There is a guy on the radio here who had a PhD in Parapsychology. He's got all sorts of crazy conspiracy theories and thinks just about everything is haunted. I can't stand him. Where does one obtain a degree in Parapsychology?

There's a lot of 'research' on precognition. All published in 'parapsychology' and 'psychical research'. Not worth a thing. Certainly there's genuine research into the topic, but you can make an educated guess as to the outcomes of what it finds.

I didn't look into Tarot or Palms, which might be interesting. It's likely it falls under the topics of luck and/or superstition. I'll have a poker around and see what's there.

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As for getting a PhD in Parapsychology - see this comprehensive list :

http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070906174058AAnVjk1

Some are akin to scribbling 'Parapsychology' in crayon on crete paper and wearing your underpants on your head.

Anything worth its salt is a PhD in Psychology, with maybe an elective in 'Parapsychology' or just a general research history of it. In which case you can expect to be looking at microexpressions, mirror neurons, somatic markers and other interesting non-verbal capacities (I should think); I'm hardly an expert.

@Jade - My husband and I do exactly the same thing. As you say it's just a side effect of knowing someone far too well!  We spend most of our time together, I know what his emotional responses or opinions generally are so it's not surprising that we often have moments where it feels like we are inside each others heads.  I swear sometimes we have whole conversations just by looking at each other! It would be much more interesting if two people who had never met could consistently do this, then I might start to believe it.

When I was younger and maybe a bit more gullible I always used to get really freaked out by strange conicidences or supernatural things (still do a bit though I rationalise it much better in my own head now), my Dad always used to burst my bubble by talking about the probability of certain things happening, like the exact song I'm singing being on the radio when I turn it on etc. What a party pooper! But he was likely very right!

Yeah, that is an interesting thought. I wonder what it is - but I'm going to hazard a guess and say there's not much literature (at least not much that's generalizable) because something like that, I imagine, would be very hard to manipulate. I'll have a look into it.

Regarding your second last line - food for thought - opposite what? What might be opposite that facilitates the attraction?

There's a lot of 'research' on precognition. All published in 'parapsychology' and 'psychical research'. Not worth a thing. Certainly there's genuine research into the topic, but you can make an educated guess as to the outcomes of what it finds.

God, you are an ignorant no nothing scientician. I use the term scientician as you don't appear to be assessing the evidence, rather reacting based on your own beliefs and when they are contradicted, ignoring this evidence.

See the recent paper in PLOS One for details on that with stockbrokers.

For the people who come here genuinely seeking some kind of insight, there are a number of meta-analyses on psi phenomena, make of them what you will.

http://dbem.ws/FeelingFuture.pdf

There was a recent meta-analysis of free choice psi experiments (the ganzfeld technique) and the link to that is here:http://www.psy.unipd.it/~tressold/cmssimple/uploads/includes/MetaFreeResp010.pdf

while Hyman's critique is here http://tinyurl.com/33ofpbk

Older meta-analyses include the one by Utts (which also has an interesting discussion on the history of statistics - http://www.jstor.org/pss/2245728

Sense of being stared at meta-analysis: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpsoc/bjp/2004/00000095/00000002/art00007

The 1985 meta-analyses by Honorton and Hyman with opposite results are a wonderful demonstration of the subjectivity of meta-analysis.

Also, it may also be worth noting that the Society for Psychical Research was founded by some of the greatest names in victorian science, and pioneered statistical analysis of experiments back when this was a novelty.

I don't expect others to share my views totally, but it sickens me to see someone who claims to be a scientist dismissing evicdence because it doesnt suit his preconceived notions of the world.

If we were all like that, Einstein would have stayed a patent office clerk, which would have been tragic.

First, I'm a little confused. disgruntledphd appears to be a geniune scienceblogger, and used to correspond back when I was primarily at psycasm.com.

Second, I must point out I'm not a scientist, but one who aspires to be so. In that manner I promise to read those articles and reply in my blog (hopefully) by Monday (I will not be writing another post until this has been given fair treatment). Following that reasoning I must point out that I'm prepared to be demonstrated wrong. I will, to the best of my ability, critically analyse those articles. However I will say that meta-analysis are only as good as the studies they compile, and so digging through the back references may take some time. I will do what I can.

Having said that - if I can find a meaningful degree of positive evidence for pre-cognition, psi, or mind-reading, if I fail to find any meaningful methodological or statistical errors, or fail to demonstrate why the evidence is in favour of our [Humans] lack of psi abilities, I will wear a tin-foil hat for a whole day [with pictures as evidence].

I mean, I'll have to, right? It would be unwise not to...

Hi Rift,

I don't know what you mean by "confirmation bias". Can you explain?

In these cases, an event occured in real life after I dreamed it. In one case it was only 3 days later so it was very fresh in my mind.

On opposites attract, what attracts? I don't know. Many people say my guy and I are complete opposites. I think probably when it comes to relationships, it is far more complicated because relationships with our mothers and fathers have a big impact on our choice of spouse. And our self-esteem also. And our past relationships. And maybe your hormone level at the time you are looking as well.

I am talking about - have you ever met someone and instantly knew you would be friends or just immediately felt comfortable with them?  But then there are people who you meet and you know you just don't have chemistry. My second postdoc PI was that way. As soon as we met, I knew we were opposites but not in a good way.

If Disgruntled wants to post the PLoS paper link, that would be interesting.

"Well, you dream every night, then something similiar happened"

No- it wasn't similar. It was exact. Down to the sounds outside, the man watering his grass, the kid on the bike, the shirt I was wearing, and the conversation we were having. It was exactly the same.

I don't often remember my dreams but that one was lucid.

Fair warning. Between working my way through the references and tackling my exams, I will be later than monday in replying.

I hope to make some interesting points...

To be honest, I'm busy with disgruntledphd's questions atm - as well as all my own study (exams, exams, exams). I'm not sure what the exact nature of deja vu is and why it occurs - but I have read that it's unique in that it's one of the few instances that the brain 'malfunctions' and we're aware of it doing so. Normally if we 'malfunction' (such as forget, misremember, perceive improperly) we're not aware of it.

Though I'm sticking with my line, based on what I know the evidence to be. There's really no such thing as psi-phenomenon, and this includes precognition, tarot, telekenesis, remote viewing, and all of that...

These questions (more broadly, as well as how they relate to disgruntled) will be addressed very shortly in my next post. As you can imagine, it's going to be a little lengthy - but hopefully outlines the validity of my position and that of skeptical / scientific perspective generally (at least as it relates to psychology - I can't be sure of the nuances that exist for other fields).

Done.

http://blog.pascallisch.net/?p=180

It is interesting how much interest this paper already generated. I signed up to do a journal club in our department on it about two weeks ago, and I just presented it. Here is my report.

Deja vu: Long story. It is neither. I still have to publish that...

It follows from the definition of psi effects. If the results are real (a big IF), how else would you explain that studying AFTER a test will make you better when taking it? If that is true, precognition seems parsimonious. It challenges the cause/effect relationship, our understanding of temporal order in the universe, etc.

Given our understanding of causality, anything that you do AFTER the fact should have no influence on the outcome whatsoever. But (according to Bem), it does. In 9 different experiments. So what is going on?

That is my assessment as well (I pointed that out towards the end). We need to test the same person on multiple tasks. The stimulus seeker scale suggests that these are the same people. The priming data suggests that they are not. The data they did collect can not speak to the issue.

Thank you. Well, what can I say? I presented this at our journal club and discussed it with quite a few people. I am a "sceptic" myself, but in the scientific sense. So I agree that the evidence is the evidence and should - in doubt - prevail. To my surprise, quite a few of my colleagues said that this is impossible. Period. No matter the evidence.

Tideliar: That was my attitude until I read the paper. Show me the flaw in the design. Then we'll talk.

The data is the data.

Summary here: http://blog.pascallisch.net/?p=180

Given the results, what do you think can account for them? Bem made it up?

Sorry man. It *is* rather long. But not as long as the original paper, which runs at 61 pages. I tried to condense as much as possible without losing and relevant information. There are 9 individual experiments to cover.

What irks me is that I would like to dismiss this as much as anyone, but I cannot come up with a coherent alternative explanation. If this data was presented for any other effect, we would accept it at face value and commend the author on his technical rigor (replicating 9 x with different paradigms, using a hardware random number generator, etc.)

Anyway. The germ theory thing is just a justification why it cannot be dismissed out of hand. When Galileo begged his detractors to look through his telescope to see the sunspots for themselves, they refused. Their argument: How can we know that the devil isn't in the thing and makes us see crazy stuff?

I think I treated both sides fairly. In my graph at the end, I fall somewhere on the left. I can be convinced, but it takes a lot of evidence.

Small effects are not by themselves a problem. We get that all the time in Psychology, particulary social psych.

Or in neuroscience, for that matter. Choice probabilities are usually only 0.52 to 0.55 (with 0.5) the expectation.

What matters is the p value. And that is fairly low, particularly for their priming experiments.

The cumulative p value for all 9 of their expts is very, very low.

Nothing that I can think of would account for this.

Could Bem have skewed the data somehow, due to the fact that he performed as a mentalist (and is a member of the Psychic Entertainer's Association - see link below) for many years before this research was conducted in the early 90's? I think that there is a definite element of bias that comes into play here. Just a touch.

The paper that you are referring to Pascal, is in part a rehashed, republished paper that first appeared in Psychological Bulletin vol. 115, in 1994 - http://www.dina.dk/~abraham/psy1.html - many of the statistics at the beginning of his 2010 paper, and indeed the opening paragraphs, are lifted from that initial paper and reworded some way. This is old information, repackaged to keep a debate alive.

One cannot eliminate the bias here, Pascal. It would be ludicrous to lean on the apparent strength of evidence without replicating these experiments and getting the same results. Bem has his livelihood as a psychic entertainer at stake. What results do you think he was going to come up with? In light of this, his results need to be more exraordinary than would normally be demanded.

Those are some interesting points - I recently posted a rebuttal to those findings. I'd be interested in your opinions on that, as well as your direct critiques of the paper in question.

http://www.labspaces.net/blog/863/_sigh__Psi__A_Rebuttal