weemba@brahms.BERKELEY.EDU (Matthew P. Wiener) (01/24/86)
[This is a carryover from a net.philosophy discussion] In article <631@oakhill.UUCP> davet@oakhill.UUCP (Dave Trissel) writes: >"A recent experiment indicates that inexperienced subjects can bring about >genetic mutations in bacteria - a finding which has profound implications >for the health industry and for evolutionary theory. > .... .... .... > How? By merely 'wishing'. > .... .... ...." I am unqualified to comment on the bacteria/PK experiment per se. If it is true, I hope we will hear about it from more investigators. But because of the (unfortunate) track record of sloppiness in past psi research, I will remain skeptical. I am curious, though, how the results (clear vs red) were recorded. The 'wishing' worries me. A fun game I used to play with friends was to convince them that Venus was an airplane, and that if they stared hard and long enough, they would see it move. About half of them could be convinced it was moving. I would like to point out that even within the traditional sciences anti-weird bigotry is extremely strong, and fraud is far too common. And yet the fields advance anyway! (I can cite examples if you wish.) >> ... I mean, why would >>the same people who see a professional magician/mentalist perform be >>merely impressed, but when a charlatan does the exact same stunts call- >>ing it psi/esp powers, they freak? I mean, really, what is it about >>people that can make them so self-inducedly gullible and stupid??? > >Well, it looks like you as many others on the net are still living in the >parapsychological world of the 19th century. I have no idea just how valid >studies like the one above are - but it sure looks to me that the field >has gone much further than the simple mind-guessing tricks of the last >century. Certainly not of the magician card gessing game, is it? See Bassini, Singer, Reynolds, "Occult Powers: Seeing is Believing", J Scientific Study of Religion, 1981(?) (Best of memory recall here.) They describe an experiment where a quickly trained performer did a few elementary tricks like blindfold reading and rod bending before college audiences with one of two introductions (possibly psi/definitely magic). 80% of the first kind of audience believed they saw psi, with many of them (10%?) freaking out (worried about Satan, etc.) 40% of the second kind of audience believed they saw psi. (These numbers are hazy, but in the right ballpark.) ucbvax!brahms!weemba Matthew P Wiener/UCB Math Dept/Berkeley CA 94720
davet@oakhill.UUCP (Dave Trissel) (01/27/86)
[This discussion moved from net.philosophy. Should those articles be reposted here?] In article <11526@ucbvax.berkeley.edu.BERKELEY.EDU> weemba@brahms.UUCP (Matthew P. Wiener) writes: > >> How? By merely 'wishing'. > >I am unqualified to comment on the bacteria/PK experiment per se. >If it is true, I hope we will hear about it from more investigators. >But because of the (unfortunate) track record of sloppiness in past >psi research, I will remain skeptical. >I am curious, though, how the results (clear vs red) were recorded. >The 'wishing' worries me. A fun game I used to play with friends >was to convince them that Venus was an airplane, and that if they >stared hard and long enough, they would see it move. About half of >them could be convinced it was moving. The biasing of REGs (Random Event Generators) machines in tests I am aware of is accomplished in the same way - by merely 'wanting' to achieve a certain result. Better success can be had if there is a motivation of some sort such as a reward for the subject if the person succeeds. There have been a lot of studies to determine what effects good psi performance. One of the most interesting findings is the 'sheep/goat' effect which indicates that 'believers' and 'non-believers' taking the very same psi test under the very same conditions come out having the 'believers' performing better. Just as a person could gullibly be a 'true believer' by interpreting facts in a biased or invalid manner, so can a person be a 'true skeptic' by simply dismissing a precognative dream or declaring that everyone who conducts parapsychological experiments is a fraud or hopelessly inept. But one of the implications of the sheep/goat experiments is that the very belief of the individual involved may have something to do with what is experienced. Thus the skeptic claiming 'I never have such things happen to me' and the believer saying just the opposite may both be correct. One finding which came out of the sheep/goat investigations is that some people which are psi-negative (i.e. tend to obtain the opposite of what the psi test is supposed to mark as correct) evaluate the condition of their lives as having bad luck and misfortune striking them far more frequently than the average Joe. If these studies are valid then as you can imagine there are some interesting implications to be researched here. Considering the sloppiness of research in this area, alas this has been true. It was realized about ten years ago that the parapsychologist would have to clean up their act and self-police by rejecting the incompetents out of the field. But such things are not easy to do. When you consider the quite limited funds available for competent psi research it is even more amazing that anything of substance has been produced, in my opinion. One could write a psuedo-science book on earth changes or the Bermuda Triangle and have a guaranteed readership of believers and make more money and have more noteriety than anyone dedicating their entire life to parapsychology. The competence of researchers in the field also pertains to your subject of suggestability. In the REG experiments I was involved with the machine would end if with its internal counters being numbers from 0 to 9. The targets were randomly chosen either before or after the experiment with all the steps and setup specifically decided upon and unchanged before the tests. In cases like this I see no room for suggestability factors entering in. But in the bacteria experiment I can imagine any number of problems. For example, was the red strain significantly red? Or was it just a faint red hue which could easily be induced by anticipating its presence. Was the person identifying the color ignorant of the part that strain had in the experiment? Did two people independently validate the color? These are just the normal things any good researcher would take care of, but were they done? >80% of the first kind of audience believed they saw psi, with many of them >(10%?) freaking out (worried about Satan, etc.) 40% of the second kind of >audience believed they saw psi. (These numbers are hazy, but in the right >ballpark.) Unfortunately, I don't know what can be done about this. Would that all people could be taught the essence of the scientific method and lots of science foundations. But I look at it this way. The 'Fifth Force' stuff appeared in Newsweek and I suspended my usual doubts about accuracy in journalism and figured maybe there could be a new chapter written in physics. Then I later saw some short net.physics articles explaining that the deal isn't as important or accepted as Newsweek led me to believe. Now, would it be as correct for a net.physics contributer to attribute to me the same gulliblity as I would attribute to the members of that class? After all, I get Scientific American and try to read every article up until I get almost totally lost - and this includes the physics articles. So one can't accuse me of not trying to understand what's going on. If the accounting major in the class is to be considered gullible than doesn't that put me in the same position vis-a-vis the 'Fifth Force' situation? -- Dave Trissel Motorola Semiconductor Austin TX {seismo,ihnp4}!ut-sally!im4u!oakhill!davet [Sorry but our mail will not properly reply to BITNET among others.]