Dean Radin's Take on Things
- Thread starter Rodney
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Civilized Worm
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I saw the gorilla, does that mean I'm qualified to dismiss psychic phenomena?
Gr8wight
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Yes, but what if we are told there will be a gorilla, and that the first person to spot the gorilla will win a prize, so the whole crowd at the basketball game is actively looking for the gorilla, but no one sees it? But let's say the people who put on the game insist there was a gorilla, but nobody could see it. What if we bring in people who have no actual interest whatsoever in the basketball game, and other people who are experts in the appearance of gorillas, and we have them look at the video record of the game, from a dozen camera angles, in extreme slow motion, and no one ever sees a gorilla? Except for one guy, who claims he saw a gorilla, but when asked to point it out on the videotape, cannot? How long should we go on believing there really was a gorilla? In those circumstances?
See, Rodney, in the video described by Mr. Radin, the gorilla was really there. Although most people did not see it the first time, after being told to look for it, almost everyone could see it on a second viewing. Not so your alleged paranormal which no one seems to be able to see, even when looking for it intensely. Mr. Radin needs a few lessons in constructing an analogy.
See, Rodney, in the video described by Mr. Radin, the gorilla was really there. Although most people did not see it the first time, after being told to look for it, almost everyone could see it on a second viewing. Not so your alleged paranormal which no one seems to be able to see, even when looking for it intensely. Mr. Radin needs a few lessons in constructing an analogy.
leon_heller
Graduate Poster
Radin's pronouncements on the results obtained by the PEAR people are comprehensively debunked here:
http://www.skepdic.com/pear.html
For someone who claims to have qualifications in psychology, he seems to be extremely gullible about the paranormal. It's usually physicists who take such stuff on board uncritically.
Leon
http://www.skepdic.com/pear.html
For someone who claims to have qualifications in psychology, he seems to be extremely gullible about the paranormal. It's usually physicists who take such stuff on board uncritically.
Leon
You mean that they're debunked because Robert Todd Carroll states: "These data should remind us that statistical significance does not imply importance"?
leon_heller
Graduate Poster
That's one of the reasons. Without a theory of how the results come about the findings are quite useless, even if they are significant.
Leon
So if a new treatment for cancer produces results that are significantly above chance, it should be disregarded until there is a theory of how the treatment could work?
How silly.
We might as well stop investigating any and every anomalous aspect of reality then.
leon_heller
Graduate Poster
Of course we should! It's a total waste of time.
In over 100 years of investigations no-one has produced any scientific evidence for paranormal phenomena, let alone a convincing explanation of how they are supposed to arise.
Leon
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One of the great engines behind progress in knowledge is the investigation of anomalies. We learn by looking at what doesn't fit into our current mode of understanding.
The notion of electromagnetic waves was not so long ago ridiculed by the scientific establishment; now it forms the basis of quite a proportion of our society.
Sorry, but your attitude seems to be one of putting your head in the sand when faced with anomalous data. That's just retrogressive, and a bit clingy.
You don't have to have a theory about how something arises in order to know, and honestly acknowledge, that it does arise.
leon_heller
Graduate Poster
So your view is merely prejudice then.
leon_heller
Graduate Poster
Herz showed that there was an actual effect which coule be replicated. No paranormal studies have ever been successfully replicated by any reputable investigators.
Leon
leon_heller
Graduate Poster
No. Can you show me one paranormal study that has been accepted by the scientific establishment.
Leon
The scientific establishment currently works on the assumption of naturalism. It would be no surprise at all, then, if no paranormal study had ever been widely accepted within it.
Acceptance by an establishment does not equal truth.
You might as well ask "Has any study finding Mohammed not to be a prophet been accepted within the Islamic establishment?"
leon_heller
Graduate Poster
What is wrong with naturalism? It's done a very good job of explaining things so far. Has anyone come up with anything better?
Leon
Civilized Worm
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I feel dirty for saying it, but plumjam has a point. As people have been pointing out to Claus in the distance healing thread, you don't need to understand the mechanism to recognise wether something is having a measurable effect or not.
Tanstaafl
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Yes, noticing anomalous data is often the beginning of discovery. However, a sensible scientist will want to have either 1) a plausible linkage between the items with the correlation, or 2) a rather large, clearly significant correlation.
No scientist should want to spend scarce time and money pursuing something that turns out to be just a statistical quirk.
This doesn't make a lot of sense. Yes, there is an assumption of naturalism, but that does not require a dogmatic rejection of paranormal claims. These effects, if they exist, could merely be the result of natural laws that we are, as yet, unaware of. I can't think of anything a scientist would like more than to be the first to discover a new law of nature.
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leon_heller
Graduate Poster
I didn't say that "Acceptance by an establishment equals truth". I was referring to non-acceptance by the scientific establishment of evidence for the paranormal.
Leon
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Plumjam,
You make a good point.
It's one that is repeated over and over to would be contestants in the Million Dollar Challenge. We don't care a straw about explanations or metaphysical speculatiions. We just want to see the goods. Denonstrate that you can do the specific tested for, and win the prize. Theories later.
Now the pain our psychic investigators have suffered from the inception of their research back at Duke University is that a particular run will show greater than chance results, which seems to suggest something paranormal is happening. However, subsequent runs don't pan oiut with consistancy.
There's a huge lack of repeatability.
These days anxious researchers grab up a group of experiments without regard to their reliability and make a "meta-analysis." Results are still very marginal, not enough to satisfy a scentist who is looking for the way we can expect nature to behave.
One of the things I learned in college physics lab was that if there was any place in the universe where the laws of physics are going to break down in your face, it's in Physics Lab. But you see, these norms of physical behavior aren't established by one classfull of clumsy physics students. It needs habitual repeatability.
Shinola happens. For something to be significant, it needs to be an ordinary, regular behavior. If it's not that, then it might be worthy of further investigation if we have some idea of how the ordinary was circumvened in that particular instance.
There has been shinola in respect to ESP studies but nothing with consistancy you can count on.
Babble about why the product is better than Brand X is wothless unless the product delivers.
And yes, a product that actually delivers is better than one that in theory should.
You make a good point.
It's one that is repeated over and over to would be contestants in the Million Dollar Challenge. We don't care a straw about explanations or metaphysical speculatiions. We just want to see the goods. Denonstrate that you can do the specific tested for, and win the prize. Theories later.
Now the pain our psychic investigators have suffered from the inception of their research back at Duke University is that a particular run will show greater than chance results, which seems to suggest something paranormal is happening. However, subsequent runs don't pan oiut with consistancy.
There's a huge lack of repeatability.
These days anxious researchers grab up a group of experiments without regard to their reliability and make a "meta-analysis." Results are still very marginal, not enough to satisfy a scentist who is looking for the way we can expect nature to behave.
One of the things I learned in college physics lab was that if there was any place in the universe where the laws of physics are going to break down in your face, it's in Physics Lab. But you see, these norms of physical behavior aren't established by one classfull of clumsy physics students. It needs habitual repeatability.
Shinola happens. For something to be significant, it needs to be an ordinary, regular behavior. If it's not that, then it might be worthy of further investigation if we have some idea of how the ordinary was circumvened in that particular instance.
There has been shinola in respect to ESP studies but nothing with consistancy you can count on.
Babble about why the product is better than Brand X is wothless unless the product delivers.
And yes, a product that actually delivers is better than one that in theory should.