jerome wrote:

FedUpWithFaith wrote:Hi Jerome.

Nice to see you again after so long. I was just thinking about these papers and wondered what became of the research when lo and behold, I came across this thread in the most recent posts section. Must be a psychic paranormal event!

lol! or sheer coincidence! How you doing? Great to see you over here. Any idea where spags is? He sort of gave up on the 'Atheism' thing, while as far as i know still being atheist.

On the papers, I caught up with Robertson and Roy at a conference Nottingham, and grilled them. I then started an email correspondence with Robertson. They are desperate for a replication: I offered to do a PhD one, but no funding, and while Derby, Coventry and Edinburgh could provide supervisors, doing this kind of stuff is academic suicide. Still I thought it interesting enough to try - but we are stuck with no funding, and so no progress. You would have thought the psychics, mediums and snake oil salesmen would have been falling over themselves to actually fund a replication, but nah, no interest, which says ot me that the vast majority of them have absolutely no faith in their own abilites - whereas the ones who do, by definition don't tend to make any money out of it, and don't see the point in a study to confirm their own beliefs. So we are stuffed. I might actually go dor it this summer; I can get a research grant, but not a maintenance one - so I can do it if I am willing to remain penniless another three years, and end up wit the worlds most useless PhD

j x

.

I shudder to give this advice but maybe you should see if the Templeton Foundation would fund this. If not, get on Oprah.

I always wondered how "the good psychics", if there really is such a thing, were recruited in the first place. That has to be the big risk in duplication. Or would you try to use the same mediums as Robertson did?

In the long span of time since I last commented on those papers I did come across some similar research on mediums (I almost tracked you down) that was "debunked" (I hesitate using this word with it's perjorative connotations since I have no reason to impune the motives of Robertson or the other researchers who seem completely honest to me) via recognizing a very subtle and complex form of confirmation bias that crept in. Unfortunately, it's been a long time and I didn't save the refs. I'll see if I can track them down again because they were rather ingenious.

I have no idea where Spags went either. I miss him too. Otherwise, I've been fine - though quite busy and not much time for forums anymore. After i heard about the collapse of RD, which didn't surprise me given what i learned before I left, I thought I'd catch up with some old friends like you.

AH, Robin Woofitt's work? That was widely reported as a debunking, but as we discovered on the JREF when a couple of us read the paper was actually no such thing? Or the Schwarz stuff? Without knowing more it's hard to say. It's great to see oyu back FUWF! I'll leave this thread for now as have ot get ready for girlfriends visit - I'll message you later

j x

Easons bookstore in the Pavillion shopping Centre in Swords have got rid of the small science section they did have and in its place have on whole section on Angels of all fucking things. Not happy about this at all. And just around the corner, which used to be 2 shelves dedicated to nature now cut to 1, they have a whole section on psychics.


EDIT: Repeated myself on the last line.

People but it. Market pressures therefore mean that we see the slow erosion of decent books and pap replace it. Sad, but a fact of life

j x

jerome wrote:People but it. Market pressures therefore mean that we see the slow erosion of decent books and pap replace it. Sad, but a fact of life

j x

And hence, the movement Richard started and that we try to continue with, making science and reason more marketable than woo woo.

I think the way forward is probably start with our kids (I don't have any) and friends. Science is intrinsically fascinating: unfortunately woo (of the type I loathe anyway) usually panders to our desire to understand ourselves. It like that Nescafe advert that says "it's all about you!" I get upset when my favourite types of woo - the per reviewed fun stuff - gets mixed up with "the Big Book of Angel Tarot" -- but it's going to happen.

j x

The Psychic Twins, are not only despicably preying on the whole of Southern America and the single overtaxed braincell of Tyra Banks, they're not even attempting to be that psychic. They give relationship or personal advice, essentially. The first girl in the link I posted asks about her murderer father in prison and whether she witnessed a murder and how many other victims were there. Since there are no details, the twins can say whatever the heck they like: there are seven murders, there was a gun and a knife. This is absolutely indefensible.

The only prediction they make is, "are you working on a film?" to which the girl says, "I'm writing a book...". If you watch their other spots on Tyra (if you can stomach it) you can see that the guesses they make are said in a different tone of voice than the rest of their advice and are frequently non sequiteurs-- as if they are trying to fit something in.

They are absolutely the worst "psychics" I have ever seen-- they do nothing that any gossip columnist couldn't also do. Their only shtick is them being twins: They explain how as twins they always felt as if they could read each others' thoughts. If you see the show-- you'll see that this manifests as one twin nodding while the other talks, and them taking cues from each other, like, "yes, I see him on the west coast" and other twin will go, "hmm, west coast, California."

Sadly, the comments below the video give away how popular they are. Anything positive is voted up. Anything negative is voted down. This is true of all their videos. Clearly, the support is powerful.

Bah.