Michael Prescott's Blog

Defining Gravity

I never go to the movies anymore, so I didn't see Gravity until it came out on pay-per-view yesterday. I was tremendously impressed with this film. It's a bravura tour de force of technical skill and dramatic tension. But beyond all that, I felt it had a strongly spiritual – even mystical – message, which I wasn't expecting from a generally realistic movie about outer space.

To explain what I mean about the mystical message, I have to reveal key plot points. I don't like to do this, because I hate spoilers. So I am hereby advising you not to continue reading this post if you have any intention whatsoever of seeing Gravity. And I do recommend seeing it. You can always come back and read this post later.

Okay?

Just to be clear, in what follows there are big-time S P O I L E R S.

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..

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If you're still with me, I assume you have already seen the film or have no intention of ever doing so.

Gravity centers on two astronauts, Matt Kowalski (George Clooney) and Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock). Incidentally, in a film that makes many nods to Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, it's probably not a coincidence that the two main characters have names beginning with S and K, Kubrick's initials. And who is the most famous Kowalski in movie history? That would be Stanley Kowalski, the Marlon Brando character in A Streetcar Named Desire. I'm pretty sure that both the initials and the Kowalski name are a tip of the hat to the pioneering filmmaker whose vision made subsequent space movies like this one imaginable.

But I digress. The film begins when a cloud of debris destroys an orbiting space shuttle, killing most of its crew. Only Stone and Kowalski are left, and they become separated. Kowalski drifts off into space, apparently never to be recovered. Stone manages to get aboard a Soyuz escape capsule on the International Space Station. After heroic efforts not only to board the station but to disentangle the capsule from its prematurely deployed parachute, Stone discovers that the capsule is out of fuel; all her effort has been in vain; she is hopelessly stranded. With no options left, she dials down the lighting, turns off the oxygen, and prepares to drift off into unconsciousness and death.

She is startled awake by raps on the capsule's door. Kowalski has returned. He wrests the door open and enters the capsule, saying cryptically that he got some extra juice for his battery -- "It's a hell of a story." Stone tells him the capsule is marooned for lack of fuel. Kowalski takes this news in stride, saying immediately that there's another option – they can use the landing jets as a form of propulsion. When Stone demurs, he asks if she wants to live or if she would prefer to simply give up and die. It's already been established that Stone lives a lonely, empty life on earth, still mourning the loss of her four-year-old daughter in a freak accident some years earlier. Kowalski suggests that maybe she would prefer to remain cocooned in the emptiness and alonenesss of space, where nobody can hurt her. But if she decides to go on living, she has to commit to it fully and go all out.

Stone takes this in. When she turns to answer, Kowalski is gone.

You see, he was never there at all. At least not physically. The whole encounter was, in conventional terms, a hallucination. Earlier in the film it was noted that low oxygen levels can bring about lightheadedness and confusion. It appears that Stone, suffering from hypoxia, imagined the episode and dredged up the landing-jet idea from her subconscious.

And yet ...

Stone herself apparently doesn't think so. Though she has already said she's never prayed in her life, suddenly she finds herself directing what can only be called a prayer to Kowalski. She asks him to give her deceased daughter a message when he meets her. At the conclusion of her plea, she asks for his answer, hesitates for a beat, and then says, smiling, "Roger that."

Moreover, when she sets to work activating the landing jets, she says "Wow, you're one clever son of a bitch, Matt." Clearly she's still giving him credit for the idea. And by this point, having turned the oxygen back on, she isn't suffering from hypoxia anymore.

Another struggle follows, in which Stone uses the Soyuz to access a second space station, from which she will make her descent to Earth on a Chinese capsule. This new capsule is in bad condition, buffeted by another round of debris and already starting to burn up as it touches the atmosphere. The odds are against her. Even so, her attitude is altogether different from the panicked desperation we saw earlier. Now she seems almost to revel in the challenge. Talking to an offline Mission Control, but really talking to herself, she says that in the next ten minutes she will either land in one piece or burn up on reentry. "No harm, no foul. Either way, it'll be a hell of a ride."

From seeing life as a tragedy -- the perspective engendered by the death of her daughter -- Stone has gone to seeing it as an adventure. Remember Kowalski's words after entering the capsule, when he was asked how he got there. "It's a hell of a story," he answers cheerfully. If he's not a hallucination, but a visitor from the next life, then he got to the capsule by dying ... and evidently he found it a memorable and happy experience, another great story in the never-ending series of personal anecdotes he loves to relate.

Not only does he find death liberating, but Stone finds herself liberated, as well. If death is only a transition and not to be feared, then the loss of her daughter is only temporary, and not a sufficient reason to throw away the rest of her life in grief and solitude. Life, seen as a small part of a wider spectrum, loses its terrors and becomes an adventure. Whatever happens, it's no harm, no foul -- just a hell of a ride.

Stone makes it back. At the end, clutching the wet soil of a desert lake (actually Arizona's Lake Powell), she says softly, "Thank you." The thanks would appear to be directed to Kowalski, or to some higher power that put her in touch with Kowalski's wisdom at the crucial moment.

Gravity could be seen as simply an action film utilizing the latest special effects magic to thrill the audience. And it is that. But it's something more. Like 2001, its underrated sequel 2010, and Carl Sagan's Contact, Gravity uses outer space to reach for inner truths.

It's a great film - and one hell of a ride.

News update

FYI ... Dr. Melvin Morse, known for his books about NDEs in children, has been convicted on one count of felony reckless endangerment. The case has attracted attention not only because Morse is a well-known writer, but also because he was alleged to have "waterboarded" his girlfriend's daughter by holding her head under a stream of water.

According to the Associated Press:

Morse was charged with three felonies — two for alleged waterboarding and one for alleged suffocation by hand. He was convicted of one felony — waterboarding in the bathtub — and five misdemeanors. Jurors reduced the second waterboarding charge to a misdemeanor and acquitted Morse of the suffocation charge.

Morse showed no reaction as the verdict was read. He was ordered to surrender his passport and will remain out on bail until his sentencing, set for April 11.

Morse faces a maximum of 10 years in prison, but a lesser punishment is likely under state sentencing guidelines. Each misdemeanor carries a maximum of one year in prison but typically results in probation. The felony reckless endangerment conviction for waterboarding carries a maximum of five years in prison but a presumptive sentence of 15 months.

Prosecutor Melanie Withers said she was "very gratified" by the verdict, and that she was on her way to speak with the victim, now 12 years old.

Morse declined to comment and referred questions to his attorneys.

"He maintains his innocence to this day," said attorney John Brady.

Morse's lead defense attorney, Joseph Hurley, said he planned to appeal.

It's a sad situation.

Commitment to the game

In an earlier post I mentioned Roger Ebert's epiphany, during his last days, when he reported to his wife, "This is all an elaborate hoax."

In somewhat similar vein, transpersonal psychologist Stanislov Grof wrote a book called The Cosmic Game (which I admit I've never been able to really get into - but I like the title).

Increasingly I see this life as a kind of game, hoax, charade, simulation ... call it what you will. That's not to say it isn't real. It's just not the final, ultimate reality.

After all, a video game is real. You're not imagining it. It just isn't quite the same kind of reality as the computer you're playing it on. A hologram is real, too. It's a real image, not a hallucination. But a hologram of an apple doesn't possess the same kind of reality as an actual apple.

The interesting thing to me is that people have different degrees of commitment to the game. There seem to be two extremes. On one end of the spectrum are people who are very lightly attached to this reality. They tend toward mysticism and what psychologists call dissociation. Often they are hyper-sensitive by nature, repelled by the coarseness of physical existence. They experience real pain in even the most minor disagreement. They avoid the rough edges of life - political battles, career struggles, personal crusades.

At the other extreme are people who are fully committed to the game. They are playing hard, and playing to win - or at least to survive. These are people who rarely, if ever, think about their own mortality. They enjoy the rough-and-tumble atmosphere of competitive striving. They like a good fight (though in some cases, only if it's a purely intellectual fight). They tend toward philosophical materialism and, often, materialism in the popular sense of acquisitiveness.

Each extreme has trouble understanding or respecting the other. Mystics find materialists shallow and vulgar. Materialists see mystics as impotent, deluded dreamers.

Our commitment to the game can also change over time. Young children seem to be minimally committed. They draw little distinction between life and death, and must be constantly supervised for their own safety. They regard everything as a kind of game; nothing is too serious. As we get older, we become conscious of our mortality and, usually, less comfortable with risk. Life becomes important; we learn to worry. In old age, some people revert to a more childlike attitude. They look back and see that they didn't have to take life quite so seriously after all. In some cases they wish they had spent more time playing, and less time striving and fretting.

It may be natural to assume that the mystics have it right and the materialists are wrong. But this is not necessarily true. If it is a game, it is clearly meant to be an immersive game. We seem to be encouraged to throw ourselves into it. Those who detach themselves from the game and see it as "an elaborate hoax" are not really playing anymore. And what is the point of a game if you don't play?

People sometimes come to a mystical perspective as a result of a sudden flash of super-awareness, which Richard Maurice Bucke called "cosmic consciousness." It is possible that such episodes are nothing more than glitches in the system - a kind of information leakage that compromises the intended purpose of the game. Total immersion may be a feature, not a bug - in which case, mystical transcendence, however personally gratifying it may be, can be seen as a kind of cheat, akin to jumping to a higher level of a video game by using a hidden shortcut.

If this is true, we would expect serious obstacles in the path of transcending the game. The whole tendency of this reality would be to keep us immersed and committed. And to a large extent this does seem to be the case. I've noticed, for instance, that unless I write down a synchronicity or successful premonition immediately, I will forget it. Within an hour it's gone from my memory, and I cannot retrieve it. Many people report the same thing. Similarly, most people forget their dreams as soon as they wake up (and dreams may provide insights into other realities which would undermine our commitment to this one). The difficulty of definitively nailing down ESP, PK, or an afterlife is well known. Many cultures have taboos against even investigating these subjects. Our own culture tends to marginalize such interests by relegating them to popular entertainment, tabloid journalism, and seedy strip-mall palm-reading operations. George Hansen has much to say about this in his influential book The Trickster and the Paranormal.

We also see persecution of those whose insights threaten general commitment to the game. The prophets of Israel were harassed by the authorities. Bands of itinerant prophets were hunted down and killed. Jesus was crucified. The Gnostics were declared heretics, and their books burned. So-called witches and warlocks were tortured and burned alive. Christians who embraced reincarnation, such as the Cathars, were killed en masse. Today, anyone in academia who gives a respectful hearing to such outre subjects as psi, the immortality of the soul, or even UFOs is liable to be ridiculed and ostracized. Powerful forces seem to be at work keeping us securely within the confines of the rules of the game. Perhaps we are just not supposed to think outside the box.

Though a lot of trouble seems to have gone into making the game as immersive as possible, I'm not saying there's any sinister intent behind it. I'm also not saying that we are necessarily being manipulated by some sort of alien intelligences. Actually, I think it is far more likely that we ourselves - in the capacity of our higher self - have designed or co-designed the game and agreed to all its rules and stipulations. (This is a recurring theme of Michael Newton's books on hypnotic regressions to a between-lives state.) As Plato said, when we are born into this world, we forget what we knew in spirit. This forgetting is necessary in order to play the game and take it seriously. If we knew we had designed it as a test or an exercise, we would not be fully engaged.

Stock traders sometimes practice by making purely hypothetical trades called "paper trades." It's a good way of learning the ins and outs of trading without risking your money. But any trader will tell you that there is a difference between a paper trade and the real thing. No matter how much you pretend that real money is at stake in a paper trade, you know you are only playing around. Your emotions do not get engaged to the same extent as they do when actual money is on the table. You can get the full experience of trading, with all its anxieties and roller-coaster unpredictability, only by making real trades, and taking real (and painful) losses.

Commitment to the game may seem like short-sightedness or naivete to those of us in search of higher realities. But maybe we're the ones who are missing something.

After all, as long as we're alive on earth, it's the only game in town.

Another day, another NDE

Here's a brief but interesting account of an NDE by someone who was reportedly dead (in some sense) for 45 minutes.

Brian Miller was declared dead after suffering a massive heart attack at a Ohio hospital.

Then to the surprise of nurses and doctors, after 45 minutes, his heart randomly started beating again.

Miller, 41, told WJW-TV that while he was out, he saw a light and relatives who had passed away.

Miller said he remembers walking along a “heavenly” path lined with flowers. He was then stopped by his mother-in-law, who had just passed away.

“She grabbed a hold of my arm and she told me that, ‘It’s not your time.’”

Miller said he met another relative before waking up.

Despite that for 45 minutes his brain did not receive any oxygen, doctors said Miller did not suffer any brain damage.

“There is an afterlife and people need to believe in it,” he said.

The rest of the story summarizes research into NDEs and skeptical objections.

Thanks to Ian Wardell for posting a link to this news item on Facebook. Ian also participates in the comments at the link.

Entangled minds

If I understand this news item correctly (and it's very possible that I don't), it may provide additional ammunition for the view that consciousness directly affects physical reality at the quantum level.

By varying the strength of the coupling between the nucleus and the electron, the scientists could carefully tune the measurement strength. A weaker measurement reveals less information, but also has less back-action. An analysis of the nuclear spin after such a weak measurement showed that the nuclear spin remained in a (slightly altered) superposition of two states. In this way, the scientists verified that the change of the state (induced by the back-action) precisely matched the amount of information that was gained by the measurement.

The scientists realised that it is possible to steer the nuclear spin by applying sequential measurements with varying measurement strength. Since the outcome of a measurement is not known in advance, the researchers implemented a feedback loop in the experiment. They chose the strength of the second measurement depending on the outcome of the first measurement. In this way the scientists could steer the nucleus towards a desired superposition state by only looking at it.

This result provides new insight in the role of measurements in quantum mechanics.

It's not clear to me, however, if this experiment really establishes a direct role for consciousness, or if, as one commenter at the linked article put it, the real takeaway is "that a quantum object can be steered by interaction with another quantum object without decoherence or any non-quantum (classical) interactions."

Music on the brain

I don't want to upstage the ongoing discussion about parapsychology and statistics in the previous thread(s), though I must admit that my eyes glaze over when these complex mathematical issues are examined in detail. Heck, I don't even balance my checkbook …

Anyway, for those looking for a less technical topic, here's something interesting. One of my Facebook friends, Carol Lorraine, recently posted a link to an interview with Dr. Tony Cicoria, an orthopedic surgeon who had a near-death experience in 1994 when he was struck by lightning. The experience itself is vivid and notable; what is perhaps even more noteworthy is that afterward he developed a newfound passion for music, and began writing his own compositions, which he says are simply "downloaded" into his brain.

Though I suggest you read the whole thing (it's not long), I'll include part of Dr. Cicoria's discussion of his NDE:

When I had the experience the thing that I was struck about was that time did not exist. I did not have any sense of time. I could have been gone for a week and there would not have been any appreciation of time as an entity, per se. But one of the things about the whole experience was the confusion I felt when I initially separated from my body. I knew that I had gotten struck, and I knew that I had gone flying backwards and then I was standing there, and I was confused. There was nothing that signified that I had left. It was a continuum of consciousness. There was never a microsecond where I wasn’t thinking and conscious of everything I was doing. But, the thing that was lacking was that there was no connection to this reality, whatsoever. You know, as I floated up the stairs and I went into the room where the big family gathering was, I saw my kids as I was passing through. And I had really no concern other than the fact that when I saw them, I just had the feeling that they’re going to be fine ...

But I had no need to stay there. It was like, “Oh, well, so I’m obviously going someplace else.” For a brief microsecond the highs and lows of my life just kind of flashed in front of me, and it was, okay, that was that. Then when I left the building, that’s when I was surrounded in this aqua-colored, bluish-white light, for lack of something better to call it.

When I was in the light, I no longer had any connection to previous reality, but yet my consciousness was absolutely racing, and I was absorbing all of the feelings that I was having of how wonderful this was and there isn’t any negative thought, everything is positive thought and love and warmth and a great feeling. It was just incredible. Right about the time that I realized, “This is the most wonderful thing that anyone could experience,” boom, I was back! And I remember when I was suddenly back and I realized I was back, I was angry. I remember screaming, “please don’t make me go back, I don’t want to be here.”

There are several details in this account that tie in closely with many other such reports.

First, the absence of any sense of time.

Second, his lack of any sense of attachment to this life – even to his own children. ("Okay, that was that.") This reminds me of a point that our commenter Art has made – namely, that upon making the transition to the other side, we will see this life as little more than a brief, almost inconsequential dream.

Third, a greatly accelerated and super-focused consciousness.

Fourth, the image of being "in the light."

Finally, extreme reluctance to go back to his physical, earthly life, because his experience after passing was purely positive. ("... how wonderful this was and there isn’t any negative thought, everything is positive thought and love and warmth and a great feeling.") No wonder he was screaming, “Please don’t make me go back, I don’t want to be here,” as he was revived.

As I said, many other cases have these elements. What makes this case especially evidential, in my view, is how greatly Dr. Cicoria's life changed after the experience. His ability to write complex musical compositions without apparent effort is totally new. Skeptics sometimes ask why people who come back from the other side don't bring with them any of the knowledge that they were supposedly exposed to over there. But here we have a case of someone who brought back, if not knowledge exactly, at least the ability to tap into a creative source that was previously unknown to him. Of course, it could be argued that the lightning strike simply activated a heretofore unused potentiality of his brain.

Best-selling writer Oliver Sacks features Dr. Cicoria's story, including its remarkable aftermath, in his new book Musicophilia: Tales of Music and The Brain.

A message from Chris Carter

Chris Carter, author of Science and Psychic Phenomena and other books, has sent me a detailed response to J.E. Kennedy's review and to some of the comments that have appeared on this blog. He's given me permission to publish it, so here it is in its entirety. (Everything that follows is from Chris.)

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Michael, this is directly from my book, Science and Psychic Phenomena:

“However, it later turned out that Milton and Wiseman had botched their statistical analysis of the ganzfeld experiments by failing to consider sample size. Dean Radin simply added up the total number of hits and trials conducted in those thirty studies (the standard method of doing meta-analysis) and found a statistically significant result with odds against chance of about twenty to one.

“The thirty studies that Milton and Wiseman considered ranged in size from four trials to one hundred, but they used a statistical method that simply ignored sample size (N). For instance, say we have three studies, two with N = 8, 2 hits (25 percent), and a third with N = 60, 21 hits (35 percent). If we ignore sample size, then the un-weighted average percentage of hits is only 28 percent; but the combined average of all the hits is just under 33 percent. This, in simplest terms, is the mistake they made. Had they simply added up the hits and misses and then performed a simple one-tailed t-test, they would have found results significant at the 5 percent level. As statistician Jessica Utts later pointed out, had Milton and Wiseman performed the exact binomial test, the results would have been significant at less than the 4 percent level, with odds against chance of twenty-six to one.” (p. 99)

Kennedy wrote: “The large number of methodological decisions for meta-analyses, like other types of post hoc analyses, provides great opportunity for researchers to consciously or unconsciously bias the results. The endless debates about different possible statistical tests, inclusion cutoff criteria, data trimming, data transformations, and so forth, have no convincing resolutions.”

We can easily see that Kennedy’s point is nonsense. Simply adding up the total number of hits and trials and then doing a then performing a straightforward t-test of significance – as Dean Radin did – has nothing to do with, as Kennedy puts it, “endless debates about different possible statistical tests, inclusion cutoff criteria, data trimming, data transformations, and so forth.” It is a straightforward method of doing statistical analysis that is taught in all first year statistics courses.

Table 1: Standard Ganzfeld Replications 1991-2003
Laboratory	Sessions	Hit Rate*
PRL, Princeton, NJ	354	34 percent
University of Amsterdam, Netherlands	76	38 percent
University of Edinburgh, Scotland	97	33 percent
Institute for Parapsychology, NC	100	33 percent
University of Edinburgh, Scotland	151	27 percent
University of Amsterdam, Netherlands	64	30 percent
University of Edinburgh, Scotland	128	47 percent
University of Gothenburg, Sweden	150	36 percent
University of Gothenburg, Sweden	74	32 percent
Totals:	1194	34.4 percent

Strangely, in an exchange with me in the book Debating Psychic Experiences, arch-“skeptic” Ray Hyman mentioned only one of these replication studies:

Instead of conducting meta-analyses on already completed experiments on the Ganzfeld, for example, the parapsychologists might have tried to directly replicate the auto-Ganzfeld experiments with a study created for the stated purpose of replication. The study would be designed specifically for this purpose and would have adequate power. In fact, such studies have been carried out. An example would be Broughton’s attempt to deliberately replicate the auto-Ganzfeld results with enough subjects to insure adequate power. This replication failed. From a scientific viewpoint this replication attempt is much more meaningful than the retrospective combining of already completed (and clearly heterogeneous) experiments. (emphasis added)

But is this replication attempt really “much more meaningful from a scientific viewpoint” than the combined results in a meta-analysis? If the true hit rate were 33 percent with 25 percent expected by chance alone, then the probability that a sample size of 151 will fail to yield results significant at the 5 percent level is 28 percent. In other words, Broughton’s failure to replicate with a sample that small is even less remarkable than flipping a coin twice and getting heads both times.

As an example of a replication study, Hyman could just have easily mentioned Kathy Dalton’s (1997) study using creative individuals, which achieved a hit rate of 47 percent. The odds-against-chance of this result is over 140 million to one. This closely replicated the auto-Ganzfeld results mentioned above (Schlitz & Honorton, 1992), which found a 50 percent hit rate for students from the Juilliard School. It also closely matched results from a study using primarily musicians (Morris, Cunningham, McAlpine, & Taylor, 1993), which found a 41 percent hit rate.

These figures should make the conclusion clear: the earlier results have been replicated by a variety of researchers in different laboratories in different cultures, with similar hit rates. Hyman (1996a) wrote: “The case for psychic functioning seems better than it has ever been…. I also have to admit that I do not have a ready explanation for these observed effects. (p. 43)” Hyman and the other “skeptics” have lost the Ganzfeld debate.

Meta-analysis of the Ganzfeld

However, instead of debating the merits of individual studies, what does the data considered as a whole tell us? Meta-analysis is designed specifically to answer this question, and Dean Radin (2006) has performed it on all Ganzfeld experiments (confirmatory and exploratory) performed over a 30-year period. He wrote:

From 1974 through 2004 a total of 88 Ganzfeld experiments reporting 1,008 hits in 3,145 trials were conducted. The combined hit rate was 32 percent as compared to the chance-expected 25 percent. This 7 percent above-chance effect is associated with odds against chance of 29 quintillion to 1. (p. 120)

Could the results be due to a file-drawer problem of unreported failures? Radin answers:

If we insisted that there had to be a selective reporting problem, even though there’s no evidence of one, then a conservative estimate of the number of studies needed to nullify the observed results is 2,002. That’s a ratio of 23 file drawer studies to each known study, which means that each of the 30 known investigators would have had to conduct but not report 67 additional studies. Because the average Ganzfeld study had 36 trials, these 2,002 “missing” studies would have required 72,072 additional sessions (36 x 2002).  To generate this many sessions would mean continually running Ganzfeld sessions 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for 36 years, and for not a single one of those sessions to see the light of day.  (p. 121)

Ersby’s comments

"Kennedy’s argument is that meta-analyses offer enough subjective leeway to adjust results until the required figure is achieved. The Bem, Palmer & Broughton paper actually supports it, rather than refutes it. The BPP paper is, after all, a reworking of a previous meta-analysis with an additional inclusion criteria [sic] which had never been used before and has not been used since. This is exactly the kind of subjectivity that Kennedy is talking about.”

The “additional inclusion criterion” was simply the status of the studies used, that is, whether they were meant to be confirmatory or exploratory. Far from this never been used before, or being somehow “subjective,” this was actually a criterion specified in the joint communique written with skeptic Ray Hyman. As I wrote in my book:

“In their joint communiqué, Hyman and Honorton asked future ganzfeld investigators, as part of their “more stringent standards,” to clearly document the status of the experiment; that is, whether it was meant to merely confirm previous findings or to explore novel conditions. The problem with the Milton and Wiseman study was that it simply lumped all studies together, regardless of whether the status of each study was confirmatory or exploratory. In other words, Milton and Wiseman made no attempt to determine the degree to which the individual studies complied with the standard ganzfeld protocol as spelled out in the joint communiqué.” (p. 100)

Meta-analysis is essentially combining many smaller studies into one larger study in order to exploit the greater statistical power of larger sample sizes to detect effects with statistical significance. As such, it is only useful when all of the studies are of the same nature. This is indeed standard practice, and common sense.

Ersby adds:

“It’s worth noting that Standardness alone does not bring Milton & Wiseman’s meta-analysis up to statistical significance. In other words, the hypothesis that M&W’s poor results was due to including exploratory work is not supported by the data. It is only when the new data from 1997-1999 is introduced does the result reach significance.”

Simply not true. As I wrote above, had they simply added up the hits and misses and then performed a simple one-tailed t-test, they would have found results significant at the 5 percent level. Wiseman, by the way, did not dispute this when statistician Jessica Utts pointed this fact out at a conference.

“Which brings me to the other argument about the M&W: that Milton and Wiseman deliberately excluded the Dalton experiment to achieve a null result. But if you add the Dalton experiment to the M&W database, and use their method to calculate the effect size, it still doesn't achieve significance.”

Again, simply not true. It attains significance even without the Dalton experiment included.

“Lastly, Chris Carter's claim that Milton & Wiseman 'botched' their statistical analysis doesn't stand up to scrutiny. M&W used the same method as Honorton did in 1985. And, as Kennedy states, the method used by Carter is not considered a standard meta-analysis technique."

Again, not true. According to Honorton: "I calculated the exact binomial probability for each study and obtained its associated Z score." This means his z scores were indeed weighted by sample size, so no, Milton & Wiseman did not use the same method that Honorton did. And by the way, the exact binomial test (which uses probabilities and combinations of possible chance results and so explicitly takes into account sample size) most certainly is considered a standard technique.

No statistician would ever argue that sample size should not be considered in performing statistical tests. Sample size is crucially-intrinsic to proper statistical analysis, and I would not have expected Milton & Wiseman’s error from any competent first year statistics student. The error is not even sophomoric.

No wonder this person writes under a pseudonym.

 ------

Bem, D., and Honorton, C., 1994. “Does Psi Exist?”, Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 115, No. 1, pages 4 – 18.

Bem, D., Palmer, John, and Richard Broughton, 2001. “Updating the Ganzfeld Database: a victim of its own success?”, The Journal of Parapsychology, Vol. 65, September, pages 207-218.

Bierman, Dick J., 1995. “The Amsterdam Ganzfeld Series III & IV: Target clip emotionality, effect sizes, and openness,” Proceedings of the 38^th Annual Parapsychological Association Convention, pages 27 – 37.

Broughton, Richard, and Cheryl Alexander, 1995. “AutoGanzfeld II: The first 100 sessions,” Proceedings of the 38^th Annual Parapsychological Association Convention, pages 53 – 61.

Broughton, R.S., & Alexander, C.H. 1997.  "AutoGanzfeld II: an attempted replication of the PRL Ganzfeld research." Journal of Parapsychology, 61, 209-226.

Carter, Chris, 2012. Science and Psychic Phenomena: the Fall of the House of Skeptics, Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions.

Collins, H.H., 1985. Changing Order: Replication and Induction in Scientific Practice. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.

Dalton, K., (1997). “Exploring the Links: Creativity and Psi in the Ganzfeld.” Proceedings of Presented Papers: the Parapsychological Association 40^th Annual Convention, pp. 119-134.

Harris, M., & Rosenthal, R. 1988. Human Performance Research: an overview. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

Honorton, C., 1975. “Error some place!” Journal of Communication, 25, pages 103-116.

Honorton, C. 1985. “Meta-analysis of Psi Ganzfeld Research: A Response to Hyman.” Journal of Parapsycholgy 49: 51–91.

Honorton, C., 1993. “Rhetoric over Substance: the Impoverished State of Skepticism.” Journal of Parapsychology 57, pages 191-214.

Hyman, R., and Honorton, C., 1986. “A joint communiqué: the psi Ganzfeld controversy.” Journal of Parapsychology, 50, pages 351-364.

Hyman, Ray. 1991. “Comment” Statistical Science, 6, pages 389-392.

Hyman, Ray. 1996a. “Evaluation of Program on Anomalous Mental Phenomena.” Journal of Scientific Exploration, 10, pages 31-58.

Hyman, R. 1996b. "The Evidence for Psychic Functioning: Claims vs. Reality." Skeptical Inquirer, March/April 1996, pp. 24-26.

Morris, R., Cunningham, S., McAlpine, S., & Tayor R., (1993) "Toward replication and extension of autoGanzfeld results." Proceedings of the Parapsychological Association 36^th Annual Convention, Toronto, Canada, pp. 177-191.

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More from J.E. Kennedy

J.E. Kennedy sent me a brief essay putting his remarks about parapsychology into a fuller context. I want to thank him for continuing to participate in this discussion.

Here are his latest remarks, which I found very interesting and thought-provoking.

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I’ve been periodically looking at the comments on this blog and am pleased to see that some people have been looking at my papers. However, the larger context for my ideas appears to not be widely known outside of those actively doing work in parapsychology.

The field of parapsychology has become divided into two relatively distinct camps. One group believes that the current research strategies in experimental parapsychology are making progress. According to this view, the skepticism of most scientists is based on irrational biases and ignorance of the research, and should be overcome with continuation of the same type of research. Carter’s book is based on this position.

The other camp believes that parapsychology will not be successful if it continues the same strategies. The people in this camp generally worked in and followed parapsychology for over 20 years and started by doing experiments with high expectations of success. This perspective sees the rate of success in experiments and the acceptance of the field today as not noticeably different than in the 1940s. All the supposed research findings and hundreds of experiments have not been able to produce more reliable, convincing results. Major obstacles to reliable psi effects are not yet understood and different research strategies are needed. People associated with these ideas include Rhea White, Walter von Lucadou, George Hansen, Dick Bierman, Brian Millar, Ramakrishna Rao, and myself (J.E. Kennedy). When people reach this point, they usually take one of two paths. One path explores the possibility that psi effects are limited by a principle of nature or physics, often having to do with something like temporal paradoxes. The other path is to investigate the question “What does psi do?”

I took the latter path. In about 1990 I became active in parapsychology again after spending a decade doing other things. I focused on two independent questions (1) why is psi so elusive and (2) what does psi do? For the question of what does psi do, a colleague and I began a research project that started with in-depth, open-ended interviews with 30 people who had paranormal experiences. The interviews focused on the question “what effect did the experience(s) have?” The findings of these interviews were basically the same as expressed on this blog. The most common response was something like “Well, you know when it happened, there wasn’t a profound effect or meaning. But now that I look back, I see that it made me become more interested in the non-material aspects of life.” They would usually go on to describe changes that would be categorized as spirituality.

Based on the interviews, we developed a questionnaire that included the most common themes and gave it to 120 other people who had experiences. The questionnaires more quantitatively verified the spiritual and related positive aspects of paranormal experiences (http://jeksite.org/psi/jaspr95a.pdf). Of course, in some cases the experiences were immediately profound, like saving a person’s life. I once had an experience with immediate huge benefits. But, these cases are a small minority and are very effective at inspiring spiritual interests. When I looked back on the experience for me, I realized that it seemed to be contrived to be a dramatic experience that affected my worldview (described in http://jeksite.org/psi/jaspr00.pdf).

After 40 years of work in experimental parapsychology, Rhea White (now deceased) similarly pursued the question of what are the effects of psi and came to similar conclusions. She broke away from experimental parapsychology and started a new organization and journal (http://www.ehe.org/display/splash.html). She came to believe that experimental parapsychology was a misguided attempt to control and dominate psi, and that we should take a much more humble approach of learning from psi.

For me, the two seemingly independent questions (why is psi elusive and what does psi do) converged. Experimental parapsychology is based on the attempt to control psi and ultimately develop practical applications. Most of the books by proponents have a section on the development of psi technology. But if practical applications are developed, the first uses will be to try to obtain dominance for business and the military. It is no accident that the greatest and longest funding for psi research was for developing military applications. But, if the primary function of psi is to inspire non-material spirituality, then the attempts to use psi for business and military dominance severely conflict with the basic nature of psi. If psi becomes another technology for making money, it will lose the mysterious properties that make it inspire spirituality. Such money-making and military applications are the ultimate goal of experimental parapsychology and the primary hope for attracting big research funds.

However, if psi is a principle of nature for inspiring non-material spirituality, then the optimal effects would be sometimes strong, but defiantly erratic when attempts are made to control and subdue psi for potential self-serving material purposes.

I encourage readers to keep these ideas in mind as you read about research in parapsychology and consider your own experiences. Determine for yourself how well these ideas fit the phenomena. These ideas are pretty far out for those with the basically materialistic worldview of experimental research (including parapsychology). But, if you ask the fundamental question “what does psi do” and then follow the data, this is where it leads.

I’ll end with a couple of quotes from psi researchers. Russell Targ, physicist and co-developer of remote viewing at SRI, developed a remote viewing application to predict the commodities market. The first experiment produced 9 out of 9 hits, and it is reported that someone actually invested in this case and made $120,000. A second experiment produced 8 out of 9 hits. Then a third experiment was done. As Targ later described it: “I then sought for replication to take advantage of this mechanical psi machine we had created and I got eight out of nine failures. That has really stopped my personal psi investigation for a couple of years while I have tried to meditate on what the problem is here.”

Robert Jahn, professor of engineering at Princeton who managed the PEAR lab, conducted RNG studies for years that produced significant results. When a large replication was attempted, the overall planned analyses were not significant, but there were reported to be striking evidence of psi in internal effects that were somewhat similar to what had been found before. Jahn summarized the situation as: “At the end of the day, we are confronted with an archive of irregular, irrational, yet undismissable data that testifies, almost impishly, to our enduring lack of comprehension of the basic nature of these phenomena.”

These are examples of how the engineering efforts to control psi have turned out—and it has been this way for over 60 years. (References for these cases and other relevant information are in http://jeksite.org/psi/jp03.pdf. A paper discussing the purpose of psi is at http://jeksite.org/psi/jaspr04.pdf.)