Monday, May 22, 2017

Deryl Bem Proved ESP Is Real: Which Means Science Is Broken

I deny that proof of ESP means that science is broken...I'm not religiously anti-ESP. As far as I'm concerned, it's pretty much just another empirical question. In fact, I was getting a little bit excited reading about Bem's results...but...alas...it was, as was predictable, too cool to be true. So...worst possible outcome: instead of science works and so does ESP!, we end up with: neither ESP nor science works... Talk about a damn bummer...
   Oh and: "white guys" who stay around after the experiments to ask about experimental design and suggest problems are "mansplaining." [contemptuous eyeroll] Hell, that "mainsplaining crap is way sillier than ESP.
   Claiming to prove the reality of ESP wouldn't even be the dumbest thing I've heard claimed for a psych experiment, anyway...
   Also anyway: the alleged confirmation disappeared when the researchers decided registered ahead of time what kind of analyses they were going to do on the data. Which...I cannot believe is not standard practice when there are several different methods of analysis that might be used. What do people think is going to happen if they keep analyzing the data in different ways until they find a way that yields results that are consistent with confirmation? Jebus.

1 Comments:

Blogger Pete Mack said...

In the physical sciences, this would be a five of seven sigma experiments. Any experimental paper presenting such an earthshaking find would be rejected without a P-value of 10-6 or so. The Higgs Boson was one such--and it's the reason both teams published jointly. They each had enough data to be darn sure--around four sigma IIRC, but add the two together and they passed the bar.

There's another experiment going on in woowoo territory, where some guy is using a closed microwave box and claiming it's a space drive. If it actually worked, it'd violate Newton's second law. That's seven sigma territory. He has less than three.

11:34 PM  

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