Your thoughts on ''mediums?''

[George-ananda]

This one?



Sorry - it took me a while to have enough time to look at it.

Going through the report:

- the paper doesn't say that anyone peer reviewed it. All it says is that two other PhDs provided "helpful comments on this manuscript." In fact, if the authors did know who the peer reviewers were, this would be an issue, because "Explore" claims to keep its reviewers anonymous:


Guide for authors - Explore: The Journal of Science & Healing - ISSN 1550-8307

- despite the authors' claims that their experimental setup was wonderful, until such time as someone replicates the experiment's results, this will be in doubt. From the paper, the experimental setup seems to be far from wonderful - details below.

- The description leaves a lot to be desired, but as far as I can tell, the ratings in Figure 3 include not only the ratings by the intended sitters, but also by the "proxy sitters", which makes no sense. In any case, I don't see how a valid experimental setup would have given anything other than whole number values in Figure 3, but there are half values. This suggests to me, The "mediums" were given the names of the deceased, and the sitters were a mix of people who had lost parents and who had lost peers. In this situation, merely giving the deceased's name provides a fair bit of information for cold reading purposes: for instance, if I hear that the deceased's name is "Braden", this will suggest young age, sudden and shocking death (e.g. by injury or unexpected illness), no kids, and a good likelihood of using a Playstation, while if I hear that the deceased's name is "Hubert", I'll lean towards older age, maybe chronic disease, parenthood, a good likelihood of playing golf, etc

On the technical side, where did it say they were given the name of the deceased?

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

oI would have to defer the details to a Schwartz response.

Well, quote him to your heart's content.

What I want to avoid is a situation where you try to lead me down the garden path. You said that the study was compelling; I looked and found that it wasn't. Now, you say he's addressed my concerns in some response out in the internet somewhere. When I find that and look at it, will the process repeat? "Oh - he has a second response to the rebuttal to the response - your answers are all there."

I've been more than accommodating by reading that paper on the basis of nothing more than your word that it would be compelling, so here's how it's going to play out from here on out: if you have any questions or issues with any of the points I raise, you will post those questions and issues in the thread. Quote sources as you like in order to do this, but I'm not going to be reading through any more papers at your request.

I do defer to experts on all technical subjects on which I do not claim expertise.

No, you don't. You pick and choose between experts, and reject the majority while deferring to the fringe.

Schwartz has impressed me with his knowledge and integrity. After decades of looking into the paranormal, I have also formed the strong opinion that some so-called skeptics have a driving emotional bias against parapsychologists and my judgment in this case considers that.

... but you can't raise any actual issues with any of the points I raised? Regardless of what you think of my motives, my points are either valid or not.

At any rate, the issues you raise are only alleged imperfections in the work.

They're imperfections that imply that the conclusions of the study should not be relied upon... IOW, that the effect the authors claim to have demonstrated was not actually demonstrated.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

On the technical side, where did it say they were given the name of the deceased?

On nearly every page of the paper.

Did you even read it?

 

[George-ananda]

On nearly every page of the paper.

Did you even read it?

You are correct about the first name, I had forgotten that part.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

On the technical side, where did it say they were given the name of the deceased?

The first time they mention it is on page 2 of the PDF:

The mediums were given no information about the sitter or his/her relationship to the discarnate. However, to increase the capacity of the medium to receive accurate information about a targeted discarnate, the first name of the discarnate was given to the medium at the start of the reading.

I also noticed that the paper doesn't say anywhere that the transcripts of the readings had the first name of the deceased removed before they were given to the sitters for ratings, though I gave them the benefit of the doubt (perhaps unwisely) that they wouldn't have made such an obvious blunder.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

You are correct about the first name, I had forgotten that part.

And it's a big problem, as I pointed out. Think about all the information you could get from a name plus some general knowledge about the decades in which the name was popular or unpopular:

- gender
- decade (or at least era) of birth

If the mediums knew the parameters of the experiment, then they can combine that to make a very good guess at which is that particular case.

There are parameters of the study that the mediums may have known without violating the blinding:

- the sitter is an undergraduate student
- the sitter attends the University of Arizona
- the sitter had a close relationship to the deceased
- the deceased is either the parent or peer of the sitter

So say you guess that the person is a peer. You now can say with relatively good accuracy that the deceased:

- probably grew up in Arizona, or at least the southwest.
- died shockingly young
- probably died in a way that was considered unexpected and especially tragic
- probably died without having kids
- (assuming general knowledge about causes of death in young people), probably died from some sort of injury.
- growing up, involved themselves in the pastimes and pop culture of the late 1990s and early 2000s (remembering that the paper was published in 2007, so assume that the research was done in 2006 and the deceased was born around 1996 or so).

Or say you guess that the person is a parent. You now can say with relatively good accuracy that the deceased:

- probably either grew up in or moved to the Southwest.
- was of the right age to have a child who was an undergraduate student (so probably 40-50 when the research was done, so born about 1956-1966).
- died in their 30s or 40s (since they're now deceased, but lived long enough to have a close relationship with their child).
- probably died from some sort of injury, but cancer or coronary issues would be a close second.
- either wasn't divorced or had a significant amount of custody (again: close relationship).
- growing up, involved themselves in the pastimes and pop culture of the 1960s and/or 1970s.
- as a parent, probably involved themselves in the pastimes of their child (so pick the typical pastimes for a child and you have a good guess at their hobbies in the eyes of their child).
- was well-off enough to send his or her kids to the University of Arizona.
- maybe involved themselves in hobbies that go along with having a disposable income (e.g. golf).
- (if the parent was a woman) either didn't work, or worked and struggled with workplace discrimination issues during her working life.

None of it's iron-clad, but we aren't talking about iron-clad. The average score for the "intended" group was 3.56, so all we're talking about enough information to get a rating between "3: Mixture of correct and incorrect information, but enough correct information to indicate that communication with the deceased occurred" and "4: Good reading with some incorrect information" in a group of people who were screened from the outset for their willingness to believe that this sort of communication is possible.

Do you think this is enough information to bump the "intended" group up a bit? And that's all only from a first name.

 

[George-ananda]

Well, quote him to your heart's content.

What I want to avoid is a situation where you try to lead me down the garden path. You said that the study was compelling; I looked and found that it wasn't. Now, you say he's addressed my concerns in some response out in the internet somewhere. When I find that and look at it, will the process repeat? "Oh - he has a second response to the rebuttal to the response - your answers are all there."

I've been more than accommodating by reading that paper on the basis of nothing more than your word that it would be compelling, so here's how it's going to play out from here on out: if you have any questions or issues with any of the points I raise, you will post those questions and issues in the thread. Quote sources as you like in order to do this, but I'm not going to be reading through any more papers at your request.


No, you don't. You pick and choose between experts, and reject the majority while deferring to the fringe.


... but you can't raise any actual issues with any of the points I raised? Regardless of what you think of my motives, my points are either valid or not.


They're imperfections that imply that the conclusions of the study should not be relied upon... IOW, that the effect the authors claim to have demonstrated was not actually demonstrated.

First I am impressed by the amount of effort you put in.

Secondly, unfortunately your issues would be better addressed by Schwartz than me. I'll admit to not being energetic enough to look for Schwartz's comments related to each of your points, so here are my thoughts.

- The description leaves a lot to be desired, but as far as I can tell, the ratings in Figure 3 include not only the ratings by the intended sitters, but also by the "proxy sitters", which makes no sense. In any case, I don't see how a valid experimental setup would have given anything other than whole number values in Figure 3, but there are half values. This suggests to me that there results may be 50% noise.

I don't understand your confusion on this The 'Y' axis is the 'Average Blinded-Sitter Scores'. Why would an average not coming out to a whole number confuse you? Each medium did multiple sittings so it is reasonable the average is not a whole number. It says '(the mediums performed five readings in 5.5 hours)'. Perhaps you are thinking each medium did only one reading??

- a line on page 3 raises alarm bells for me: "Discarnate descriptions were then paired to optimize differences in age, physical description, personality description, cause of death, and hobbies/activities of the discarnate." The "mediums" were given the names of the deceased, and the sitters were a mix of people who had lost parents and who had lost peers. In this situation, merely giving the deceased's name provides a fair bit of information for cold reading purposes: for instance, if I hear that the deceased's name is "Braden", this will suggest young age, sudden and shocking death (e.g. by injury or unexpected illness), no kids, and a good likelihood of using a Playstation, while if I hear that the deceased's name is "Hubert", I'll lean towards older age, maybe chronic disease, parenthood, a good likelihood of playing golf, etc. This approach won't be 100% accurate, but it could certainly be enough to cause a significant effect in the overall averages.

I see your point here. Certain names were more prevalent in certain decades I will grant but not that dramatically. Perhaps also this helps the medium form a true connection with the discarnate. I don't see more than the name only possibly hinting at a decade though.

- a sample size of 8 is ridiculously small, and the fact that they had to screen through 1,600 sitter candidates to get 8 pairs raises p-hacking alarm bells for me.

What you must note is he is intending to only test 'alleged gifted' mediums in this study and not 'regular people' or even 'alleged mediums'. So p values take into account sample size. It takes stronger results to produce a significant p value with a smaller number of subjects. The p value in this case would be valid.

- another major problem with the experimental setup: they didn't compare results for the purported mediums to results for a control group of non-mediums.

The materialist assumption the experiment was trying to refute is that all people whether alleged mediums or non-mediums would get an insignificant p value. This did not happen which is in conflict with materialist expectations.

So... overall, this looks to be a poor study that doesn't demonstrate what you claim it does. And that's even giving the benefit of the doubt that the researchers were honest (which, like I said, shouldn't be assumed until the results are replicated).

I disagree except for a small point granted on the name thing. I have repeatedly read Schwartz encouraging people to continue these types of experiments.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

First I am impressed by the amount of effort you put in.

Secondly, unfortunately your issues would be better addressed by Schwartz than me. I'll admit to not being energetic enough to look for Schwartz's comments related to each of your points, so here are my thoughts.

And I don't think that scouring the internet for Schwartz's comments is a good use of my time.

I don't understand your confusion on this The 'Y' axis is the 'Average Blinded-Sitter Scores'. Why would an average not coming out to a whole number confuse you? Each medium did multiple sittings so it is reasonable the average is not a whole number. It says '(the mediums performed five readings in 5.5 hours)'. Perhaps you are thinking each medium did only one reading??

Ah - whoops. Yes, I didn't notice that. That could be playing a role.

The text did make it sound like the "proxy sitters" participated in the rating, though.

I see your point here. Certain names were more prevalent in certain decades I will grant but not that dramatically. Perhaps also this helps the medium form a true connection with the discarnate. I don't see more than the name only possibly hinting at a decade though.

But a hint would give an effect. How large an effect depends on the specific names, which he didn't provide in the paper. At any rate, it's not an effect that he isolated for in the experiment.

What you must note is he is intending to only test 'alleged gifted' mediums in this study and not 'regular people' or even 'alleged mediums'. So p values take into account sample size. It takes stronger results to produce a significant p value with a smaller number of subjects. The p value in this case would be valid.

I was talking about the filtering of the sitters.

The materialist assumption the experiment was trying to refute is that all people whether alleged mediums or non-mediums would get an insignificant p value. This did not happen which is in conflict with materialist expectations.

If we're testing for the effectiveness of medium powers, then I would expect to see that specific thing - medium powers - isolated as a variable. Since every person making the prediction in the study was a purported "gifted medium", that variable wasn't tested.

I disagree except for a small point granted on the name thing. I have repeatedly read Schwartz encouraging people to continue these types of experiments.

Encouraging people to continue experiments is not the same thing as actually replicating the results. He could be sincere as all-get-out but made an honest error. It happens in research all the time, so I wouldn't expect him to be immune.

 

[George-ananda]

Encouraging people to continue experiments is not the same thing as actually replicating the results. He could be sincere as all-get-out but made an honest error. It happens in research all the time, so I wouldn't expect him to be immune.

Regarding the replication, I found out more from an interview with the co-author Julie Beischel

Dr. Beischel: What we’ve found in all three of those ways that we look at scoring, we’ve achieved statistically significant positive results in a study done in 2007, and a replication study that we just published earlier in 2015. So the original study was 16 readings and this most recent study is 58. So that’s a total of 74 readings in which under these more than double-blind conditions mediums could report accurate and specific information about the deceased when no sensory information could be plausible for where they got their information…George Clinton; George Hamilton; George Carlin; George Strait; George Bush–either one; George Noory; George Foreman; George Washington…all you have is the name George. Now you have to describe personality, physical description, hobbies, cause of death, messages for the sitter…And you and your 19 friends have to do that to a statistically significant degree 58 times.

For all these years I have been talking about gifted mediums skeptics have been saying COLD READING or HOT READING. And then they would get into all the cueing they would use (which is no more than common sense). Now are we going to claim they are doing cold readings at highly significant odds against chance based on just a first name? Without a name how is the medium even going to know which dead friend/relative she is supposed to communicate with?

Anyway, that is why I say mediums genuinely produce information not reasonably obtained through any known process. And I believe that beyond reasonable doubt.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Regarding the replication, I found out more from an interview with the co-author Julie Beischel

Dr. Beischel: What we’ve found in all three of those ways that we look at scoring, we’ve achieved statistically significant positive results in a study done in 2007, and a replication study that we just published earlier in 2015. So the original study was 16 readings and this most recent study is 58. So that’s a total of 74 readings in which under these more than double-blind conditions mediums could report accurate and specific information about the deceased when no sensory information could be plausible for where they got their information…George Clinton; George Hamilton; George Carlin; George Strait; George Bush–either one; George Noory; George Foreman; George Washington…all you have is the name George. Now you have to describe personality, physical description, hobbies, cause of death, messages for the sitter…And you and your 19 friends have to do that to a statistically significant degree 58 times.

For all these years I have been talking about gifted mediums skeptics have been saying COLD READING or HOT READING. And then they would get into all the cueing they would use (which is no more than common sense). Now are we going to claim they are doing cold readings at highly significant odds against chance based on just a first name? Without a name how is the medium even going to know which dead friend/relative she is supposed to communicate with?

Anyway, that is why I say mediums genuinely produce information not reasonably obtained through any known process. And I believe that beyond reasonable doubt.

Your link to the 2015 study is dead.

Edit: and the original researcher doing the same experiment again isn't replication. The replication must be independent; that's the whole point.

 

[George-ananda]

Your link to the 2015 study is dead.

Edit: and the original researcher doing the same experiment again isn't replication. The replication must be independent; that's the whole point.

I have not looked into if there are other experimenters on this out there. Possibly people are afraid of professional disgrace

When the Ganzfeld experiments were being discussed I do recall myself mentioning Dr. Dean Radin saying how the results have now been replicated in independent labs on five continents but for some reason the Ganzfeld results satisfies no skeptics.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

I have not looked into if there are other experimenters on this out there. Possibly people are afraid of professional disgrace

The history of science shows that smashing paradigms isn't what brings disgrace to a scientist; compromising their standards is what brings disgrace to a scientist.

When the Ganzfeld experiments were being discussed I do recall myself mentioning Dr. Dean Radin saying how the results have now been replicated in independent labs on five continents but for some reason the Ganzfeld results satisfies no skeptics.

I did a quick search and didn't see any mention of Dean Radin in this thread (until just now). If you have some specific claim of his, feel free to provide a link, but I'm not going off on another snipe hunt.

BTW: I think it's interesting that Schwartz and Beischel dismissed the possibility that their results could have been caused by psychic ability out-of-hand.

 

[George-ananda]

The history of science shows that smashing paradigms isn't what brings disgrace to a scientist; compromising their standards is what brings disgrace to a scientist.

It is known to be professional disgrace for a serious scientist to even look into 'silly' things like the paranormal.

I did a quick search and didn't see any mention of Dean Radin in this thread (until just now). If you have some specific claim of his, feel free to provide a link, but I'm not going off on another snipe hunt.

No, Radin wasn't discussed in this thread as far as I know either. I know the Ganzfeld experiments have been discussed more than once on RF. Are you not familiar with the subject? But anyway, the point I was trying to make was that you were talking about replication and I was pointing out that the Ganzfeld experiments were conducted in separate labs on five continents but the skeptics are not satisfied.

More thoughts on the replication issue: The Ganzfeld experiments were easy to replicate because they involved random normal people. Schwrtz/Beischel medium experiments require very gifted people like less than one percent of alleged mediums (like 8 were selected out of 1500).

BTW: I think it's interesting that Schwartz and Beischel dismissed the possibility that their results could have been caused by psychic ability out-of-hand.

From the paper:

The study design effectively eliminates conventional
mechanisms as well as telepathy as explanations for the informa-
tion reception, but the results cannot distinguish among alter-
native paranormal hypotheses, such as survival of consciousness
(the continued existence, separate from the body, of an individ-
ual’s consciousness or personality after physical death) and su-
per-psi (or super-ESP; retrieval of information via a psychic
channel or quantum field).

 

[VioletVortex]

Almost all of these people are capitalist scams, though I think that the principle of interacting with the dead is true. Not in the most literal sense, though. I believe in reincarnation, and I think that memories gained in past lives are held in the subconscious mind, and normally, they are suppressed and overshadowed by the commotion of every day life. They can be evoked, however, through ritual, meditation, sleep, and sometimes, just philosophizing. Anyone who offers to communicate with your ancestors in exchange for money is a ****ing joke, though.

 

[Ponder This]

There are some areas of exploration and discovery that are particularly murky. Mediumship is one of those areas.

By definition, the paranormal is:
"denoting events or phenomena such as telekinesis or clairvoyance that are beyond the scope of normal scientific understanding"

Anyone can claim to be a medium. Mediumship is not part of normal scientific understanding.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

By definition, the paranormal is:
"denoting events or phenomena such as telekinesis or clairvoyance that are beyond the scope of normal scientific understanding"

And also by definition,

Science[a][1]:58[2] is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.

Science - Wikipedia

Put those two together and you end up with something like this:

paranormal is: "denoting events or phenomena that are not sufficiently testable or predictable to be sure that they're real."