I used to be very interested in the parapsychology-back in the 1970’s it looked like there would finally be some good hard scientific proof , that at least some of it(extrasensory perception) was real. Well, its been quite a while since anyone has wriiten anything on the subject-is this study a “dead end”-have real scientists given up on this? I also understand that Duke University (where J.B. Rhine did his early research)no longer funds a department of parapsychology. Was the whole thing a scam from the beginning?
From the Sci.skeptic FAQ (which took a little digging to find):
"0.7: Is there any scientific psi research?
[Contributed by Roger Nelson of PEAR]
In short, yes. According to a recent National Research Council report, there is a 130 year history of scientific research, albeit with no clear conclusion that the classical psi effects, telepathy, clairvoyance, psychokinesis, precognition, have been demonstrated. Most knowledgeable scholars would date the advent of controlled research later, to the early 1930’s when J. B. Rhine began his work with McDougall in Duke University’s psychology department. Rhine’s work has been much criticized, and is widely discounted, but inappropriately for the most part.
In any case, later workers built on these foundations of experimental design and statistical analysis, and there has been a cumulative increase in scientific rigor and sophistication. Most of current psi research is conducted by a small number of investigators in universities and established institutes, and reports are presented at conventions of professional organizations such as the Parapsychological Association, and the Society for Scientific Exploration, and published in professional journals of these groups or, occasionally, in mainstream journals in physics, psychology, and statistics. Professionals familiar with the literature, including recent meta-analyses, find persuasive evidence for small, replicable anomalous effects correlated with human consciousness and intention.
There are currently perhaps a dozen active research laboratories, worldwide, and on the order of 50 to 100 researchers actually doing experiments. It is a fact that their work is not well known to the general public including most of the sci.skeptic readership. Thus, the frequently negative, and sometimes disdainful commentary on psi research from “skeptics” tends to be ill-informed, or refers to something other than scientific research. Language usage is part of the problem, as the terms psychic research, parapsychology, esp, telepathy, etc., have been usurped by non-scientists and media people. With suitable modifiers, the term anomalous is often used to describe the subject of investigation in modern research, partly to avoid the implied mechanisms and relationships attached to the older terms.
Much of current experimental psi research is not only scientific, but adheres to more rigorous standards than are found in much contemporary work in the social and physical sciences, largely because the investigators understand the technical difficulties as well as the implications of positive findings for our general scientific models. It should be noted that constructive criticism from skeptics has made important contributions to research quality."
The copyright on the document is 1996.
To read the whole thing go to:
http://www.burtcom.com/mtrsn/sfaq_idx.htm
I don’t think that we question the fact that testing is being done;gullibility will always be in fashion, after all. But has anything been found?
slythe:
The answer is there in my post, just kinda burried. Let me quote:
“Professionals familiar with the literature, including recent meta-analyses, find persuasive evidence for small, replicable anomalous effects correlated with human consciousness and intention.”
So what does this mean? To me it says “We can’t show you a guy floating a pencil, but we can show you a column of numbers to justify our next research grant.”
But this is in the skeptic faq and these scientists probably really think they have found something. So who knows. Personally I’d love to see someone float that pencil. But I think I’ll just have to be content with the column of numbers.
(Only 10 posts and I’m in Great Debates. I think I’m in way over my head.)
I’ll believe in psychics when, the next time I wonder into a psychic fair with $20 in my pocket thinking as loudly as I can, “Say ‘Randi’ and win free money!”, and someone collects.
Well…Don’t the police sometimes seek the help of “psychics”?
…and until recently, didn’t the U.S. military use “remote viewing”?
Krispy Original - I survived the SDMB outage
Whether people believe in it or not doesn’t make it true…
Kind of like Christianity…
D’OH! 
Esprix, who wasn’t directing that at orangecakes personally, but certainly couldn’t resist the jibe!
Dean Radin had a recent book The Conscious Universe: The Scientific Truth of Psychic Phenomena which I’ve just read.
I’d post a link to the book on Amazon, but I don’t know if that is kosher (linking to commercial site?) But, if you look for “Dean Radin” you can’t go wrong.
Anyway, he gives convincing arguments for several parapsychological effects, the two of which I can remember and are actually interesting to me are the ganzfeld and random number generator (RNG) effects.
Apparently, when someone is concentrating on it an RNG does not generate data that is as random as it does in control tests. The effect is small but statistically significant. I don’t know what to make of it, especially since we don’t really have a theory for how all this works. The RNGs are (IIRC) using quantum effects to get true randomness (radioactive decay?) and so one theory is some interaction between a conscious mind and the quantum probability wave function. Bizarre.
The ganzfeld is a weird touchy-feely experiment I can’t fully wrap my head around. Someone sits in the equivalent of a sensory overload chamber and says out loud what images are coming to her mind, while someone in another room is watching a video clip and ‘sending’ the images. Later, either the receiver watches four tapes and picks which one was ‘sent’, or independent people listen to what she was saying and decide which of the four tapes best fit the imagery she used in her descriptions. By chance you’d expect 25% hit rate, but it ends up being significantly (and I mean that in the statistical sense) higher than that.
My wife is currently involved in some ganzfeld experiments at Stanford U. She’s the believer in the family, I’m the skeptic. I’ve always wanted to believe in psi, but every promising story in the past has vaporized under scrutiny, so I’ve been left without much hope for it to be real. Perhaps this is the avenue of research that will finally pay off, or perhaps we are deluding ourselves.
One thing I do believe is that solid scientific research in this area should be encouraged. It’s true there have been charlatans in the past, but if there are replicable studies then they should be published in Nature or other ‘real’ science journals.
All of the research I’ve read about bpoils down to just a few things :(a) there are people who seem to be able to perceive things from another’s mind, without any physical connection and (b)some people are able to physically effect random processes. Well, if this is true, then why don’t we see casinos in Las Vegas going bust? If someone can affect the outcome of dice rolls, that person could rapidly break the bank! For this reason , I don’t believe in ESP!
Who said anything about dice rolls? If I read doug’s post correctly they are talking about an effect on the quantum level, too small to alter the roll of a die. Don’t get me wrong - after all I’m the one who’s holding out for the floating pencil. But if they can replicate an experiment with a demonstrable result, I’m all for looking at it more closely. We may find nothing more than a badly designed experiment, but hey - that’s science.
If these abilities were really significant, they should be easy to prove. But when someone says “I can guess the outcome of a coin toss 52% of the time” well, that’s pretty hard to verify. It’s also pretty useless.
2% better than chance is useless! Nonsense my friend-a 2% edge (over the house) in rouelette or blackjack would be pretty good.In fact, you could earn a decent living (if you were prepared to spend a lot of time in the casino)?
Actually, Radin talks about psi in the casino in his book, and addresses egkelly’s point pretty thoroughly. Unfortunately, I don’t have the book with me right now or I’d pull some quotes for you.
As for the casino data he had, a bigwig at a Vegas casino gave him tons of data and they correlated it with “field conciousness” effects - things like “when the superbowl is happening, payouts increase a little”. Stuff like that.
And, thanks for backing me up, Trion. You are correct that this is exactly how science progresses. If a replicable experiment that defies classical or quantum predictions can be designed (and in fact Radin claims it has been) then we’ll have a revolution on our hands. I don’t know if we are there yet, but I’d love to see it happen.
Unfortunately, wishing doesn’t make it so and I’m still a bit skeptical that this will pan out, but for now it is very intriguing.
Yes, with universal failure (despite psychic’s claims to the contrary). Psychic Detectives, Psychic Detectivs on A&E.
I doubt it, or else they would have not been surprised so many times … but I can’t come up with a good reference.
jrf
Should that be “sensory deprivation chamber”? It would really change the meaning of the whole post…
And if it’s a “sensory overload chamber” what’s she being overloaded with?
-Steve
“Heyyyy sexy mama! Wanna kill all humans?” -Bender, Futurama
“Your game shows reward knowledge. Ours punish ignorance!” -The Simpsons
I knew someone would notice that, so I’d like to thank you for coming through for me Mr. Sprix
KO said:
Well, I’m sure you were either trolling or just being a really nice guy so I could post the following links to recent Mailbag items. In any event, here they are (somebody else mentioned they were looking for references).
http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mpsychicfed.html
http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mpsychiccop.html
http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mdixon.html
The research on random number generation, etc., is finally on the right track, IMHO. We have been looking for elephants when we should have looking for fleas. May I posit the perfect PK experiment? I can? Of course, I already knew that you would say yes…
Create a null field sphere, a vacuum shielded from every conceivable influence. Inside, stretch a very thin wire with a very small bead in the center, with calibration designed to detect the tiniest vibration of that wire/bead. (The hard part will be to eliminate all the vibrations that might affect the string) This would define the “ground” state.
Have a subject concentrate on moving the bead (he’ll probably have to be able to see it, hence a glass sphere). If it moves even the slightest, debate over. Since PK involves a force rather than a perception, it will be that hardest to pin down. PK is, according to scuttlebutt, the rarest of the “psychic” phenomena, so lets fund it with enough money to test lots and lots of subjects, and enough to offer a powerful incentive to the subjects. You wanna be a millionaire? Move the bead one micrometer.
If, as a previous post has suggested, the effects are most prevalent at the quatum level, it has implications that could rock our world! The mind set of the experimenter directly affects the experiment! Shroedingers cat is dead if it thinks it is! (It has something to do with Hiesenberg…maybe…not sure about that.)
If conciousness itself is a force, even a small and subtle one, the implications are like, totally awesome.
I, for one, would bet on it.
“The Universe is not only queerer than we imagine, it is queerer than we CAN imagine.”
J.B.S. Haldane (though I have seen it attributed to others)