salyavin, I found the original article at the Journal of Conflict Resolution 
website as well as a reply to methodological critique and even the critique 
itself. But that was written by someone from Univ of Kansas and I'm 95% sure 
the article that made such an impression on me was written by a professor from 
the Univ of West Virginia. Not knowing the title of his article, I wasn't able 
to find it. But I'm pretty sure it appeared in the journal with the original 
research article so that would be 1988, vol. 32 (4).





On Thursday, March 27, 2014 10:00 AM, Share Long <[email protected]> wrote:
 
salyavin, mind you, he was questioning Scientific Method, not any methods used 
in that particular study, which would be listed in Collected Papers and that 
would give one the Journal citation. I'll see if I can find it. It was a long 
time ago.





On Thursday, March 27, 2014 9:53 AM, salyavin808 <[email protected]> 
wrote:
 
  


I don't suppose there is a link to this essay, anyone?

---In [email protected], <sharelong60@...> wrote :


Lawson, I remember when I stopped believing in scientific objectivity. Journal 
of Conflict Resolution. Research done on the Maharishi Effect, I think in 
Israel. A professor from Univ. of West Virginia on the journal's board. They 
published his essay along with the research.

At the end of his essay he says, and I'm paraphrasing, that if such an idea can 
be supported by scientific method, then
 we need to question the scientific method itself. My interpretation: his world 
view was so shook by the research that he had to do something, anything to 
invalidate that research. Even if it meant he was invalidating all such 
research in the process!

I wouldn't take quite such a dramatic position about it. It's not like it's a 
reasonable idea. By reasonable I mean it isn't sympathetic to any other ideas 
we have about society or psychology or physics. In fact we would have to ditch 
pretty much everything in order to accommodate it. So he's right to be wary, 
but without reading the article itself I don't know what he meant about 
questioning the method. With such a wishy-washy idea as the ME we might need to 
reinforce the SM in some way in case we are kidding ourselves with statistical 
fluctuations etc.

My comment on the ME is that in order to say you have lowered the crime rate 
you'd have to know what the crime rate was going to be. It never looks to me 
when I look at the raw data that something magical has taken place, the crime 
rate goes up and down daily and the TMO never seem able to lower it more than 
the amount it usually fluctuates anyway! If it went to zero every time Nabby 
and the boys were in town we'd have to believe it but it's obviously open to 
interpretation hence the wariness in the Journals. They have to be wary, 
extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

As it is, I think the ME has been shown to be wrong because of the amount of 
courses that were supposed to be being monitored and the data never got 
released. Selective publishing is the worst science of all because if you can't 
see how many tails have been tossed, as well as the heads, then you can't draw 
meaningful conclusions. Since the pundit project started 10 years ago, it isn't 
like the world entered a period of peace and joy is it? Not in any way that I 
noticed.

I think it's admirable that journalists and judges and scientists aim for 
objectivity. I also think that what's most admirable is to accept that we 
humans are never 100% objective
and incorporate that idea into all our findings, conclusions and declarations. 





On Thursday, March 27, 2014 3:50 AM, "LEnglish5@..." <LEnglish5@...> wrote:

 


Fred has asked some of the most prominent researchers into Buddhist meditation 
why they don't take the PC research seriously.

The response is always along the lines of: show me a Western theory that 
suggests that it is important, and I will.

Anomalous measurements that are consistently found in the right circumstances, 
apparently aren't of interest to "real" scientists -only stuff guided by theory.

Of course, everyone knows the story of John Ellis, Director of Research at 
CERN, who, as a junior researcher at CERN, found some
weird flaw in his cloud-chamber photographic plates, and rather than dismissing 
it outright, he went back and found similar flaws in other plates that he had 
missed. He then went around and fished many, MANY examples of similar flaws out 
of garbage bins, always happening in specific circumstances, and published. 
Everyone else had dismissed it as being of no interest because no Western 
theory predicted what was on the plates, so they assumed that it was trash.

It got a write-up as the cover article of Discover, and made his career.

L

---In [email protected], <[email protected]> wrote
:






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