Diploid said:

He demands such unattainable statistics

He demands performance that exceeds what would happen by random chance alone. What's unattainable about that?

You do understand, don't you, that it's a test to see if you have PSI not a test to see if you can score a few lucky guesses, right?

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Diploid said:

Exactly.

And the fact that there is no discernible long-term skew in casino losses (or other systems of chance like insurance, investing, and such) is pretty good evidence that no one with PSI is secretly using their powers and getting rich.

Casinos year after year after year make EXACTLY the amount of money predicted by statistical theory. Same for insurance companies and even investment banks, the current slew of moronity among their ranks notwithstanding.

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DieCommie said:

Since your whole point here revolves around the p-value, let me ask you...  What p-value do people with 'PSI' get?  Are you claiming it is around .05?

(Note, if you dont have any data on what p-value these 'PSI' people can generate, which I dont think you do, then your whole argument is moot anyway.)

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In publishing the ganzfeld results from PRL, Bem and Honorton (1994) excluded one of the studies from the general analysis for methodological reasons, and found that the remaining studies showed 106 hits out of 329 sessions, for a hit rate of 32.2 percent when 25 percent was expected by chance. The corresponding p-value was .002. As mentioned earlier, the hallmark of science is replication. This result has now been replicated by three additional laboratories.

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It is recommended that future experiments focus on understanding how this phenomenon works, and on how to make it as useful as possible. There is little benefit to continuing experiments designed to offer proof, since there is little more to be offered to anyone who does not accept the current collection of data.

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I have played the devil's advocate in this report. I have argued that the case for the existence of anomalous cognition is still shaky, at best. On the other hand, I want to state that I believe that the SAIC experiments as well as the contemporary ganzfeld experiments display methodological and statistical sophistication well above previous parapsychological research. Despite better controls and careful use of statistical inference, the investigators seem to be getting significant results that do not appear to derive from the more obvious flaws of previous research. I have argued that this does not justify concluding that anomalous cognition has been demonstrated. However, it does suggest that it might be worthwhile to allocate some resources toward seeing whether these findings can be independently replicated. If so, then it will be time to reassess if it is worth pursuing the task of determining if these effects do indeed reflect the operation of anomalous cognition. This latter quest will involve finding lawful relationships between attributes of this hypothesized phenomenon and different independent variables. Both the scientific and operational value of such an alleged phenomenon will depend upon how well the conditions for its occurrence can be specified and how well its functioning can be brought under control.

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However, I am glad to see that my article has prompted Randi to lower the odds (to 1 in 100 for the preliminary, and 1 in 100,000 for the main challenge). This may make the Challenge a more attractive proposition for parapsychology researchers. It certainly remedies (to a degree) one of the main problems with the challenge - that the odds are so long. One in one hundred thousand is still no easy task however.

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