Indepth Review Of Richard Dawkins' "Enemies Of Reason" Film

[Eteponge]

[Eteponge]

I want to discuss Dr. Gary Schwartz's current triple-blind protocols for a moment. Skeptics, I want to know exactly what is wrong with this current set up ...

In these controlled experiments, a random sitter (out of a very large undisclosed pool) is randomly selected, and a random proxy sitter (of no relation to the sitter, and has never met them before) is randomly selected from the same pool to take the physical place of the person actually being read. The medium is placed in one room, and is not allowed to talk to or see the proxy sitter, who sits in another room. So, the actual sitter being read is not present, but a proxy sitter of no relation is sitting in for them, and even they cannot speak to the Medium. All of this is done blind to the medium, the sitters, the proxy sitters, and the researchers. Then a second reading is done, this time for the proxy sitter themselves. After both readings are over, both readings are then given to the true sitter who was not physically present during the reading, who examines, judges, and determines which of the two readings was meant for them, and the overall accuracy of the psychic information and of the alleged deceased relatives who came through during the reading. Matching their own reading from the two readings is highly significant.

I don't exactly see where the problem is. Most critiques I've read online about Dr. Gary Schwartz are attacking his EARLY Experiments (circa 2000 - 2003) which were only single-blind, and had various design errors, which he later corrected, and stepped up the controls.

Here's audio from a debate that Dr. Gary Schwartz had with Skeptic Michael Shermer on the topic of his experiments, where Michael Shermer critiques Dr. Gary Schwartz's experiments, and then Dr. Gary Schwartz responds and tears them apart ...

[ProfWag]

"In his book The Afterlife Experiments, Schwartz describes the Herculean efforts he went through to understand cold reading. He knows that many tricksters use cold reading to defraud others by pretending to know secrets about them and he wanted to make sure than none of the psychics he tested was a fraud. However, in his zeal to understand cold reading, he overlooked the most essential element in the process: the way subjective validation functions in the evaluation of any reading. Forer and others have been able to get a high rating of accuracy for phony readings without cold reading. Schwartz has been so diligent to make sure his subjects weren't cheating that he overlooked the obvious: the high ratings given psychic readings were probably due to subjective validation. Ruling out cold reading and cheating, while important, are not sufficient to ensure an accurate assessment of rater bias."
Robert T. Carroll

[NinjaPuppy]

[ProfWag]

Here's a question that I am a little curious about. Why do all the mediums who want to have their abilities validated only go see Dr. Gary Schwartz at the Univ of Arizona? If they are so confident in their abilities, why don't they go knocking on the door at Harvard, Yale, or a host of other Psychology Departments?

[ProfWag]

[NinjaPuppy]

If a 'believer' tried to pass off that quote in favor of anything paranormal or unexplained, you skeptics would have a field day.

As far as your next question about Schwartz being so popular. I can't answer for other people and unless we have someone here who has actually considered the options, we may never know.

[NinjaPuppy]

[ProfWag]

[NinjaPuppy]

[ProfWag]

[NinjaPuppy]

[ProfWag]

Because his experiments resulted in an approximately 80% validation rate. If one were to conduct their own experiments with people who don't claim or even believe in that ability (in other words, "guess work"), their results would also be about an 80% validation rate. Hence, it's subjective whether or not the results were due to people actually talking to dead people or if the results were due to guess work.
If John Edward could talk to dead people, then he should be able to talk to Jimmy Hoffa and find out where he's really buried rather than validating that he just wanted to pass on to his family that "he's doing okay."

[NinjaPuppy]

[ProfWag]