jlg@lanl.ARPA (11/09/84)
Response to message in net.crypt - >However, much of the discussion took as its starting point that there is >"no scientifically hard evidence for ESP." This is simply not true. There >exists a great deal of scientifically hard evidence. Though it has some >"inelegant" characteristics, it is many times what would be required to >establish a less controversial hypothesis. The question is not whether or >not their is hard evidence but whether there is enough to overcome our >(very reasonable) a priori theoretical bias against it. > >If your only source of information about parapsychology is "The Skeptical >Inquirer" then you are somewhat in the position of having publications from >the American Tobacco Institute as your only source of information about the >health risks of tobacco. SI publishes a lot of good work but it is very >selective about its targets. For the other side of things I would suggest >a careful (even skeptical) reading of back issues of the "Journal of >Parapsychology" and of the "Journal of the American Society For Psychical Research." If you can't get these, then I recommend the excellent (though >necessarily rather limited) survey found in the Proceedings of the IEEE, >February 1982 (Vol. 70, #2). It's entitled "The Persistent Paradox of >Psychic Phenomena: An Engineering Perspective", and its by Robert G. >Jahn, who is the Dean of the Princeton University School of Engineering. > >One final point ... Chuq stated a personal belief in ESP despite the lack >of scientific evidence, presumably on the basis of personal experience. >lanl!jlg responded with a discussion of the difference between empirical >and "meta-physical" (sic) subjects. The claim being that ESP is a pseudo- >science unjustly claiming empirical rather than metaphysical status. This >is not a fair response to Chuq's comments. If I see ball lightning rolling >down the street towards me, than this is strong, legitimate evidence for >the empirical existence of ball lightning. It is likely to convince me of >>the reality of the phenomenon, even if it is not yet accepted by the >scientific community (as it wasn't until relatively recently) and even if I >don't have a camera so as to collect SCIENTIFIC evidence so as to convince >others. My belief in ball lightning would be empirical and accusations of >metaphysics or pseudo-science would be unjustified. This would be so even >if my interpretation was wrong and what I had observed was, for example, an >afterimage of an ordinary lightning flash. Ultimately, personal >observation is the basis of all empirical evidence. If you see ball lightning rolling down the street toward you, what is it that leads you to conclude that it IS ball lightning? Unless you have seen the phenomenon before, you have no reason to suspect that it might not be some other (less esoteric) effect that you are also unfamiliar with. Anecdotal evidence is NOT evidence! Unfortunately, most 'evidence' for ESP is anecdotal (including, probably, the personal experiences that lead people to believe). The kinds of psychological stresses and coincidences that lead people to think they had a supernatural experience might make an interesting study, but parapsychologists aren't likely to study this too closely since it would cast doubt on their beliefs. The real scientific study of ESP won't be started until the other possible explanations for the anecdotal stories are well understood. In addition, I HAVE read back issues of the Journal of Parapsychology. I found it most dissapointing in its lack of scientific content. Many of the contributors don't seem to have even a rudimentary grasp of mathematics or statistics, even though their arguments are founded on 'statistics' that they gathered. One example is Helmut Schmidt's work on quantum random number generators. He tested 'many subjects', and two of them came up with scores which differed 'significantly' from chance (one was about 2 standard deviations from random, the other about 1.7 standard deviations from random - IN A NEGATIVE DIRECTION!). Schmidt estimated the odds for the first person's score as about one in a million (actual odds for that score are about one in 700, summing the odds for scores even further from random yields a chance of one in fifty of scoring better than Schmidt's best subject). The mathematics involved in the scoring of this test are a simple exercise in the binomial theorem, yet Schmidt seems unaware that the binary random walk problem is used as an example in a large number of statistics and probability texts - including warnings by the authors that the results can SEEM to be non-intuitive if care is not taken. (By the way, if Schmidt's 'many subjects' totalled more than fifty, then the two scores published fall well within the expectations of chance.) The lack of mathematical sophistication in the field of parapsychology is confusing to me since the field of psychology relies heavily on statistics - with psychologist being VERY well trained in the discipline. Interestingly, the only parapsychologists I've met who's work I trust have consistently FAILED to show positive results, even though they are firm believers who really want to show something is there to study. The willing- ness to accept the 'hard truths' (as Sagan would say) is the hallmark of scientists, the willingness to gloss over the evidence and do sloppy experiments is the hallmark of pseudo-scientists. When there are well-controlled, reproducible, and correctly analyzed experiments done which demonstrate the existence of ESP, I will be among the first to show an interest. In the mean time, the inability or disinclination of people to recognize the sloppy nature of para- psychology is a dangerous precident. Suppose the people in charge of making arms control policy or energy policy apply the same low standards to their work (they probably do!), we would be in bad shape. In fact, suppose the NSA began to give the intelligence community information that was decoded 'psionically', and American policy was based on this data!?!
gwyn@brl-tgr.ARPA (Doug Gwyn <gwyn>) (11/10/84)
JLG: Right on!!
flinn@seismo.UUCP (Edward A Flinn) (11/12/84)
I would be interested to hear of one single piece of 'hard' scientific evidence for ESP that has been critically examined by objective experts on the subject. As far as I know, no such evidence exists...