading statements render his work invalid (rather than arguing his work is in itself invalid) then you are running a real risk of rendering large chunks of parapsychology invalid. The whole "Dog Who Knows.." episode has too often been reduced to Wiseman vs Sheldrake, with little actual attempt to look at Sheldrake's findings on their own terms. Discussing the controversy over the data is not the same as discussing the data. I expect you already knew that, but I just wanted to make myself clear.

Yes, I agree that those are two different discussions.

Looking at the thesis, it seems that in several of these areas there are problems with both Sheldrake's studies and the sceptical experiments testing the same phenomena.The staring experiments in particular seem to be a statistical can of worms, with Marks and Colwell identifying a lack of randomness in the sequences used in some of Sheldrake's experiments, only for him to explain that he had followed an earlier recommendation of Wiseman's to use counterbalanced sequences rather than random ones. Not that the analysis done by Marks and Colwell would have been appropriate even if the sequences had been random! I don't suppose the atmosphere the debate took place in was particularly conducive to sorting out this kind of problem.

The staring experiments in particular seem to be a statistical can of worms, with Marks and Colwell identifying a lack of randomness in the sequences used in some of Sheldrake's experiments, only for him to explain that he had followed an earlier recommendation of Wiseman's to use counterbalanced sequences rather than random ones.

Does the thesis mention Lobach & Beirman's 2004 paper "The invisible gaze: Three attempts to replicate Sheldrake's staring effects" which ran a computer simulation of someone receiving trial by trial feedback and guessing using a simple learning technique? His results were very similar to Sheldrake's reported results with his list of sequences with feedback. 

As for the new sequences Sheldrake designed to no longer include equal numbers of stare and non-stare periods, Lobach and Beirman wrote "On inspection, 16 of the 20 new target sequences have a 10-10 or a 9-11 distribution, and only 4 have a 8-12 distribution."

Is there a link to the thesis in this thread? I didn't notice it before.

Does the thesis mention Lobach & Beirman's 2004 paper "The invisible gaze: Three attempts to replicate Sheldrake's staring effects" which ran a computer simulation of someone receiving trial by trial feedback and guessing using a simple learning technique? His results were very similar to Sheldrake's reported results with his list of sequences with feedback. 

As for the new sequences Sheldrake designed to no longer include equal numbers of stare and non-stare periods, Lobach and Beirman wrote "On inspection, 16 of the 20 new target sequences have a 10-10 or a 9-11 distribution, and only 4 have a 8-12 distribution."

Is there a link to the thesis in this thread? I didn't notice it before.

There's an archived copy of the dissertation here:
https://web.archive.org/web/201107031222...-Sheldrake

Philip Stevens has kindly provided another copy including pictures, which I hope will be made available here soon.

As far as I can see, there's only a brief reference to Lobach and Bierman having failed to replicate Sheldrake's staring results. But I think Stevens's main focus is on whether Sheldrake has been treated fairly, rather than on whether Sheldrake's hypotheses are true - in other words, on the controversies rather than on the data themselves.

There's an archived copy of the dissertation here:
https://web.archive.org/web/201107031222...-Sheldrake

Philip Stevens has kindly provided another copy including pictures, which I hope will be made available here soon.

The dissertation is now available here:
https://psiencequest.net/mediawiki/image...munity.pdf

No surprise there. It's never been the case that proponents even pretend that the standards are remotely equitable. Proponent parapsychologists can be caught in outright lies about how they obtained their results and we're expected to look the other way. But if a non-proponent says something which an uncharitable (or even overtly dishonest) reading can turn into a falsehood, they are pilloried ad nauseam. It's an interesting phenomenon, so please, do carry on.

"Lying for Jesus"

Linda

Non proponents will lie or mislead much more than proponents, not sure why you are trying to pretend it's the non proponents that are treated unfairly. This is obviously not the case.