Telepathy research paper

I got this from someone who posted it in IRC, so credit goes to him. I forget who it is though. Fat something I think. It's pretty good. He shows a lot of peer reviewed, scientific evidence of the existence of telepathy. Read the paper and debate the evidence. Any posts like "I don't think it's real, there's no evidence" that lead me to think you didn't even read the paper will be reported as off-topic spam.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=K1HB13D7

 

eh cba to download it...

could u post the file contents in

Code:

 tags?

 

Not really. It's 8 pages long.

 

ouch that sure doesn't make me wanna read it haha

 

Fat_Lard's the one who uploaded it; all credit goes to him. As I told him directly, I like how he cited specific examples with numbers included. Excellent job.

 

Meh, I dled it, and read most of it.

The paper itself is alright - but the sources cited are questionable, making the entirety of the concept questionable.

 

How are the sources questionable? The only one that isn't the direct results of a peer-reviewed study is the straightdope.com one, and all he got from that was the Ganzfeld procedure. That's readily available and accurate anyway. Princeton's parapsychology department did some of the studies as well... A lot of the stuff came from Rupert Sheldrake, and he invites others to replicate the experiments. What source specifically are you talking about, and what makes the results flawed?

 

Ganzfield Experiment Criticisms:
"Isolation — Richard Wiseman and others argue that not all of the studies used soundproof rooms, so it is possible that when videos were playing, the experimenter (or even the receiver) could have heard it, and later given involuntary cues to the receiver during the selection process.[24] However, Dean Radin argues that ganzfeld studies which did use soundproof rooms had a number of "hits" similar to those which did not.[4][18]

Randomization — When subjects are asked to choose from a variety of selections, there is an inherent bias to choose the first selection they are shown. If the order in which they are shown the selections is randomized each time, this bias will be averaged out. The randomization procedures used in the experiment have been criticized for not randomizing satisfactorily.[25]

The psi assumption — The assumption that any statistical deviation from chance is evidence for telepathy is highly controversial, and often compared to the God of the gaps argument. Strictly speaking, a deviation from chance is only evidence that either this was a rare, statistically unlikely occurrence that happened by chance, or something was causing a deviation from chance. Flaws in the experimental design are a common cause of this, and so the assumption that it must be telepathy is fallacious. This does not rule out, however, that it could be telepathy.[26]"

A statistician must be meticulous. A single factor- meaning if ANY of the listed above has merit, it would disqualify the legitimacy of the experiment.

Especially number 3 - As I've taken my stats myself, you can never ACCEPT the null hypothesis. Rather, you can only FAIL to reject it... meaning, even if these studies are valid (which I am dubious), you can only say that telepathy is still a viable answer, not that telepathy is the answer.

 

"If the order in which they are shown the selections is randomized each time, this bias will be averaged out. The randomization procedures used in the experiment have been criticized for not randomizing satisfactorily."

Most of these experiments did use randomization in the answers to the cards...

Also, if you were to do meta-analysis with all of these statistical experiments, the odds the results were caused by chance would be far greater than 1:10,000,000,000. Furthermore, what explains the fact these experiments and results can be replicated? Pretty much every time one of these experiments is conducted, the results are always higher than chance level. By what you are saying, there should be an equal deviation against chance level. Why aren't there tons of experiments yielding 10% success rates? Another interesting discovery is that people who strongly believe telepathy doesn't exist seem to have a reverse telepathic effect; that is, they are wrong far more often than the level expected by chance. Subjects were given a survey asking this question (among others) before participating in many of the experiments. By the way, in case you are wondering, this data includes all results and doesn't exclude those who don't believe in telepathy.


How do you explain the ability of the mentalist? What about the remote viewing program? The EEG tests? The feeling of being stared at experiments, especially the one in which a person's skin resistance changes when being watched on closed-circuit television? I think these coupled with the statistical data make a pretty convincing case.

 

Randomization must occur through entirety. Lack of randomization in any step, if as suggested by criticisms article I read is true, then bias is apparent.

Yes, a low P value was found - however, if any bias was in the finding of such value, the P-value is worthless. The P value would describe the probability if compared to random chance, however, if the chance was not random...

Perhaps the same flaws were apparent in each experiment.

This is an argument from ignorance even if you assume the data is true. You can only reject the null hypothesis.

Agreed, they are worth merit, and worth investigation. All I'm pointing out are the basic flaws before one goes about blindly believing in such. If you believe the evidence is convincing enough, I don't blame you. As skepticist myself, I can't - until a scientific mechanism explaining telepathy can be developed.

 

Bump.