Evidence for Psychic Powers

[Ali Quadir]

So in psychology, just anyone can peer review someone's experiments? That's broken and goes against the concept of 'expert'. Perhaps they couldn't find any experts and that's why the paper passed got published in the first place?

In any science my friend... I'm sorry but peer review is not as absolute and holy as you consider it. It's just better than nothing.

Consider that new articles by definition are about some new insight idea or field, big or small. Often this is so new that the best peers available have very little prior and relevant knowledge.

Take this case.. You send an article to a psychological journal.. Who do you think is going to peer review it? A quantum physicist? A bread baker?

This is incidentally one of the often voiced criticisms against peer review.

The fact that this 9 experiments article got through peer review simply means that the reviewers honestly judged the research methodologically sound and the article was good enough for the standards of the journal. I doubt that they'd all agree with the existence of a psi effects. But their job is not to agree. But to judge the article and experiment so as not to include obvious junk into the journal.

The outcome of an experiment has very little to do with the peer review process.

So in the very least we know that this article and these experiments are good enough in methodology for the high demands of a journal that we know is generally very critical of the articles it publishes.

What do you mean with "explained adequately?" Surely not that the mechanism underlying the measurements is adequately explained?

'Explained adequately', meaning an explanation of hypothesis, experiment, and results which has sufficient rigour.

Well. Since this journal's peer reviewers allowed the article to be published... They judge a lot of articles. The rejection rates of these journals are generally between 60 to 80 percent. We'd have to look up the rejection rate of this particular journal. But I'd wager it's going to be on the high side.. (It's a very high profile journal. Everyone wants to be published in it... so they can afford and even need to be picky)

At any rate, we can conclude that a critical journal has judged the hypothesis experiments and results to be sufficiently sound.

If you disagree. Then tell us what's wrong with the article. By all means... Prove the journal wrong....

Offering an explanation of the underlying mechanism would be proposing a theory, which would also demand rigour. The theoretical base in not even necessary, but the explanation which adequately identifies, in a stringent manner, cause and effect from the hypothesis/claim and results is indeed essential. Otherwise, one is necessarily presenting selective or anecdotal evidence - that is the evidence can easily be shown to be biased or sparse, in comparison to what data and criteria were otherwise possible for identification and consideration.

Ok so this part is irrelevant, we do not try to propose a theory. Neither does mr Bem's article suggest a theory.

Why don't you tell me what's wrong with them? The whole paper exists of 9 experiments. Judging the whole thing on one of them would not be right.

I disagree, it would be 'right'. This represents his presented evidence, after all.

No, his presented evidence is the whole 9 experiments.. Not one of them. Besides, I'm making it easy on you... Giving a bigger target to shoot at. But if you want me to take experiments from the article, lets just take the first 2 for demarcations sake.

What's wrong with either of them?

Just as judging "Evidence of psychic powers" on one experiment alone is not really the proper thing to do.

Apples and oranges, no analogy holds. We're talking about Bem having properly demonstrated sufficient rigour in the explanation of (any and all) experiments of that last paper.

Actually. I consider that we are talking about evidence for psychic powers in general. With Bem as a specific example.

Also pick one field in science that you consider model science, what you would call: "proper well done science" we may use it as a reference point so that we can compare parapsychology to it in areas of dispute...

The field of mathematics. Also computer science.

I suggested you pick a model science, one to compare parapsychology to... Yet you come up with two fields of study which have very little in common with regular empirical science.

Can you explain the role experiments and empirical evidence plays in math and computer science? And to what degree you consider these two fields of study comparable to say biology, physics, psychology, chemistry?

What's wrong with psychology.. If you consider it a valid and proper science. Then surely the methodology involved is sound and if a similar science like parapsychology uses the same methodology then that is a good sign.. Right? Why not use that as an analogy?