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Pigasus Awards & Sheldrake

Blutoski said:
triple-blind so that none of the experimenters, callers, nor recipients is aware of the running score to avoid the learning concern
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This would fix the clock synchronization leak, too.

~~ Paul
 
Bfinn said:
Indeed; I've just checked this in the paper, and it says this potential leakage was eradicated in the videoed trials, in which the recipient had to guess before picking up the phone.
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And all the previous trials were discarded, I presume. That is such a ridiculous leak that it makes it difficult for me to agree with your statement that "Sheldrake isn't an idiot."

The entire field of parapsychology is a game of "eliminate all leaks through the normal senses." I daresay this is a stupendously difficult job. Let's at least make a half-hearted attempt, shall we?

~~ Paul
 
Hang on a mo. Did the recipients receive feedback about whether they got hits or misses, and recipients were allowed to drop out, and those dropout scores were eliminated?

Could someone post a link to the specific paper(s) we're discussing?

~~ Paul
 
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Paul C. Anagnostopoulos said:
Hang on a mo. Did the recipients receive feedback about whether they got hits or misses, and recipients were allowed to drop out, and those dropout scores were eliminated?

Could someone post a link to the specific paper(s) we're discussing?

~~ Paul
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Here is a link to his page about it: http://www.sheldrake.org/D&C/controversies/BA06.html and here is a link to his work on telepathy: http://www.sheldrake.org/Articles&Papers/papers/telepathy/index.html (his articles are linked).
 
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Paul C. Anagnostopoulos said:
If he's convinced, then it's time for a theory from which can be derived hypotheses to test.
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Well I can't speak for Sheldrake, but presumably the theory that this is testing is that humans can communicate telepathically under some circumstances (including this one). Telepathically meaning presumably in a way other than via the normal senses.

If you mean a physical theory, i.e. fleshed out in terms of specific underlying mechanisms, I doubt there would be a candidate for a long time. (Sheldrake suspects morphic fields underlie it, but they are just an outline of a theory.) After all, there are various biological phenomena for which the underlying physical mechanisms are unknown or poorly understood, though it is assumed that they supervene on known physical laws; nothing wrong with that.

I assume that if telepathy does occur then it might not be explicable by currently known physics - which is after all a reason for a level of skepticism about telepathy, though does not of course justify total skepticism.
 
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Bfinn said:
If you mean a physical theory, i.e. fleshed out in terms of specific underlying mechanisms, I doubt there would be a candidate for a long time. (Sheldrake suspects morphic fields underlie it, but they are just an outline of a theory.) After all, there are various biological phenomena for which the underlying physical mechanisms are unknown or poorly understood (though it is assumed that they supervene on known physical laws; nothing wrong with that).
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If someone thinks they have a replicable phenomenon, and the phenomenon is in fact replicated by other workers, then he should devise a theory and test hypotheses, even if the theory is shakey. It's time to do that. Until that happens, psi experiment hypotheses are about nothing other than the protocol and the statistics, and not about any underlying theory. The trouble with hypotheses about protocol and statistics is that the experiments are horribly brittle. You make a little change to the protocol and get a different result, and then you have no idea whether that is because you have discovered something fundamental about the mechanism, or whether you have simply broken the magic protocol.

Consider the three Wiseman & Schlitz staring experiments: I bet Wiseman would give his right arm to know why the experimenter effect disappeared in the third round. I know I would.

I agree with you that we won't have a theory for a long time, although we may not agree on the reason. :D

~~ Paul
 
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Paul C. Anagnostopoulos said:
The entire field of parapsychology is a game of "eliminate all leaks through the normal senses." I daresay this is a stupendously difficult job.
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I agree - this I gather is the purpose of the current joint research between Chris French and Sheldrake (videoing everyone involved etc.), to replicate the experiment in a way which is as controlled as possible.
 
Paul C. Anagnostopoulos said:
If someone thinks they have a replicable phenomenon, and the phenomenon is in fact replicated by other workers, then he should devise a theory and test hypotheses, even if the theory is shakey. It's time to do that. Until that happens, psi experiment hypotheses are about nothing other than the protocol and the statistics, and not about any underlying theory.
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I'm speculating, but I don't think it is time for that yet. We only have the beginnings of a replicable anomaly here, because there hasn't been enough replication (and sure, stronger controls will be needed to build up a convincing case).

In a sense what Sheldrake is currently doing is testing the null hypothesis, that there isn't telepathy. If & when that has been tested enough (to show that the null hypothesis appears to be false) then you could start trying to put together an alternative theory.

Or to put almost the same thing another way, the provisional theory could be simply the hypothesis, viz. 'telephone telepathy exists', i.e. 'humans can sometimes tell (not by normal means) who is phoning them'. It need have no wider or more specific claims than that for now (e.g. about telepathy under other circumstances).

My point being, I think it's sufficient for the time being to concentrate on showing that there is something to explain here (even without providing a proper alternative explanation).

(Anyways, we're getting into philosophy of science, which is a bit off the point I think; any moment we'll start using words like hypotheticodeductivism.)
 
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Bfinn said:
My point being, I think it's sufficient for the time being to concentrate on showing that there is something to explain here (even without providing a proper alternative explanation).
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As long as we agree that "something to explain" might turn out to involve nothing other than the known senses, I'm okay with this. I do agree that there is no "standard psi experiment" that can be clearly replicated.

Keep in mind that it is an unfalsifiable hypothesis that humans can communicate using something other than the standard senses.

~~ Paul
 
So I read Sheldrake's paper "A filmed experiment on telephone telepathy with the Nolan sisters." It was good of him to point out that in 2 of the 12 trials, Colleen picked up the phone before stating her guess. When you consider only the 10 valid trials, the p value increases to .07, I believe. Also, I'm suspicious about the validity of p values for such small datasets.

Sheldrake also gets points for discussing the clock synchronization issue in the paper.

~~ Paul
 
bfinn said:
Why not? If you have read the relevant research, you can explain why this is a "parody", and how the issues mentioned here were addressed.
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Actually I can't be bothered.
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I have no way of telling whether you are not supporting your declared position because you "can't be bothered", or simply because you can't.
 
Mojo said:
I have no way of telling whether you are not supporting your declared position because you "can't be bothered", or simply because you can't.
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The way of my 'supporting my declared position' it seems is that I have to write a precis of research for the benefit of those on this forum who haven't read it and aren't interested in reading it (because they seem to think research can be evaluated without reading it).

And even if I were to do this, you wouldn't really be able to tell whether this was genuine support for my position, because not having read the research you wouldn't know whether my precis was accurate or not.

There's only one solution: read the research before making up your mind.
 
bfinn said:
Er, so any scientist who publishes research which is not hailed as an important breakthrough (within 3 or 4 years) can legitimately be labelled a fraud/fruitcake, by a highly-publicized amateur who I suspect hasn't even read the research?
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If the research does not spur much interest in those scientists who should be most interested in the results, I would say that the scientist's claims about the importance of the results can be legitimately doubted. And claiming to have conclusively demonstrated the existence of a phenomenon that has otherwise not been conclusively demonstrated would usually be considered an important breakthrough. What Randi wants to do with legitimate doubt is his own business. I personally have much different standards, as I suspect do you.

Linda
 
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fls said:
If the research does not spur much interest in those scientists who should be most interested in the results, I would say that the scientist's claims about the importance of the results can be legitimately doubted.
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Regrettably I suspect the reality is that the scientists who should be most interested in the results haven't pursued the research because they 'know it can't be true'.

I heard Sheldrake a few months ago in a radio debate with a chemist (a chemist!) who was brought on to proclaim that this telephone telepathy research was all nonsense. Sheldrake asked if he had actually read any of the research paper - er, no, he hadn't. A fine scientist.

And claiming to have conclusively demonstrated the existence of a phenomenon that has otherwise not been conclusively demonstrated would usually be considered an important breakthrough.
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I don't believe Sheldrake has claimed to have conclusively demonstrated anything here. Just that so far he has found an apparent telepathy effect which deserves further research. (Though I don't doubt he believes that given further research the effect will persist.)
 
bfinn said:
Well, he invented the hypothesis - which is hardly surprising. Scientists often test hypotheses that they invented themselves. I expect almost all established scientific theories were first tested by the person who invented them. There is nothing unusual about Sheldrake doing this.

The problem is, what... experimenter bias? fraud? Of course - these are always possibilities, regardless of who came up with a hypothesis. This is why there is rightly such emphasis placed on protocols, peer review, and replication.
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As far as I can see, he has invented the notion that people can tell the difference between live and pre-recorded TV, decided that this effect (that he just invented) is due to the fact that we subconciously pick up on the mass emotions of the nation during live events, and wants to test separating that feeling from the knowledge of the watching.

Also known as 'I am short on material for my new book and the associated news headlines which net me some more £££".
 
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