[ExI] Alcock on Bem in Skeptical Inquirer.

[Damien Broderick]

On 12/7/2010 10:48 AM, John Clark wrote:

>> Well, confirming doesn't work either, as Popper showed.

> Popper did some good stuff but I'm much less a fan than I once was.

I'm surprised that you'd kvetch about this particular point. 
"Confirming" doesn't settle anything, because often a number of 
explanations lead to the same prediction or expectation. That's why it 
is helpful to try to falsify each one in a test that leaves one or more 
of the alternatives standing. In fact, I would expect you to be arguing 
that proponents of psi are guilty of the confirmation error, since (you 
might claim) they assume that the statistical and other errors they 
stupidly make confirm psi rather than their incompetence as 
experimenters. Of course you'd then have to show what those errors are, 
which is difficult when you refuse to waste your time reading the 
experimental reports.

Damien Broderick