The Telepathy Tapes

A

analiennamed

Member
so the show is presented by a documentary film maker who encounters first a doctor, then many parents and educators who interact with non verbal or very low speaking ability autistic children and adults.

the show presents many individuals who seem to exhibit the ability to have ESP.

the initial critique i've heard is that these non verbal autistic folks are being assisted in their communication, via "spelling" (pointing to letters on a board), and therefor are being manipulated. this argument doesn't hold water in my opinion because many of the spellers go on to become autonomous, and require no physical touch in order to assist their spelling, so physical manipulation doesn't appear to be a culprit.

I'm not really sure where else to go with alternative explanations, but the tests are typically such that, the pyschic autistic person chooses a person whose mind they will read, and then can with 100% success, spell out what the subject is seeing, from: random number sequences, sentences in random books on random pages, thoughts the subject is holding, depictions of images the subject sees.

curious what other explanations folks might have in mind.


Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2r8M-YIsO0&list=PL6lsUJdGLFx7OGLRQCQfHQPWcMDPc5Ey7



Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKbA2NBZGqo
 
Don't know if you're familiar with Facilitated Communication (FC), something that has been thoroughly debunked. The people holding the plaques with letters on them, called facilitators, are the ones doing the communication mostly unconsciously through subtle cues.

When, at around 30 seconds in the second video, the facilitator looks back to see what card was pulled:
1737239664815.png

That clearly explains how he "got it right". She did, because she saw the card and this is FC.
 
Search for "facilitated communication" or "FC", in particular in posts by @tinkertailor, this kind of thing has come up several times in the last year, she's our literal expert in the field(s).

The fact that none of these psychics ever claimed the million dollar Randi prize, is a good indicator that any claims of psychic abilities are bunk. Imagine all the good work autism charities could do with a million dollars - what kind of psychopath wouldn't want that?
 
the facilitated communication argument does not hold up for "akil" who types independently on an ipad keyboard. @Gaspa
 

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analiennamed said:
the facilitated communication argument does not hold up for "akil" who types independently on an ipad keyboard. @Gaspa
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I didn't look to see what goes on in that scene or how this person is getting information, but it doesn't even matter. Mentalism-type tricks sold as telepathy are as old as the hills. If any such extraordinary demonstration is carried out without being under laboratory conditions with rigorous statistical analysis, confidence intervals/error bars, etc., let alone what happens after all of that, nobody should get excited.

But I know you're looking for a debunking. I say, why ruin a good magic trick?
 
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Wikipedia doesn't pull any punches in its criticism of the practice.

External Quote:

Facilitated communication (FC), or supported typing, is a scientifically discredited technique[1]​ which claims to allow non-verbal people, such as those with autism, to communicate. The technique involves a facilitator guiding the disabled person's arm or hand in an attempt to help them type on a keyboard or other such device that they are unable to properly use if unfacilitated.[2]​

There is widespread agreement within the scientific community and among disability advocacy organizations that FC is a pseudoscience.[3]​ Research indicates that the facilitator is the source of the messages obtained through FC, rather than the disabled person. The facilitator may believe they are not the source of the messages due to the ideomotor effect, which is the same effect that guides a Ouija board and dowsing rods.[4]​[5]​ Studies have consistently found that FC is unable to provide the correct response to even simple questions when the facilitator does not know the answers to the questions (e.g., showing the patient but not the facilitator an object).[6]​ In addition, in numerous cases disabled persons have been assumed by facilitators to be typing a coherent message while the patient's eyes were closed or while they were looking away from or showing no particular interest in the letter board.[7]​

Facilitated communication has been called "the single most scientifically discredited intervention in all of developmental disabilities"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facilitated_communication
 
I understand the critique of FC but there are subjects who are not using FC with tremendous success rates in controlled experiments. I am talking about the kid who does not use facilitated conversation - akil - pictured in the video as using his iPad to type text independently

@Edward Current are you suggesting a severely autistic person, who is communicating with out using facilitated conversation is running parlor tricks ?

I'm here because I can't think of any good explanations, and this place typically can help crunch problems.
 
FatPhil said:
Search for "facilitated communication" or "FC", in particular in posts by @tinkertailor, this kind of thing has come up several times in the last year, she's our literal expert in the field(s).

The fact that none of these psychics ever claimed the million dollar Randi prize, is a good indicator that any claims of psychic abilities are bunk. Imagine all the good work autism charities could do with a million dollars - what kind of psychopath wouldn't want that?
Click to expand...
The doctor who first published literature on the subject had her license pulled as a result.

However she appealed the decision and demonstrated that her research was scholarly and sound and her license was reinstituted. Which to me says a lot in itself.

I suspect the reason funding is low is because to support esp is to throw your credibility out the window in a world that only recognizes materialism. I'm stumped how akil with out using facilitated communication can beat these tests with multiple observers and measures put in place.
 
analiennamed said:
I'm stumped how akil with out using facilitated communication can beat these tests with multiple observers and measures put in place.
Click to expand...

It's going to take some time to go through the video and do some research. As noted above @tinkertailor, is I believe, finishing her graduate work in Speech pathology, linguistics or a related field, so we may have to wait for her to weigh in.

I've already read some reviews about the accompanying pod cast. In general, I would always advise sever skepticism whenever the concept of ESP and Psy is brought up. Despite decades of claims, from the spiritualist of the 19th century to Puthoff and Targ's work at SRI for the army/CIA to Bem's series of experiments in the mid '00s the evidence never survives the scrutiny and is never replicated.

I fear that this time around, some have mixed the hope for ESP with the profound hope of parents that have severely disabled children. I don't see anything positive coming from this in the long run.

As for Akil, like I said it will take some time to watch the video, but if there is the possibility that Akil simple learned to communicate using the ipad, then why invoke ESP?
 
Just pure speculation on my part at this time...

However... here are some things to be aware of.

-Non-verbal does not necessarily equate to learning disability.
-Expressive language deficits do not necessarily mean that the child has severe receptive language deficits.

In other words, children who cannot speak may be able to understand spoken speech and process things rather well.

Children with autism can have "focused attention" - they can "hyperfocus" on certain things. They can process certain things amazingly well. Better than average.

I have personal experience with a mostly non-verbal kid who can draw scenes from memory after seeing them once. He once drew a restaurant he saw once while riding past it in the family car. I was able to find that restaurant on Google maps because he included the name on the sign and the street address. I also saw him draw the map of a large shopping mall, from memory. He saw that map once.

He draws in multi-point perspective, btw. And he's creative. That restaurant is nowhere near the Strip but he drew recognizable Strip hotels in the background.

So, although I haven't looked into this yet, I warn everyone to beware of some common misunderstandings about what autism is all about. Autism is very quirky and these kids will surprise you.
 
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The mother in that second video says that her son told her he could hear her thoughts. The question is unanswered as to whether "he told her", or "she interpreted that he told her". When she was holding a letter board up to him, I watched it in slow speed, and she was moving it so that he would choose the symbol closest to "straight ahead" of him. Of course we could not see her face or any signals (deliberate or accidental) that her face might have revealed to him, and there's a resemblance to long-debunked "horses that can count" carnival tricks. A video shows us what it wants to demonstrate, but is not a lab-controlled double-blind test, by any means.

I'm not saying non-verbal people are not intelligent. I'm saying that this method of communication is inadequate to show that.
 
analiennamed said:
I understand the critique of FC but there are subjects who are not using FC with tremendous success rates in controlled experiments. I am talking about the kid who does not use facilitated conversation - akil - pictured in the video as using his iPad to type text independently
Click to expand...
i'm not listening to an hour long podcast where we cant see the subjects in action. can you quote/transcribe what "with tremendous success rates " exactly means. the data?

i thought it was more impressive his mom chose two random numbers which just so happen to come out as a rounded 900. it would take me a month if you told me to multiply two random numbers (besides 9s and tens) into a calculator to come up with an even 100 number
 
I'm also wary of parents who want to get attention through their children.

The darkest example of this is Munchhausen by proxy. If there are parents who will harm their children to get attention... what's to say that some won't do something much more benign?

They may have worked out all sorts of tricks with their kids. Perhaps very subtle signals such as making clicking sounds with the tongue or finger nails, or making slight hand movements. Etc.

If you show me a kid in an isolation booth who can neither see nor hear the person sending the telepathic message... then you're getting somewhere. Possibly. The message would have to be chosen by a third person to limit tricks such as learning sequences or getting signals via vibrations in the floor from foot movements.

BTW, see "Clever Hans."
 
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NorCal Dave said:
As for Akil, like I said it will take some time to watch the video, but if there is the possibility that Akil simple learned to communicate using the ipad, then why invoke ESP?
Click to expand...
theres a difference between communicating and rotely reciting something back. not that that has anything to do with this 2 min video being "legit" of course. just saying.
 
I have not watched the longer video (and probably won't) but the first three comments under it, and a good many more that follow, do not inspire any confidence in me that there is serious science being either presented or received. I sympathize with those affected and their loved ones, and I don't find it surprising that they are eager to clutch at straws, but this seems to appeal almost exclusively to a "woo" audience. Here they are, with names removed:

External Quote:

(1) May the Telepathy Tapes become the catalyst of the long-awaited global paradigm shift.

(2) This is wild. I am a speaking autistic person who has non-verbal episodes. I have never felt more understood in my experiences until now. I have been all over the astral. I've seen heaven, and spoken with the huge, glowing light/energy (or human presenting) angels. I've seen the sacred golden library and learned all about some of my past selves. I have spoken to the dead, some who I knew while they were alive, and others who I did not. I had no idea that there was such a strong connection between autism and the ability to "hear" and "see" spiritually, both of which are trainable skills! Thank you for making this, as controversial as it may /seem/ to the world right now. This is extremely valuable data in my self understanding.

(3) I have schizoaffective disorder and have been telepathy talking to aliens for 10 years. When I listen to these tapes I sometimes need to pause the video to talk to different people with telepathy. I get lots of visuals or visions of grey aliens when I listen to these tapes. These non speakers are the heroes who help create the social memory complex. I also think they are star seeds for the most part.

 
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NorCal Dave said:
the evidence never survives the scrutiny and is never replicated
Click to expand...
This is not how ESP research is dismissed. ESP does replicate. Here's a meta-analysis which on the surface comes to the conclusion that the data doesn't support establishing ESP as a real effect. But if you actually read what they say, it's revelatory:
the largest Bayes factor for psi is 330 to 1, and this value is conditional on psi differences across altered states of consciousness. Although this degree of support is greater than that provided in many routine studies in cognition (Wetzels et al., 2011), we nonetheless remain skeptical of the existence of psi
Click to expand...
330 to 1 is better than the evidence for most of the medicine you take, and they admit that it's better than routine studies in cognition. So then why isn't ESP accepted then if the data says the effect is real? Here's what they say:
1. The Bayes factor describes how researchers should update their prior beliefs. Bem (2011) and Tressoldi (2011) provided the appropriate context for setting these prior beliefs about psi. They recommended that researchers apply Laplace's maxim that ex- traordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Psi is the quint- essential extraordinary claim because there is a pronounced lack of any plausible mechanism. Accordingly, it is appropriate to hold very low prior odds of a psi effect, and appropriate odds may be as extreme as millions, billions, or even higher against psi. Against such odds, a Bayes factor of even 330 to 1 seems small and inconsequential in practical terms. Of course for the unskeptical reader who may believe a priori that psi is as likely to exist as not to exist, a Bayes factor of 330 to 1 is considerable.
Click to expand...
Because of the lack of a plausible mechanism (In the eyes of the researchers), then even an effect size which in other context would be enough to establish the efficaciousness or safety of a medicine, cannot be used to establish a psi effect.

It's literally ridiculous. You can absolutely establish an effect without knowing the mechanism. Worse: they say that if you are unbiased when it comes to the question of psi's existence, "[the] Bayes factor of 330 to 1 is considerable." In other words if you treat psi research, like every single other field, the effect is soundly, and obviously, established.

This has been the state of psi for decades now so it pisses me off when people like you say that it doesn't replicate. It does. But to unscientific skeptics, it doesn't matter.
 
NorCal Dave said:
It's going to take some time to go through the video and do some research. As noted above @tinkertailor, is I believe, finishing her graduate work in Speech pathology, linguistics or a related field, so we may have to wait for her to weigh in.

I've already read some reviews about the accompanying pod cast. In general, I would always advise sever skepticism whenever the concept of ESP and Psy is brought up. Despite decades of claims, from the spiritualist of the 19th century to Puthoff and Targ's work at SRI for the army/CIA to Bem's series of experiments in the mid '00s the evidence never survives the scrutiny and is never replicated.

I fear that this time around, some have mixed the hope for ESP with the profound hope of parents that have severely disabled children. I don't see anything positive coming from this in the long run.

As for Akil, like I said it will take some time to watch the video, but if there is the possibility that Akil simple learned to communicate using the ipad, then why invoke ESP?
Click to expand...
One youtube skeptic, Sneezing Monkey, recently critiqued this video and among other things he pointed out that they were trying to mind read numbers from 1 to nine or other such small ranges, which makes for relatively easy hits. If these people were really psychic they should be able to mind read numbers from 1 to 10,000 or 1 to 1,000,000.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7tKg8q7aJ0&t=5s
 
analiennamed said:
The doctor who first published literature on the subject had her license pulled as a result.

However she appealed the decision and demonstrated that her research was scholarly and sound and her license was reinstituted. Which to me says a lot in itself.

I suspect the reason funding is low is because to support esp is to throw your credibility out the window in a world that only recognizes materialism. I'm stumped how akil with out using facilitated communication can beat these tests with multiple observers and measures put in place.
Click to expand...
Having followed the work of the late James Randi on testing psychics for many years the first thing everyone should realize is that testing for psi needs to be done under highly controlled conditions, preferably with professional magicians designing the test protocol. They know how to convince people they are psychics and know all of the tricks, very few people outside of that profession do. The fact that the audience can't figure out how the trick is done doesn't mean that real magic (or telepathy) is at work. It just means the magician is more clever than the audience.

And not all people who claim such powers are frauds, many honestly believed they could do what they claimed. Until they were tested by James Randi under highly controlled conditions. So questioning claims is not meant to denigrate the people making them, it is just challenging them to prove it under conditions that eliminate all conceivable ways for the test to be invalid.

The person doing the mind reading, and the person whose mind is being read, should be in different windowless soundproof rooms for example.
 
MapperGuy said:
Having followed the work of the late James Randi on testing psychics for many years the first thing everyone should realize is that testing for psi needs to be done under highly controlled conditions, preferably with professional magicians designing the test protocol. They know how to convince people they are psychics and know all of the tricks, very few people outside of that profession do. The fact that the audience can't figure out how the trick is done doesn't mean that real magic (or telepathy) is at work. It just means the magician is more clever than the audience.

And not all people who claim such powers are frauds, many honestly believed they could do what they claimed. Until they were tested by James Randi under highly controlled conditions. So questioning claims is not meant to denigrate the people making them, it is just challenging them to prove it under conditions that eliminate all conceivable ways for the test to be invalid.

The person doing the mind reading, and the person whose mind is being read, should be in different windowless soundproof rooms for example.
Click to expand...

i'd love to know what's behind this trick:
https://limewire.com/?referrer=pq7i8xx7p2
 
analiennamed said:
i've uploaded a video of one of their tests here, seems pretty clear that akil is not being manipulated, and that the random word generator generated some pretty sufficiently random stuff:
https://limewire.com/?referrer=pq7i8xx7p2

@deirdre @Ann K

@Charlesinsandiego Dr. Dianne Hennacy Powell
Click to expand...
Dr Powell's license was suspended in 2010 for malpractice, not for believing in improbable things. (Edit: despite what she says on her website!)

https://omb.oregon.gov/Clients/ORMB/OrderDocuments/db4c98c8-0894-4578-85cc-523b0972f896.pdf
 
metac3 said:
This is not how ESP research is dismissed. ESP does replicate. Here's a meta-analysis which on the surface comes to the conclusion that the data doesn't support establishing ESP as a real effect. But if you actually read what they say, it's revelatory:

330 to 1 is better than the evidence for most of the medicine you take, and they admit that it's better than routine studies in cognition. So then why isn't ESP accepted then if the data says the effect is real? Here's what they say:

Because of the lack of a plausible mechanism (In the eyes of the researchers), then even an effect size which in other context would be enough to establish the efficaciousness or safety of a medicine, cannot be used to establish a psi effect.

It's literally ridiculous. You can absolutely establish an effect without knowing the mechanism. Worse: they say that if you are unbiased when it comes to the question of psi's existence, "[the] Bayes factor of 330 to 1 is considerable." In other words if you treat psi research, like every single other field, the effect is soundly, and obviously, established.

This has been the state of psi for decades now so it pisses me off when people like you say that it doesn't replicate. It does. But to unscientific skeptics, it doesn't matter.
Click to expand...
An excerpt from a response to this purported evidence published in 2020:
At the outset, let us make our position clear: Parapsychology has failed to demonstrate that its claimed phenomena actually exist. Despite the best efforts of researchers, theoreticians, and compilers of data-bases, there was (see Druckman & Swets, 1988) and still is no persuasive evidence that supports the existence of psi. Psi researchers share with other fields a history of refinement of methodology and increasing precision in measurement technique. But, unlike mainstream scientific domains where we have witnessed a sometimes unsteady but progressive accumulation of repeatable demonstrations of key phenomena, parapsychology has shown no such advancement. Instead, a troublesome pattern has emerged. Claims of evidence for psi are announced only to later fall into disregard. Theories are enunciated and later abandoned. Methodologies are introduced, found wanting, discarded, and sometimes recycled. Each new procedure is introduced with claims of success, followed by failures to replicate, followed in turn by the publication of meta-analyses that are claimed to rescue the effect of interest. As excitement about each new procedure wanes, a resurgence of interest develops when another, apparently successful procedure is reported.
Click to expand...
Reber, A. S., and Alcock, J. E. (2020). Searching for the impossible: parapsychology's elusive quest. Am. Psychol. 75, 391–399. doi: 10.1037/amp0000486

PubMed Abstract | CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar
Click to expand...
 
analiennamed said:
sorry here is the video directly uploaded here.
Click to expand...
Ok, the first thing that sticks out at me is the mother.

Watch her behaviour closely, her left arm in particular. Her hand movements are followed by a key press. She puts her hand in one position, Akhil touches a letter. Her hand changes position, Akhil touches a letter. And so on.

I saw another video where the mother was said to have been standing behind Akhil (who was sitting on a bench) so he couldn't see her, but the video clearly showed her standing behind but to his right while Akhil was also angled toward her. She was doing the same thing there, and was constantly moving around and even poking him in the back.


Source: https://x.com/likeitmatters3/status/1873229318396231970

This could possibly be a case of unconscious (or deliberate) cuing using subtle physical movement.
 
Z.W. Wolf said:
This is ridiculous. The guy can hear the word. He's just using his device the way people with expressive language deficits use them.

Just because he has expressive language deficits doesn't mean he has receptive language deficits.
Click to expand...

Weren't you just talking about not locking yourself into things without considering alternatives?

How does he hear the word?
 
Gaspa said:
Don't know if you're familiar with Facilitated Communication (FC), something that has been thoroughly debunked. The people holding the plaques with letters on them, called facilitators, are the ones doing the communication mostly unconsciously through subtle cues.

When, at around 30 seconds in the second video, the facilitator looks back to see what card was pulled:
View attachment 75997
That clearly explains how he "got it right". She did, because she saw the card and this is FC.
Click to expand...

They are using the Rapid Prompting Method in this example, not Facilitated Communication which involves physical manipulation of the arm or hand.

This video demonstrates that the people behind the Telepathy Tapes really weren't interested in having controls in place to eliminate the use of scientifically discredited techniques. The absolute least they could have done to reduce the possibility of the "mindreader's" target (in this case the mother) influencing the outcome is to not have them hold the board! If the board must be used, it should be held by someone that doesn't know that answer.

That's just basic stuff that would have mitigated at least one known issue, but they couldn't even do that. Incredibly lazy.
 
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analiennamed said:
the facilitated communication argument does not hold up for "akil" who types independently on an ipad keyboard. @Gaspa
Click to expand...

That still shows no "facilitation".

And anyway, even if one facilitator had morals, or simply wasn't indoctrinated into the dark arts of the technique yet, and doesn't influence his ward, that doesn't mean the field isn't discredited. It's been designed to be abusable, which means it's *broken by design*.
 
metac3 said:
This is not how ESP research is dismissed. ESP does replicate. Here's a meta-analysis which on the surface comes to the conclusion that the data doesn't support establishing ESP as a real effect. But if you actually read what they say, it's revelatory:
Click to expand...

6 billion to 1, they say?

OK, they chose which experimental result they think they can get unambiguously reproduced (I'm not asking them to reproduce it, they can run off to the authors of the papers these results are from.)
My stake will be 1 euro. To be fair to them, let's call the odds 60 million rather than 6 billion - I want to make this more tempting to them, I'm giving them well over 100x leverage here (well over, as they can chose the result they're most confident with).
If they don't reproduce it, they pay my winnings to skeptical, scientific and educational charities worldwide.
The only extra condition - I get to design the experimental setup that will test this result. (By which I mean I'll get magicians and psychologists that I know to design it, it's not what you know, it's who you know. Fortunately, for me, one of them is a name well known from the post-Bem backlash, ;-) )

They'd be mad - or giving off a very strong message that they have low confidence in what they're written - not to take me up on that bet, it's so in their favour, according to them.
 
Charlesinsandiego said:
One youtube skeptic, Sneezing Monkey, recently critiqued this video and among other things he pointed out that they were trying to mind read numbers from 1 to nine or other such small ranges, which makes for relatively easy hits. If these people were really psychic they should be able to mind read numbers from 1 to 10,000 or 1 to 1,000,000.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7tKg8q7aJ0&t=5s
Click to expand...


There's little difference between 6 repeats of a 1-9 experiment and a single instance of a 100000-999999 experiment, so that's not something I'd change about the experimental set-up. If anything, a 100000-999999 experiment is *worse*, as it opens the door for introducing the concept of "near misses", which might be interpreted as "partial positives", or some bullshit like that[*], whereas in the simple 1-9 case it's obviously right or wrong. As with most things - KISS. The maths will tell you when the result is significant, there's no need to play silly games to help the maths out.

[* weasel wording definitely exists - I'm reminded of https://mchankins.wordpress.com/2013/04/21/still-not-significant-2/ ]
 
FatPhil said:
6 billion to 1, they say?

OK, they chose which experimental result they think they can get unambiguously reproduced (I'm not asking them to reproduce it, they can run off to the authors of the papers these results are from.)
My stake will be 1 euro. To be fair to them, let's call the odds 60 million rather than 6 billion - I want to make this more tempting to them, I'm giving them well over 100x leverage here (well over, as they can chose the result they're most confident with).
If they don't reproduce it, they pay my winnings to skeptical, scientific and educational charities worldwide.
The only extra condition - I get to design the experimental setup that will test this result. (By which I mean I'll get magicians and psychologists that I know to design it, it's not what you know, it's who you know. Fortunately, for me, one of them is a name well known from the post-Bem backlash, ;-) )

They'd be mad - or giving off a very strong message that they have low confidence in what they're written - not to take me up on that bet, it's so in their favour, according to them.
Click to expand...
Your response is funny. Nearly every ganzfield experiment that has ever been conducted achieves a signal greater than the expected value of 25%. So yes, if you ran an auto-ganzfield, it would in fact replicate. Even skeptics like Susan Blackmore replicate ganzfield.

Also you completely ignored everything I said about how even the deniers of psi admit that it replicates, but that even though the numbers are such that in any other field, it would soundly establish the effect, because a priori assumptions by skeptics, it can't possibly be that we can use the data we have to conclusively say psi is true.
 
metac3 said:
Also you completely ignored everything I said about how even the deniers of psi admit that it replicates, but that even though the numbers are such that in any other field, it would soundly establish the effect, because a priori assumptions by skeptics, it can't possibly be that we can use the data we have to conclusively say psi is true.
Click to expand...

Which part of the quote in @Minus0's post #26 would you say is an "admission that it replicates"?
 
Minus0 said:
An excerpt from a response to this purported evidence published in 2020:
Click to expand...
Brother, the very meta-analysis I linked is a psi rebuttal paper which comes to the same conclusion: That psi isn't established.

The problem that I point out is what these people mean by "doesn't replicate", is actually more like: "it has an effect size better than some medicines, but it's not to my satisfaction because I'm a materialist skeptic."
Statistician Joel Greenhouse (1991) maintained that "parapsychologists should not be held to a different standard of evidence to support their findings than other scientists." We dispute this proposition in the strongest of terms. When confronted with "miraculous" claims, standard procedure is precisely the opposite. Claims that contradict, dispute, or even gently call into question accepted and empirically established findings and models are, and must be, held to a higher standard.
Click to expand...
This mindset is exactly wrong and unscientific. The authors main contention isn't about replication, it's psi breaking 'laws' (in their opinion) such as thermodynamics or time reversibility or causal mechanism. These authors don't believe in psi because no amount of effect size will be able to convince them that maybe their 'laws' don't stand on as firm ground as they thought.

I believe in medicine. I believe in double blind studies to establish the basis for the existence of effects.
FatPhil said:
Which part of the quote in @Minus0's post #26 would you say is an "admission that it replicates"?
Click to expand...
That paper doesn't do any statistical analysis, and their meta-analysis section has a single reference. Their denial comes in the form that I specified above (that psi breaks 'laws').

What is clearly implied is that even if psi replicated to the authors satisfaction:
There is no good reason to consider the data produced by parapsychologists to pose a challenge to the well-demonstrated principles of modern science, principles that rule out the existence of psi. It is all an elaborate illusion, an intellectual Potemkin Village, albeit unintentional. As we noted at the outset, just as pigs cannot fly, psi cannot be true, and parapsychological phenomena cannot have ontological status.
Click to expand...
 
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