Challenge applications

[Professor Yaffle]

Thanks DowserDon,

I'm glad the links worked. I think that might be the first time anyone's used them.

Ward

P.S. Who's Professor French?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_French

 

[wardenclyffe]

Thank you.

Ward

 

[DowserDon]

Reply to Pixel42. I'll give you an example of why I think the protocol is deficient.
Some people can tell the difference between an 1893 and an 1896 vintage wine. Most people can tell the difference between tea and petrol. Now try putting those liquids into sealed plastic bottles beneath upturned buckets and ask the same people to discriminate between them. They cannot do it because the testing protocol is stopping the test applicants from their using the senses that they would normally use in order to be able to tell one from the other.
No one really knows how a dowser detects water but just suppose it is a question of smell. The standard protocol immediately puts a competent dowser at a disadvantage.
Imagine it is an electrical field generated by flow of water through the earth. The dowser would not experience this if the water were stationary in a bottle.
All in all, the present protocol is an example of a poorly designed biassed experiment.
Don't blame Randi - he is only an ex stage magician. You need an experienced scientist to design an improved protocol.
When Prof. Chris French (Prof of Psychology) at Goldsmiths College, University of London, gets around to agreeing my proposal for a different protocol and when he gets around to testing me, we'll see whether I have managed to design an experiment that is not biassed towards either party. He was given the job of agreeing a test protocol with me last September - we have still not met.

 

[Pixel42]

No one really knows how a dowser detects water but just suppose it is a question of smell. The standard protocol immediately puts a competent dowser at a disadvantage.

Why? Are you saying that a smell that isn't masked by metres of earth and stone can be masked by an upturned bucket?

Often the water is put in barrels and buried, and the dowser is asked to tell the buried barrels full of water from buried barrels full of sand, say. The barrel can be made of anything you like. Wood, perhaps. Or just placed in a bowl and a stone arch placed above it and covered in earth. Earth, wood and stone are all things dowsers can presumably dowse through without difficulty.

Imagine it is an electrical field generated by flow of water through the earth. The dowser would not experience this if the water were stationary in a bottle.

Test have been done with the water flowing through pipes rather than stationary. Most dowsers claim to be able to detect water pipes, so the substances they're made of (plastic, metal) don't seem to mask whatever it is dowsers are detecting.

All in all, the present protocol is an example of a poorly designed biassed experiment.

You seem to be under the impression that there is only one "present protocol". Many different variations have been tried, usually as a result of dowsers making the same objections you are. None have resulted in the dowser doing significantly better than chance.

When Prof. Chris French (Prof of Psychology) at Goldsmiths College, University of London, gets around to agreeing my proposal for a different protocol and when he gets around to testing me, we'll see whether I have managed to design an experiment that is not biassed towards either party.

How do you expect to be able to determine that?

He was given the job of agreeing a test protocol with me last September - we have still not met.

I hope he finds the time soon.

 

[Lamuella]

Reply to Pixel42. I'll give you an example of why I think the protocol is deficient.
Some people can tell the difference between an 1893 and an 1896 vintage wine. Most people can tell the difference between tea and petrol. Now try putting those liquids into sealed plastic bottles beneath upturned buckets and ask the same people to discriminate between them. They cannot do it because the testing protocol is stopping the test applicants from their using the senses that they would normally use in order to be able to tell one from the other.
No one really knows how a dowser detects water but just suppose it is a question of smell. The standard protocol immediately puts a competent dowser at a disadvantage.
Imagine it is an electrical field generated by flow of water through the earth. The dowser would not experience this if the water were stationary in a bottle.
All in all, the present protocol is an example of a poorly designed biassed experiment.
Don't blame Randi - he is only an ex stage magician. You need an experienced scientist to design an improved protocol.
When Prof. Chris French (Prof of Psychology) at Goldsmiths College, University of London, gets around to agreeing my proposal for a different protocol and when he gets around to testing me, we'll see whether I have managed to design an experiment that is not biassed towards either party. He was given the job of agreeing a test protocol with me last September - we have still not met.

if someone is smelling water, they aren't displaying a paranormal ability.

This is a challenge for people who display paranormal abilities. Your objection seems to be "This protocol doesn't let me cheat"

 

[wardenclyffe]

DowserDon,

If you believe you have come up with a different type of protocol, and if Prof. French is slow in communicating with you, you might want to try it out with us, first.

While we cannot speak for the JREF nor Prof. French, many of us have been looking at the problems of protocol development for some time. It might save you some time and aggravation if you were to spell out your ideas here, where there's nothing at stake. You'll run in to people who are probably much more cautious than Prof. French who would not accept any protocol, but you might run into people who are more imaginative than Prof. French (or even yourself) who might find ways to simplify the protocol and make your life easier. You never know, but these are puzzles that we like to work on here.

Now, to your examples. The protocols you describe for differentiating wines or even tea and petrol would would not be fair to the applicant. You are correct. However, in those cases we do know what mechanism's at work. It's a combination of sight, smell, mouth-feel, taste and so on. We can figure out how much of a role each of the senses plays by experimenting. We can eliminate one sense at a time.

In the case of wine tasting, more than one experiment has been done (I'm too lazy right now to look for examples, but I'm expecting someone here has a couple of handy links to post) where simply by blinding the taster as well as the person conducting the test, the results are that the wine-taster's accuracy goes way, way down. Knowing the answer ahead of time makes getting the answer correct very, very easy. Not knowing the answer and going on pure taste makes the correct answer very difficult to get.

We see this in cases of dowsing all the time. When the dowser is shown where the target (water, gold, whatever) is, his or her stick or pendulum or wires or whatever will react just as they are supposed to, and the dowser says everything is working properly. But then the bucket is put over the target and the dowser is completely confounded.

As you say, no one knows the exact mechanism that seems to make dowsing work. But it appears to be a keen ability to read the landscape based on years of experience of knowing where targets are likely to appear. This is a combination of intelligence, experience, cleverness, some lucky guesses and the fact that most targets that dowsers successfully find are not necessarily all that rare to begin with. It's not a regulated field, so we have no way of knowing the success rate of dowsers in general nor of specific dowsers nor of dowsers of specific things.

An automobile mechanic could easily claim to be a dowser. If I'm not mechanically minded, but I take my car in because it's having trouble, my mechanic could hold a pendulum over the engine and then tell me it's the water pump. I'd be in no position to deny that. But it was years of experience that taught the mechanic what the symptoms of a broken fuel pump were. The mechanic might convince him or herself that it was dowsing, but it was actually just their own intelligence and experience that gave them the answer.

This is already way longer than I want it to be. You understand what I'm saying.

Continued luck,
Ward

 

[Pixel42]

if someone is smelling water, they aren't displaying a paranormal ability.

This is a good point.

When agreeing a protocol for testing a paranormal ability the main concern is to eliminate all the mundane effects which the applicant could have misinterpreted as indications of something paranormal. In the case of dowsing these are generally assumed to be confirmation bias, the ability to pick up clues from the landscape and the fact that most people vastly underestimate how likely it is to hit water by digging almost anywhere. All these effects will be eliminated by a standard double blind test. But anything that allowed the applicant to use their normal senses to identify where water is most likely to be - hearing and smell as well as sight - also needs to be eliminated in order to conclude that a paranormal ability is being displayed. So JREF is unlikely to agree to any test protocol which left such possibilities open.

 

[jojonete]

An automobile mechanic could easily claim to be a dowser. If I'm not mechanically minded, but I take my car in because it's having trouble, my mechanic could hold a pendulum over the engine and then tell me it's the water pump. I'd be in no position to deny that. But it was years of experience that taught the mechanic what the symptoms of a broken fuel pump were. The mechanic might convince him or herself that it was dowsing, but it was actually just their own intelligence and experience that gave them the answer.

Gotcha!

 

[SkepticScott]

The standard protocol immediately puts a competent dowser at a disadvantage.

That's why there's an open test before the test. That is, the dowser would know where the target is being placed, and if the dowser can't detect it then the test is postponed and the protocol is redesigned. There is no "standard test" since each has to be designed by two parties to meet the specific claim being tested. [Exception: in some mass tests, like the recent TV show, there is one protocol and people are invited to participate if they think they can do what the protocol is testing.

The JREF has done dowsing tests with running water.

Remember, the protocol is designed together based on what is claimed. Your hypothetical wine tester would claim "I can distinguish between wine X and wine Y by taste", so (if accepted) the JREF would never propose a protocol that didn't let the claimant taste the wine.

On the other hand, if a claimant claims "I can detect water buried beneath several meters of earth", it would be reasonable to propose "can you find a glass of water under a cardboard box?" or "can you detect water flowing in a pipe buried 0.5 meters down?"

 

[gnome]

True--the dowser is not at a disadvantage if they are well aware of their capabilities and only agree to a test that works around any limitations they are aware of. Sadly, these limitations are often only claimed after failure. Each test is designed to put a faker or someone mistaken about their abilities at an extreme disadvantage while giving a genuine performer a standard that should be fairly easy to achieve if the power works as claimed.

 

[Almo]

Fact is, in the test in Australia, the dowsers said that it would be a cakewalk because the test would be so easy. When asked what would happen if they failed, they said they would admit dowsing didn't work.

When they failed, the excuses came out.

It's very simple to see what's going on here.

 

[Almo]

Double post.

 

[Ladewig]

That's why there's an open test before the test. That is, the dowser would know where the target is being placed, and if the dowser can't detect it then the test is postponed and the protocol is redesigned.

I want to quote this aspect of the protocol as it is especially important.

 

[MRC_Hans]

Reply to Pixel42. I'll give you an example of why I think the protocol is deficient.
Some people can tell the difference between an 1893 and an 1896 vintage wine.

I doubt that. However such old wines must be very rare, so those that exist may be different for a lot of reasons.

No one really knows how a dowser detects water but just suppose it is a question of smell. The standard protocol immediately puts a competent dowser at a disadvantage.

That can be easily tested. Just have someone place a row of glasses, randomly filled or empty, and cover each with a small cardboard box. Then see of you can smell which ones have water in them. If you can't, then it aint smell. (I recommend you leave the water for about one hour before testing, as freshly poured water may have some scent).

Imagine it is an electrical field generated by flow of water through the earth. The dowser would not experience this if the water were stationary in a bottle.

It is not. Electrical fields can be detected with measuring instruments. If flowing water generated a field strong enough to be felt above the surface, it would be known. Also, flow meters are used many places in industry. None of them use an electric field, because there isn't any.

All in all, the present protocol is an example of a poorly designed biassed experiment.

If it is, it is because dowsers have consistently failed to define what really constitutes their ability.

Don't blame Randi - he is only an ex stage magician. You need an experienced scientist to design an improved protocol.

Don't worry, James Randi does not design the protocols alone. He consults relevant scientists.

When Prof. Chris French (Prof of Psychology) at Goldsmiths College, University of London, gets around to agreeing my proposal for a different protocol and when he gets around to testing me, we'll see whether I have managed to design an experiment that is not biassed towards either party. He was given the job of agreeing a test protocol with me last September - we have still not met.

Prof of Psychology? What makes you think he is particularly qualified to design a dowsing experiment?

Hans

 

[Professor Yaffle]

Prof of Psychology? What makes you think he is particularly qualified to design a dowsing experiment?

Why wouldn't he be? Do you think the JREF would ask someone unsuited and unqualified to work on this?

He is currently Professor of psychology at Goldsmiths College, University of London, is head of their Anomalistic psychology Research Unit which he founded in the year 2000, and is the Editor-in-Chief of The Skeptic (UK) magazine.
He teaches a course entitled Psychology, Parapsychology and Pseudoscience as part of the BSc (Hons) Psychology programmes at both Goldsmiths College and Birkbeck College. He is a Chartered Psychologist and a Fellow of the British Psychological Society. He has published over 60 articles and chapters covering a wide range of topics within psychology, including publications in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology, the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, the British Journal of Psychology and the British Journal of Clinical Psychology.
His main current area of research is the psychology of paranormal beliefs and anomalous experiences. In addition to academic activities, such as conference presentations and invited talks in other departments, he frequently appears on radio and television casting a sceptical eye over paranormal claims. He has taken part in programmes dealing with a wide range of such claims including psychic predictions, telepathy, faith healing, hypnotic past life regression, ghosts, UFO abductions, out-of-body experiences, astrological claims and so on.[1][2][3] He has appeared on various science programmes (e.g. Equinox, Science Now, All in the Mind) and documentaries (e.g. Heart of the Matter, Everyman) as well as numerous discussion programmes (e.g. Esther; The Time, The Place; Kilroy; This Morning).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_French

 

[MRC_Hans]

This is a good point.

When agreeing a protocol for testing a paranormal ability the main concern is to eliminate all the mundane effects which the applicant could have misinterpreted as indications of something paranormal.

Yes, a very important point, indeed. If a dowser works by smelling water, then it would be a remarkable feat, and that person might go down in history as the keenest nose of all mankind, BUT it would not be paranormal, and hence not eligible for the MDC.

The MDC is for supernatural performance. So it is not unfair that smell is eliminated.

DowserDon, you mentioned tea and petrol (assuming they look alike), and most people will readily be able to distinguish them by small (and taste ), so obviously, doing that is not eligible for the MDC. However, if you could distinguish between then, in sealed containers black containers, it might be supernatural (unless there are other, mundane clues, like weight).

Hans

 

[Ladewig]

Reply to Pixel42. I'll give you an example of why I think the protocol is deficient.

[snip]

All in all, the present protocol is an example of a poorly designed biased experiment.

Well if you don't like the proposed protocol can you tell us what you think is a fair and valid protocol for testing dowsing? I know you said you wanted to wait, but is there any useful reason for waiting to reveal your proposed testing procedure?

 

[gnome]

In fact, we can help point out any flaws (if there are any) and give ideas for refining it into a test procedure that will likely be agreeable.

 

[sadhatter]

Yes, a very important point, indeed. If a dowser works by smelling water, then it would be a remarkable feat, and that person might go down in history as the keenest nose of all mankind, BUT it would not be paranormal, and hence not eligible for the MDC.

The MDC is for supernatural performance. So it is not unfair that smell is eliminated.

DowserDon, you mentioned tea and petrol (assuming they look alike), and most people will readily be able to distinguish them by small (and taste ), so obviously, doing that is not eligible for the MDC. However, if you could distinguish between then, in sealed containers black containers, it might be supernatural (unless there are other, mundane clues, like weight).

Hans

I have always found this premise very intriguing. At what point does an ability become supernatural, and even within the supernatural realm, what grades of supernatural are there?

So much so i am currently writing series of stories ( it is taking more of a novel feel as of late, all posted online, anyone interested can pm me, as i don't want to just needlessly pimp out my media.) , around this concept.

At what point would an ability that is otherwise normal, be able to apply for the MDC ( if at all.). I mean a gent lifting a fully loaded tank with one arm would seem on the very borderline, for example. But what if said gent did not have the amount of muscle required to do this? By this i mean, some biologists sit down and make an informed decision on the approximate amount of muscle, and the structure it would need to be able to lift a tank one handed. And the gent in question does not meet these requirements, but still is lifting the tank.

Not that i think this will ever happen, mind you, but it is an interesting premise.

 

[Ladewig]

At what point would an ability that is otherwise normal, be able to apply for the MDC ( if at all.). I mean a gent lifting a fully loaded tank with one arm would seem on the very borderline, for example.

In what sense would lifting 136,000 pounds (62,000 kg) be "borderline"?