Psychics, James Randi, etc.

[SineSwiper]

Fox News, taking a page of O'Reilly's book, refuses to apologize and only say "we invite EA to come on our show so we can figuratively sodomize them and not let the get a word in edgewise, but they don't want to".

And yet, people praise James Randi for the same thing...

[Andrew, Killer Bee]

And yet, people praise James Randi for the same thing...

James Randi is a prick in the service of truth and reason. Fox News are pricks in the service of ignorance, prejudice and mammon. No small amount of difference there.

[SineSwiper]

James Randi is a prick in the service of truth and reason. Fox News are pricks in the service of ignorance, prejudice and mammon. No small amount of difference there.

Not really. He's extremely biased, and yet expects psychics to flock over to him, in order to do "experiments", with his stupid million dollar offer, despite there already being perfectly unbiased experiments that prove their validity. No moron would go to a known skeptic for that sort of experiment, especially if there's a million dollars on the line.

[Andrew, Killer Bee]

I'm... not sure I understand your post. Am I reading it wrong or are you pro-psychic?

...despite there already being perfectly unbiased experiments that prove their validity.

Wait. Unbiased experiments proving the existance of psychic powers? Am I reading this right?

No moron would go to a known skeptic for that sort of experiment, especially if there's a million dollars on the line.

Skepticism is a pretty core scientific tenet. Are you arguing that the credulous should be the ones to carry out these experiments?

[SineSwiper]

(Errr...sorry, I was confusing "psychic" with "medium" earlier.)

I'm... not sure I understand your post. Am I reading it wrong or are you pro-psychic?

Yep, unless there are some credible experiments that prove otherwise. After all, believe in science until you are disproven. If there are contradictions, repeat the experiments several times.

Wait. Unbiased experiments proving the existance of psychic powers? Am I reading this right?

Yep. A extensive double-blind set of experiments proved that mediums actually know events surrounding a person's life (whom s/he never met or can even see or hear) with amazing detail with a 70 to 85% accuracy rate, and even with absolutely no information from the person. Even if it was a yes or no question (which isn't anything of incredible detail), the average would be 50%. Cold readers, when viewed the tapes of the experiments, were completely dumbfounded and could not explain the data. The details of the experiment were as follows:

The medium will sit in a chair facing away from everything, especially the test subject (whoever was the person receiving the reading). Both the medium and receiver were blocked off by a seperator. For the first ten minutes, no questions were asked. Instead, the medium would just start spouting off information, some of it being so uncanny that it couldn't be guessed. Afterwards, the receiver would answer (yes or no) questions, but only through a third person giving out the answers, so that no emotion was expressed in the answer. The resulting facts were graded on true or false, as well as a 1-4 scale of predictability. (Coin flips would get a 1; really uncanny facts would get a 4.)

John Edwards, the man I'm sure you love to hate, got some of the highest scores, averaging about 80% most of the time. There were some other well-known mediums there, too.

Skepticism is a pretty core scientific tenet. Are you arguing that the credulous should be the ones to carry out these experiments?

I think the meaning of the word has been shifted towards the other end of belief in the past several decades. Just look at the web sites relating to Skepticism. It's not about science. It's about shooting down any sort of idea based on one or two factoids.

A scientist should try to cover all of the angles in an experiment, but must also be open-minded enough to believe the data, if it's proven scientifically. Skeptics are akin to atheists. The real scientist is agnostic.

Yes, there are many many fakes, and many other bogus claims in the world of the occult/supernatural/holistic/etc. However, you should disprove it and move on. It should not be a lifelong goal to defame these theories by any means necessary. That is a biased, unscientific, and unhealthy view of using science as a club to prove your beliefs, instead of basing your beliefs on science.

Will an experiment like this ever get repeated? Probably not for a while. Why? The politics of science. Any sort of "voodoo science" like this is automatically vilified by the people who would be likely to grant money in such an experiment. Which is a damn shame. We still have people that don't believe in global warming or evolution because of scientific politics.

Just look at how long it fucking took to get chiropractic care as a recognized form of medicine by the AMA. Decades and decades of distrust and outright corruption. This is the power of skeptics, misguided at their attempt to blow off scientific evidence to support their own beliefs, instead of an open-minded POV towards science.

[Andrew, Killer Bee]

science

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

[Andrew, Killer Bee]

A extensive double-blind set of experiments proved that mediums actually know events surrounding a person's life...

From <a href="http://csicop.org/si/2003-01/medium.html">an article</a> in (OMG BIAS) The Skeptical Inquirer:

I will list here the major types of flaws in the experiments described in his first four reports (I will deal with the fifth report separately below):

1. Inappropriate control comparisons
2. Inadequate precautions against fraud and sensory leakage
3. Reliance on non-standardized, untested dependent variables
4. Failure to use double-blind procedures
5. Inadequate "blinding" even in what he calls "single blind" experiments
6. Failure to independently check on facts the sitters endorsed as true
7. Use of plausibility arguments to substitute for actual controls

The preceding list refers to defects in the conduct of the experiments and in the gathering of the data. Other very serious problems appear in the way Schwartz interprets and presents the results of his research. These include:

8. The confusion of exploratory with confirmatory findings
9. The calculation of conditional probabilities that are inappropriate and grossly misleading
10. Creating non-falsifiable outcomes by reinterpreting failures as successes
11. Inflating significance levels by failing to adjust for multiple testing and by treating unplanned comparisons as if they were planned.

[SineSwiper]

From <a href="http://csicop.org/si/2003-01/medium.html">an article</a> in (OMG BIAS) The Skeptical Inquirer:

And a rebuttal. Just to prove that I'm ahead of the game, I'll post Hyman's rebuttal of that reply, which is rather selective, in my opinion.

Most rational scientists agree that the credibility and integrity of a review of a body of research is that the review includes all the important information, not just the reviewer's favored information. Hyman's review titled "How Not To Test Mediums" is a textbook example of the selective ignoring or dismissing of historical, procedural, and empirical facts to fits one's preferred interpretation. The result is an inaccurate, mistaken, and biased set of conclusions of the current data.

Some might argue that Hyman has made what might be termed the ultimate reviewer's mistake: the selective ignoring and omitting of important information. Paraphrasing Hyman, "Probably no other extended review of psychic research deviates so much from accepted norms of scientific methodology as this one."

[Kupek]

YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND SCIENCE.

Theories are never proved correct, they are only disproved (through falsifying data), or have supporting evidence. Further, a mainstay of science is reproducibility. Some hack publishing his own experiments is not noteworthy. What was his full methodology? What are the possible holes in his experimental design? What are alternative conclusions one can come to? How can follow-up experiments further investigate the matter? But all of that is just icing. A basic tenet of the scientific method is that if other people can't reproduce your data, your experiment is crap.

God. If I continue reading this thread my head will explode.

[Andrew, Killer Bee]

Sine makes sense if you just divide him by zero, Kupek.

[Zeus]

YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND SCIENCE.

Theories are never proved correct, they are only disproved (through falsifying data), or have supporting evidence. Further, a mainstay of science is reproducibility. Some hack publishing his own experiments is not noteworthy. What was his full methodology? What are the possible holes in his experimental design? What are alternative conclusions one can come to? How can follow-up experiments further investigate the matter? But all of that is just icing. A basic tenet of the scientific method is that if other people can't reproduce your data, your experiment is crap.

No "hack" can do anything without a lab setting or a helluva rep anymore anyways. No one would believe him or even give me the benefit of the doubt to try out his experiment regardless of how well he documents it and how legit it is.

When was the last time we had a garage scientist come up with anything? Maybe I'm just out of the loop but I haven't heard of anything in a LONG time

[SineSwiper]

Theories are never proved correct, they are only disproved (through falsifying data), or have supporting evidence. Further, a mainstay of science is reproducibility. Some hack publishing his own experiments is not noteworthy. What was his full methodology? What are the possible holes in his experimental design? What are alternative conclusions one can come to? How can follow-up experiments further investigate the matter? But all of that is just icing. A basic tenet of the scientific method is that if other people can't reproduce your data, your experiment is crap.

Fine, then have somebody reproduce the experiment. Oh wait, nobody will give out the grant money for such an experiment, you say?

So, when are we comfortable with the subject to stop yelling at each other and start to duplicate the fucking experiments? After all, you said it: A mainstay of the scientific method is reproducibility. In order to reproduce a result, you have to, you know, duplicate the experiment.

Of course, if the same scientist reproduced the experiment, he would be dismissed as being a hack and biased. If we have one of these skeptics make a go at it, there's a decent chance of scientific corruption, or misunderstanding of the way that a medium has to work. (Making a study double-blind to protect scientific credibility is one thing; forcing something stupid like making the medium "call out" whoever he wants or doing the whole thing by telephone is corrupting the experiment to give out bad results.)

No, I think there needs to be open-minded scientists that are agnostic in their beliefs of the matter, and isn't hell-bent on trying to prove or disprove the results. No million dollar bets on the experiment, either.

Kupek, is there anything wrong with what I'm asking, or are you going to say that I don't understand science again? I understand science well enough to know about the political undertones that it carries sometimes. Hell, you're probably closer to that sort of thing than I am.

[Kupek]

I'm sorry, I honestly am, but serious participation in this discussion would use up, minimum, an hour of my time. More likely, about two hours. I really don't have the time or patience for that anymore. I wasn't kidding with my description of Ruminations.

I submit you buy into these experiments for mainly two reason: you're not familiar enough with the scientific method to spot bad experiments, and more importantly, you want them to be true. Which is fine. Believe in whatever mystical, supernatural crap you want to. Just don't dress it up in pseudo-science.

[Zeus]

But you can't deny that the scientific community is very closed to anyone who is not a part of their ranks, regardless of the legitimacy of their experimentation.

[Andrew, Killer Bee]

It's not a club. You either practise science or you don't. If you don't, you're not a scientist. "The scientific community" is naturally closed to people claiming to practise science, that actually don't, just like "the gaming community" is closed to people that say that play games, but don't.

[Zeus]

The very nature and history of science is built upon "garage" experiments. It's should be "prove it to us if you can" not "you're not a 'scientist' thus we don't acknowledge you" which is just the way it's been forever. Sure, that don't mean you take ever Tom, Dick, and Harry seriously, but I'm saying it's far beyond that. It's an old boy's club and unless you're a part of it, it don't matter how legitamite you are.

I was just trying to get Kupek to acknowledge that. He's going through is PhD, I'm sure he's gone through an insane amount of bullshit politics trying to work his way into that community. I have both an aunt and a friend who are doing that in political science and they've told me many stories about how ridiculous and close-minded those are who decide whether or not you're "legitamite".

[SineSwiper]

It's not enough to say that some scientist's method is flawed. You must back it up with another experiment. After all, you could be arguing about the flaws all damn day. Sometimes, there just isn't a way to cover for a flaw. (Coming up with a placebo group for certain experiments is rather hard, sometimes.)

A good example backing what you claim is one experiment about this Russian girl who could supposedly diagnose conditions just by being around them. So, they implemented an double-blind experiment (they could still see her, but they didn't know each other) where six people had a condition and she had to link the condition with the person.

The results were a bust. She couldn't guess them accurately. Regardless, though, they actually went through the test. This was over some sort of fantastic thing that was much less popular than mediums. Why is it that these people can run an experiment over this, but nobody is willing to run more tests on mediums?

If you think the tests are flawed, then run another experiment your own way.

[Kupek]

It's not enough to say that some scientist's method is flawed. You must back it up with another experiment.

False. I don't need to produce my own experiment to call someone's methodology into question. If that was the case, the peer review process would take even longer.

[SineSwiper]

I'm not saying that as a requirement of science in general, but the lack of research on this subject is appalling. Just spend the time to counter the claims, since so many people believe them. After all, people jump at the chance to research illicit drugs like E or find some way to claim that "marijuana causes cancer".

The benefits are great if you disprove scientifically that they exist, and even greater if you prove (or at least towards proving) scientifically that they do exist.

[Kupek]

One, you can't prove theories true. We've been over that, so I won't explain it.

Two, people believe in this stuff because they want it to be true. It has no rational basis. No experiment or explanation will be enough for them - unless they took the time to actually understand the scientific method and learn some science in the process, in which case they'd probably start to doubt supernatural explanations anyway.

People who work in science are interested in discovering new things. Were I a scientist in those areas, I doubt I'd bother: the only people who actually give this stuff credence are also not familiar with how science works, and would probably not accept the findings.

[SineSwiper]

I realize that it's impossible to prove something true, though under that same logic, it's impossible to disprove something as well. One could always claim that the test subjects weren't really mediums, for example.

However, you can still give people a lot better chances that the truth is indeed true. Sure, some people still believe that evolution doesn't really exist, but for the most part, most people do believe it, and the ones who are in the field of science benefit from the research of evolution (with its countless avenues of biological science branches).

I feel that there's a lot of bunk ideas out there, but there are some other real things that are lumped in the same category. The only way to prove (however the fuck you want to define that word, Kupek) that some of these things aren't actually bunk (or to disprove them) is to test them. That lack of research on these ideas is rather disconcerting, actually, especially when there is research indicating that the possibility is strong.

Again, I refer to chiropractic as an example of this. Decades and decades of discounting evidence to its worth and only now is it getting some of the notice that it deserves. Does anybody apologize for ignoring it for so long? (For god's sake, it took a class action lawsuit for the AMA to recognize it as a valid practice.) Why must we fight so hard to get something recognized, when all it takes is paying attention to the research?

[Zeus]

*watches Kupek deftly avoid his questioning through feining an argument with Sine* :-)

[Kupek]

Yes, Zeus, I am clearly avoiding certain topics because they are TIME SINKS. I said up front I don't want to get into the whole deal here. But Sine has actually presented a few small things which have easy answers.

I realize that it's impossible to prove something true, though under that same logic, it's impossible to disprove something as well.

Not so, and this is why I say you don't understand the scientific method. First of all, some things can be proved true: mathematical theorems for, one. But scientific theories are not mathematical theorems. Scientific theories, basically, state a way the observable universe operates. We can not prove them true because in order to do so, we would have to exhaustively test everything, which is impossible. But, all you need to disprove such a theory is a counter example. For example, if my theory is that all planets have circular orbits, no amount of cataloguing circular orbits will prove my theory correct. But all it takes is a single non-circular orbit to disprove it.

It all depends on what you're trying to prove or disprove. Your example is actually valid: I can't disprove the existence of mediums. Nor can I disprove the existence of invisible pink elephants or the flying spaghetti monster.

Also, science is, by its nature, conservative. Most ideas are wrong. It takes time and extraordinary amounts of evidence for things to be accepted - but this is a feature, not a bug. That's why the AMA doesn't have to apologize.

[Zeus]

Yes, Zeus, I am clearly avoiding certain topics because they are TIME SINKS. I said up front I don't want to get into the whole deal here. But Sine has actually presented a few small things which have easy answers.

A simple "I disagree but don't have the time, patience, or frankly a measurable level of caring to discuss it with a peon like you" would have sufficed (<--- psst, this means I'm joking)

It did provide me with a good laugh though :-)