Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 4.3bsd-beta 6/6/85; site decwrl.DEC.COM Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!bellcore!decvax!decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-pbsvax!cooper From: cooper@pbsvax.DEC (Topher Cooper DTN-225-5819) Newsgroups: net.sci,net.philosophy Subject: Re: Parapsychology and sloppiness Message-ID: <899@decwrl.DEC.COM> Date: Tue, 4-Feb-86 11:15:18 EST Article-I.D.: decwrl.899 Posted: Tue Feb 4 11:15:18 1986 Date-Received: Fri, 7-Feb-86 08:36:36 EST Sender: daemon@decwrl.DEC.COM Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation Lines: 86 Xref: watmath net.sci:510 net.philosophy:4087 Matthew P. Wiener (weemba@brahms.UUCP) writes: >But because of the (unfortunate) track record of sloppiness in past >psi research, I will remain skeptical. And Dave Trissel ({seismo,ihnp4}!ut-sally!im4u!oakhill!davet) responds: >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. Sorry Dave, I'm going to have to disagree with you -- sort of. Parapsychology suffers from the problem that *anyone* may announce that they are a parapsychologist and/or conduct experiments which they do not have adequate training for. There are thus many people out there who are considered from outside the field (including by themselves) as being inside the field, but in reality are not. One common case of this is when people arrive on the scene from the "hard sciences" and announce that they are going to put things on a "scientific" basis. They then precede to repeat many of the same errors which have long since been recognized and avoided in parapsychology. Some of these people disappear after some embarrassing incident, some learn from their experience and "join" the field, and others continue on the periphery. So how does one distinguish people "really" in the field from those who are not? The same as in any other field: you look at where there articles are published. Articles published in sources juried by parapsychologists, such as the "Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research", the "European Journal of Parapsychology" or the "Journal of Parapsychology", can be considered to have been judged of interest to parapsychologists and therefore, in essence, to be parapsychology. If we restrict ourselves to these sources, I would say that parapsychology has a record of experimental tightness which few fields can match. This is not to say that no published parapsychology experimental reports are sloppy but only that no more of them are than in any other field. There is a constant awareness in the field that things must be kept tight. When someone enters the field from another field they find that the "paradigms" (in the sense of Kuhn) of the new field are different from what they are used to. They decide that this is the reason that the results have not been "accepted" by the scientific community. They send out a clarion call for reform. The hard scientists want all that sloppy stuff with "ill-defined" psychological variables eliminated, while the soft scientists want "more concern for the human angles" and less for all that "mechanistic stuff". This happens every few years. Currently, for example, Robert Jahn (Dean of Engineering at Princeton U.) is questioning, among other things, the use of multiple simultaneous analyses (it is not uncommon in parapsychology to get results like "ESP scores are positively correlated to intelligence in extroverts but negatively correlated in introverts"). His criticism is not that it is in any way formally incorrect, just that it is "sloppy": that's just not the way they do it in engineering. In reality, there is a room for (and need for) many different kinds of work. Frequently, as in any field, some work which is not the "tightest" possible gets published. This is because it is thought interesting even if it is not evidentially very strong. It may introduce a new experimental technique which needs, however, some refining. Or it may be suggesting of a new phenomenon. The experiment currently being discussed, as it happens, is in this latter category. The experiment was not actually conducted by Dr. Nash, but rather by some premed students under his supervision. The limitations of the procedures were carefully noted in the actual article. Unfortunately, such qualifications tend to get dropped in summaries such as the one Dave reprinted for us. If you believe that the anomalies in *all* parapsychological research are due to sloppy techniques, then there is nothing here to convince you otherwise. If, on the other hand you believe, on the basis of more tightly done experiments, that one or more unexplained phenomena are the cause of many of the anomalies, then this experiment suggests a possible new manifestation of those phenomena: "PK" influenced mutation. But it will take some better experiments to actually demonstrate this, even to parapsychologists. Topher Cooper USENET: ...{allegra,decvax,ihnp4,ucbvax}!decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-pbsvax!cooper ARPA/CSNET: cooper%pbsvax.DEC@decwrl Disclaimer: This contains my own opinions, and I am solely responsible for them.