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InvisibleDiploidM
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How To Fool A Psi Researcher
    #14403008 - 05/04/11 11:48 PM (12 years, 8 months ago)

Project Alpha was necessary to demonstrate a charge that skeptics had been making for over 150 years, that parapsychologists, no matter how intelligent or well-trained they are in science, are susceptible to deception and self-deception.

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Project Alpha was a hoax designed by James Randi, Steve Shaw (a.k.a. Banachek), and Mike Edwards from 1979-1983. Randi trained two young mentalists/magicians—Banachek was 18 and Edwards 17 when the project began—to fake psychic powers while being investigated in a serious scientific setting. They were able to fool the scientists for four years through more than 160 hours of experiments on their paranormal powers.

In 1979, James S. McDonnell, board chairman of McDonnell-Douglas Aircraft and devotee of the paranormal, gave $500,000 to Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, for the establishment of the McDonnell Laboratory for Psychical Research. Randi saw this as an opportunity to disprove the complaint of many parapsychologists that they were unable to do properly controlled experiments because of lack of funding.

Randi believed that funding was the least of their problems. In his view, the main obstacle to parapsychology was its “strong pro-psychic bias.” This bias blinds researchers to numerous flaws in their protocols, almost all of which are related to their naïveté regarding human deception and their inexperience at detecting such deception. Some parapsychologists, such as Stanley Krippner, then president of the Parapsychological Association, agreed with Randi that qualified, experienced conjurors were essential for design, implementation, and evaluation of experiments in parapsychology, especially where deception--involuntary or deliberate--by subjects or experimenters, might be possible. But many parapsychologists ignored Randi, as they had been ignoring similar criticism for more than a century and a half.

Randi trained Banachek and Edwards so well that out of 300 applicants they alone were selected as subjects. The director of the McDonnell Lab was physics professor Peter R. Phillips, who had been dabbling in parapsychology for about ten years. He told the press that his lab would investigate “psychokinetic metal bending (PKMB) by children.” Randi sent Phillips a list of protocols (he called them “caveats”) that should be instituted when testing human subjects to prevent deception. One of the things he warned him about was not to allow the subjects to run the experiments by changing the protocol, a practice Randi knew is a common ploy of alleged psychics. He also warned that capricious demands by subjects might well be the means of introducing conditions that would permit subterfuge. Randi also advised that a conjuror be present during the experiments and even volunteered himself at his own expense to do the observing. Phillips told Randi he was quite confident he could conduct proper experiments without Randi’s help. Randi writes:

Though I had specifically warned Phillips against allowing more than one test object (spoon or key, for example) to be placed before a subject during tests, the lab table was habitually littered with objects. The specimens were not permanently marked, but instead bore paper tags attached with string loops. Banachek and Edwards found it easy to switch tags after the objects had been accurately measured, thus producing the illusion that an object handled in the most casual fashion had undergone a deformation (Randi: 1983a).

Phillips and his lab assistants became convinced the boys had psychic powers but they also thought of their work as exploratory. In 1981, they took a videotape of the Banacheck/Edwards sessions to a convention of the Parapsychological Association. Their colleagues at the convention are said to have laughed at the video and noted numerous weak spots in their protocols.

Soon afterward the McDonnell folks began instituting protocols that had been suggested by Randi. Almost simultaneously they found that the boys seemed to have lost their ability to produce psychic effects. It was at this point that the boys were dismissed and Randi made the hoax public. Randi’s take on the project after it was completed was:

If Project Alpha resulted in Parapsychologists (real parapsychologists!) awakening to the fact that they are able to be deceived, either by subjects or themselves, as a result of their convictions and their lack of expertise in the arts of deception, then it has served its purpose. Those who fell into the trap invited that fate; those who pulled back from the brink deserve our applause (Randi: 1983b).

Twenty years later he comments:

The effect of Alpha didn’t last long” (personal correspondence). By that I think he meant that this expose, like many others before it, has had little impact on the parapsychological community. Rather than thank skeptics for vividly demonstrating how easy it is for very intelligent, highly trained professionals to be fooled by conjurers, they ignore the skeptics. Or worse, they accuse them of  “offensive incredulity.

Lots more about Project Alpha at The Skeptic's Dictionary


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1) You can't get married to your spouse who is the same sex as you.
2) You can't have an abortion no matter how much you don't want a child.
3) You can't have a certain plant in your possession or you'll get locked up with a rapist and a murderer.

4) We need a smaller, less-intrusive government.


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InvisibleOrgoneConclusion
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Registered: 04/01/07
Posts: 45,414
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Re: How To Fool A Psi Researcher [Re: Diploid]
    #14403093 - 05/05/11 12:10 AM (12 years, 8 months ago)

This article reconfirms my faith in parapsychology. :yesnod:


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