Susan Blackmore's accusations against Daryl Bem

The third point Williams makes is an odd one: Sargent's work doesn't effect the overall results of the ganzfeld meta-analysis so you may as well keep them in. I'm not sure if that makes sense, but there you go.

I think probably that was written with reference to Blackmore's statement that "I have challenged Bem personally over this but he denies that it matters." I find it difficult to believe that she didn't ask him why he thought that, or that he didn't explain if asked. As Blackmore doesn't enlighten us, I think it's reasonable to discuss whether it does matter.

Williams doesn't appear to be arguing that Sargent's work shouldn't be removed from the database - he says "arguably it should be, based on Blackmore’s criticisms." But he is arguing that its removal wouldn't make much difference to the strength of the evidence.

Courtesy of the SPR Facebook page - on her Psychology Today blog, Susan Blackmore has another go at Daryl Bem:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/...-phenomena

Partly she seems unhappy that in a revised version of his paper "Writing an Emprical Article," Bem has removed some statements that she was previously unhappy with (statements on the basis of which he has been accused of endorsing "p-hacking," though that accusation usually relies heavily on selective quotation).

Also she repeats the incorrect statement discussed above, that [in 1994] "Bem used Sargent’s data in his meta-analysis, with Sargent’s studies making up a quarter of those involved." Sargent's data had been used in an earlier meta-analysis by Honorton in 1985, before Blackmore raised concerns about Sargent's work, but were not included in the new meta-analysis published by Bem and Honorton in 1994.

Bryan J. Williams has responded in detail to Blackmore's blog post in a commentary entitled "Making Too Much of Too Little?"
https://en-gb.facebook.com/notes/bryan-j...002782050/

It's also worth noting that while she now refers to her 1987 paper as "showing how Sargent had cheated," of course that is not what Blackmore wrote at the time. In the paper she referred to cheating as one possible hypothesis that could explain what she had seen, but concluded "I think there is still doubt as to the correct hypothesis."

Apparently Blackmore is continuing to attack Daryl Bem, this time in the November/December issue of the Skeptical Inquirer, under the title "Another Scandal for Psychology: Daryl Bem’s Data Massage." This one is behind a paywall though, so I can't see it:
https://skepticalinquirer.org/2019/11/an...a-massage/

Apparently Blackmore is continuing to attack Daryl Bem, this time in the November/December issue of the Skeptical Inquirer, under the title "Another Scandal for Psychology: Daryl Bem’s Data Massage." This one is behind a paywall though, so I can't see it:
https://skepticalinquirer.org/2019/11/an...a-massage/

Someone who paid for a copy of Blackmore's latest article kindly sent me a copy. I think if I had paid for it I would have asked for my money back. It's just one page, and I can't see anything new in it that wasn't in her previous Skeptical Inquirer article (linked above) or her Psychology Today blog post (ditto).

She has modified the wording of her "important point," perhaps as a result of Bryan J. Williams having pointed out that what she'd written previously wasn't true. In her blog post she wrote "Bem used Sargent’s data in his meta-analysis, with Sargent’s studies making up a quarter of those involved." Now she writes "Bem had included Sargent's data in his review of ganzfeld meta-analyses ..." In fact, the paper she's referring to was written by Bem and Charles Honorton, and as well as presenting a new meta-analysis they summarised the results of one published by Honorton alone nine years earlier, in which Sargent's data were included. The likelihood of her implication that it was Bem rather than Honorton who contributed the summary of Honorton's previous work can no doubt be judged easily enough!

I think the only other new point is that she wanted to entitle her blog post "Another Scandal for Psychology," but the editors changed that title. Hardly surprising, as there's no evidence of anything scandalous in the article. But now Skeptical Inquirer has obliged by published a reworked version of the blog post under that title, with the addition of "Daryl Bem's Data Massage" for good measure.