Claim: Remote Viewing is a Scientifically Proven Technique that Utilizes a Natural Human Ability to Enable Access to Hidden Information

[LilWabbit]

Okay, I am not calling you or anyone else out here, I just want to make an observation. Something I'm noticing in this thread particularly is that the main method of debunking involves looking up the name of a study's author, looking at the Wikipedia page (or a different site) for said author, scrolling down to the "criticisms" part of the page, and pasting those criticisms of the author here. Now, no one here is explicitly claiming that because such and such a person has expressed criticism of the author that therefore the author's work can be considered to be officially debunked, but at the very least that's the initial impression this approach gives off. That a study has been criticized by another academic is not interesting because that's par for the course in all of science. We critique each other's work, even the best studies published in nature are routinely critiqued. Any serious engagement with the topic wouldn't stop at citing critiques of these papers from skeptics but would instead dive into the claims and counterclaims being made and actually get into the details of the arguments.

Lazy rebuttals stemming from intellectual condescension fuelled by a more tribalistic brand of skepticism (as opposed to genuine independent and critical thinkers/skeptics such as Mick) -- people who swear by the name of science howbeit not usually understanding science all that deeply -- is a real thing. So you have a very valid point there.

Does this condescension exist amongst MB members. I'm sure it does to some extent. Sometimes I'm also guilty as charged. Maybe even right now.

Inasmuch as believers often betray a disturbing sense of collective moral self-righteousness and judgmentalism, the label of a 'skeptic', for many, carries a self-serving thrill of belonging to an intellectual elite mocking, overtly or covertly, the 'other' tribe of gullible idiots. Such an attitude is not helpful nor conducive to learning even if the skeptics would otherwise have excellent points to impart to anonymous MB readers sincerely looking for sound prosaic explanations to the woo that puzzles them or to varying extents even resonates with them.

A sympathetic and compassionate attitude isn't always easy. But many valuable things aren't.

 

[NorCal Dave]

It's a case of if we don't bother to read any of the journals this stuff is published in, we can just ignore and pretend it doesn't exist. I'm sorry, but that doesn't cut it. This is a serious blindspot for skeptics and it's driven more by ideology and our own biases than an impartial analysis of the state of the field. I'm a skeptic myself and am not sure what to make of the research given how voluminous it is, but I'm not going to pretend like it was an academic dead end.

. Richard Wiseman continues to publish meta analyses in the field, which are in turn themselves criticized and followed up with counter meta analyses. This is really one place where we've dropped the ball and allowed ideology and talking points shape our attitude and thinking about the subject.

I'll disagree a bit here. I think it's more a case of RV/Psy proponents trolling out the same data in new studies and saying "Look, Psy! Proof!", only for it not to be the case. For example, in post #20 you offered the Jutt's paper which looked at a number of previous experiments (bold by me):

The primary work examined in this report was government sponsored research conducted at Stanford Research Institute, later known as SRI International, and at Science Applications International Corporation, known as SAIC.

https://www.ics.uci.edu/~jutts/air.pdf

So, in 1995, Jutts pulled out Putohoff and Targ's experiments from the '70s and Bay's experiments form the '80s and included them in her meta-analysis.

In 1988 an analysis was made of all of the experiments conducted at SRI from 1973 until that time (May et al, 1988). The analysis was based on all 154 experiments conducted during that era, consisting of over 26,000 individual trials. Of those, almost 20,000 were of the forced choice type and just over a thousand were laboratory remote viewings. There were a total of227 subjects in all experiments.

The statistical results were so overwhelming that results that extreme or more so would occur only about once in every 10^20 such instances if chance alone is the explanation (i.e., the pvalue was less than 10-20). Obviously some explanation other than chance must be found. Psychic functioning may not be the only possibility, especially since some of the earlier work contained methodological problems.

However, the fact that the same level of functioning continued to hold in the later experiments, which did not contain those flaws, lends support to the idea that the methodological problems cannot account for the results. In fact, there was atalented group of subjects (labeled G1 in that report) for whom the effects were stronger than for the group at large. According to Dr. May, the majority of experiments with that group were conducted later in the program, when the methodology had been substantially improved.

https://www.ics.uci.edu/~jutts/air.pdf

As noted earlier, Putohoff and Targ claimed positive result with little to no evidence (bold by me):

While the readouts did show some fluctuations, there was no evidence that this was due to any efforts on the part of Swann.[11] Nevertheless, Puthoff and Targ announced to a gathering in Geneva, Switzerland that they had indeed definitively established psychokinesis as a real phenomenon.[12] The builder of the machine, who had been present during Swann's visit, would later report that while there had been fluctuations these were in no way unexpected or outside the normal parameters.[13]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parapsychology_research_at_SRI

And were ultimately discredited (bold by me):

A lengthy exchange ensued, with the external researchers finally concluding that the failure of Puthoff and Targ to address their concerns meant that the claim of remote viewing "can no longer be regarded as falling within the scientific domain".[35][36] Procedural problems and researcher conflicts of interest in the psychokinesis experiments were noted by science writer Martin Gardner in a detailed analysis of the NASA final report.[37] Also, sloppy procedures in the conduct of the EEG study were reported by a visiting observer during another series of exchanges in the scientific literature.[38]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parapsychology_research_at_SRI

From @Ann K article above, Bay had been looking for Psy since his early days after he left UCD to "drop out":

"I moved to San Francisco," he recalls proudly. "As a professional hippie." In the Bay Area, May dropped out, attending trippy lectures on parapsychological research and experimenting with drugs. With the standard-issue beard and ponytail in place, he took off for India in search of the miraculous. May expected to "make Nobel Prize–winning discoveries of mind over matter," but he came home empty-handed. "I was unable to find a single psychic, whether street fakir or holy guru, who was able or willing to fit into my scientific framework," he wrote in Psychic magazine upon his return.

And by the '90s was making a living at it:

To his admirers, May is a legitimate parapsychologist. To his critics, that phrase is the ultimate oxymoron. From 1985 to 1995, May served as the California-based research director of the Pentagon's ESP program. A proton-probing scientist by training and a paranormal prophet by choosing, May was that rare specimen—a full-time ESP researcher with a salary and 401(k) plan courtesy of the U.S. government.

Just a side note here also, Puthoff has a PhD in laser physics and Bay's PhD is in nuclear physics, so they are both out of their area of education and expertise in this field.

Bay's star viewer was Puthoff's buddy, McMoneagle:

For May, further proof of the program's many wonders is Star Gate's legendary "Agent 001." The first psychic to work directly for the Pentagon, then–Army Chief Warrant Officer Joseph McMoneagle began remote viewing for the government in 1978.

This is the same McMoneagle that claims he can remote view across space and time and didn't predict, but rather actually saw people in the mid '00s going around naked but for temporary tattoos. And saw that humans were "seeded" from space after starting out as otters. (see post #9)

After government money dried up, Bay got on with the millionaire head of Bial Pharmaceutical, a big-time believer in all kinds of weird stuff. With a new benefactor, Bay set up a new all-star team of, not scientists, but viewers, mediums and a 'happy" coach:

To conduct the ESP-improvement experiment, May reassembled his old A-team. Out of rural Virginia, there's McMoneagle, the former Army intelligence officer who won the Legion of Merit. Then there's Nevin Lantz, a former Star Gate researcher who works today as a Palo Alto psychotherapist and "authentic happiness coach." And finally there's Angela Dellafiora Ford, a former Star Gate psychic and DIA intelligence analyst from Maryland who markets herself as a "medium that can help people connect with their spirit guides as well as communicate with their loved ones on the other side."

Bay originally agreed with skeptic Hyman that the earlier work at SRI, the work included in Jutt's paper, was crap:

Hyman grew to respect May's scientific rigor and ethics. They agreed that the early SRI research was "crap," Hyman says, providing way too many clues to the psychics and fudging the results.

But in the end, Hyman's analysis for the CIA of Bay's poor work was accepted:

But when May began running the ESP program, Hyman says, he also created protocol problems. May became the only arbiter of whether a psychic had accurately described a target. "The only judge who could make it work was Ed May," Hyman says. "That's a no-no."

Hyman's views prevailed. The final CIA report chastised May for serving as both judge and jury on virtually all the ESP tests. "The use of the same judge across experiments further compounds the problem of non-independence of the experiments," the report concluded.

https://www.newsweek.com/2015/11/20...-psychics-can-help-american-spies-393004.html

All of that was a long way of saying, the papers from SRI by Puthoff and Targ and Bay maintained proof of RV and other Psy phenomenon were problematic at best. This is 1/2 of what Jutt used in her meta-analysis and at least the earlier work from SRI had been outed long before her 1995 paper.

Repeated meta-analysis of bad experiments is just not compelling. It's a case of garbage in=gabage out. So, when another paper comes out trying to statistically show 'ol Joe McMoneagle the otter man can actually remote view, it's looked into, but not seen as something new and compelling. Jutt's paper was critiqued and found to be problematic.

When Bem's paper was first published there was a lot of interest and subsequent critiques which eventually found many of the same recurring problems with the previous papers on Psy.

 

[Amathia]

Lazy rebuttals stemming from intellectual condescension fuelled by a more tribalistic brand of skepticism (as opposed to genuine independent and critical thinkers/skeptics such as Mick) -- people who swear by the name of science howbeit not usually understanding science all that deeply -- is a real thing. So you have a very valid point there.

Does this condescension exist amongst MB members. I'm sure it does to some extent. Sometimes I'm also guilty as charged. Maybe even right now.

Inasmuch as believers often betray a disturbing sense of collective moral self-righteousness and judgmentalism, the label of a 'skeptic', for many, carries a self-serving thrill of belonging to an intellectual elite mocking, overtly or covertly, the 'other' tribe of gullible idiots. Such an attitude is not helpful nor conducive to learning even if the skeptics would otherwise have excellent points to impart to anonymous MB readers sincerely looking for sound prosaic explanations to the woo that puzzles them or to varying extents even resonates with them.

A sympathetic and compassionate attitude isn't always easy. But many valuable things aren't.

I have a feeling the way we come across also varies on the medium. I'm honestly constantly amazed at the kind of hate and vitriol Mick gets from the UFO community, far more than I've ever seen for any skeptic that gets involved with other kinds of communities. In every single video he's in (either in his own channel or as a guest) he's always polite, only sticks to the claims and evidence for or against them, never gets personal, never starts psychoanalyzing people, and actually puts in the world to find plausible explanations for most of the UFO videos he engages with as opposed to other skeptics like Brian Dunning whom I'd consider to be more of an "armchair" debunker. The hate Mick gets is astounding, but also the accusations of him being condescending and arrogant because he absolutely never comes across that way in any video I've ever watched or any of his posts here.

But then there's Twitter. And even though he's by no means even half as condescending as he's accused of being, many of his tweets do carry soundbite snark that I'm sure only gets internally amplified by believers who read them. That entire website brings out the worst in everyone and is such a toxic cesspool that I'm surprised anyone ever actually enjoys the time they spend on it. The character limit just encourages soundbites instead of long-form extended reasoning about topics, and when you add Mick's dry sense of humor I can see why so many people project so much of their own baggage onto him.

Conversations here are far more productive given the lack of space constraints and there being a culture of friendly disagreements. Your own post that I'm responding to is a good example of accepting and encouraging self examination that's hard to find in many other online communities. I've half expected the usual kind of pushback and defensiveness you find in many other forums with a couple of things I've posted, but have been pleasantly surprised at the ability to disagree with one another that exists here. I wish we could see more of it online.

 

[LilWabbit]

Conversations here are far more productive given the lack of space constraints and there being a culture of friendly disagreements. Your own post that I'm responding to is a good example of accepting and encouraging self examination that's hard to find in many other online communities. I've half expected the usual kind of pushback and defensiveness you find in many other forums with a couple of things I've posted, but have been pleasantly surprised at the ability to disagree with one another that exists here. I wish we could see more of it online.

A belated welcome to MB, @AR318307! You're a breath of fresh air. But more importantly, I appreciate your capacity for nuance coupled with articuate expression and kind demeanor.

 

[deirdre]

In every single video he's in (either in his own channel or as a guest) he's always polite, only sticks to the claims and evidence for or against them, never gets personal, never starts psychoanalyzing people,

He doesnt have to. His entourage on Twitter and here on MB do the dirty work for him.

He disagrees with this assessment and tells me that noone on twitter or MB speaks for him. But MB is his website, and allowed impoliteness, superiority, rampant bias, etc exhibited by SOME members do reflect badly on him, I believe, to believers and even people on the fence.

Lately MB has had a few more reasonable, less biased minds join the community so it's been feeling nicer lately for sure! Still needs improvement, but the newer members are helping alot!!

add: should add.. in the old days, beofre Mick spent more time on Twitter and almost no time on MB, people complained about METABUNK, not so much about Mick personally. Thats why i have the impression people judge Mick more by his website and less by his personal behaviors.

 

[Eburacum]

instead of just saying "that's nothing like Jupiter is", it would be helpful to outside readers looking up info on remote viewing -ie the REAL target audience- if you posted proof of what Jupiter looks like or else i just have to take your word for it.

Good point. I could be extremely boring on the subject of Jupiter's atmosphere if necessary; there is a lot of interesting data out there now that was not available in 1973.

Suffice it to say that the atmosphere of Jupiter is three thousand kilometers deep and would be completely dark at the bottom due to optical extinction of light. Below the three thousand kilometer level there is a layer of supercritical hydrogen and helium, followed by a layer of liquid molecular hydrogen mixed with helium rain, tens of thousands of kilometers deep, then a layer of metallic hydrogen even deeper. At the centre may be a rocky core larger than Earth, although this core may be partially or wholly dissolved by the hot, liquid metallic hydrogen layer. No mountains, no sand, no temperature inversion, and probably no tornados that we would recognise as such (unless you count the Great Red Spot, which is larger than Earth).

 

[deirdre]

I could be extremely boring on the subject of Jupiter's atmosphere if necessary;

dont be too boring!. the average reading level for people is like

7th- to 8th-grade level

Average Reading Level In The U.S.
The average American reads at the 7th- to 8th-grade level, according to The Literacy Project.

and i assume that doesnt account for foreign readers who might struggle a bit with a less familiar language.

 

[Mendel]

dive into the papers

assess the results of all meta-analyses

Your source is doing the opposite, a meta-meta analysis. That's no way to meet the criticism that the quality of the papers underlying these meta-analyses is uneven.

 

[deirdre]

Suffice it to say that the atmosphere of Jupiter is three thousand kilometers deep and would be completely dark at the bottom due to optical extinction of light. Below the three thousand kilometer level there is a layer of supercritical hydrogen and helium, followed by a layer of liquid molecular hydrogen mixed with helium rain, tens of thousands of kilometers deep, then a layer of metallic hydrogen even deeper. At the centre may be a rocky core larger than Earth, although this core may be partially or wholly dissolved by the hot, liquid metallic hydrogen layer. No mountains, no sand, no temperature inversion, and probably no tornados that we would recognise as such (unless you count the Great Red Spot, which is larger than Earth).

or proof, as related to the RV claim:

Article:

One of Jupiter's most famous features is the Great Red Spot. It is a giant spinning storm, resembling a hurricane.

...
Jupiter has three thin rings that are difficult to see.

Source: https://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/5-8/features/nasa-knows/what-is-jupiter-58.html

Article:

As a gas giant, Jupiter doesn't have a true surface. The planet is mostly swirling gases and liquids. While a spacecraft would have nowhere to land on Jupiter, it wouldn't be able to fly through unscathed either. The extreme pressures and temperatures deep inside the planet crush, melt, and vaporize spacecraft trying to fly into the planet.

Source: https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/jupiter/in-depth/

edit add: i assume Swann didnt mention the big red spot, <which would be hard to miss. Im not watching some youtube video to see what swann claimed exactly..im just going by that one photo and what you posted

 

[Mendel]

I had a look at one of the stock market papers.
The methodology employed seems to come down to choosing two images, and then picking the one that comes closest to what the test subject produced. This approach completely abandons the idea of "viewing", i.e. the notion that the test subject has some idea of what they're receiving mentally. The outcome of these experiments is almost entirely determined by the judges and whoever picks the pictures.

There's no theory of how the "results" are achieved, nor do these experiments lead to such a theory.

It reminds me of how FE experiments coalesce around "laser near water" setups that achieve ambiguous results at best that can't decide anything. The fact that there's an audience for these experiments that is willing to overlook these glaring flaws is the reason the field has not collapsed yet.

 

[beakflip]

Your source is doing the opposite, a meta-meta analysis. That's no way to meet the criticism that the quality of the papers underlying these meta-analyses is uneven.

Are new experiments even happening anymore? I was looking at autoganzfeld literature some time ago and I don't remember there being anything other than reviews and meta analyses in the last decade or so.

 

[deirdre]

Are new experiments even happening anymore? I was looking at autoganzfeld literature some time ago and I don't remember there being anything other than reviews and meta analyses in the last decade or so.

that might depend on what "remote viewing" means. i thought it meant seeing physical objects in a hidden location. But upon a bit of scanning, it seems all types of ESP are also remote viewing? like is precognition remote viewing? The 'experts' and expert skeptics seem to be saying it is.

?

 

[Ann K]

FE experiments coalesce around "laser near water" setups

That made me think of the supposed psychics who offer help to police departments to find something like a body ...and almost always their suggested spots (which I guess we would have to call "remote viewing") are described using the words "near water". It's had to go wrong when things are phrased so ambiguously, and almost every inhabited place on earth is "near water", for some unstated definition of "near".

 

[beakflip]

that might depend on what "remote viewing" means. i thought it meant seeing physical objects in a hidden location. But upon a bit of scanning, it seems all types of ESP are also remote viewing? like is precognition remote viewing? The 'experts' and expert skeptics seem to be saying it is.

?

Ganzfeld experiments involved telekinesis telepathy (derp!), I think exclusively so (at least autoganzfeld methodology was constructed around telepathy (double derp!)). Having seen R. Wiseman being brought up earlier in the thread, I thought that ganzfeld research fell under remote viewing research, since as far as I know, his paper was a meta analysis of Honorton's and some other autoganzfeld experimenter's works. Not sure how that fits with the topic.

 

[deirdre]

Ganzfeld experiments involved telekinesis, I think exclusively so (at least autoganzfeld methodology was constructed around telekinesis). Having seen R. Wiseman being brought up earlier in the thread, I thought that ganzfeld research fell under remote viewing research, since as far as I know, his paper was a meta analysis of Honorton's and some other autoganzfeld experimenter's works. Not sure how that fits with the topic.

yea i thought it weird the stock market thing was in the OP.

so this thread is way too large a topic for useful discussion

 

[LilWabbit]

Ganzfeld experiments involved telekinesis, I think exclusively so (at least autoganzfeld methodology was constructed around telekinesis).

You mean telepathy?

After typing 'autoganzfeld' I'd butcher any word too.

 

[Ann K]

I've found the best way to sharpen my ability to think about a specific topic is to dive into the papers myself and talk about the perceived flaws of the study with other folks without assuming from the get-go that it's all bunk

But to closely examine something like the study you mention, "Our dataset, accumulated over more than 80 years of investigation, refers to 11 meta-analyses related to six different states of consciousness", would require a study of each of the eleven meta-analyses, and then a study of each of the individual analyses that went into the meta-analyses (an unspecified number) over a span of eighty years.

I find it difficult to believe that anyone could still find information on methodologies, participants, and analysis techniques for the very old studies, let alone testimony from participants about things like subtle visual cues from the administrators which, since they may have been inadvertent, are unlikely to be included in any written work. Even more problematic are situations such as previously mentioned wherein a person with a vested interest in finding a correlation is the same person who judges a trial to be successful or not.

A deep study of the papers is an admirable aim, but when you get to a meta-analysis of other meta-analyses, it's likely to be unfruitful. Every scientist would like his work to be accepted and verified, but we are far outside the realm of measurable, objective data when we get to this particular field. And it must be said that the field of parapsychology, fortune tellers, ESP, and associated topics has a long history of charlatans who intend to deceive and hopeful believers who are too eager to believe. It's an area that merits skepticism.

 

[Amathia]

He doesnt have to. His entourage on Twitter and here on MB do the dirty work for him.

He disagrees with this assessment and tells me that noone on twitter or MB speaks for him. But MB is his website, and allowed impoliteness, superiority, rampant bias, etc exhibited by SOME members do reflect badly on him, I believe, to believers and even people on the fence.

Lately MB has had a few more reasonable, less biased minds join the community so it's been feeling nicer lately for sure! Still needs improvement, but the newer members are helping alot!!

add: should add.. in the old days, beofre Mick spent more time on Twitter and almost no time on MB, people complained about METABUNK, not so much about Mick personally. Thats why i have the impression people judge Mick more by his website and less by his personal behaviors.

I'm really curious how much of the vitriol directed towards him stems from whatever people are picking up from him in his videos and tweets vs people's opinion on what happens here on MB. This is just an observation, so obviously not that useful, but every time I see people talking shit about him on subreddits like /r/UFOs, /r/UFO, & /r/Aliens I almost never see anyone mention this website. Sometimes I wonder how many of those folks even know this place exists. A lot of the complaints seem to be mostly about the way he comes across in his tweets, but again, that's just my observation of what's said in those communities and I try to spend as little time there as possible lately for my own mental sanity so I could be wrong. Maybe it is y'all's fault that he's the Voldemort of Ufology.

 

[Amathia]

Ganzfeld experiments involved telekinesis telepathy (derp!), I think exclusively so (at least autoganzfeld methodology was constructed around telepathy (double derp!)). Having seen R. Wiseman being brought up earlier in the thread, I thought that ganzfeld research fell under remote viewing research, since as far as I know, his paper was a meta analysis of Honorton's and some other autoganzfeld experimenter's works. Not sure how that fits with the topic.

I'm fairly sure Ganzfeld experiments are for ESP/Telepathy. Telekinesis research I think typically falls under the heading of "PK".

 

[Amathia]

A belated welcome to MB, @AR318307! You're a breath of fresh air. But more importantly, I appreciate your capacity for nuance coupled with articuate expression and kind demeanor.

Thank you!

This place is also a breath of fresh air for me. The /r/skeptic subreddit doesn't dive into this kind of stuff in any depth, so I'm glad I finally checked MB out after hearing about it from Mick's Youtube videos.

 

[Amathia]

Are new experiments even happening anymore? I was looking at autoganzfeld literature some time ago and I don't remember there being anything other than reviews and meta analyses in the last decade or so.

They are. I sorted a search on Google scholar for only articles since 2019 and there are quite a few. Here's an article discussing the question of whether the Ganzfeld database is that contentious. Relevant to the conversation here earlier about the reliability of the meta-analyses if the data being analyzed isn't reliable. Like I said earlier, this topic is exhausting and the research is fucking voluminous and I don't know how anyone could ever realistically catch up with this much research.

 

[beakflip]

I'm really curious how much of the vitriol directed towards him stems from whatever people are picking up from him in his videos and tweets vs people's opinion on what happens here on MB. This is just an observation, so obviously not that useful, but every time I see people talking shit about him on subreddits like /r/UFOs, /r/UFO, & /r/Aliens I almost never see anyone mention this website. Sometimes I wonder how many of those folks even know this place exists. A lot of the complaints seem to be mostly about the way he comes across in his tweets, but again, that's just my observation of what's said in those communities and I try to spend as little time there as possible lately for my own mental sanity so I could be wrong. Maybe it is y'all's fault that he's the Voldemort of Ufology.

I am of the same mind. I always thought MB contributions went generally unnoticed whenever Mick West and UFO debunking is brought up (only been paying attention to the subject for the last couple of years). I am also baffled by some of the twitter comments... they sound a lot like burning witches at the stake...

 

[deirdre]

Maybe it is y'all's fault that he's the Voldemort of Ufology

(we are SO off topic)

well since hes been almost exclusively on twitter the last few years, i imagine it would be the fault of his Twitter entourage more than here now. I didnt really make my point clear.

note: im not saying it's all the entourages fault, basically he's touted as a UFO expert and is quoted in fancy newspaper articles and stuff, so he is all by himself the Anti-christ of the UFO world. no matter how polite he is. ....Now that i think about it, being polite on Twitter might be akin to condescension all on it's own. I dont do Twitter, but i hear it's a cesspool of emotional responses.

And i have heard him talk recently about how he tries to stay polite blah blah blah..which to an audience that doesn't, is condescending. ie. I am better than you. The accent and dolcet tones probably doesnt help. I like it in Mick, but truthfully when the new age guys talk all dulcet toney i have a negative reaction.

 

[LilWabbit]

The accent and dolcet tones probably doesnt help. I like it in Mick, but truthfully when the new age guys talk all dulcet toney i have a negative reaction.

Instead of dulcetto, maybe Mick should debunk in falsetto?

 

[deirdre]

Instead of dulcetto, maybe Mick should debunk in falsetto?

i'm not knocking the dulcet tones. in fact, i'm the one who constantly nagged him to speak slower because i coulnt understand him often with his normal accent. so..that ones my fault

 

[beakflip]

Thank you!

This place is also a breath of fresh air for me. The /r/skeptic subreddit doesn't dive into this kind of stuff in any depth, so I'm glad I finally checked MB out after hearing about it from Mick's Youtube videos.

There was the occasional dive over at r/skeptic, but the +1/-1 system, as generally employed by the users, doesn't reward that kind of behavior, it rewards sound bites that fall within tribal expectations. (Last off topic comment that I make here, Mark My Words)

 

[NorCal Dave]

Here's an article discussing the question of whether the Ganzfeld database is that contentious. Relevant to the conversation here earlier about the reliability of the meta-analyses if the data being analyzed isn't reliable

Unfortunately, your "Here's" link isn't working, but as the topic is, or was at one point, Remote Viewing, Ganzfeld experiments are only sorta related. Yes, from Wiki:

In a typical ganzfeld experiment, a "receiver" is placed in a room relaxing in a comfortable chair with halved ping-pong balls over the eyes, having a red light shone on them. The receiver also wears a set of headphones through which white or pink noise (static) is played. The receiver is in this state of mild sensory deprivation for half an hour. During this time, a "sender" observes a randomly chosen target and tries to mentally send this information to the receiver. The receiver speaks out loud during the 30 minutes, describing what they can "see". This is recorded by the experimenter (who is blind to the target) either by recording onto tape or by taking notes, and is used to help the receiver during the judging procedure.

In the judging procedure, the receiver is taken out of the Ganzfeld state and given a set of possible targets, from which they select one which most resembled the images they witnessed. Most commonly there are three decoys along with the target, giving an expected rate of 25%, by chance, over several dozens of trials.[8]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganzfeld_experiment

In short someone like me sits in a quite room and relaxes while someone else, like you, try to send me mental information of a target you are looking at. Afterwards, I try to pick out the sent target from a group of 4 targets.

In remote viewing, the gifted viewer is asked to identify or describe various places that are not their present physical location.

If the paper is relevant to the discussion of reliability of meta-analysis of unreliable data, I assume it's in relation to Ganzfeld experiments. Yes?

The various meta-analysis of Remote Viewing studies, despite their supposed reliance on multiple studies with lots of participants and volumes of data, seem to all eventually refer back to the same few people and institutions: SRI, Puthoff, Targ, Bay, Geller, Swann and McMoneagle being the most popular. IF the work and claims of the aforementioned are indeed problematic, and I think there is ample evidence that they are, then any meta-analysis of those claims is equally problematic.

 

[deirdre]

If the paper is relevant to the discussion of reliability of meta-analysis of unreliable data, I assume it's in relation to Ganzfeld experiments. Yes?

it was. i dont know why it disappeared. it even disappeared from my History..which now has me thinking i got some kind of malware!

it was a blog criticism by Bryan J. Williams of the "Psychic Research Something", of another blog which was criticizing the experiments. you cant access it here without registering https://www.academia.edu/50675672/I...A_Commentary_on_a_Recent_Skeptical_Blog_Entry

the original blog it was criticizing was here https://web.archive.org/web/2023033...hilia.com/2019/01/contention-in-ganzfeld.html

 

[John J.]

Here's a slightly more focused paper that might be worth discussing:

https://www.ics.uci.edu/~jutts/air.pdf

....In which Jessica Utts, having concluded that remote viewing etc. works, writes

I believe that it would be wasteful of valuable resources to continue to look for proof.

An extraordinary, and profoundly anti-scientific statement (not unscientific. Her use of discredited data from SRI is unscientific).

"I've confirmed it exists. Let's not run any more experiments to see if it exists. It would waste resources" .

 

[JMartJr]

This strilkes me as a very broad topic for a debunk. It is more like debunking "UFOs are real" than it is like "Debunk claims that Gimbal shows rotating object," which is more the type of thing that seems to work well here Are there other individual cases, like the Jupiter Viewing? It was fairly easy to show that THAT case was pretty much bunk. Do other cases follow that pattern?

 

[Amathia]

https://www.ics.uci.edu/~jutts/air.pdf

....In which Jessica Utts, having concluded that remote viewing etc. works, writes

I believe that it would be wasteful of valuable resources to continue to look for proof.

An extraordinary, and profoundly anti-scientific statement (not unscientific. Her use of discredited data from SRI is unscientific).

"I've confirmed it exists. Let's not run any more experiments to see if it exists. It would waste resources" .

That's an extremely uncharitable reading considering all the text you ommitted that immediately surrounds the only part you quoted:

It is clear to this author that anomalous cognition is possible and has been demonstrated. This conclusion is not based on belief, but rather on commonly accepted scientific criteria. The phenomenon has been replicated in a number of forms across laboratories and cultures. The various experiments in which it has been observed have been different enough that if some
subtle methodological problems can explain the results, then there would have to be a different explanation for each type of experiment, yet the impact would have to be similar across 24 experiments and laboratories. If fraud were responsible, similarly, it would require an equivalent amount of fraud on the part of a large number of experimenters or an even larger
number of subjects.

What is not so clear is that we have progressed very far in understanding the mechanism for
anomalous cognition. Senders do not appear to be necessary at all; feedback of the correct
answer may or may not be necessary. Distance in time and space do not seem to be an
impediment. Beyond those conclusions, we know very little.

I believe that it would be wasteful of valuable resources to continue to look for proof. No one
who has examined all of the data across laboratories, taken as a collective whole, has been able to suggest methodological or statistical problems to explain the ever-increasing and consistent results to date. Resources should be directed to the pertinent questions about how this ability works. I am confident that the questions are no more elusive than any other questions in science dealing with small to medium sized effects, and that if appropriate resources are targeted to appropriate questions, we can have answers within the next decade.

This is literally how science works. You establish an effect exists, you replicate it over and over and over until you get to a point where more replication studies would make no statistical difference and would only further continue to demonstrate what has already been demonstrated to exist. At that point it's a waste of resources to continue doing replication studies instead of studying something else or, in this case, focusing your research on the underlying mechanisms of how it works.

Now, obviously your response is going to be that you reject the claim that the research has shown the effect is there, let alone that the research has unequivocally demonstrated it to the degree she says it has. So obviously you think her call for no more replication studies is way too premature.

But that is not the same thing as disagreeing with what she's actually saying. There's nothing even remotely anti-scientific about calling for research to move on from more useless replications to more fertile areas of study like the proposed mechanisms of action behind the effect that has been demonstrated. That's how science works literally everywhere. Your disagreement isn't with this, your disagreement is with whether or not the effect has even been established in the first place. That's a perfectly valid thing to disagree with her on, but let's not pretend like that disagreement has anything to do with the caricature mischaracterization you've attributed to her.

 

[John J.]

There's nothing even remotely anti-scientific about calling for research to move on from more useless replications to more fertile areas of study

I disagree.
Utts' 1995 paper isn't a departmental memo.
And there isn't a scientific consensus that remote viewing is real! (And that's a polite understatement).

That's how science works literally everywhere.

You referred to the replication crisis in social psychology (IIRC- apologies to you and the relevant poster if I'm wrong);
this wouldn't have been found if researchers hadn't attempted to replicate trials which were long-accepted as having significant results.

Your disagreement isn't with this...

Yes it is. My disagreement is with Utts' apparent belief that because

It is clear to this author that anomalous cognition is possible and has been demonstrated

...it is therefore unnecessary to do any more research to see if remote viewing works.

Frankly, I'm not aware of any well-run, replicable trials that have concluded that "anomalous cognition" has been demonstrated, and Utts' 1995 paper -with a reliance on some essentially discredited sources (e.g. SRI) and containing about half the citations that you'd expect as a minimum in an undergraduate submission- hasn't really changed my mind.
But please don't tell me what I agree or disagree with.

 

[Ann K]

In short someone like me sits in a quiet room and relaxes while someone else, like you, try to send me mental information of a target you are looking at. Afterwards, I try to pick out the sent target from a group of 4 targets.

I remember the Zener cards with the star, circle, square etc. I thought there were five, not four, but never mind. With a full 20-25% of positive responses expected purely at random, I'd expect the chance of getting a long run occasionally to be much higher than if, for example, there were a dozen different targets presented for each trial. I'd want to know the percent of "good" trials as a percent of all trials, and whether the administrators ignored any chance runs in "bad" trials. The complicated methodology leaves so many opportunities to do some extremely bad statistics, and so many opportunities for an unscrupulous individual to "cook the books". I've read about these experiments for many years, and from the start this type of experimental seemed very poorly designed if a scientist wanted to study such phenomena honestly.

 

[Mendel]

This strilkes me as a very broad topic for a debunk.

Metabunk's policy is, "one claim of evidence per thread". The "Open Discussion" forum is the only place where this rule is relaxed. @Landru

"Focus on individual claims of evidence, not broader theories, and with one claim of evidence per thread."

 

[deirdre]

I thought there were five,

5. how could the squiggle lines not be the first one you thought of

i dont get that pick the target you think is closest to what you saw bunk. i get that its hard to get in the zone and images can be a bit screwy but you either see it or you dont. If you suck at it so bad you can only feel "vague densities" of objects or something, then youre not good enough at it to be counted anyway.

Where as the bridge thing in the OP i would count as an impressive hit, if i believed the "viewer" really did have no idea where Puthoff might walk. AND if they exaggerated travel distance. If you drove somewhere in town i was familiar with, i'd likely be back at the 4 to 1 chance guess of where you probably are based on how long it took you to call in and say "ok i'm here" (and obviously back then there'd be a telephone box)

 

[deirdre]

lol a write up on bridge lady. she sounds just like me, except i suck at size estimates even when my eyeballs are viewing things in real life.

https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00787R000200070006-9.pdf "CIA: Experiments with Hella Hammond"

 

[tinkertailor]

This is literally how science works.

I cannot remember ever reading an academic paper in any peer-reviewed journal that said anything about author "opinion" or further research being a waste of resources. I read and analyze hundreds of articles a year for school, and it's my understanding that this is the sort of thing authors are rejected for during the peer review process. Heck, if I wrote anything about my opinion in an undergrad-level research paper I would be marked down considerably, especially if I didn't cite multiple credible academic sources for my claim.

Good research discusses the implications of the findings and seeks more information, which you mentioned here:

You establish an effect exists, you replicate it over and over and over until you get to a point where more replication studies would make no statistical difference and would only further continue to demonstrate what has already been demonstrated to exist. At that point it's a waste of resources to continue doing replication studies instead of studying something else or, in this case, focusing your research on the underlying mechanisms of how it works.

Yes, but science is replicable by different researchers in different settings with different. If it isn't being replicated by anyone but a few researchers, it isn't well-established. To be fair, I don't know how many people are doing research on ESP stuff now. I can't imagine there is much funding for ESP research. Research is fueled by funding money, and now that the military isn't into ESP I can't see who would pay for a study.

But that is not the same thing as disagreeing with what she's actually saying.

I doubt the motives and legitimacy of researchers in any field who engage in shoddy research tactics. There is no way she can claim something is well-established if it isn't established and accepted by more researchers. That is fishy. When a researcher does that, I'm going to be critical of their findings.

As an aside, I don't entirely disbelieve that ESP, remote viewing, and the like could be a possibility. No one would be more excited than I would. I'm half-tempted to start using that RV Tournament app, just to see how I do!

edit: clarity

 

[deirdre]

As an aside, I don't entirely disbelieve that ESP, remote viewing, and the like could be a possibility. No one would be more excited than I would. I'm half-tempted to start using that RV Tournament app, just to see how I do!

we could try it right now. want me to stare at something?

 

[Amathia]

I disagree.
Utts' 1995 paper isn't a departmental memo.
And there isn't a scientific consensus that remote viewing is real! (And that's a polite understatement).


You referred to the replication crisis in social psychology (IIRC- apologies to you and the relevant poster if I'm wrong);
this wouldn't have been found if researchers hadn't attempted to replicate trials which were long-accepted as having significant results.


Yes it is. My disagreement is with Utts' apparent belief that because

It is clear to this author that anomalous cognition is possible and has been demonstrated

...it is therefore unnecessary to do any more research to see if remote viewing works.

Frankly, I'm not aware of any well-run, replicable trials that have concluded that "anomalous cognition" has been demonstrated, and Utts' 1995 paper -with a reliance on some essentially discredited sources (e.g. SRI) and containing about half the citations that you'd expect as a minimum in an undergraduate submission- hasn't really changed my mind.
But please don't tell me what I agree or disagree with.

I don't know how to say this, but you just restated the very point I was making.

Utts is essentially saying this:

If A --> B
A
Therefore B.

A here stands for "Anomalous Cognition/ESP has been sufficiently established by the research."

B here stands for "We ought to focus our resources on underlying mechanisms of action research."

So the claim is "If ESP has been sufficiently established by the research, then we should now focus our resources on studying the underlying mechanisms of action."

And since she believes ESP has been sufficiently established by the research, she is calling for the parapsychology community to shift their focus now to mechanisms of action research.

Your disagreement with her is on whether or A is true, not on whether the conditional If A - > B is true.

An analogy might help here. Suppose she was making the case that the overwhelming amount of research into the efficacy of SSRIs has demonstrated their efficacy at being effective to treat depression, and that after so many studies replicating the same research findings, we should now invest resources into trying to understand why SSRIs work in treating depression instead of continuing to ask if they work in treating it.

It's obvious that if the efficacy of SSRIs has been demonstrated to a high degree of confidence that no more effort should be spent researching the same question. The resources would be better spent now trying to understand the mechanisms of action of said medication.

This basic conditional claim is not anti scientific, at all. It's about as routine as science gets. But imagine someone saying "wait a minute, that's anti-scientific!"

Your reason for saying that is not that you believe we should keep replicating studies forever even after they've shown an effect exists. Your basic disagreement in such a scenario is that you simply don't believe the efficacy of SSRIs has been established to your satisfaction, so we shouldn't move on from that type of research yet.

And that's a perfectly reasonable thing to disagree on.

But Utts was accused of being anti-scientific for wanting to move on from replication research because in her mind it's been established well enough that further studies are a waste of time. You disagree with her on that specific point and you think more replications are needed. That's fine. But no one is being "anti-scientific" here, you're just disagreeing on a factual question about what the current evidence actually shows. That's it. But it's obvious that if the research eventually got strong enough to show that ESP is possible and the body of evidence was so strong that more replications would be a waste of time, you yourself would eventually want resources and focus to shift from more replication studies to something more useful.

There's nothing anti-scientific happening here, just a boring disagreement about what the data currently shows.

 

[Amathia]

I cannot remember ever reading an academic paper in any peer-reviewed journal that said anything about author "opinion" or further research being a waste of resources. I read and analyze hundreds of articles a year for school, and it's my understanding that this is the sort of thing authors are rejected for during the peer review process. Heck, if I wrote anything about my opinion in an undergrad-level research paper I would be marked down considerably, especially if I didn't cite multiple credible academic sources for my claim.

I have, typically in Lit. Reviews and meta-analytic studies. Might vary by field though. I'm mostly familiar with philosophy (where this kind of thing doesn't apply) and behavioral sciences. It'd take me a bit to find examples of it since it's not the kind of thing I mentally flag for future reference, but it's not at all unusual to see. Researchers comment on what avenues are dead ends and what areas are open for fruitful new research all the time in their papers.