[extropy-chat] Bayes, crackpots and psi

[John K Clark]

Some Bozo in New Scientist wrote:

> For years, well-designed studies carried out by researchers at
> respected institutions have produced evidence for the reality of ESP.

Seeing such words in print don't make it so

> The results are often more impressive than the outcome of clinical
> drug  trials

Ah., if you look at recent headlines that's not exactly a glowing
testimonial.

> In short, by all the normal rules for assessing scientific evidence, the
> case for ESP has been made.

I can say it even shorter, BALONEY.

> And yet most scientists still refuse to believe the findings,
> maintaining  that ESP simply does not exist.

That is the exact same song the ESP people have been singing for well over a
century and except for the name in all that time absolutely nothing has
changed, the evidence sucked then and it sucks now. Look at the letters
Arthur Conan Doyle wrote to Harry Houdini, Doyle was complaining
scientists were too narrow minded to embrace ESP . Doyle even thought
Houdini was using real magic in his act and wouldn't believe him when
Houdini insisted he was just an entertainer performing illusions.
Sherlock Holmes would have been embarrassed by the naivety his creator.

If there was anything to this alleged phenomenon you'd expect it to be at
least a little better accepted by now; but if there was nothing to it I'd
expect to see exactly what I do see, cranks still love it and science still
hates it.  Absolutely positively nothing has changed, zip, nada, zilch,
zero.

> the response of skeptics has been the same: whatever was responsible for
> the positive findings, it cannot be ESP. Something else must have
> happened:
> some flaw in the experiment, say, or a slip-up in the data analysis.
> Perhaps even fraud.

A fortune teller committing fraud? NEVER! The very idea is inconceivable,
and the researchers in this field are always so careful!

  John K Clark     jonkc at att.net