Six weeks? What’s to stop the people with the charmed warts from bathing daily in Compound W? Are they going to be monitored constantly? As an alternative, I suggest we round up 20 lab animals with warts, since their behaviour can be more closely monitored, unless wart charming works only on humans.
Besides, I’m not asking what you think Randi would do and what you assume the results of the tests would be, I’m asking for a workable test protocol.
Your deliberate ignoring of evidence is tiresome.
“At JREF, we offer a one-million-dollar prize to anyone who can show, under proper observing conditions, evidence of any paranormal, supernatural, or occult power or event”
The Challenge is real, it is your so-called claim that is bogus. You can play “what if” and word-play games all day, but what it boils down to is this-you won’t submit an application because you know you don’t have a valid claim. Unless you also have the ability to read Mr. Randi’s mind and/or predict the future, your “The Challenge is worthless!” statement means nothing.
Submit your claim, show us the reason you were refused(not tell us why it will probably be refused), and get back to us.
At most this would show that the power of suggestion can effect physical changes.
We already know that. Only the naive and uneducated think such things are paranormal in nature. A scientist would think it’s more likely the effect of the brain on physical parameters, operating within a complex system that is not completely understood, but nevertheless based on ordinary chemical and physical processes.
You continue to attribute that argument to me, and yet I have not made it. Please stop. What I am saying is that “unexplained” is not necessarily “unexplainable.” You, however, have argued the opposite. Here are your words for the third time.
where you state that not proved and not provable are the same thing. I’m merely deny that assertion. It does not follow that I affirm the opposite, however.
If you choose to ignore the rules, you really have no standing to complain that the Challenge is unfair.
This won’t quite work, but it’s a start.
First and most important, this doesn’t reliably test the ability of the healer. If people get better it could be due to the healer, the patient, some outside influence, or a combination of all three.
So we need at least three groups. One group treated by people who believe that they can talk warts away, one group using the exact same methodology as the first but done by people who don’t believe, and one control group. This still isn’t ideal, as it isn’t double-blind, but I can’t think of a way to blind the healers. Can anyone else?
Next, how do we rule out the patients getting other treatments, or even accidentally come into contact with something that might have an effect?
Next, you need to specify a specific number of trials, and find some way to quantify the minimum results that will qualify as a win. For example, three trials, minimum of 10 people in each group for each trial, a win is if the group treated by the believers has a minimum of 20% more loss of warts than either of the other groups (I have no idea what these numbers should be, can anybody suggest some?)
Anyone have any other suggestions to make this a valid test?
On preview, I see Bryan Ekers has suggested using lab animals instead of people to get around the monitoring problem. Is this workable?
And there we have it. The fact is that, like I said, the challenge operates from the position that everything is explainable, merely by it’s existence. The same thinking you embrace. Any demonstrable effect or thing can be written off as not paranormal simply by this logic. The challenge is bogus. They are offering a prize based on contrived meanings of words and from a stand point of impossibilty. They do not beleive that anyhting is unexpainable and no one can prove a negative. No one can win the prize. Materialize a pink unicorn in front of them and they will claim that it must be explainable, just like you maintain that things you do not understand or do not have an explanation for are none the less explainable. Not because you can prove it, but because you are a man of faith. You simply believe without proof. I don’t rely on faith for anything said here. I simply ask for proof of the explanations that you insist exist. You have yet to provide them. You can not prove that there is an explanation for everything althoug you insist there is one.
Ok. Do you have an example of an unexplainable event. Do you just believe that they exist or do you not believe they exist or are you open to the possibilty. If so, what, in your mind, would the charateristics of an unexplainable event.
If the test has to be done on humans (frankly, that combined with a six-week test period during which I assume the test subjects can go home without being monitored makes a convincing result unlikely, but whatever) I suggest we limit the test to people suffering from hand warts and set up a wall partition with a hole so they can put their hands through and have no other contact with the person who might or might not be a wart charmer.
Have ten people with hand warts.
Have ten people with fake warts applied by a professional make-up artist.
Have ten people with no warts, real or fake.
Do not allow the wart charmer to see any part of the subject except the hand. Do not allow the wart charmer to physically touch the warts (unless the claim is that this is necessary, in which case some alteration is required).
That’s just preliminary, but if it’s important that those with real warts no know if they are being treated by an actual wart charmer, and that the wart charmers not know if the warts are real and not be given a chance to subtly smear on some Compound W or similar chemical treatment… well, there you go.
Yeah this was my biggest concern from the first, and I said virtually the same thing way back in post #11. But what the hell, it might be interesting to come up with a workable protocol.
Ok, this is interesting, one (or one set of) healers, but they don’t know the real warts from the fake.
But how to we quantify success without a control group? And how do we know any healing is due to the power of the healer, and not some special talent of the patient (or for some mundane reason, as you and I both think). In order to qualify for the challenge, my understanding is that we have to be demonstrating a power of the healer, not just a demonstration of the placebo effect.
You see, here again is the problem. You are insisting on proof of the unproveable. You want to prove a negative: prove that the patient *doesn’t have * special powers.
Not only wrong, but very wrong. In no way do we need to prove a negative.
We don’t need to prove that the patient has no power. Instead, we design a test such that the outcome would be different in a predetermined way if the healer has a power instead of, or even in addition to, the patient. If the test comes out indicating the power came from the healer, we haven’t proved the patient had no power, just that it wasn’t used in that test, or at least that it wasn’t the only effect in that test.
So can we design such a test?
For example, if the same patient has results with one healer who is a believer and not with another who isn’t, that might be evidence that some of the healing came from the healer. If this is repeated with different healers, the evidence is stronger. So can we set a number of patients, healers, and trials such that the level rises to the point where we can state with some certainty that at least some of the healing comes from the healer, and is not something solely in the patient?
In order to do a test like that, first you have know what the ‘healer’ can do. You need a specific statement of effect that is approved by both the ‘healer’ and the tester. If the ‘healer’ says he waves his hands over warts and they vanish instantly every time, that can be tested easily. If the ‘healer’ says he waves his hands over warts and sometimes they vanish in months, that’s just not specific enough to be tested. The effect and success conditions have to be approved by both groups, or you just get the usual round of excuses from the ‘healer’ when he fails. Unless you know exactly what the healer can do, you really can’t perform a good test.
Now I have to think more.
The wart charmer that charmed me did this:
Took me into his study alone.
Asked me to show him the warts.
Asked me specifically if I had any other warts on me and if I did, show him.
I showed him what I thought might be a wart on my big toe. (Though I think it was a mole)
He touched both the mole (wart ?) on my toe and then rubbed the warts on my knee while whispering something under his breath. I’m not sure if he blew on them on purpose or if it was just his breath from speaking.
He then stood and told me to try not to think about them and they would be gone by the time school started. It was maybe 5 weeks until school.
About a week before school started I looked down one day and they were all gone.
Now, if the wart charmers have a condition of privacy during the ritual (or whatever) it obviously will not be accepted. This does not discount the phenomenon, only disqualifies it from the challenge. There are quite a few of these people around and I never heard of one advertising or asking for money or anything. I suspect there is some rule about using the power for personal gain but I’m not sure of this. I get the idea that the power supposedly does not come from the healer but through the healer and the results are not up to him, especially if he violates the procedure.
OTOH, I have heard of the potato method, stones, etc, that do not seem to imply anyhting more than suggestion. That may be the more appropriate, or more condusive method to test. However, these most assuradly do not mark any power of the healer but the power of a potato or the power of the healers suggestion…which maybe a power of the paranormal. After the discussion here of what constitutes paranormal, I am still arriving at the fact that the exercise is set up for failure, exclusively.
Good questions. From IknewIt’s post below, the claim seems to be that the healer talks and touches the warts, and that within about four weeks, they go away. That still leaves a lot of room for mistakes to creep in. I don’t know about any of the other questions. I think you’re correct that they may need to be addressed.
Ok, that gives us something to work from. Ideally, the test protocol should try to preserve something like this process if possible. It certainly does present problems from the controllability aspect however.
It could be a problem, but as long as we know the healer hasn’t smuggled in some traditional medicine and applied that, the privacy itself may not be a stopper. It does add to the test setup and cost.
That should be ok for test, as long as the outcome is affected by the healer in some way, we should be able to design to test for that effect.
So the biggest problem I see is how to insure that nothing else has affected the patients during the 4 week waiting period.
Now I will try to find out if this guy is still alive. I would guess that he was 65 then, I was like 10 so…shit…he’s probably dead. Have to find another healer. There is a lady here I have been told can do it and another one back home…but she may be dead by now too.
The only other problem I see, and could be wrong, is any condition that the power can not be used for personal gain. If that is so, we won’t find anyone to show up and take the test.
No sweat, let them donate the money to a charity or some other needy group. No personal gain need be involved.
I found this old piece:
Most wart charmers are agreed
that the skill cannot be taught
Most would then go on to add
three other rules for the craft
Firstly, that no wart charmer
should ever advertise the fact
Secondly, that no wart charmer
must ever charge fro charming
Thirdly that whatever cure
is used is the charmers choice
and no one should ever think
to follow his peculiar way
It goes on but that may be enough to seal the fate.
Donate the money. Refuse the money. Keep the money for yourself. Use it for insulation. Use it for firestarter. Buy a million dollars worth of silver and give it to the poor for fillings.
And where did you find this little piece of prose?