Esalen photo
This is a funny shot of me and actor John Cleese, at a research seminar on survival of consciousness held at Esalen Institute a few years ago. John is as funny in person as in the movies.
Feeling the future meta-analysis
Before Cornell University psychologist Daryl Bem published an article on precognition in the prominent Journal of Social and Personality Psychology, it had already (and ironically given the topic) evoked a response from the status quo. The New York Times was kind enough to prepare us to be outraged . It was called " craziness, pure craziness" by life-long critic Ray Hyman. Within days the news media was announcing that it was all just a big mistake . I wrote about the ensuing brouhaha in this blog . But the bottom line in science, and the key factor that trumps hysterical criticism, is whether the claimed effect can be repeated by independent investigators. If it can't then perhaps the original claim was mistaken or idiosyncratic. If it can, then the critics need to rethink their position. Now we have an answer to the question about replication. An article has been submitted to the Journal of Social and Personality Psychology and is available here . The key
Comments
http://www.csicop.org/si/2008-04/hyman.html
Seems to me that he's engaged in some rhetorical tricks here, but I lack the background to challenge his assertions.
http://deanradin.blogspot.com/2008/08/what-gorilla.html
You seem to meet a lot of interesting people in your work Dean.
As to the Skeptical Enquirer article you linked to book surgeon, it is amusing to see how much certain skeptics can twist the facts.
I remember when I read the AIR review, with the two reports by Utts and Hyman. When I read the Hyman report I was surprised. He actually used this argument to refute psi the anomalous cognition claims:
I cannot provide suitable candidates for what flaws, if any, might be present. Just the same, it is impossible in principle to say that any particular experiment or experimental series is completely free from possible flaws. An experimenter cannot control for every possibility--especially for potential flaws that have not yet been discovered.
To say that an experiment can never be free from flaws in principle, and use it as reason to discard an entire field of study is ridiculous.
Since then I have found time and time again that these academic skeptics that seem to have clever arguments on the surface, when you dig into their claims, there actually is nothing there. And sometimes they grossly twist the facts and boarder to the dishonest. There should be no room for such tactics in science.
"John Cleese Podcast #32: The Scientist at Work"
http://funkwarehouse.com/jcpods/john_cleese_podcast_32.mp4
Funny man :)
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=searching-for-god-in-the-brain
Interestingly, a commenter on the article mentioned something dear to our nonlocal hearts:
"A real religious experience is not induced but spontaneous, so how can you possibly record anything unless you happen to have someone have a religious experience while wired up to your equipment. Furthermore you need to distinguish between religious experience, which still includes a sense of ego self and true mystical experience, in which the sense of personal self is gone. Why not examine insightful perception instead, without the double blinds that block such perception and with relationship which is necessary for insightful perception. For instance a person is insightful of a distressing image about to be viewed on a pc screen in what are known as precognition experiments. This perception points to the mind being a non-physical reality. it would be very interesting and maybe even provide some infor that may help solve the quantum measurement problem in modern physics".
Drinks are on Dean, Tor buys the cookies and I'll reserve the pool tables.