[ExI] Alcock on Bem in Skeptical Inquirer

[Stefano Vaj]

2010/12/5 John Clark <jonkc at bellsouth.net>

> The tipoff that something was wrong was when Bem said his goal was “to
> provide well-controlled demonstrations of psi"; so if his experiment did not
> give evidence for psi then he figured there must be something wrong with his
> methodology so he kept changing it until he got something compatible with
> his goal. His goal should have been to find out the truth about psi
> regardless of how painful and incompatible with previous beliefs that may
> be.ù
>

Come on.

I am still perplexed on the results of such experiments (my only personal
inclination is to give some credit to non-quantistic telepathic phenomena),
but nobody would ever dream of criticising per se an effort "to provide
well-controlled demonstrations of proton decay" or "of the life-extension
effects of caloric restriction".

Most discoveries originate anyway from experimental attempts, including
failed attempts, to demonstrate a given hypothesis the experimenter is
interested in.

--
Stefano Vaj
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