Princeton ESP Lab to Close 363
Nico M writes " The New York Times reports on the imminent closure of one of the most controversial research units at an ivy league School. The Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research laboratory is due to close, but not because of pressure from the outside. Lab founder Robert G. Jahn has declared, in the article, that they've essentially collected all the data they're going to. The laboratory has conducted studies on extrasensory perception and telekinesis from its cramped quarters in the basement of the university's engineering building since 1979. Its equipment is aging, its finances dwindling. Jahn points the finger at detractors as well: 'If people don't believe us after all the results we've produced, then they never will.'"
Comment removed (Score:2, Interesting)
Global Consciousness Project (Score:3, Interesting)
The World Trade Center attacks, Princess Diana's death, and other events with long lasting consequences brought large shifts in the outcomes prior to the events occuring - which is the most bizarre and interesting part. Other events, such as New Year's Eve, etc, also have results that are regularly shown. It's a positively enthralling study.
Anyway, it suggests that we, as a whole, are projecting a field of human consciousness that affects random outcomes. This would suggest that any lone person attempting to affect random outcomes would be lost in the sea of thoughts, and have little to no overall effect.
I am curious as to whether or not you could create some sort of shielding or better result by varying location, proximity, etc... The most interesting and telling experiment I can think of would be to take a human and a few random generators a great distance from the earth and resume tests. I had no idea that any really credible institute had been performing these tests, this is neat.
No peers, indeed (Score:2, Interesting)
For as long as I can remember I've had a subtle effect on machines. I've heard similar things described here many times, in many discussions. When friends and relatives ask me to fix something, and I come over to help them out, the thing just starts working. Mostly it's with computers.
I'm not a religious person. I don't believe in god. In fact it's my attitude that belief should be limited to the bare minimum and that, if given a choice, we should rely on verifiable facts as the basis for actions and attitudes. This odd effect I have on machines has happened so often, for decades, that I can't really deny it. It's subtle, but it's been observed by people around me, for as long as I can remember. And yet I feel embarrassed talking about it, even posting anonymously about it.
So I'm glad to see that PEAR has existed, but not surprised at all that the scientific community refused to peer review their work. Maybe their work will be picked up by someone else. Maybe this phenomena and others like it will be more easily measured in the future. Who knows? It doesn't bother me much, really. If it's an actual physical phenomena it'll still be there in the future, and hence will have the possibility of being measured.
Re:Um.... we believe you... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Also (Score:5, Interesting)
2. Winning the challenge would not only get them a million dollars in funding, but *incredible* publicity leading to millions more.
3. They'd be crazy not to take the challenge if they knew they could win it.
4. They haven't taken the challenge.
Conclusion: They never discovered any repeatable paranormal phenomenon. Why am I not surprised?
Re:Evolution and ESP (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't believe in these phenomena without evidence, but I can foresee ways in which revealing them could be detrimental to someone's chance at off-spring!
Re:Good radiance to pseudoscience (Score:1, Interesting)
The PEAR group consistently obtained positive results for 30 years. How is that a difficulty of replication? And if you check the parapsychological literature for YOURSELF, you'll see that their results have been replicated in dozens of other labs.
Many-sigma deviations between experimental and control runs are not fitting the data to the conclusion. It's simply raw factual data.
If you check, you'll see that Jahn started in that field as a strong skeptic who reluctantly agreed to help an undergraduate conduct an experiment in this area. It was the consistent results which convinced him to form PEAR. This is hardly "begging for belief". Falsification is quite simple. Falsification occurs if there is no significant deviation between experimental and control runs, but it turns out there is a consistent longterm deviation between these.
P.S. "defraught" is not a word.
I'll answer to an AC (Score:3, Interesting)
Where are they. I certainly find NO POSITIVE RESULT WHATSOEVER. Care to do a citation. Peer reviewed journal would be nice.
And if you check the parapsychological literature Ha. HA. Let me guess. Not peer reviewed. Not even remotely in the science citation index. Certainly does not look like it.
As for the rest of your drivel, if you had read the ORIGINAL paper from the PEAR team and what they admit you would not be adament on "positive" result. Here is the link already psoted by another psoter
Re:a lot of effort for... (Score:1, Interesting)
Check their methods. Controls are used. And with careful investigation by many outside parties, no methodological flaws have been found.
The equivalent has been done in dozens of different experiments with consistently positive results, just not at 95% success rates. (Usually a pre-defined set of pictures are used, rather than numbers, because people can visualize them better. Mathematically this is equivalent to transmitting numbers.)
If you apply that kind of logic to home runs, you would conclude that home run hitters don't exist. If you let Babe Ruth bat twice and he strikes out both times (likely, considering his record), you'd conclude that he can't hit. This would be a ridiculously illogical conclusion, which is why your requirement of such a success rate is not relevant.
First, PEAR operated on a budget over ten times the size of the Randi prize, so it is fairly irrelevant compared to the scale of their research. Second, the Randi prize does not accept scientific evidence accumulated over large numbers of runs (perhaps because no one at the Randi foundation knows statistics well enough to understand such experiments), thus conveniently excluding all of the most rigorous and powerful scientific data on the phenomenon.
Re:I'll answer to an AC (Score:2, Interesting)
Here [princeton.edu] is a reasonably comprehensive list of their publications and where they are published.
And to save you the effort of, you know, reading too much, here [princeton.edu] is a recent publication from Cellular and Molecular Biology (in 2005), which includes descriptions of many of POSITIVE RESULTS, including an assortment of citations for further information.
Nice attempt to ridicule what you do not know, but wrong, as shown above. Here [deanradin.com] is another list of studies in parapsychology which may be helpful to someone interested in learning about this topic from a scientific perspective rather than a rhetorical one.
And here [slashdot.org] is a link to the rebuttal of that blog entry right beneath that post, which if you'll note, contains a link to the original paper being discussed in the blog. (Which if you'll again note, also describes positive results, contrary to what the uninformed blogger thinks.)
Re:a lot of effort for... (Score:4, Interesting)
I mean, they're psychic. They know what will happen. And the only thing they get out of it is $1 million and a life forever ruined in the name of science.
Re:Also (Score:3, Interesting)
If the million dollar challenge you are referring to is the James Randi challenge, then I'm not suprised that they haven't taken the guy up on it. Not that I'm arguing that ESP and the paranormal are real (I'm not), but from what I've read the criteria that you have to meet and tests that you have to pass to win are set by Randi, and that he is the sole judge of whether you have proven anything or passed any of the tests. By all of the accounts that I have read, the challenge is essentially set up in such a way that even if psychic powers were real and you were able to demonstrate them beyond a reasonable doubt, you still would fail to win the challenge. It's basically a publicity stunt put on by JREF. Again, I'm not saying that PEAR proved anything (because I honestly don't know), but if you take yourself to be a serious research institution you wouldn't want to get involved in someone else's publicity stunts (especially if they were guaranteed to make you look bad). It's kinda like how Saddam Hussein didn't mind having elections in Iraq, because he knew that he was always going to "win" 100% of the vote.
Re:Your results...do not impress (Score:1, Interesting)
Science requires but one kind of truth, the simple truth of the reproducable result. The quotation you mention stems from the sad fact that the vast majority of people think like you and therefore must be struck over the head by something before accepting it.
If someone were able to make a candle flicker with their mind, even so slight an amount that it is imperceptible to the naked eye, this can be proven scientifically. Their inability to toss around cars in a parking lot with their mind does not change this.
Re:Also (Score:5, Interesting)
I have. From the FAQ:
1.4. How many people have passed the preliminary test?
None. Most applicants never agree to a proper test protocol, so most are never tested.
1.5. How many people have passed the formal test?
No one has ever taken the formal test, as one must first pass the preliminary test.
2.1. What do you mean by "mutually agreed upon"?
"Mutually agreed upon" means that neither side can force the other side into doing or saying something that they don't want to, and that if no agreement can be reached, the application process is terminated, with no blame or fault attributed to either side.
It's easy to point fingers after a Challenge claim comes to an impasse and say that the other side was being unreasonable. This phrase is used to insure that finger-pointing has no merit.
Randi claims that most applicants never agree to a "proper test protocol", and are never tested. But he also points out that both sides have to agree what that "proper test protocol" is. So either side can basically tank the process by being disagreeable. With a million dollars on the line (not to mention his reputation), you have to believe that Randi has a serious incentive to make sure that nobody passes the test. Apparently the easiest way to do so is to ensure that nobody (or only a very few people) actually gets to take the test.
Again, I'm not arguing that paranormal powers exist. I'm just pointing out that JREF's "Million Dollar Challenge" is little more than a publicity stunt, set up in such a way that they advertise a million dollars being available without ever having to pay out on it (or indeed, even attempt the challenge).
I think that there was a software company is Russia that recently offered a similar challenge. Apparently someone was disputing their claims of being unhackable or uncrackable or something, and the company offerred a large sum of money to anyone who could break their software. The only catch was that you had to fly to Russia on your own dime, and use systems that they configured, and meet all sorts of other restrictive criteria that were specifically constructed to ensure that you could not succeed. The contest wasn't designed to prove anything, it was merely a way for the company to get some free publicity and advertise to perspective customers that "even when offerred x amount of money for demonstrating flaws in our software, nobody has yet been able to do so".
Now if the criteria were set and judged by a neutral third party, then I might have a little more faith in the challenge. But I doubt that would ever happen because JREF would then face the chance (however minute) of actually losing the money and the bragging rights.
Re:Ahem (Score:5, Interesting)
Thanks, this has the 50-page paper I was looking for when I saw this story - I remember it from years ago: On the Quantum Mechanics of Consciousness, With Application to Anomalous Phenomen (1986). Foundations of Physics, 16, No. 8, pp. 721-772 (PDF [princeton.edu]). Now, the Foundations of Physics is not exactly a top-tier journal, but there is some very minimal peer review. The figures present some results that are, on the surface, somewhat surprising. For example, look at Fig. 2, p. 726. I suggested to CSICOP (the Skeptical Inquirer magazine, that I subscribed to) that they have some of their experts do a rebuttal, but even though I got a response that they'd take it under consideration, it apparently never happened. I am still puzzled by this paper.
NOT his only research (Score:4, Interesting)
More study needed... (Score:2, Interesting)
I am thinking of a number between 1 and 1,000,000, what is it? Does not seem to me to be the right kind of test.
My experience with this kind of phenomenon is that it is very paradoxical.
I will not go through the whole story here, but I will say that I have personally experienced something that I still cannot explain. It was too specific to be chance and fortunately for me, I had communicated the premonition to a friend who was a witness to the event as it happened later.
The paradox is that in my precognitive vision, I was the actor in the event, but in the real time manifestation I was an observer of the same event. In my vision, I made decisions to perform specific actions based on reasons I thought out during the event. In the "real time" version, I was a very close bystander observing the same set of specific events unfold as I had determined them to be in the vision. So, if in real time, I was the observer, but in the vision, I was the actor. Then "Who" made the decisions to act out the sequence of events as they happened? There were two time lines, the first when I was deciding what to do and doing it in my vision. Then the second when I was watching it happen. So which should be measured, and how would you connect the perception with the manifestation.
I suppose that precognition is more of a subset of ESP. But maybe this is part of the problem with formulating tests to capture this kind of behavior. ESP is not one type of behavior or even measurable at a single instant in time. Things are separated in time and unpredictable. Not only did I not have any indication that I was going to have the vision... I was equally surprised when the actual "real time" event took place. But once it began to, there was no doubt that what I was seeing was real. My witness and I just sat there, in shock and her first words were... "That was your dream."
This has only happened to me once that I am aware of in 32 years and happened when I was about 19 years old. So with that kind of frequency, how would someone have been able to "measure" that. I have had many dreams since, some seemed as vivid and "real" as the one that I call a vision. But I have not been the observer of them happening at a later date.
Does this mean that they never happened? Or, was I not in the right place at the right time to observe it manifest? I will not know and they seem like difficult questions to answer.
I experienced something that was very real, and not just a vague sense that I had seen this before, but a very specific sequence of events that took place with an impossible level of correlation to a previous vision of them. If it didn't happen to me, I would never believe it was possible.
I would like for someone to figure out how and why something like this happens. But it seems that in my experience it would be very difficult to capture this kind of phenomena in a lab setting. But just because it is hard to capture, does not mean we should quit trying to understand it. Imagine how mysterious electrical effects were to our ancestors. Lightning was some strange power of the gods. But we have been able to figure it out more and more over time, and we are still learning how to harness it and make good use of it in our daily lives.
Think again (Score:2, Interesting)
Given all that, is it really that ridiculous to try and see if there are any subtle effects of what we call consciousness on the macro world?
Like much of any religion, bad science is full of zealotry and fundamentalist attacking of anyone daring to question the dogma, the "implied" truth, the "what we believe in our heart" is truth -- in this case, that consciousness does nothing and there's no such thing as ESP.
Good science would be glad to see a few labs like this one running, occasionally offering to review their results and suggest improvements in methodology.
Re:Extraordinary evidence is needed (Score:3, Interesting)
Go read a theory book, moderator, or catch up on your Bayesian statistics. If you want clarification, reply. If it doesn't make sense, reply. If you think I'm full of it, first read Wolpert, then reply.
When Wolpert published his first "No Free Lunch" argument about inference, it took the machine-learning and AI research communities by storm. It simply hasn't found its way into all studies of inference yet, and it should. There is no way the topic is overrated - it can only be found to be so by people who are wholly or willfully ignorant of the subject.
Thanks. I don't usually reply to moderations, but this is ridiculous.
You didn't read it very carefully... (Score:3, Interesting)
No, wrong. They are saying there is no pattern in the HIGHER moments, but the CENTRAL claim of positive results that is presented in the paper is the statistically significant 7-sigma deviation of the MEAN when considering the entire set of data. This is not picking a small sample, it is considering everything and getting a consistent and extremely significant positive result. The rest of the paper is dedicated to seeing if there are any additional patterns, such as individual participants being more successful, and so forth.
This is a silly thing to complain about. First of all, training has nothing to do with experimental quality, because the operators have no physical contact with the device anyway, and thus can have no practical or theoretical influence except through a psi result. Training of operators can therefore only affect the strength of a result, and in fact, how to train operators to receive good performance is still a somewhat open-ended question. It's known that participants yield significantly stronger results after meditation, and that the beliefs and expectations of the participants correlate significantly with the successfulness of results. But neither one of these can invalidate a positive result, because NO training method for participants can produce a false positive, as there is no conventional physical mechanism by which a false positive can be obtained given their experimental setup.
Also, having different operator database sizes simply means some participants participated in the experiment more often than other participants. This says nothing about the protocol, it simply says they were not trying to keep each participant limited to an equal number of runs. Critics who have actually visited that lab have failed repeatedly to find any specific problems with their experimental protocol.
And "small signal to noise" does NOT mean that the data is too weak to draw conclusions, it only means that large datasets must be considered to draw statistical conclusions, and so it is not meaningful to consider very small datasets. Just above you were trying to accuse them of using small datasets, when in fact they are saying outright that they cannot use small datasets, and you are just failing to understand what they are saying.
Re:More study needed... (Score:2, Interesting)
But if I modify your example about the coin toss a little it would be closer to what I am talking about.
You have a dream that you are talking to a friend and that the two of you decide that the only way to settle a dispute is with a coin toss. And in your dream you say to your friend... "If I flip this coin 42 times and if all of them are heads then I am right and you are wrong." Then in your dream you flip the coin 42 times and every toss is heads and you both agree the dispute is settled.
Now you wake up from this dream and tell a friend for yours about your weird coin toss dream and all the details about what kind of coin it was and what the dispute was about, etc. every detail you can remember.
Later that day you and your friend are sitting in a cafe and next to you are two guys having a discussion. You and your friend begin to listen in because the topic is similar to the topic you discussed in your dream. Then one guy says to the other... The only way to settle this is with a coin toss... and if I flip 42 heads in a row, I win. He does and your friend looks at you and says... Wow, that was your dream.
That is similar to what happened to me. Only mine had to do with a certain section of highway with a certain kind of car (color, model, etc.) an exact number of police cars, a very specific crash sequence, etc. So many details that seem to take it outside the realm of coincidence.
Re:Extraordinary evidence is needed (Score:3, Interesting)
Science isn't about an absolute objective truth. It has axioms, and it has theories that are tested. As long as observation is consistent with assumptions, it's pretty hunky dory, though to be useful to build new theories with, it has to be falsifiable too (The assertion of an invisible rhinoceros in my living room isn't falsifiable for example, the theory of how it got there and what makes it invisible is).
There's a lot of parts of science that are untested, sure. It's why science doesn't claim to have an ultimate truth, much like so many other belief systems. There's lots of scientists who believe it to be The One True Way to objective truth, sure, but that's largely an idealistic view of new students. Most of the veterans of science are quite happy with the idea that we answer questions in order to come up with more interesting questions.