[ExI] Psi in a major science journal, J. Personality and Social Psychology.

[John Clark]

On Oct 20, 2010, at 7:29 PM, Damien Broderick wrote:

>  Isabelle Hakala wrote:
> 
>> I *did* read the paper, at least through the end of the first experiment, and honestly, unless they post the CODE for the program, there is no way to know if there is a cheat involved.... Since the program chooses the placement of the picture AFTER the person inputs where they feel it will be, that could be RIFE for cheating.
> 
> Where does this hermeneutics of suspicion cease? Suppose I obtained the code for you, what would you do with it?

I would try doing the experiment for myself using that code; if I had nothing better to do with my time that is, but I do, watching Sesame Street.

> And if you examined it closely and found it acceptable, how would you know that some evil scientist hadn't just *pretended* to use that code while really just typing out 65 pages of invented results

I would know who is telling the truth and who is lying (or is just incompetent) when lots of people who are known to have done good work in the past repeat the experiment and obtain similar data; and as this experiment is very cheap and easy to perform and the conclusions drawn from the results are claimed to be unambiguous this does not seem to me to be a onerous request in any way.  

> I'm serious. What would satisfy you? What *could* satisfy you in this instance?

An article describing a repetition of the experiment and a confirmation of Bem's results published in Science, Nature or Physical Review Letters would satisfy me. Otherwise it's just some guy who typed some stuff.

  John K Clark

  





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