Straight Talk: The Ganzfeld (Advocates & Skeptics only)

[craig weiler]

Bias is not everywhere, it is heavily on the skeptic side. There is Randi cheating with Zibarov, Wiseman cheating on the autoganzfeld

The whole Gauquelin mess and cover up that drove the open minded skeptics out of CSICOP.

The messy and badly done hatchet job on the Girl with the X-Ray eyes.

Wiseman's hatchet job on Sheldrake's dog study where he used the statements of 2 broadcasters in his calculations and made up extra rules.
Randi's outright lie about his own dog study, which never actually happened.

Marks and Cowell's sloppy staring study that Sheldrake quickly evicerated.

Hyman's sloppy and overly dramatic critique of the Afterlife Experiments.

More recently, Alcock's wild re-imagining of the history of parapsychology followed by a nonsensical critique of Daryl Bem's latest presentiment study.

You won't find anything remotely this bad on the parapsychology side of the argument.

[Arouet]

[_Ice_Ages_14_Aces_]

[craig weiler]

Ice Age is clearly better at this than me. Thank you!!

Arouet: It looks like every single last objection you could possibly make has been dealt with. Now what?

[ProfWag]

[craig weiler]

Profwag,
It includes all the successes and failures. That's basic. Ganzfeld 101.

You don't have a successful statistical experiment unless you're counting everything that applies. That's why the file drawer problem is so important.

That's why the ganzfeld is a successful experiment.

[_Ice_Ages_14_Aces_]

ProfWag,

There is no selective reporting in my statistical analyses. I added all the successful sessions as well as the unsuccessful ones. Furthermore, I statistically analyzed them using two-tailed instead of one-tailed (Which Ersby incorrectly used)

I'm pretty there are more sessions than the one I mentioned here btw.....

[ProfWag]

[ProfWag]

[_Ice_Ages_14_Aces_]

ProfWag,

Reference

Even though I combined the result of the 3 studies, I suspect Ersby's Meta-Analysis to be seriously flawed since he trimmed out the outliers, which in proper statistics, you are not supposed to do....

[ProfWag]

[_Ice_Ages_14_Aces_]

1974-2004 MA: Entangled Minds, page 120 (Also published in Psychological Bulletin)

Andrew: Skeptic's Dictionary Ganzfeld

Ersby: JREF Forum (You can also see it on my previous post.)

[_Ice_Ages_14_Aces_]

1974-2004 MA: Entangled Minds, page 120 (Also published in Psychological Bulletin)

Andrew: Skeptic's Dictionary Ganzfeld

Ersby: JREF Forum (You can also see it on my previous post.)

[ProfWag]

[Craig Browning]

I just love watching smart people masturbate

Then again, I get really turned on when I see someone using a very matter of fact way of getting to the point, using the type of stats and 'scientific' data that keeps getting insisted upon, that really can prove things "wrong" when it comes to the traditional skeptic's position. Craig, you're a god-send! (I do mean you, not me) I can't speak geekenise and you do it exceptionally well. But, this is a factor that skeptics love to exploit as well; the general fact that most people in the Psychic world aren't brainiacs wired towards anal-retentive logic. The result ends up being the "new ager" giving up and leaving the "discussion" feeling devastated by the assholes that will then gloat about the torment and beating they just rendered to "yet another woo woo idiot" as some would say.

I won't even pretend to understand all this mathematic maneuvering; while a Numerologist, this stuff is pure Greek to me (it's ok, you can chuckle if you get the pun there); in layman's logic if someone can prove a thing more than 55% of the time, it's probably got some validity, but when you start adding in all the other jargon and routes of travel you're opening a can of worms in which evil and orneriness can come into play (like I said, statistics can and frequently are generated in ways that make the paying side happy).

Anywho, just wanted to thank you all for the fun to and fro.