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I'm ashamed of Princeton having been involved in this stupid crap. Glad to note that they finally closed that shit down early this year, albeit under the excuse of "fulfilling their research agenda." LOL

Re: the "feeling anxious before seeing shocking images." They would have had to be informed of what they were going to be shown for the test beforehand, so this "prescient knowledge of their own emotional reaction" is bullshit. It's a simple case of anxiety from knowing that something disturbing is up ahead but not knowing when it's going to happen. It's just like when you play any shooter/thriller video game like Doom or Resident Evil. You get the nervous thrill even before the monster pops out simply because you know it's going to.

Of course, the only way to be sure is to ask the scientists at Princeton directly, but I'd expect them to have been smart enough to take that into account.

I'm *really* not a believer in psychics, fortune tellers, ghosts, vampires or anything which appears on the X-files... but when you look at the research, as I have -- and this is research done by the CIA, the military and the government, typically a jaded lot when it comes to any "new age nonsense" -- even I am unwilling to categorically say it's "stupid crap".

I understand and can even relate to your skepticism. Yet I would ask that your suspend disbelief until you read the book Remote Viewers, written by a highly skeptical journalist. After his extensive research, he concluded that there wasn't enough data to ignore the results:

"Remote Viewers is a bit of an odd book for Jim Schnabel, a science writer who has previously published work that could be described as highly skeptical of some things "out of the ordinary." In fact, when Mr. Schnabel was doing his research for this book he asked me for an interview, which I refused to give him because I considered him a "knee-jerk debunker." Considering the outcome of his research, this turns out to be a fortuitous endorsement of Mr. Schnabel's claim of objectivity. In the best traditions of investigative journalism, Schnabel takes an open mind and tunnels into much of the military remote-viewing community, revealing that the remote-viewing phenomenon was considered very real by the U.S. intelligence services, and a phenomenon worthy of high-level funding and research..."
http://www.courtneybrown.com/reviews/BookReviews/SchnabelRV.html

You're misinformed/wrong on a number of points. First of all, you assume that scientists at Princeton don't make mistakes. There is a reason why Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research got shut down. Hint: it's not because they were making huge breakthroughs. The place has been a joke for those of us on campus for years. Oh, and also only one of the researchers under PEAR was a full professor. Science does not stand under the name of an Ivy League university, or at least it shouldn't. Appeals to authority aren't exactly scientific. And we don't even need to ask the researchers in person. They publish papers in journals. Simple enough.

Second of all, you assume that the CIA, the military, and the government aren't capable of making million-, billion-, or even trillion-dollar mistakes. For fuck's sake, they experimented with creating beams that made the target homosexual. GAY BEAMS. WE SPENT HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS, IF NOT MILLIONS, OF DOLLARS TRYING TO MAKE GODDAMN GAY BEAMS. We waste millions of dollars on dumbass projects that have no scientific grounding whatsoever that get written off in the name of national security all the damn time. Also, cold fusion.

Third of all, skeptical science writer != scientist. A real investigation would look into the procedural and statistical methodology of the experiments that were carried out, not the amount of funding being given to the research or how super-secret the CIA was or any of the other useless information one can present.

tl;dr: No, Virginia, there's no such thing as psychic powers.

Rembar, all compelling arguments, and I'll concede that much of it might be true. Still, bullshit and deception has a way of getting vetted after enough intelligent and skeptical people examine the issue. If psychic powers were *complete* nonsense, then we should be able to disprove them eventually... which appears not to be the case after you watch the video. What the remote viewer does in the video is simply too coincidental to dismiss as rubbish, which is why the government funded more research into remote viewing.

I'm *not* saying with certainty that psychic powers exist, only that after doing research, I'm not convinced that they don't exist, either.

Someone had better publish this video simply to promote the discussion!

Just like religion might not be *complete* nonsense, right? We can't necessarily disprove it, so we can't dismiss it as rubbish.

Wrong. Just as we don't have to disprove god, we don't have to disprove "psychic powers." Until one of these cooks uses their powers for some sort of real-life situation, like, say, "controlling numbers" to win the lottery a few times, I'm gonna call it bunk.

I CALL BULLSHIT. No, you see, I would normally continue on a regular tangent but no, this is the same kind of bullshit that has people all screwed up with intelligent design and other kinds of pseudo-scientific crap.

You see, I've had the good luck to see journalism from the side of the scientist and the side of the journalist. There's this terrible trend on the part of the journalist to want to present a "fair and balanced" viewpoint in his article. It makes a compelling story, you see, and humans love compelling stories. Unfortunately, of course, sometimes there isn't a balanced view that's fair. What's fair is that one side is right, and one side is wrong. And that's where science comes in to tell people which one is the right one.

You're drawing conclusions based off a video you've watched and a book you've read, both of which are second and third-hand accounts of actual scientific research. Come back and tell me your conclusions after you've actually looked into the research being conducted. And I do mean the actual damn research. Quote me papers. Cite me means and standard deviations and p-values. But for fuck's sake, don't tell me "oh, there's evidence for and against, I guess there's no conclusions." I call shenanigans, because not only is it also the kind of illogical trickery that Fox News gets away with on a regular basis, it's also flat fucking false.

In conclusion, NULL HYPOTHESIS - IT'S PART OF A WELL-BALANCED MEAL.

First, why all the cussing, Rembar? Am I not disagreeing with you respectfully? I'm all for being passionate about a topic but you don't hear me hurling expletives, do you? I'm just puzzled why this seems to have hit the cursing nerve. (I'm no prig, either -- I can curse like a sailor, too.)

Second, I am neither scientist nor journalist, nor do I have the capability or interest to become either. However, I think my bullshit detector is excellent and—no matter how you want to spin it—I really won't draw any definitive conclusions based on one documentary and a book I once read. Sure, show me the actual evidence, let me interview the scientists myself. That is the only and best way to know anything for certain.

It goes the other way, too: until I see evidence which decisively proves remote viewing is absolute nonsense (and by remote viewing, I do not mean the countless psychic frauds out there), then I'm not going to claim it's absolute nonsense. The only thing I feel comfortable in saying is that IF remote viewing does work, it's imperfect at best and psychic powers would have to be so small that they are not measurable with current scientific equipment. But that's conditional: IF they exist. They might not exist. That's fine, but to me, the data could go either way.

A true scientific mind should be a strong, disciplined skeptic, but also open-minded enough to embrace the improbable if enough evidence is presented. If the evidence is not presented, it does not mean the evidence does not exist.

And, frankly, I'm okay if you disagree with that.

I can't get the sound of James Randi's laughter out of my head!

First of all, I'm cursing because it keeps me amused and at least mildly interested, which I certainly wouldn't be if I were to boringly negate every argument that psychic powers are real. Nothing against you personally. I just call bullshit when I see bullshit, and this one is dripping with the foul appearance of human filth.

Second, if you think your bullshit detector is well-tuned, think again. You don't have anything real for your detector to work off of. Like I said, you're working off third-hand reports and you're drawing inaccurate conclusions from them. And yes, the "Oh they might exist or they might not exist" wishy-washiness is a conclusion, whether you acknowledge it or not. Again, parallels with intelligent design arguments, only without the modern relevance.

The funny thing is how you say you're not a scientist and don't have the capability nor interest to become one, then proceed to tell me exactly what a true scientific mind should be. I mean...I've got nothing against that, even if I'm not particularly interested in discussing what it means to have a scientific mind, but I find that ironic, no?

Finally: An Evaluation of Remote Viewing: Research and Applications, come back and negate the conclusions and then I'll be interested. In particular, I'd like to see you address the issue of methodological faults (we're going to ignore the statistical analysis issues for now), and we can discuss this: "Particularly troublesome from the perspective of the application of paranormal phenomena is the fact that the remote viewers and project managers reported that remote viewing reports were changed to make them consistent with know background cues. While this was appropriate in that situation, it makes it impossible to interpret the role of the paranormal phenomenon independently."

If we can deal with those problems, then we can move on to the ultimate conclusions, where "Remote viewing, as exemplified by the efforts in the current program, has not been shown to have value in intelligence operations", and "Continued support for the operational component of the current program is not justified."

Happy New Year, and good luck.

Rembar, thanks for the document. It's quite substantive. Some things I wanted to restate, because I don't seem to be expressing myself clearly enough:

* I am not a scientist, nor have I ever claimed to be a scientist. But you don't have to be a designer to recognize good and bad design and you don't have to be a writer to recognize good and bad writing. I have no interest in being a scientist because I have a good idea of what that involves: mainly, keeping an open mind to seemingly crazy ideas. If we always listened to the naysayers, major scientific discoveries would never have happened. (For the record, I'm not a creationist.)
* I am NOT claiming that remote viewing *definitively* exists, just that there "may be" some scientific evidence to support it, as I said in the post's original description. I leave the final judgement to the scientists.
* I am only disputing the close-minded attitude that remote viewing is nonsense, bullshit, bunk, etc. Anyone can shout out an opinion, but to categorically state that remote viewing is nonsense would imply a complete knowledge of what's possible and what's not in the universe (for today, and for all time). I don't have that kind of sweeping insight, and does anyone?

While reading the document you provided, I would tend to agree with their conclusion that remote viewing, if it even exists, is too imprecise to be of value to the intelligence community. (Honestly, I've always wondered what methods they could use to separate the wheat from the chaff.)

However, and I really want to emphasize this point:

== They do NOT claim that remote viewing is total nonsense.==

On page 5-3, they even say, "This is not to say definitively that paranormal phenomena do not exist. At some point in time, adequate evidence might be provided for the existence of remote viewing."

This is the ONLY point I have been trying to make: remote viewing *MIGHT* exist. Is that so hard to envision? Perhaps because it sounds too much like hokey science? If so, I would agree—anything to do with psychic research sets me on edge, too. But this? I find it really hard to believe that so many people have been hoodwinked for so many years. It's possible, sure, but I'm unwilling to pass judgement so swiftly.

Now:

IF there's a chance some sort of psychic power does exist—no matter how small—then it's worth investigating further. A talent like that, augmented and refined, could have staggeringly useful applications.

But again, that's IF it exists.

Ok, hunker down, it's time to git-er-dun. RP, to start with, I would like you to respond to the issue of methodological faults in the experiments that were analyzed, as I asked you before. I would like you to respond to the fact that the experiments purported to show "evidence" for the existence of remote viewing or some sort of psychic phenomena analyzed in the above paper suffered from severe methodological and statistical flaws, and then I would like you to tell me where exactly you find support for the belief that there is, in fact, reasonably acceptable scientific evidence of the existence of a remote viewing phenomenon, to the extent that further research is justifiable.

I'm serious about this. I want you to meet me eye level on this one. Scientific evidence for a scientific issue, everything else is secondary. It's easy to hand-wave when it comes to issues of "what science can prove and cannot prove". It's not so easy to hand-wave when it comes down to the actual science itself. Although I've responded to your more general arguments below, I will not carry this any further until I see you respond to the above.

That being said:

If we always listened to the naysayers, major scientific discoveries would never have happened.

That's not a valid argument nor is it even applicable to this situation. I have had that argument tossed at me at least a dozen times during my time sifting, and I'm tired of people pointing at the stupid shit the Catholic Church did to Galileo centuries ago and then pretend that that type of situation is even remotely comparable to a situation like this. Passing judgement swiftly? I dare you to give me a single damn example where a major scientific discovery was made after decades' worth of thorough empirical evidence had been provided to the contrary, as is the case with remote viewing. You won't be able to. Guess why.

I am NOT claiming that remote viewing *definitively* exists, just that there "may be" some scientific evidence to support it, as I said in the post's original description. I leave the final judgement to the scientists.

They already have made a final judgement, insofar as scientists ever do, which is what I have been saying all along. The fact that the scientific community has already passed heavy judgement upon remote viewing is what I'm trying to get you to understand, yet you persist in not accepting this. There "may be" some scientific evidence to support it? Like I said just above, I call bullshit. Show me the damn scientific evidence.

I am only disputing the close-minded attitude that remote viewing is nonsense, bullshit, bunk, etc. Anyone can shout out an opinion, but to categorically state that remote viewing is nonsense would imply a complete knowledge of what's possible and what's not in the universe (for today, and for all time). I don't have that kind of sweeping insight, and does anyone?

Not a valid argument. Science is not based on making categorical statements, it's a matter of using evidence and analysis to support theories to varying degrees of strength. Tell me, what kind of experiment would you suggest that could unequivocally scientifically prove that remote viewing does not exist? Offhand, I can't think of one. Shit, I don't even think such an experiment could be created. However, it is possible to prove it far beyond a reasonable doubt, and this has already happened. But but but we can't be sure for really sure? Big fucking whoop. Nothing is 100% sure in science, the theory of gravity is still just a theory, life goes on.

IF there's a chance some sort of psychic power does exist—no matter how small—then it's worth investigating further. A talent like that, augmented and refined, could have staggeringly useful applications.

Fucking no. Did you actually just put forward Pascal's Wager as an argument for researching psychic phenomena? I mean, I'm not even sure how to begin to tell you how poor that argument is, it's been beaten to death so many times I'm hesitant to lay a finger on it. Instead, let me quote you the final conclusion from the document I cited (emphasis mine), in which your claim is clearly negated:
"In summary, two clear-out conclusion emerge from our examination of the operational component of the current program. First, as stated above, evidence for the operational value of remote viewing is not available, even after a decade of attempts. Second, it is unlikely that remote viewing—as currently understood—even if existence can be unequivocally demonstrated, will prove of any use in intelligence gathering due to the conditions and constraints applying in intelligence operations and the suspected characteristics of the phenomenon. We conclude that: Continued support for the operational component of the current program is not justified.

In conclusion, remote viewing is bullshit and does not deserve further money-wasting, be it through government-sponsored research or misguided media hype.

I can sense this could go on for weeks and weeks and accomplish nothing more than us spending hours and hours of time just reiterating our positions.

I still feel there is a very, very small possibility that remote viewing does exist even if current scientific research has been unable to detect it and prove it. Of course, remote viewing might not exist and I'm open to that possibility, too. You feel it's all bullshit and always will be, regardless of anything I'll say so let's just agree to disagree and move on.

Did you not read a thing I wrote? Of COURSE there's a very, very small possibility that remote viewing does exist, I said as much already. You keep belaboring the same pointless idea, and I've been saying that all along, it's true, but it doesn't matter a damn. Very, very small chance? For the sweet lovin' Lord's pity, there's a very, very small chance that every piece of evidence we've ever gathered in science that has anything with words like "p-value" or "significance" is wrong. Statistics tell us this. That chance, however, is so fucking infintestimal that it is negligible for all intents and purposes beyond the most retarded philosophical discussions, same as is the case with the existence of remote viewing. I said this, the paper I cited you said this, the papers I didn't cite you said this, and yet you keep turning around and saying, "But there's this very small chance...". Big whoop.

Oh, and that whole "let's agree to disagree" is a bunch of crap, it's the same argument the intelligent designers/creationists use when they start talking about "teaching both sides" in a science class. No fucking way. Science exists for just this purpose, to tell people when something is right and something is wrong, and guess which side of the line remote viewing fell on when it was researched?

You've already made your mind, and you have not met my arguments, but such is life. You're entitled to your misguided opinions, and I won't bother you on this video more. I'm downvoting because I think it's pretty clear that this video is unsalvageable. The sift goes on.

rosspruden:

since you seem to thing talking to the scientist would provide insight, I submit for your consideration:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Alpha

*requeue

Re-queueing this video for one more try; last queued Sunday, December 30th, 2007 10:11pm PST - requeue requested by submitter rosspruden.

As a Ph.D. candidate in Transpersonal Psychology who has taken classes in parapsychology under well-respected parapsychologists, Charles Tart and Russell Targ, I would like to chime in here to say that the research that suggests remote viewers are capable of scoring statistically better than chance in their operation is pervasive in the literature.

i tried to find a valid debunking of this experiment in this thread, but i couldn't. just a load of stomach acid fermenting.

MINK, This vid touches so many different organizations that an individual debunk of each is not really relevant to the central issue.

The question is have these organizations produced extraordinary evidence through replicable experiments to back up their extraordinary claims, and the answer is still no.

You may notice that they tend to say "the probability is X to 1 against random chance", but these are statistical weasel words. For instance if I flip a coin 100 times and it comes up heads 50 times, the chance of me getting the exact order of H-T I got is 1.00891345*10^29 to 1 against, it also so happens to be an exactly statistically average result.

here they are one at a time, just to show you where my BS meter goes off:

Monagle: pure cold reading, draws a bus stop, and talks about being near trains - his subject is in Europe and attempting to be somewhere interesting, he probably took a bus or train, that's just good stage magic. Draws what looks like a bike wheel, which the show decides “looks like a jet engine” - of course it looks like many things, that is why he drew it. “a chapel, maybe” - religious institutions are pretty common, safe bet there. “lots of glass” - my study has lots of glass, almost all public buildings have lots of glass, this is another no brainer. He uses a lot of “maybe”, and of course we don't get to see all the blatantly wrong guesses, that would not be good television.

PEAR: http://skepdic.com/pear.html nuff said

Marilyn Schlitz: http://skepdic.com/ganzfeld.htmlhttp://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2320/is_n2_v60/ai_18960809

while there does appear to be something statistically significant going on with the ganzfeld experiments, we don't have any reason to believe this is “psi” related. We only know that something is going on. To assume, without basis, that the cause is supernatural, rather then psychological, or experimental design failure, is groundless.

We also have the problem that some studies, such as those of Carl Sargent, have “regular” ganzfeld results, but the experimenters have been caught cheating (see second link) while preforming the experiment, this implies a problem with replicability.

Please remember, if we are talking about science, the burden of proof lies with the extraordinary claims, you should instead be asking for a sound, demonstrable, falsifiable, scientific hypothesis. Debunking is a hobby for stage magicians, not a scientific endeavor.

LOL at "well-respected parapsychologist", that phrase is an oxymoron and especially ironic considering the two professors you're talking about. Tart got a Pigasus Award in 1981 for being such a tool, and Targ was one of the ones who thought Uri Geller was an actual psychic before Randi debunked him. Targ was so far gone as to publish a book (Mind-Reach: Scientists Look at Psychic Abilities) saying as much with his Scientologist buddy Harold Puthoff.

Speaking of parapsychology, Susan Blackmore has a PhD in parapsychology and she has a few things to say about her experiences here and here. I particularly like this quote: "The way I really think is more like this: 'I am a scientist. I think the way to the truth is by investigation. I suspect that telepathy, clairvoyance, psychokinesis and life after death do not exist because I have been looking in vain for them for 25 years. I have been wrong lots of times before and am not afraid of it.'"

http://skepdic.com/parapsy.html
http://www.randi.org/encyclopedia/parapsychology.html

As to the Ganzfeld experiments, causation can't be established to any psychic phenomena. As Dgandhi said, yes, there is a statistically significant effect, but that effect is linked instead to severe experimental and analytical flaws, of which there are dozens if not hundreds, including amongst them interference in the procedure of the experiment by the researchers, outright cheating on the part of the researchers, allowing subjects to receive aural clues (as Dgandhi said above), and even basic failure to perform proper randomization.

http://www.skepticreport.com/psychicpowers/ganzfeld.htm

Then again, Mink, I couldn't care less about debunking every single experiment "proving" psychic phenomena, especially if the only thing you have to offer is mindless throw-away comments without any actual effort on your part, when you don't even read the report I cited that did, in fact, offer debunking and criticism galore. It's boring, it's already been done, and, most importantly, the onus is not on me to prove anything.

I am going to finish up by quoting Dghandi, because what he wrote so eloquently bears repeating:
"The question is have these organizations produced extraordinary evidence through replicable experiments to back up their extraordinary claims, and the answer is still no."

that's better. more like what i was looking for.

link related:
http://xkcd.com/373/