FinnAgain you’re worrying about a non-existent problem. As I seem to have said several times before recently (though not in this thread), vanishingly few paranormalists claim to have an ability that lives on the threshold of statistical significance. On the contrary, they almost all claim to have abilities that are highly significant. So significant that they know they have the ability without any form of scientific controlled testing, let alone long series testing of the type required to detect small effects.
Well and the Invisible Pink Unicorn and the Flying Spaghetti Monster might be the co-creators of the universe. But if there’s no way to prove the “power” then it comes down to Occam’s Razor, and that’s going to call BS every time.
Sure Tom, Peter Morris did that in another thread and see what happened to him. Not to mention having the thread locked for no good reason. There is no justice for the opposition voice on this board. The mods are all skeptics also. Well, you don’t need to answer, I won’t post any more in this thread and I have no respect for what you say.
I have to side with lekatt, in that this thread looks more like an irresistable temptation to believer-baiting, leading to warnings when the inevitable happens.
Besides, the question is ridiculously obvious. If you want a fair and effective way to test for psychic abilities, have the person claiming said abilities describe in detail what they can do, and have them demonstrate, twice, in a manner that rules out chicanery or blind chance. If they can’t demonstrate, or if their claimed ability is so tenuous that chicanery or blind chance can’t be ruled out, then the test fails.
Can we rigorously define how it’s different? Your point was Simply bucking statistical probabilities, even outrageously, even repeatedly, doesn’t mean that luck isn’t involved - mine is that actually, lots of other observations we make rely on statistics not throwing a wobbly (the duck example might not have been the best illustration). The numbers are different, but ultimately, if something is incredibly unlikely, we expect it to happen infrequently - if a test of psychics can be ruined by huge statistical fluke, so can lots of other things - but we don’t normally worry about that.
Any deviation of gambling winnings (from statistical expectations0 ought to offer proof of psychic abilities. This is a logical place to look-someone who has a big winning streak at blackjack is eaither:
- psychic, or
- a cheat
Not necessarily. It is possible to have an incredible streak of luck without utilizing either cheating or psychic abilities. It’s when something specific is predicted beforehand, then happens, that you suspect either trickery or the paranormal. If you consider how many times people have been caught on video tape cheating, well…I’ll let you draw your your own conclusions.
What about the dude who claims, “My powers only work to find lost children! I don’t know nothin’ about blackjack.”
That sort of person has a ready-made excuse for not winning in Vegas, yet they can still claim to be psychic.
Peter Morris did what? Report a post? Not that I saw. And what “happened” to him? He has been placed under no sanctions that I have seen.
The only thread that has been locked recently was one that had degenerated into personal attacks in which the OP was no longer being discussed. I am trying to prevent that, here, and you are encouraging both personal acrimony and a hijacking of the thread.
I know. You keep posting here to tell us that.
And we have also had specific efforts, both in requests by the OP and in my actions as Mod to avoid that outcome. Whatever the temptation, I encourage everyone to resist it.
The topic is the devising of tests that would be amenable to believers and skeptics that would provide evidence of specific claims. Perhaps there is no single test (or protocol) that can be devised. Perhaps no individual test can be acceptable to all viewers. However, the test (and, perhaps, its feasibility) is the topic. Poster will adhere to that topic.
[ /Modding ]
I don’t think that you can have a single format for your test that everyone will agree to, not even close.
Personally I think that any test should follow some of the existing models - specifically that the testee would participate in creating the test, everyone has to agree on all of the details beforehand, including what constitutes “success” and “failure” (so that opinions don’t come into it after the fact) and exactly what abilities are going to be demonstrated.
Appropriate specialists in the related fields should be consulted to identify any possible natural explanations for the phenomena and to help with defining success and failure (If I claim that I can cure the common cold by laying my hands on the sick, a doctor would probably balk at my condition of “Healing will take place within 30 days” as indicating something unusual had happened). Because there have been frauds in the past professional magicians should be consulted to help avoid trickery (if I say that I can guess what card you picked from a shuffled deck, obviously you want to eliminate the non-paranormal means of doing it).
Everything has to be done under observation. This is supposed to be a valid scientific test.
So what’s the problem? As we all know there will be some people who believe in the paranormal who insist that a test to the above standards isn’t valid. You will undoubtedly get people who are happy to have their dowsing tested very vigorously under controlled conditions, but you’ll also get folks who say that having someone of a skeptical mindset nearby messes up their abilities and so on. I don’t think there’s any way around that.
All you can do is say “Here is a test for a specific person’s claimed abilities that was set up with their cooperation. Both that person and the skeptics agree that it is a fair and valid test and it conforms to the standards of a good scientific experiment.”
I’m not convinced that Project Alpha shows that scientists can’t design these kinds of tests, just that those scientists did a crappy job.
The scientists involved at that institute were “paranormal” researchers, right? They were more interested in seeing what kind of cool things might be possible than in attempting to prove that they weren’t. And their experimental designs were laughable. Reading the Wikipedia page, if they had paid attention to even half of Randi’s suggestions, they would have stopped the fakers much sooner. Switching the paper labels on two spoons? Moving objects in a “closed” container that’s not really closed? Giving the test subjects the chance to palm and replace all kinds of experimental equipment? These are all amateur mistakes.
But scientists who are not magicians are prone to such mistakes. Being an expert in the lab doesn’t make you an expert with cards.
If you are testing a biological phenomena, you probably don’t go looking for nuclear physicists to help, do you? If you are testing something that can be tricked, you try to find experts that know about trickery. It’s all about fitting the field with the appropriate experts.
I don’t recall any class in the college science curriculum entitled Magic tricks in the lab 101.
If your subjects are rats or bacteria, you probably won’t need a sleight of hand guru. If your subjects are humans, you might.