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From: cooper@pbsvax.DEC (Topher Cooper HLO2-3/M08 DTN225-5819)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Re: Parapsychology
Message-ID: <1148@decwrl.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 29-Oct-85 18:31:25 EST
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Posted: Tue Oct 29 18:31:25 1985
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Commenting on my citations of the experimental literature of parapsychology
Mike Huybensz says:
 
>How pathetic.  Almost every mention of early papers carried the warning
>"flawed, but the flaws were corrected later".

Oh come on.  In discussing some historical papers, I mention that a few of
them from fifty years ago had some methodological flaws.  I also mentioned
that the flaws were spotted (mostly by people within the field) and quickly
corrected.  Some other, more recent papers, used new techniques, some of which
were incomplete or had minor flaws in them.  Again these were corrected.

This is called refinement of experimental technique, and it is part of science.
It is, for example, why replication is required (at least in principal)
before new findings are accepted.  If a scientific field is to be considered
invalid on this basis, then there are no valid scientific fields.

For the most part the flaws in published, refereed papers are quite minor or
completely irrelevant to the question the existence of psi phenomena.  How
relevant is it that an author failed to completely exclude clairvoyance as
an alternate explanation in a telepathy experiment?

>						And a huge numebr of papers
>were about methodology, not phenomina.

I cited both sources of original papers and detailed technical surveys which
describe and give specific citations to experimental reports.  I would guess
that following up on these would produce somewhere around, say 1500
experimental reports.  If you follow up on the citations in these papers you
would end up with, I would guess, somewhere between 2500 and 3000 experimental
reports.

Since intelligent criticism can only be based on an understanding of
the methodology used in the field I provided some citations to papers which
surveyed methodology.  If you can find flaws in the methodologies discussed
in those surveys (assuming they accurately describe practice) you don't even
have to read the experiments, you will have invalidated the methods used in
those experiments.  One of those papers about methodology was even some
criticism of methodology used in the field.  It seemed to me that anyone who
honestly wanted to find out about the field would want to know what was in
those methodological surveys, so I included them.

So we have several thousand experimental papers, and a few methodological
papers, which in turn might cite a few dozen papers which are purely
methodological.  Hardly a "huge number of papers ... about methodology."  If
you're not interested don't read them; but be prepared to repeat the same
silly misunderstandings about methodology that critics keep making (e.g.,
Rich Rosen's criticism of the interpretation of negative deviations in psi
experiments and my response in this newsgroup).

>The fact is, there is NO demonstrable, reproducible psychic phenominon
>after who knows how many years of research.  Progress in parapsychology
>has closely paralleled progress in alchemical transmutation of elements:
>none, except as spinoffs of another field.  (Physics has given us
>radioactive decay and bombardment, biology has given us magnetic senses in
>a variety of organisms.)  Compare this to any other field recognized as
>science, and you will readily see why parapsychology is regarded as
>fraudulent.

I guess you can lead a Huybensz to water but you can't make him think :-)
(Sorry, couldn't resist).  The fact is, there IS demonstrable, reproducible
psychic phenomena.  I just finished telling you where you can find it
documented.  Unless you can show why that evidence should be considered
invalid, your denials of the existence of that evidence are simply statements
of faith.

It is true that psychic phenomena cannot be produced on demand, but then
neither can a local supernova or ball lightning .  It is true that it takes
certain skills and talents to be a successful experimenter but it also takes
skills and talent to do experiments depending on microsurgery.  A skilled
experimenter can elicit parapsychological phenomena somewhere between one
experiment in three and one experiment in two.  Not as reliable as we would
like, but hardly completely unreliable.

Progress in parapsychology has been slow but steady: we know more now than we
did ten years ago.  That you are ignorant of the results does not mean they
do not exist.  The field is an intrinsically very complex one, yet less
effort has probably been put into it in the last fifty years than was put
into, say, polywater research in the one or two year period between its
"discovery" and its debunking.

		Topher Cooper

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Disclaimer:  This contains my own opinions, and I am solely responsible for
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