John Ballard wrote:
> 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.
The problem with stories such as this one is that unless we can see the
predictions _in advance of the event predicted_, the alternative hypotheses
(unintentional shifting of measurements, fraud, etc.) are clearly FAR more
plausible. Please don't take that as an accusation of dishonesty on your
part. I include the "fraud" comment because unfortunately (for
parapsychological researchers), people like Geller and that guy in Canada
with the radio show (Curly?). But even without fraud, it is quite possible
to become convinced of something that isn't there, simply as a result of
inadequate research design. The problems can be very subtle, as Jim Clark
pointed out in his comments about implicit learning. The problem in that
design would almost certainly not be obvious to the casual researcher - it's
a perfect example of why you need to convince the skeptics, and not just the
believers.
> 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.
Once the field became so tainted by fraudulent perpetrators and gullible
believers, the RATIONAL response has become to dismiss claims unless they
have extraordinary evidence behind them. You can bet that the next "cold
fusion" claim is going to be doubly scrutinized before publication as a
result of the rush to publicize of those chemists in Utah. If
parapsychological claims are viewed with more skepticism than are standard
psychological claims, it is because of a _strength_ in science (evaluating
the relative likelihood of competing hypotheses _in light of past
observation_), not a weakness or bias. Geller and "Curly" are the ones
responsible for parapsychology's woes, not Randi.
My personal skepticism was given a solid kick forward by an interaction
with that "Curly" guy, who had posted lists of "predictions" he'd claimed to
have made that had come true. I asked him for one about the future, rather
than about the past, and he responded by trying to trick me into a "cold
reading" live on his radio show. His words were something like, "Let's make
it a REAL test. Give me your home telephone number (so I can generously pay
for the call!) and I'll call you during my next radio show and tell you some
things about yourself". When I didn't fall for that, he escalated into
threats almost immediately ("I'm going to call you at all hours and you're
going to wish you were never born"), obviously to protect himself from
being exposed. Needless to say, I never got a prediction about the future
from him.
As you know, Randi has gone through similar things (though quite a bit
worse than my little interaction) with a number of "psychics". Obviously
he'd have to be pretty irrational to think, "Okay, but maybe the _next_ one
will be the real thing!".
> 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.
It's hard to see what difference that would make. There's a simple test of
precognition: have the person who makes the claim detail a prediction, and
put that prediction into public print _in advance of the event predicted_.
We can then come to some agreement _in advance_ about whether or not the
predictions are sufficiently specific, and what events would and would not
count as correct. Then we wait for the event.
If there were people with this ability, the only possible barrier I can see
is getting something into public print, and with the Internet, that's not
much of a barrier. Remember that it has to be available to skeptics, not
just believers.
So do parapsychologists have a web page of specific predictions _about the
future_ made by people they've identified as precognitive? If not, why not?
(remember, a page of PAST predictions "that have come true" doesn't count -
that tells us nothing at all about anyone's precognitive abilities).
If the answer is that the phenomenon isn't replicable, then it's clearly
more rational to believe that the phenomenon doesn't really exist. We
already know that people have a precognitive ability that isn't reliably
correct - it's called "intelligent guessing". I once picked up the telephone
to call a particular woman (well, maybe she wasn't so particular, but that's
another story), only to hear nothing but breathing on the other side, where
I was expecting a dial tone. Finally I said "Hello??", and it was her on the
line - she'd called me just as I went to call her, and I picked up the phone
just before the first ring. Coincidence? _Yes_. For that to become an
investigable psychic phenomenon, I have to be able to do it at least fairly
reliably. I can't. But obviously were I a psychic believer, that story would
get pulled out over and over again as a sign of my ability.
> 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.
So why do you disagree about the usefulness of parapsychological phenomena?
Not to sound snotty, but you didn't really say here.
> >Let's let those who are so inclined investigate.
>
> 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.
I'd take James Randi into my department in a heartbeat. If he applied for a
position here, I'd send letters to the administration arguing that it was
the greatest opportunity for my institution in the time I've been here. I
imagine that many of us on the list feel the same way. (of course, he'd need
to have the standard credentials - does he have an advanced degree? I don't
really know). But in short, the answer is that many departments would be
happy to have a faculty member with a rigorous experimental approach to psi
phenomena. In fact, many already do.
Paul Smith
Alverno College
Milwaukee
