I have been a fence sitter on psychic phenomena, though I am an atheist. I dismissed parapsychology after reading erudite articles in the skeptical inquirer for some time. Then I came across information about ganzfeld experiments, their significance, the Honorton-Hyman joint communique and the persistent significance levels (even after refining experimental design to eliminate virtually all possible sensory leakage, to make sure that randomness is established etc.) in ganzfeld experiments.
The existence or absence of unexplainable phenomena like telepathy (or whatever it is that the significance levels in the experiments point to) would not impinge on my atheism for sure, but I keep asking myself – should it?
Also if someone could direct me to more skeptical research that rationally discredits or accepts ganzfeld experiments, I’d be highly obliged.
Posted: January 10th 2011
Dave Hitt www
I made a spreadsheet that created 1100 random numbers from .0 to .999, and averaged the results.
Most of the time they were .49 and .51, but I was able to occasionally get it off by two and a half percent. Not quite the three percent he got, but damn close.
When I went to a sample size of 200 averages of .45 and .55 were common.
If there were replicable studies with results 60 and 80 percent I’d reconsider my conviction that PSI is nonsense. Until then, this study remains quite unimpressive.
Posted: January 22nd 2011
Eric_PK
I don’t see any conflict between a world in which psi exists and one where there is no god.
However, the world of parapsychology research hasn’t been notable for its rigor, and that makes me wary of individual studies and more weary of meta-analysis. This “hovering just above statistical significance” makes it likely that there is no real effect there, and unless the psi researchers can do something significant (say, consistent, replicable at above 50%), I don’t think it’s worth much attention.
Here are a few links for you:
Skepdic on Ganzfeld
Heads I win Tails you lose
Doubts about replicability
The best case for ESP
Posted: January 11th 2011