Debunking the Arguments of PseudoSkeptics and Paranormal Debunkers
Argument # 17: “Experiments that
show positive results for psi must be replicable to count as evidence.”
Corollary: “I won’t consider
successful psi experiments as evidence of psi unless the results are replicated
and peer reviewed.”
Besides claiming lack of
controls, pseudoskeptics also demand psi experiments to be replicable to count
as evidence. While this standard may
seem reasonable scientifically, it is usually just another tactic to try to
raise the bar, because no matter how many times a successful psi experiment is
replicated, they still will demand a never-ending higher rate of replication. (If the 2,549 sessions of the Ganzfeld and
autoganzfeld experiments from 1974 to 1997 by different research laboratories
which produced above chance results doesn’t count as replicable, then what
would?)
This is because these guys are all about arguing and playing hopscotch
games. No matter what, they never concede that they are wrong, and will
use every slimy tactic they can find to deny what they don't believe
in. If cornered, they will change the topic or rant about something
irrelevant. That's just the way they are.
The first problem with this
argument is that just because something hasn’t been replicated doesn’t mean that it
didn’t happen. For example, if an
Olympic Track and Field runner breaks a world record, and other athletes don’t
repeat it, it doesn’t mean that it never happened. Likewise, if I won a slot machine jackpot or
threw a quarter that landed on its edge (against astronomical odds), but I wasn’t able to repeat it, it
doesn’t mean that it never happened the first time. Similarly, phenomena such as supernovas,
balls of lightning, and comets are outer phenomena not replicable under our
control but are acknowledged to exist anyway.
Therefore, replicating the appearance of UFO’s or ghosts may not be
possible because they are out of our control, but that doesn’t mean they never
happen or don’t exist. All it would take
is one genuine case of a UFO or ghost to prove that they were real and
possible. As an unnamed law
says: “If it happens once, then it is possible.”
In fact, the very nature of
psychic phenomena makes them not easy to replicate. Dean Radin, Ph.D, Director of the
Consciousness Research Laboratory at the University of Nevada, and author of The
Conscious Universe: The Scientific Truth of Psychic Phenomena,
lists 8 reasons why this is so: (page 40)
“Psi effects do not fall into the class of easily
replicated effects. There are eight
typical reasons why replication is difficult to achieve: (1) the phenomenon may
not be replicable; (2) the written experimental procedures may be incomplete,
or the skills needed to perform the replication may not be well understood; (3)
the effect under study may change over time or react to the experimental
procedure; (4) investigators may inadvertently affect the results of their
experiments; (5) experiments sometimes fail for sociological reasons; (6) there
are psychological reasons that prevent replications from being easy to conduct;
(7) the statistical aspects of replication are much more confusing than more
people think; and (78) complications in experimental design affect some
replications.”
The second problem with this
argument is that successful psi experiments definitely have been replicated by different researchers and
laboratories. One famous solid example
is the series of telepathy studies known as the Ganzfeld experiments, in which
subjects guess target images while sitting with ping pong ball halves over
their eyes and listening to relaxing white noise designed to deprive them of
sensory stimuli to heighten their intuition and psychic abilities. These have been replicated for decades. Dean Radin, in the same book quoted above
describes the replicability of the Ganzfeld experiments: (page 78-79)
“At the annual convention of the Parapsychological
Association in 1982, Charles Honorton presented a paper summarizing the results
of all known ganzfeld experiments to that date.
He concluded that the experiments at that time provided sufficient
evidence to demonstrate the existence of psi in the ganzfeld……..
At that time, ganzfeld experiments had appeared in
thirty-four published reports by ten different researchers. These reports described a total of forty-two
separate experiments. Of these,
twenty-eight reported the actual hit rates that were obtained. The other studies simply declared the
experiments successful or unsuccessful.
Since this information is insufficient for conducting a numerically
oriented meta-analysis, Hyman and Honorton concentrated their analyses on the
twenty-either studies that had reported actual hit rates. Of those twenty-eight, twenty-three had
resulted in hit rates greater than chance expectation. This was an instant indicator that some
degree of replication had been achieved, but when the actual hit rates of all
twenty-eight studies were combined, the results were even more astounding than
Hyman and Honorton had expected: odds
against chance of ten billion to one.
Clearly, the overall results were not just a fluke, and both researchers
immediately agreed that something
interesting was going on. But was it
telepathy?”
Radin further elaborates on
how researcher Charles Honorton tested whether independent replications had
actually been achieved: (page 79)
“To address the concern about whether independent
replications had been achieved, Honorton calculated the experimental outcomes
for each laboratory separately.
Significantly positive outcomes were reported by six of the ten labs,
and the combined score across the ten laboratories still resulted in odds
against chance of about a billion to one.
This showed that no one lab was responsible for the positive results;
they appeared across-the-board, even from labs reporting only a few experiments. To examine further the possibility that the
two most prolific labs were responsible for the strong odds against chance,
Honorton recalculated the results after excluding the studies that he and
Sargent had reported. The resulting odds
against chance were still ten thousand to one.
Thus, the effect did not depend on just one or two labs; it had been
successfully replicated by eight other laboratories.”
On the same page, he then
soundly dismisses the skeptical claim that the file-drawer effect (selective
reporting) could skew the meta-analysis results in favor of psi: (page 79-80)
“Another factor that might account for the overall success
of the ganzfeld studies was the editorial policy of professional journals,
which tends to favor the publication of successful rather than unsuccessful
studies. This is the “file-drawer”
effect mentioned earlier.
Parapsychologists were among the first to become sensitive to this
problem, which affects all experimental domains. In 1975 the Parapsychological Association’s
officers adopted a policy opposing the selective reporting of positive
outcomes. As a result, both positive and
negative findings have been reported atg the Paraspsychological Association’s
annual meetings and in its affiliated publications for over two decades.
Furthermore, a 1980 survey of parapsychologists by
the skeptical British psychologist Susan Blackmore had confirmed that the
file-drawer problem was not a serious issue for the ganzfeld
meta-analysis. Blackmore uncovered
nineteen complete but unpublished ganzfeld studies. Of those nineteen, seven were independently
successful with odds against chance of twenty to one or greater. Thus while some ganzfeld studies had not been
published, Hyman and Honorton agreed that selective reporting was not an
important issue in this database.
Still, because it is impossible to know how many
other studies might have been in file drawers, it is common in meta-analyses to
calculate how many unreported studies would be required to nullify the observed
effects among the known studies. For the
twenty-eight direct-hit ganzfeld studies, this figure was 423 file-drawer
experiments, a ratio of unreported-to-reported studies of approximately fifteen
to one. Given the time and resources it
takes to conduct a single ganzfeld session, let alone 423 hypotheitcal
unrepoted experiments, it is not surprising that Hyman agreed with Honorton
that the file-drawer issue could not plausibly account for the overall results
of the psi ganzfeld database. There were
simply not enough experimenters around to have conducted those 423 studies.
Thus far, the proponent and the skeptic had agreed
that the results could not be attributed to chance or to selective reporting
practices.”
Another skeptical argument
against the ganzfeld studies is sensory leakage. Radin addresses this as well: (page 81-82)
“Because the ganzfeld procedure uses a
sensory-isolation environment, the possibility of sensory leakage during the
telepathic “sending” portion of the session is already significantly
diminished. After the sending
period, however, when the receiver is
attempting to match his or her experience to the correct target, if the
experimenter interacting wit the receiver knows the identity of the target, he
or she could inadvertently bias the receiver’s ratings. One study in the ganzfeld database contained
this potentially fatal flaw, but rather than showing a wildly successful
result, that study’s participants actually performed slightly below chance expectation………
Despite variations in study quality due to these and
other factors, Hyman and Honorton both concluded that there was no systematic
relationship between the security methods used to guard against sensory leakage
and the study outcomes. Honorton proved
his point by recalculating the overall results only for studies that had used
duplicate target sets. He found that the
results were still quite strong, with odds against chance of about 100,000 to
1.”
Where skeptic Ray Hyman
disagreed with Charles Honorton was in the role of randomization flaws
affecting the ganzfeld results. However,
as Radin points out, the consensus of the experts on meta-analysis is against
Hyman’s hypothesis: (page 82-83)
“A similar concern arises for the method of
randomizing the sequence in which the experimenter presents the target and the
three decoys to the receiver during the judging process. If, for example, the target is always
presented second in the sequence of four, then again, a subject may tell a
friend, and the friend, armed with knowledge about which of the four targets Is
the real one, could successfully select the real target without the use of psi.
Although these scenarios are implausible, skeptics
have always insisted on nailing down even the most unlikely hypothetical
flaws. And it was on this issue, the
importance of randomization flaws, that Hyman and Honorton disagreed. Hyman claimed that he saw a significant relationship
between randomization flaws and study outcomes, and Honorton did not. The sources of this disagreement can be
traced to Honorton’s and Hyman’s differing definitions of “randomization
flaws,” to how the two analysts rated these flaws in the individual studies,
and to how they statistically treated the quality ratings.
These sorts of complicated disagreements are not
unexpected given the diametrically opposed conviction with which Hnorton and
Hyman began their analyses. When such
discrepancies arise, it is useful to consider the opinions of outside reviewers
who have the technical skills to assess the disagreements. In this case, ten psychologists and
statisticians supplied commentaries alongside the Honorton-Hyman published
debate that appeared in 1986. None of
the commentators agreed with Hyman, while two statisticians and two
psychologists not previously associated with this debate explicitly agreed with
Honorton.
In two separate analyses conducted later, Harvard
University behavioral scientists Monica Harris and Robert Rosenthal (the latter
a world-renowned expert in methodology and meta-analysis) used Hyman’s own flaw
ratings and failed to find any significant relationships between the supposed
flaws and te study outcomes. They wrote,
“Our analysis of the effects of flaws on study outcome lends no support to the
hypothesis that ganzfeld research results are a significant function of the set
of flaw variables.
In other words, everyone agreed that the ganzfeld
results were not due to chance, nor to selective reporting, nor to sensory
leakage. And everyone, except one
confirmed skeptic, also agreed that the results were not plausibly due to flaws
in randomization procedures. The debate
was now poised to take the climactic step from Stage 1, “It’s impossible,” to
Stage 2, “Okay, so maybe it’s real.”
Even after the successful
replicable series of ganzfeld experiments, further replicability was found in
the computer-controlled autoganzfeld experiments, designed to be even more
efficient and controlled than the original ganzfeld experiments (although not
shown to be significant as mentioned above).
This time though, two magicians who specialized in mentalism were
brought in to check the protocals for cheating loopholes, as Radin describes: (page
86)
“In addition, two professional magicians who
specialized in the simulation of psi effects (called “mentalists” or “psychic
entertainers”) examined the autoganzeld system and protocols to see if it was
vulnerable to mentalist tricks or conjuring-type deceptions. One of the magicians was Ford Kross, an
officer of the Psychic Entertainers Association. Kross provided the following written
statement about the autoganzfeld setup:
In my
professional capacity as a mentalist, I have reviewed Psychophysical Research
Laboratories’ automated ganzfeld system and found it to be provide excellent
security against deception by subjects.
The other magician was
Radin summarizes the results
of the autoganzfeld experiments as follows: (page 86)
“The bottom line for the eleven series, consisting of
a total of 354 sessions, was 122 direct hits, for a 34 percent hit rate. This compares favorably with the 1985
meta-analysis hit rate of 37 percent.
Honorton’s autoganzfeld results overall produced odds against chance of
forty-five thousand to one.”
Further replications beyond
the ganzfeld and autoganzfeld experiments include the following: (page 87-88)
“The next replications were reported by psychologist
Kathy Dalton and her colleagues at the Koestler Chair of Parapsychology,
Department of Psychology,
While only the 1985 meta-analysis, the autoganzfeld
study, and the
Finally, at the end of the
chapter, Radin concludes what the findings of the ganzfeld experiments and
others before it suggest: (page 88)
“Now jointly consider the results of the ganzfeld psi
experiments, the dream-telepathy experiments of the 1960s and 1970s, the ESP
cards tests from the 1880s to the 1940s, Upton Sinclair’s experiments in 1929,
and earlier studies on thought transference.
The same effects have been repeated again and again, by new generations
of experimenters, using increasingly rigorous methods. From the beginning, each new series of
telepathy experiments was met with its share of skeptical attacks. These criticisms reduced mainstream
scientific interest in the reported effects, but ironically they also refined
the methods used in future experiments to the point that today’s ganzfeld
experiments stump the experts.”
Thus from all this, it is
indisputable that we have solid scientific and statistical evidence that one of
the most successful and controlled series of telepathy experiments in history,
the ganzfeld experiments, were definitely replicable. Therefore, the skeptical challenge of Argument # 16 has been
met, and it’s up to them to accept the obvious data or reject it. Radin’s book describes many other replicable
psi experiments as well, including ESP, clairvoyance, remote viewing, and
psychokinesis. So I highly recommend
it. For more details about the Ganzfeld
and Autoganzfeld experiments, see the following detailed articles which can be
viewed online:
http://www.tcm.phy.cam.ac.uk/~bdj10/psi/delanoy/node2.html
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