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From: tim@unc.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.misc
Subject: Re: Re: The Earth-Centered Universe
Message-ID: <5589@unc.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 20-Jul-83 15:31:39 EDT
Article-I.D.: unc.5589
Posted: Wed Jul 20 15:31:39 1983
Date-Received: Fri, 22-Jul-83 13:12:42 EDT
References: gatech.307
Lines: 53


    The phenomenon sometimes called "psi-missing" in psi research is
usually pointed out as one of the things that is obviously wrong with
the methods in the field.  I do not like psi research, I do not
believe in psychic powers, but I also dislike smug unfairness on the
part of scientists.

    Here's what I learned in statistics a few years ago: a fundamental
part of the evaluation of experimental observations (in psychology, at
least) is the null hypothesis.  The null hypothesis, in a nutshell, is
that the observations made can be attributed to chance; that is, that
there is no significance to the observations.  You then see to what
extent your observations contradict the null hypothesis.  Using a
variety of mostly mathematical means, beyond the scope of this
discussion, you arrive at a measure of how probable it is that the
null hypothesis is correct.  If there is a low probability (5 to 10
percent is a common threshold) that the observations were due to
chance, then you say that the results are significant.

    If someone were to guess no cards right out of a five-card deck in
one thousand trials, the results exceed any reasonable threshold of
significance.  The null hypothesis is strongly contradicted.  This is
not in itself what you would call "evidence of psychic powers", but it
is, from the definition of significance, a significant result.  If
you can see no other way of explaining it except to assume that there
is some hidden force transmitting some sort of information, that's
something you'll just have to live with.

    To the best of my knowledge, there is no well-documented case of
psi-missing being significant in the overall scope of an experiment.
This article is an attempt to remove some of the unfairness that
scientists reserve for their most despised opponents.  Not only
scientists do this, of course; the Amazing Randi, a stage magician who
enjoys provably debunking fraudulent psychics, wrote an excellent book
on Uri Geller (a former stage magician who seems to have decided there
was more money in refusing to admit that there was illusion involved),
but in this book he ridiculed the idea of psi-missing, proving a deep
bias and a lack of comprehension of the scientific method.  Scientists
should know better than this, and that's why I get irked when they
abandon their scientific ideals in the presence of people they
disagree with strongly.  The feeling seems to be that there is no need
to even give a fair hearing to certain beliefs.  Recently, I have been
asked to justify my keeping an open mind on astrology.  Given the lack
of evidence against astrology, I am asked to justify keeping an open
mind? If I believed in it, this might be a reasonable objection, but
since when is keeping an open mind in the absence of evidence a sin?

______________________________________
The overworked keyboard of Tim Maroney

duke!unc!tim (USENET)
tim.unc@udel-relay (ARPA)
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill