Posted: Apr 25, 2013 9:32 am
Shrunk wrote:Cito di Pense wrote:So what are the negative Ganzfeld results, Vinncent? And why do you never refer to them when you go on about your 30%? Do you mean that Ganzfeld trials not contributing 30% are being aggregated with those that do? What? Is every subject independent?
A Ganzfeld trial is one experimental setup involving a series of experimental subjects, right? That's what characterises the Ganzfeld 'apparatus'. Don't tell me you believe every Ganzfeld setup is identical. Ah, but you will, in order to aggregate the results. There's a billion factors that are not considered, Vinncent. There's nothing like lying to yourself, through your teeth.
The issue of how the results vary depending on which studies are aggregated is one of the issues regarding the Ganzfeld. But that's an issue with any meta-analysis. As far as I can tell, the 30% hit rate seems to be a reasonably robust finding. The sticky point is what that means. Some think this means that paranormal, immaterial forms of mental communication exist. That seems a premature conclusion IMHO. Others, in effect, say that the fact you tend to get a 30% hit rate on the Ganzfeld means that you tend to get a 30% hit rate on the Ganzfeld. So why bother, I wonder?
Shrunk, consider another far-out idea that is seriously addressed by science- "dark matter". It's easily as bizarre as "psi".
Why is dark matter seriously studied and psi not? After all, dark matter is "just a theory". If you look at it closely, you'll see why. We have models of the universe with dark matter, and models of the universe without dark matter. The models with dark matter match our observations far better than models without.
Does this "prove" dark matter? No- but it makes the search for dark matter science, not pseudoscience.
This is the kind of "negative" or "not-psi" that psi needs in order to be studied scientfically. As Cito has already pointed out as an example, if you could create some kind of helmet or something that "blocks" "psi", you really could make scientific "psi" tests. You wouldn't have just purely inductive statistical variation as evidence- you'd be able to draw deductive lines in the sand. As much as philosophers may hysterically wank about induction, the sine qua non of science is deduction, specifically in the form of modus tollens.