--- In [email protected], "Xenophaneros Anartaxius" <anartaxius@...> wrote: > > --- In [email protected], "authfriend" <jstein@> wrote: > > > > --- In [email protected], "Xenophaneros Anartaxius" > > <anartaxius@> wrote: > > > > > <snip> > > > There have been a number of large well-designed studies > > > recently, such as the Templeton study, of 'intercessionary > > > prayer', which seem a lot like yagyas. These studies failed > > > to show any effect. > > > > Is intercessory prayer *enough* like yagyas to extrapolate > > the results of the prayer tests to yagyas? I can think of > > several differences that could render such extrapolation > > pretty weak. > > Judy, Yagyas and intercessory prayer are different but they > both seem to rely on 'action at a distance' through some kind > of non-physical intervention via the human mind and experience. > The philosophical conundrum here is how does something that is > non-physical affect a physical entity. A physicist would > currently have to rely on gravity, the strong interaction, the > weak force, or the electromagnetic force to attempt to explain > such a thing. Saying it is 'consciousness' does not help at > present because scientists cannot agree on what consciousness > is or whether it can actually do anything.
Sure. It's just that the methodology of each is so different (see my comments to Curtis for one huge difference) that extrapolating from tests of one to the efficacy of the other really doesn't make much sense. > > > Psychic, long-distance phenomena have been studied for years > > > without making a dent in the scientific community as the > > > results have never been clear cut, and studies have been > > > found to contain serious flaws which became evident when > > > replication attempts failed, such as the Targ-Puthoff long > > > distance viewing study many years ago. The result of this > > > study seems to have been mentioned by MMY in the Science of > > > Being and Art of Living as an established fact, but in fact, > > > the result was disproved. > > > > Or rather, the results were not confirmed, right? > > Yes, not confirmed, the null hypothesis confirmed. 'Proven' > is loose usage. To my mind, it's misleading. Not that you intended to mislead; just saying. > > Do you have a cite for this? > > Marks, D.F. & Kammann, R. (1980). The Psychology of the Psychic. > Buffalo, New York: Prometheus Books.ISBN 0-87975-121-5 (cloth) > > I read this many years ago and I think there may be a second > edition. It went over the Targ-Puthoff remote viewing > experiments. As I recall, a replication of the experiment > failed to confirm. OK. Was the replication study published in a journal, or just in the book, do you recall? > Their subsequent investigation showed that the replicators had > removed verbal queues that allowed the graders to match up > locations with drawings. This had something to do with how the > hits and misses of remote viewing experiment were categorised. > When they were able to get raw data from Targ and Putoff, they > found such verbal information in the data. When the same data > was truly blinded, the remote viewing failed with the original > experimental data. I looked up the book on Amazon (the second edition). There were a couple of positive reader reviews and a couple of negative ones. One of the negative ones had this to say: "In their 'replication' of Targ's remote viewing experiments the authors selected as the viewers a few students and a housewife who 'believed themselves to be psychic to some degree.' Of course, they did not believe in the existence of the phenomena they were testing -- otherwise they might have allowed themselves to make the assumption that it might require someone who practices. If you were testing 'exceptional athletic abilities' would you select a subject who played softball once a year and 'believed he was athletic to some degree' or would you select a professional athlete? For remote viewing, you could select members of the Hawaii Remote Viewers' Guild, for example. Their intent was not to study the phenomena using an open-minded scientific approach, but to 'debunk' it - in the typical sarcastic style." I gather it wasn't "the authors" of the book who did the replication study, but this is an interesting point. If the replication had been attempted without verbal cues but with practiced remote viewers, would the results have been the same? (Targ and Puthoff, I believe, did use practiced remote viewers.) Do you know whether Targ and Puthoff responded substantively to the critique in the book? I'm not any more inclined to take a "debunking" of a study conducted by careful scientists like Targ and Puthoff at face value than I am whatever the study claims to prove (unless there's hard evidence of outright fraud). I've just seen too many instances of the original researchers responding to a debunking by pointing out sloppiness, ignorance, misinterpretation, and sometimes even outright misrepresentation of their studies on the part of the debunkers. I need to see several rounds of debunking- counterdebunking before I make up my mind. FWIW, Prometheus Books was founded by the co-founder of CSICOP, publisher of Skeptical Inquirer, and has specialized in books by skeptics, although it's branched out into many other areas by now. > The Templeton Study was done by Herbert Benson. > http://www.ahjonline.com/article/S0002-8703(05)00649-6/abstract
