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Feng Shui Test

What about this bit?

Furthermore, most of the times, as most customers are not sure about the hour of their birth or the age of their properties, the feng shui consultants will have to tests different locations for the feng shui cures and different cures prior to obtain the required results. These can take up to 3 months.
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If I have interpreted this rather badly written pasage, they must test the cures for 3 months as the client usually doesn't know how old their various possesions are, or indeed the actual hour of their birth. If these tests on the cures is used to determine something like how old the possesions are, this could be a cheap and easy way to test their claims.

It seems like a long shot, but I would ask more about this bit.
 
His test is not blinded in any way at all. I would expect a large proportion of the customers to report success even if there was none.
 
For blinding, you could set up a percentage of the rooms according to modern design principles that the FS expert would deem 'bad'.

Or rearrange them all up using 'standard' principles (although this would necesitate the participation of an expert in that) and have the FS expert label which would cause 'good luck' and which 'bad luck' (and in which areas).

Or tell the FS expert to only optomise for one thing (wealth/health/etc) in each case and get participants to record seperately any change in 'luck' (good or bad) in all possible areas.

That still leaves the major problem of finding volunteers and the purchase of gimicky water features/ pot plants / whatever so that everyone feels Feng Shui-ed, of course.

RO
 
It might be interesting to test the Shuists on a number of rooms or houses where the ‘luck’ or success of the occupants is already known. If a person is very successful in a certain field or aspect of life then accordingly they should have arranged their homes to facilitate this.

Clients could be found who are wealthy through various professions, who have specific illnesses or have been in perfect health for some time, who have extremely good and successful relationships or who excel in certain fields – which may or may not make them wealthy as well.

The consultant(s) would then only need to assess the effect of the Feng Shui on the occupants and this could be measured against the known data.

The most interesting clients would be those with contradictory aspects. For example, a mansion belonging to a bankrupt or an otherwise obviously successful person with health problems.
 
I would stay away from subjective criteria such as relying on the customer to "tell us whether there are any improvements after feng shui remedies are implemented". No.

"Luck in wealth" at least could be objectively measured over the course of a few years though I think. Just have test subjects (both the "real" ones and the control group) agree to turn in a copy of their income tax returns each year for the duration of the study, then compare the improvements in income of the control group to that of the group that received the Feng Shui consultations.

You shouldn't need 100 people. 20 guinea pigs and 20 in the control group (40 total) should be enough to make people say "hmm" if there is a huge discrepency in wealth between the control group and the test subjects after 5 years I would think.

It's not double-blind in that volunteers for this test will be aware of whether they are in the control group or not, but I think that's ok since (a) devising a fake FS "placebo" indistinguishable from the real thing would be nearly impossible anyway, and (b) income tax returns should be a bit more objective than a subjective feeling of having been more lucky lately and thus less subject to placeo effects / confirmation bias / whatever.
 
troy jones said:
I would stay away from subjective criteria such as relying on the customer to "tell us whether there are any improvements after feng shui remedies are implemented". No.

"Luck in wealth" at least could be objectively measured over the course of a few years though I think. Just have test subjects (both the "real" ones and the control group) agree to turn in a copy of their income tax returns each year for the duration of the study, then compare the improvements in income of the control group to that of the group that received the Feng Shui consultations.

You shouldn't need 100 people. 20 guinea pigs and 20 in the control group (40 total) should be enough to make people say "hmm" if there is a huge discrepency in wealth between the control group and the test subjects after 5 years I would think.

It's not double-blind in that volunteers for this test will be aware of whether they are in the control group or not, but I think that's ok since (a) devising a fake FS "placebo" indistinguishable from the real thing would be nearly impossible anyway, and (b) income tax returns should be a bit more objective than a subjective feeling of having been more lucky lately and thus less subject to placeo effects / confirmation bias / whatever.
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An easier solution : Have the Feng Shui expert prepare several rearrangements for each guinea pig, one optimizing for health, one optimizing for wealth, and another optimizing for "luck," et cetera. Give each subject one of the rearrangements, without telling them what it optimizes for. After three months, subjects are asked to evaluate their lives on various categories such as "health," "wealth," "luck."

The experimental hypothesis, of course, is that people will improve (the most) in the area their living room has been optimized for. Since the subjects don't know which "improvement" they've been given, confirmation bias shouldn't be an issue. Since we've got several different categories running, each can provide a control group for the others.
 
Anyone else worried about the possibilities for fraud over a 3 month test? What if the "Fenger" saw the configuration that was being used and told the participant what area of their life it was supposed to improve?

Possibly offering them a cut of the prize money?
 
drkitten said:
An easier solution : Have the Feng Shui expert prepare several rearrangements for each guinea pig, one optimizing for health, one optimizing for wealth, and another optimizing for "luck," et cetera. Give each subject one of the rearrangements, without telling them what it optimizes for. After three months, subjects are asked to evaluate their lives on various categories such as "health," "wealth," "luck."
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My main concern is that trying to measure things like luck and health objectively is impossible as far as I can tell. Especially luck: will test subjects attribute every life improvement to paranormal "luck" or to skill, determination, or other prosaic factors? It's up to them individually--subjectively--to decide what is meant by luck and how it applies to their lives, and that doesn't really sit well with me. I think for that reason, if at all possible, the test should avoid using questionnaires asking about the subjects' feelings of improvements, especially in fuzzy areas like "luck".

Tax returns OTOH would give us hard numbers that would allow us to calculate out to several decimal places the percent of improvement in the area of wealth for each test subject, and wealth is one area that FS supposedly improves. Obviously not all changes in wealth will be due to FS, but assuming ceterus paribus between the control group and the real group, a marked improvement in the real test subjects' bottom lines above and beyond any improvement in the control group's wealth would give us a clear enough positive result that additional tests would be warranted, while a result showing no significant difference between the two groups would be a clear negative.

In addition, a negative result would seem to me at least to be "stronger" if one group had received FS consulting and one group did not than if one group received FS "optimized" for one thing and the other group received FS "optimized" for something else. In that scenario the FS expert could of course argue after the fact that merely "optimizing" for wealth doesn't necessarily preclude FS-related improvements in health or other areas, and would interpret a slight average improvement in all areas for all groups as a positive, or at least inconclusive, result, whereas a result of slight average improvement for all groups in my system could only be interpreted as a negative result.

Also giving each subject multiple arrangements from which to choose is probably a big departure from the usual method--perhaps a big enough departure to let adherants claim that what was tested wasn't "true" Feng Shui (in the likely event of a negative result). What actually gets tested should resemble the actual FS methods used by this practitioner under normal circumstances as much as possible IMO.

And of course giving each guinea pig three different arrangements instead of just one would greatly increase the cost to whoever foots the bill for all of this. FS practitioners sometimes recommend things like aquariums and such that aren't exactly cheap, and steps should be taken to keep costs under control, at least for this preliminary test.
 
Luck can be objectively ascertained by having each participant buy 10 Lotto tickets every day. After six months it should be clear if anyone has statistically significant better luck than others.
 
Originally posted by garys_2k Luck can be objectively ascertained by having each participant buy 10 Lotto tickets every day. After six months it should be clear if anyone has statistically significant better luck than others.
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Thus the need for a crowd of participants is much reduced - a single 'customer' may be all that's needed. Further (and all in consideration of the extent of the claimed powers, of course), there doesn't need to be any significant period of testing. Purchase one single ticket (or batch, if necessary) before the principle(s) of Feng Shui is/are implemented and one after (when the applicants are sure the effects will be optimal). Compare results. A ticket every day is the other option.

Alas, I suspect that the sensitive currents of Feng Shui cannot be applied to such a blatant act of materialistic gain ;)

Edited to add:
Things that need consideration:
-Where does the Shui have to be introduced? At home only? Work environment? Both?
-How long does the 'customer' have to stay in the boundaries of the Shui-ed up area for a positive effect to be obvious? (1/2/3 hours every day? More?)

Also, it's their application for your prize. They supply the services for the duration of the testing - for free. They supply the ornaments for the duration of the testing - for free.
 
Re: Shui, Louie, and Dewey

sackett said:
This feng hooie artist has a lot of nerve asking somebody else to design a test. He's the one claiming an effect, let him demonstrate it.

I confess I'd enjoy watching say half a dozen of these con jobbers rearrange a room, one after the other, each correcting the previous one's mistakes.

It shouldn't be too hard to assemble a bunch of them for a test. Look in the yellow pages under Bunko.
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I think skeptical organizations should be happy to design tests for people that come to them. That is, after all, what they specialize in.
 
Re: Re: Shui, Louie, and Dewey

Its a win situation for the FS expert no matter what.

If they take a persons house and make it neat clean organized in other words cheery, of course a person is going to feel better regardless of it being FS or Ikea or whatever.

Unless the new digs are not to the taste of the occupant.

Luck is only opportunity that has been used.

And I agree, this seems like a wonderful opportunity for FS.
 
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