Listfolk,
John Ballard wrote:
As psychologists we
understand how one can misinterpret, embellish, have faulty recall. I
believe these reports warrant skeptism but one that is open to what nature
gives us. Many years ago I studied a woman who reported having precognitive
dreams since birth. For about two years we recorded her dreams and she made
calls as to how confident she was about whether the dreams were
precognitive. We found that when she was highly confident that the dream was
precognitive (an hypothesis suggested by the parapsychological literature),
she was correct over 90% of the time. These were detailed, realistic dreams.
For example, she dreamt of a school bus accident at a specific intersection
and the number 42 was part of it. Two days later there was a school bus
accident at the designated intersection and 42 was the number of the police
car that arrived on the scene. Coincidence? If so, she was fairly accurate
at predicting these coincidences during the period of this study.
I vote for coincidence - HOW did you study her, anyway? Study can mean any
number of things. At any rate this is unconvincing and insufficient.
However, as to the "blind" skeptism of CSICOP, I refer you to my public
remarks in an exchange of letters in Contemporaty Psychology, 1981, Vol 26,
No.8, pp. 651-652. I have also had a one-on-one meeting with Randi which
reinforced this opinion.
Why? Because he doesn't agree with you?
I agree that these phenomena are not robust and repeatability is a problem.
In my opinion part of the repeatability problem is resources. There are only
a hundred full members of the Parapsychological Association worldwide and
most are no longer active researchers. There is very little work being done
in the United States and it's done by just a few people.
Perhaps because it everyone's too cowardly to keep studying it. Or perhaps
because it can't be sufficiently supported in any type of rigorous scientific
manner?
However I would disagree on usefulness. Consider Jim Schnabel's Remote
Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies, which my sources
indicate is about one third accurate. The few parts with which I am familiar
appear to be accurate. My doctoral dissertation at Purdue, sponsored by the
US Air Force, was a study of ESP.
The military and the police have been willing to use many methods to obtain
information. Some are legitimate and some are bogus. Think of all the
psychics who have been employed to find bodies and serial killers. Also,
with results just at coincidence level.
If it were only that simple. If you know of a psychology department that
would welcome a faculty member with a rigorous experimental approach to psi
phenonema, let me know. Over the years I have had numerous tenured
psychologists confide in private what they would never make public -- or
dare study.
John B.
This last one is a nice dodge. Sorry, but being a scientist means standing
up for what your observations and empirical analysis support. If these folks
who are so afraid to come forward were more confident, perhaps they would and
we would have more information. It's not a problems with our perspective if
they won't and suggests that underneath it all they suspect the same thing we
do: that belief in psi and other "amazing powers of mind" is likely a
product of unscientific and wishful thinking.
Nancy "I'm still not buying it" Melucci
Huntington Beach, CA
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Subject: RE: Psychology's biggest challenge (long post)
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 03:40:49 -0500
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