VK-machine wrote:Robertson and Roy wrote 3 papers on mediumship. 2 were published in 2001 and 1 in 2004, all in JSPR.

#1

A PRELIMINARY STUDY OF THE ACCEPTANCE BY NON-
RECIPIENTS OF MEDIUMS' STATEMENTS TO RECIPIENTS
T. J. ROBERTSON and ARCHIE E. ROY
ABSTRACT
A test was made of the sceptical hypothesis that the statements made by mediums to recipients are so
general that they could as readily be accepted by non-recipients. A two-year study involving 10
mediums, 44 recipients and 407 non-recipients ostensibly falsified that hypothesis. The average
fraction of the set of statements accepted by the recipient was significantly larger than the average
fraction of the same set of statements accepted by non-recipients, the probability of the results
being due to chance being 5.37 χ 10-". Details are given of the procedure of data collection and
analysis, and an objective method of weighting the statements is described. A number of non-paranormal
factors are listed and assessed as possible reasons for the seeming falsification of the hypothesis.

Yep, we agree so far. We are talking about the same experiments; that is a start!

VK-machine wrote:
There are a number of books on "cold reading", which is the art of faking knowledge when you have
none. There are also a number of accounts of how mediums obtain information about their clients to
perform so called "hot readings".

Yes: I am an accomplished cold reader; well technically a warm reader, in that I use NVC and visual cues from the person I'm reading, such as their age, accent,and dress etc. (Think the "Sherlock Holmes" trick)I have memorised large chunks of the pop charts -- well certain songs -- I wonder if anyone can work out why, and have a store of worthless knowledge i have built up that allows me to do it. I have startled some sceptic friends with my "psychic" readings, and then told people how I did it. I don't use Forer/Barnum effects or the Edward's scattergun - I picked up the skill at college, and only worked out how I did it through thinking about it carefully _ I could have convinced myself i was psychic - but if I did a reading over MSN, I'd be stuffed, unlike a true cold reader. Hot reading is easy enough if you know who your client will be and have spent time researching them, but I don't think that it would pay off unless you were a professional, and the trick is less amusing. I am of course familiar with some but only a tiny fraction of the possible techniques, but anyone who learns Mental magic can pick up some ideas pretty quickly - you can adapt multiple outs to make your psychism look better if you want for example.

So we still agree.

VK-machine wrote:
The most important factor in such "cold readings" is confirmation bias. This is the human tendency to
look for information that is in accordance with a view, rather than information that contradicts it.
One way in which this shows itself is as the Forer effect which is in skeptical circles often called
Barnum effect. This is shown by giving a number of people each the same text and then telling them
that it is a description of their personality. If the text is suitable most of the subject will
endorse it as an accurate description of themselves without realizing how widely it is endorsed.

Yes obviously I know Forer effects; I think I just mentioned them. I don't think that is the best method, or the most widely used though - I avoid it. Generalised statements that apply to anyone quickly pale. Anyone who can work out why I know pop music so well for this purpose, and what songs are important will get it. I am stuffed if i have to read someone who is French or say from Canada - I don't know the important details I need. I said to my friend Paul once when I first met him that hehad a good friend who was a garage mechanic who smoked dope and was called Sean - I was completely right. But I guessed that based on nothing but what Paul looked like, and his age and my guess as to his subculture/socioeconomic class. Nowt psychic - but here is the rub - I went on ot make a couple of other guesses that were totally wrong - and Pual completely forgot those, and concentrated on the "amazing" bit i got right. That how confirmation bias works. No need for the Forer effect if you are good. No a girl aged about 23-25? Ask if she knows a Kayleigh or an Eloise; perhaps she was at school with her? Getting why I know music yet? A knowledge of baby name trends is also useful. Ask someone in their forties or fifties if the name "June" mean anything to them. And so on!

VK-machine wrote:
This is probably how Robertson and Roy arrived at their "sceptical hypothesis" but it must be
remembered that this is only one factor. Most importantly, a real life medium should be expected to
"hot read".

But this is clearly NOT how they got their results, for reasons of the methodology they used.

VK-machine wrote:
The way that the 2 set about to test this hypothesis was by gathering a number of subjects and having
a medium perform a reading on 1 of them. This reading was then broken down into individual statements
of fact.
The subjects were then asked if each of these individual items was true for them or not.

Unsurprisingly the intended recipients endorsed more items than the other subjects. Of course, they
knew that they were supposed to endorse many items, while the others knew they were not to.
The results of this experiment tell us nothing that we didn't already know.
In particular we are unable to draw any conclusions about the validity of Robertson and Roy's "skeptical hypothesis".
In short, the paper is a waste of tree.

[/quote][/quote]

Unless i'm mis-remebering badly they didn't do that though at all? JI thought it was actually a protocol paper, and they never performed any tests.Let me read it.

j x

AH I understand my confusion - there were two papers from Roy & Robertson in that JSPR in April 2001. OK, let's look at the right one, with you now VK!

VK-machine wrote:

The way that the 2 set about to test this hypothesis was by gathering a number of subjects and having
a medium perform a reading on 1 of them. This reading was then broken down into individual statements
of fact.
The subjects were then asked if each of these individual items was true for them or not.

Unsurprisingly the intended recipients endorsed more items than the other subjects. Of course, they
knew that they were supposed to endorse many items, while the others knew they were not to.
The results of this experiment tell us nothing that we didn't already know.
In particular we are unable to draw any conclusions about the validity of Robertson and Roy's "skeptical hypothesis".
In short, the paper is a waste of tree.

Well it was to be fair the first of the three papers, and designed as an initial study. The question being asked was "was it true that statements being made by a medium were so general as to apply to anybody?" The medium read for one person, the statements were collated, and then they asked non-recipients of similar socio-economic backgrounds if they could accept the statements and did statistical calculations to see if the results were specific to the person. They discuss all kinds of possible factors that could cause their results - NVC responses and feedback from the target person in the audience being the obvious one. They then refined their experimental design in the next paper; what is important here however was that they seemed to show the statements were not generally applicable, that is from teh Forer Effect. There remain endless alternative ways to account naturalistically for the results however; so on to paper 2, the protocol one!

jerome wrote:

Will S wrote:Aren't you criticising the book for failing to achieve something which is, even in principle, unachievable? Or have you some clear idea of how the paranormal might be debunked? In order to satisfy you, what would the author of such a book have to show?

Simply addressed those academic peer reviewed experiments that appear to stand contrary to the main point of the book, and the "paranormal can now safely be put aside" argument thereof.

I'm still finding it difficult to be sure that I understand your approach here.

You seem to be criticising Wiseman for failing to consider some particular experimental work (' ... Schwarz, Beichel or Roy & Robertson's modern double blind studies with alleged mediums') which, in your opinion, provides very strong evidence for the paranormal. Is that right? Is that the basis of your criticism? Is that what you mean when you say: 'As a book debunking the paranormal it is a failure'?

If that's what you mean, it provokes a further question. Do you consider this work by Schwarz, Beichel or Roy & Robertson which Wiseman ignores to be innovative and unique? Are you saying that it provides evidence for the paranormal of a quality which previously wasn't available? So are you saying that Wiseman is simply out of date? That he's drawing conclusions which would have been acceptable in the past, but which have been overtaken by later research? If so, let's hope that there's a new edition of his book which considers this important work and, perhaps, reaches different conclusions. (Is this a 'Kelvin and radioctivity' situation? )

Or is your criticism more fundamental? Are you saying that, in addition to the work you mention, there's a whole body of experimental work, done by many different people, going back over, say, 50 years which provides strong positive evidence for the paranormal and which Wiseman selectively ignores? Are you saying that Wiseman is consistently and perversely going for soft targets and ignoring the hard ones? That would be a very serious criticism indeed, in which case I would have expected your Amazon review (which is, actually, a more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger job) to be absolutely damning!

Could you elucidate? Because, if you are not making the more serious criticism, you would seem to be implying that good quality evidence for the paranormal has become available only fairly recently? Is that what you think?

VK-machine wrote:
#2

A Double-Blind Procedure for Assessing a Medium's Statements
by ARCHIE E. ROY and T. J. ROBERTSON
ABSTRACT
In a previous study, it was shown that a significantly higher percentage of a set of statements given
by a medium to a recipient was accepted by the recipient compared with the percentage of the same set
accepted by non-recipients. A number of non-paranormal factors were identified that might diminish the
large gap between the acceptability levels of recipients and non-recipients.
In the present paper a hard protocol is described that may be used to assess the effect of each factor
separately. The protocol's single, double and triple blind nature in testing each factor is discussed.

Aparently the failure of the first paper prompted Robertson and Roy to try and make amends.
There is no point in critiquing the proposed protocol as they eventually implemented an improved
version but one must certainly commend their effort in correcting their earlier errors.[quote]

Yeah, this is the paper where they show their proposal for the third paper; it was subject to extensive sceptical review, and as you say tightened up for paper number three based on the responses in the JSPR and Skeptic Report, etc, etc. OK, let's move on to paper three, the really controversial one then shall we?

j x

Will S wrote:
I'm still finding it difficult to be sure that I understand your approach here.

You seem to be criticising Wiseman for failing to consider some particular experimental work (' ... Schwarz, Beichel or Roy & Robertson's modern double blind studies with alleged mediums') which, in your opinion, provides very strong evidence for the paranormal. Is that right? Is that the basis of your criticism? Is that what you mean when you say: 'As a book debunking the paranormal it is a failure'?

I don't know if the work will stand up in ten years time, or even now. I am responding to VK's objections, and have only just got to the critical bit, but I will take time out to reply properly here as I often seem to take forever to answer Will, for which I apologise.

The point is these studies have NOT been adequately dismissed - i'm not familiar enough with all of them, as I have a strong distaste for mediumship to comment knowledgeably (you have to remember that my area of knowledge, I won't call it expertise in parapsi is elsewhere, I'm a specialist in something quite different ) . The point is that since 2000 I have seen a large number of studies, covered in Watt's book among other popular introductory parapsychology texts - which are very much the "state of the art" in this particular field, where strong evidence for an anomalous effect appears to have been presented. The papers may well fall down on proper examination - as we saw last year in the debate where a paper on poltergeist raps failed an attempted replication here, and i made myself unpopular by publicising that failure to replicate (The JSPR article will follow). Yet Wiseman only touches on one; that of himself and O Keefe - which found negative results, and was much smaller in scale than these? I felt therefore than in presenting his own research (very good; I linked the pdf earlier in the thread), he should have mentioned at least the other work, and critiqued it - but he does not. There is never a mention of it. From his book the only modern research of this type mentioned is his own; if he has problems with other designs, then he should perhaps tell us why?

Now testing mediumistic claimants is a complex issue when it comes to experimental design -- Pratt & Birge (1948) Appraising verbal test material in parapsychology Journal of Parapsychology 12, 236-256 formed the basis for most protocols till Robertson Roy, and others have been developed for the vERITAS project (Arizona State University) and the Windbridge Institute tests, but one of the most recent mainstream overviews of the complexities of design is O Keefe & Wiseman (2005) Testing alleged mediumship; methods and results British Journal of Psychology 96, 165-179 - but as always worth reading -- http://www.psy.herts.ac.uk/wiseman/papers/MediumBJP.pdf Which makes no reference whatsoever however to the controversial and fascinating Roy Robertson protocol - the paper is not even mentioned in the References, despite being published two years earlier - a curious omission, given that was the most recent protocol and this was a piece on problems in designing medium testing protocols? The only thing I cna think of was getting a mainstream publication meant sacrificing well designed but positive studies? I have no idea - something is wrong though - I'll ask Ciaran later why he never mentioned Roy & Robertson (2003) in the paper. But given this Richard Wiseman who handles the discussion of the protocols so well is the same as the author of Paranormality, he is clearly not ignorant of the work in the field?

Will S wrote:
If that's what you mean, it provokes a further question. Do you consider this work by Schwarz, Beichel or Roy & Robertson which Wiseman ignores to be innovative and unique? Are you saying that it provides evidence for the paranormal of a quality which previously wasn't available? So are you saying that Wiseman is simply out of date? That he's drawing conclusions which would have been acceptable in the past, but which have been overtaken by later research? If so, let's hope that there's a new edition of his book which considers this important work and, perhaps, reaches different conclusions. (Is this a 'Kelvin and radioctivity' situation? )

No, how can he be when his partner who he dedicates the book to is Koestler Chair in Parapsychology at Edinburgh as I keep noting, and Wiseman publishes in the same journals, notably the EJP and the JSPR? He attends the same conferences - this is not a vast impersonal field,as you may have gathered from me frequently saying "I'll ask X" - most people in it know each other, or where t find each other, and while much of the research is astonishingly dull, I am usually pretty aware what is going on across the field,even if my speciality is a tiny part of it.

Will S wrote:
Or is your criticism more fundamental? Are you saying that, in addition to the work you mention, there's a whole body of experimental work, done by many different people, going back over, say, 50 years which provides strong positive evidence for the paranormal and which Wiseman selectively ignores? Are you saying that Wiseman is consistently and perversely going for soft targets and ignoring the hard ones? That would be a very serious criticism indeed, in which case I would have expected your Amazon review (which is, actually, a more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger job) to be absolutely damning!

Yes to both: my review was not damning, because Wiseman has written an excellent book that deals with key findings of Anomalistic Psychology -- but that is a small part of the field, and he ignores the parapsychological mainstream. My blog says more -- http://jerome23.wordpress.com/2011/02/2 ... ited-book/

Will S wrote:
Could you elucidate? Because, if you are not making the more serious criticism, you would seem to be implying that good quality evidence for the paranormal has become available only fairly recently? Is that what you think?

Evidence does not constitute proof. There has always been a considerable body of strong evidence; but different paranormal claims have different merits. The very idea of a "paranormal" simply does not work; I'll cheerfully explain why if you want. As I said, read his book, and his partners -http://www.amazon.co.uk/Introduction-Parapsychology-Harvey-J-Irwin/dp/0786430591 - or look at the discussion of Jaytee on this forum, in far more depth than Richard deals with it in the book?

Whether the paranormal exists or not may be irrelevant: Wiseman simply does not so what the books cover leads us to believe. hence my review. You should certainly read it though, because it IS an excellent book - but not what it says on the tin.

j x

I'm off to the pub now, but having re-read the third paper I think VK makes some very fair points. It's a good protocol in paper 2: but they do not use it paper 3, but instead vary 8 different versions, and then combine them in a way that makes it hard for me to establish anything beyond the difference between Group A (non-recipients) and Group B (recipients). Unfortunately over half of Group B knew they were the recipient from my reading of it, or thought they were (but actually weren't), so while the difference is vast, that may well account for it to some extent. I actually have an idea on how we can test this further, but many sincere thanks to VK for his analysis which has finally got me working through this, ignoring the weighting and distribution and concentrating on the way results are pooled, which is very frustrating. I remain unrepentantly committed to further research in the area, and as always completely fascinated! However I can see why Wiseman did not address it - it gives me a headache as it is an exceptionally complex paper.

I really have not got the energy to work through all the other research papers on mediumship: I'll leave it to the statisticians. However in all fairness i can see why Wiseman did not discuss it now; there is no simple way to address these papers, they are so complex and it would never work in a pop science book.
j x

jerome wrote:

Will S wrote:Could you elucidate? Because, if you are not making the more serious criticism, you would seem to be implying that good quality evidence for the paranormal has become available only fairly recently? Is that what you think?

Evidence does not constitute proof. There has always been a considerable body of strong evidence; but different paranormal claims have different merits. The very idea of a "paranormal" simply does not work; I'll cheerfully explain why if you want. As I said, read his book, and his partners -http://www.amazon.co.uk/Introduction-Parapsychology-Harvey-J-Irwin/dp/0786430591 - or look at the discussion of Jaytee on this forum, in far more depth than Richard deals with it in the book?

Whether the paranormal exists or not may be irrelevant: Wiseman simply does not so what the books cover leads us to believe. hence my review. You should certainly read it though, because it IS an excellent book - but not what it says on the tin.

Jerome -

Thanks for your detailed response to my last message - which I haven't quoted in full, though I have (naturally!) read it in full.

I think I understand what you mean when you say that 'The very idea of a "paranormal" simply does not work'. To quote myself on the subject:

Will S wrote:There's a nasty problem with the word 'paranormal'. If you define it as 'phenomena which today's science can't explain', then, clearly, only an idiot would deny that the paranormal exists. For example, for 19th century physicists, the fact that there were certain stones which could produce an image on a photographic plate in total darkness was, indeed, (in that sense) paranormal. It's not paranormal for today's physicists because they know about radioactivity.

So what usually seems to happen is that the paranormal is defined as abilities/events on a kind of open-ended list: telepathy, psychokinesis, dowsing, spoon-bending .... Which leaves the question: what goes, and doesn't go, on the list? Not very satisfactory!

Is that what you mean? If it is, then the obvious corollary is that there's no general answer to the question 'Is the paranormal a reality?', only answers to particular questions: 'Is telepathy a reality?', 'Is spoon-bending a reality?', 'Is it possible to communicate with the dead?' ...

But even after a ground-clearing exercise like this, I still have problems in understanding your position. An analogy might help.

Today, we can say: 'We are very confident indeed that evolution is true. Anybody who denies it either does not know about, or does not understand, the evidence and the arguments. Alternatively, he's being perverse.'

Of course, time was when we couldn't say say that; nobody could say it in, say, 1850, before the publication of 'Origin of Species'. Could anybody say it in 1860, after the publication of 'Origin'? In my opinion, no: the evidence and arguments in 'Origin' are not absolutely complete and compelling. Indeed, there could be an interesting debate about the earliest date at which the statement above in italics could properly be made. 1870? ... 1900? ... 1930? ... To give an extreme example, somebody might want to argue that it was only with the arrival of molecular genetics that the absolutely final, undeniable, rock-crushing evidence for evolution became available.

But be that as it may, we've come from a historical point at which one could very reasonably have disbelieved in evolution to a point at which it's perverse not to believe in it.

If you agree that that's a valid scenario in relation to evolution, can you suggest a similar scenario for any particular subset of paranormal phenomena: telepathy, dowsing, communication with dead, or whatever? Is any of them established as strongly as evolution? Without wanting to put words into your mouth, the answer is 'no', isn't it? (Or, if the answer is 'yes' in any of those cases, then it surely ought to be possible to identify the precise evidence and arguments.)

But, if the answer is 'no', then isn't it legitimate to ask why? With the possible exception of spoon-bending , these are all phenomena which people have been actively investigating for many decades, in some cases for more than a century. Also, they appear to be relatively easy phenomena to investigate scientifically - much easier than evolution. So, in that case, why the lack of conclusive results, and why the, apparent, lack of progress?

It doesn't seem to be hard to design the appropriate experiments, and, usually, only fairly routine statistical tests need to be used. As far as I can see, testing paranormal claims is not, usually ... er ... rocket science.

(I've even had some personal experience of this: testing the claims of a man who believed that he was able to keep milk fresh by paranormal means - in this case, the null hypothesis was not overturned. Yet had the experiment produced a positive result, we would have been in a position to repeat the experiment with a view to depriving the JREF of their $1,000,000. The experiment would have had be be scaled up a bit, in order to reach the required significance probability, but the protocol was entirely sound, I believe.)

I'd be seriously interested in any comments you have. Why do these various paranormal phenomena seem not to be amenable to scientific investigation?

You don't need me to tell you that I personally tend strongly towards the idea that they're not amenable to scientific investigation because they're not real. It's a case of searching the dark room for the black cat which isn't there, so, in addition to the null results, what you'll get is an endless series of false alarms which are based on honest mistakes, wishful thinking and, sometimes, deliberate fraud.

But have you any better, and more hopeful/interesting, explanation?

jerome wrote:And often his conclusions run far beyond what he offers: I think for example he is right to dismiss recording theories of ghosts, but I would disagree with each and every one of the grounds he does so on.

Out of interest, what are Wiseman's grounds for dismissing recording theories and what are your own, please?

HPrice wrote:

jerome wrote:And often his conclusions run far beyond what he offers: I think for example he is right to dismiss recording theories of ghosts, but I would disagree with each and every one of the grounds he does so on.

Out of interest, what are Wiseman's grounds for dismissing recording theories and what are your own, please?

Heavens! You're not the Harry Price, are you? You haven't found a novel way of contacting us from The Other Side, have you?

Given the many weird ways spirits supposedly use to contact humanity, a computer forum is as good as any. Most people on here are anonymous. It makes you wonder who they really are, doesn't it?

I once visited Harry Price's library and felt very at home.

I just wanna say, I am half way through this book. It's awesome! Love the smartphone barcode jobbies.
And I can see why the paranormal believers wanna snub this book. It really fucks up their delusions!