ESP and the Scientific Journal

[Janx]

I saw this article on google news, and it reminded me of a thread a while back about the scientific method:

Extrasensory Perception in Scientific Journal: ESP Paper Published by Cornell Psycholgist Studying Precognition - ABC News

The gist of the article is that some respected guy did a study that demonstrated ESP phenomenon. He wrote a paper and submitted to the Scientific Journal. The SJ guys reviewed it and decided the research was done correctly and published it.

Now, scientists are in a snit because it was allowed to be published. Since they believe ESP to be impossible, they resent an article on the topic being published.

My opinion on the matter is that no self-respecting scientist lets their bias interfere with scientific research. You don't poopoo somebody's research because you think the topic is stupid or impossible. The Scientific Journal did the right thing, they verified the research method to make sure it was correctly done and published the paper, regardless of the topic.

When scientists refuse to keep an open mind, they refuse to question the nature of the universe. And that kind of thinking would mean we'd never get past the earth being flat.

A good scientist would read the article, and if possible, try to replicate the experiment, and then try to test for alternative hypothesis. The goal being to see if there was a mistake, or an alternative explanation. A bad scientist says your findings are crap despite there being scientific proof that something wierd happened.

 

[Umbran]

I
Now, scientists are in a snit because it was allowed to be published.

Now, *some* scientists are in a snit. Not scientists overall.

A bad scientist says your findings are crap despite there being scientific proof that something wierd happened.

...despite there being some evidence that something weird may have happened.

It may seem nitpicky, but those differences are terribly important. To those good scientists you want to see, a single study does not stand as proof of much of anything. It is evidence. You need a whole pile of solid evidence before you call it proof of the hypothesis.

 

[kinem]

The SJ guys reviewed it and decided the research was done correctly and published it.

Now, scientists are in a snit because it was allowed to be published.

A good scientist would read the article, and if possible, try to replicate the experiment, and then try to test for alternative hypothesis.

Thanks to the poor science reporting of ABC - which is not atypical or in any way your fault - you have a rather distorted view of the matter.

The SJ guys didn't do a very good job of reviewing it. While, for what amounts to an extraordinary claim, they should have been extra careful - especially since methodological problems have long plagued this particular field. Small biases (that often amount to selecting more favorable data and discarding the rest) can easily fool researchers looking for small effects in random data. Scientists are mad because the reviewers weren't so careful.

For more on this see
CSI | Back from the future: Comments on Bem
Bem’s ESP research…… Richard Wiseman's Blog

Attempts to replicate the study have by now been done, and they have failed to show any effect.

 

[jonesy]

For a different perspective:

'Flawed' ESP Study Sparks Uproar : Discovery News

"I'm puzzled as to how four referees and two editors of a prestigious journal could allow Bem to publish as 'experiments' studies that violated accepted methodological standards.

"Experiment 1 is just one example. The first 40 subjects were tested with an equal number of erotic, neutral, and negative pictures. Presumably, although Bem never tells us what his specific prior hypotheses were, the intent was to show that erotic pictures would yield a positive precognitive effect, the neutral pictures would show no effect, and the negative pictures would yield a negative precognitive effect. With no reasonable justification, Bem runs the remaining 60 subjects with a set of pictures, half of which are erotic and the other half are 'non erotic.'

"Even if the editors wanted to allow this peculiar combining of two different experiments into one, they should have at least insisted that Bem supply some acceptable rationale for this blatant disregard of experimental methodology."

"It gets worse. If you look closely at the study, there's blatant inconsistency between Experiment 1 and Experiment 2 that the journal referees should have, at the very least, required Bem to explain. In Experiment 1, he reports that the negative targets did not have the expected negative effect. Indeed, they were slightly above chance -- in the wrong direction. Yet, he conducts Experiment 2 by using only negative pictures and no erotic ones. This time the negative pictures do produce the predicted negative effect. This suggests that Experiment 2 actually was run before Experiment 1.

"In my opinion the referees were derelict in not requiring Bem to specify in which order the experiments were conducted, and why he says he planned each experiment to have 100 subjects when some have 150, another has 200, and one has 50."'

 

[Janx]

So the consensus reall is, as the article fails to indicate, is that the approval process wasn't rigourus enough in that there was uncertainty in the testing process.

Basically, Bem wasn't clear, Bem wasn't methodical, yet his paper was allowed to be published.

That's fair.

What the article implied, was the resentment was based on "ESP isn't real, therefore the paper shouldn't published."

I'm Ok with "the testing methodology wasn't clear and we can't re-run and confirm the results, therefore the paper shouldn't be published"

On the topic itself, assuming his testing was correct, I wouldn't assume he proved ESP. Pre-cognition is not the same as remote viewing for one thing.

It would have been entirely possible, that the humans weren't predicting the future, but generating it by intent. There are people who think that the nature of reality, at the quantum physics level, may be manipulated by human intent. Therefore, when confronted with Shrodinger's Porno, when the state of the porno is revealed, it is influenced by the human's desire to see it.

Given that in this instance, the porno's location is decided by the computer AFTER the guess is made and exists solely in electronic form, that's a different animal than it mechanically being moved into position by result of a random physical coin toss.

For one thing, an electronic randomizer isn't truly random. it relies on funky math to create pseudo random numbers that is usually seeded by the start time of the machine. This alone could result in lop-sided results.

Or, the fact that it's all in a computer means it's only a few electrons to be manipulated by the human mind and its funky influence over quantum reality. That's much easier to do than making a coin turn up Heads, which has a lot more atoms and stuff (yes, I realize that electrons have no atoms).

Its too bad Bem's testing was shoddy. I'm always interested in wierd science outcomes, especially if they can be confirmed and then that changes how we look at the universe. the porno test is one that could easily be written as a program, and then tested on a group.

 

[jonesy]

Extra sensory perception is, well, what is it? If you sense something, you have a sense for it. It's not extra anything. And it's not like we haven't already moved on from the Aristotle five. Taste, sight (human spectrum, ultraviolet, infrared), pressure, heat, pain, balance, hearing (and echolocation), and smell (human level, dogs, etc.). There's proprioception where you know how the parts of your body are positioned in relation to itself without using any other senses. Some count hunger and thirst. Sense of direction. Some animals have electroception or magnetoception.

So if we were to discover (or manufacture, WIFI in your brain) a sense which gave us something new we'd just name it a sense and move on. Mindreading? Oh, it would just be brainwaveception or something like that. And I bet the ESP searchers would move onto something else.

Look at the definition Wikipedia gives: 'Extrasensory perception (ESP) involves reception of information not gained through the recognized physical senses but sensed with the mind.' Huh? Pressure isn't sensed with your mind? Pain? Smell? It's all in your mind. The signals come from your nerves, but the feeling happens in your mind. So ESP, what the heck?

 

[Umbran]

Huh? Pressure isn't sensed with your mind? Pain? Smell? It's all in your mind. The signals come from your nerves, but the feeling happens in your mind. So ESP, what the heck?

Well, that's just it - the signals come from your nerves - the actual sensing is done by your sensory nerves. The brain processes the information, but the point of reception in the peripheral nerves.

In humans, there is no known "sense of direction", other than up and down. Your direction or position is not directly sensed, but is derived from other information and a mental map. This is an important distinction, because it seems that some animals may well have an actual sense of direction - the ability to sense the Earth's magnetic field, for example, may be a real sense of direction, rather than a derived one.

 

[El Mahdi]

...it seems that some animals may well have an actual sense of direction - the ability to sense the Earth's magnetic field, for example, may be a real sense of direction, rather than a derived one.

At least until the magnetic poles move...

Florida_airport_temporarily_closes_runway_due_to_magnetic_pole_shift

As an aside, I was surprised to find that despite my repairing and calibrating aircraft compass systems for over 20 years, I didn't know that the magnetic pole nearest to the Earth's geographic North pole is actually the magnetic south pole.

But as to ESP, there have been studies (although I doubt they completely adhered to the scientific method either) that have shown reactions in certain parts of the human brain to changes in the local magnetic field. This isn't so much a direction sensing thing like with some animals - but more that these effects in the brain may be interpreted by some people as a sudden unexplained sense of unease, and possibly proscribe supernatural or extra-sensory causes to it.

 

[jonesy]

Well, that's just it - the signals come from your nerves - the actual sensing is done by your sensory nerves. The brain processes the information, but the point of reception in the peripheral nerves.

Hmm. I would argue that if the optic nerves on your eyes were capable of sending signals containing visual information, but your brain wasn't capable of either receiving or processing that information, you would not have a sense of sight. Can we call it a sense if your eyes can see it, but your mind can't inform you of that?

 

[Momeeche]

So ESP, what the heck?

What part of the brain is set up to receive and process ESP? Parts of the brain are set up to receive and process sight, sound, smell, taste and touch. So, what part of the brain is set up to receive and process ESP? Point to it. Name it.

It is easier to believe in liars, schizophrenics and lying schizophrenics than it is to believe in ESP.