ESP
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[edit] Definition
Extrasensory Perception (often abbreviated ESP) refers to the paranormal ability of perceiving things without using the standard senses such as the five traditional senses of sight, hearing, taste, touch, or smell (and a few others well-known to science such as balance, proprioperception, &c). Under this rather broad heading is included such paranormal phenomena as clairvoyance ("seeing" distant scenes or objects), telepathy (reading another person's thoughts or transmitting thoughts to another person), precognition ("seeing" the future), second sight (the ability to "see" things that are not normally visible, such as ghosts, fairies, or people's auras).
Parapsychology is the term commonly used for the study of certain types of paranormal phenomena. It was coined by psychologist Max Dessoir about 1889. It first featured in print when Dessoir wrote an article in the June 1889 issue of the German publication Sphinx. Joseph Banks Rhine later popularized the term as a replacement for the earlier expression "psychical research", during a shift in methodologies which brought experimental methods to the study of psychic phenomena.
In contemporary parapsychology, the term refers to the study of 'psi', the name given to any anomalies that are thought to indicate psychic phenomena.
[edit] History
The origins of psychic claims go back centuries. Herodotus writes about the Oracle at Delphi predicting the defeat of the king of Lydia. The predictions of Nostradamus from the 16th century have also been cited as evidence of precognition.
The idea of formally studying psychic phenomena seems to have originated with the spiritualist E. Dawson Rogers, who hoped to increase the respectability of spiritualism. The Society for Psychical Research (SPR) was founded in London in 1882, and by 1887 eight members of the British Royal Society served on its council. Soon after, many spiritualists are said to have left the SPR due to the skepticism within the SPR about some prominent mediums. However, the SPR continued its research, publishing its finding periodically in its Proceedings. Other societies were soon set up in most countries in Europe, and the American SPR was founded in 1885.
For several years both SPRs simply amassed interesting tales of alleged psychic occurrences. Some of the early SPR research involved testing the abilities of specific mediums and other "gifted individuals" with claimed psychic abilities, but there were also some experiments involving card guessing and dice throwing. Largely through the efforts of the London society's one-time president William McDougall (a respected social psychologist), the study of psychic phenomena was brought into the science laboratory. It was not until the development of statistical tools by R. A. Fisher and others in the 1920s that modern experimental parapsychology came into its own, with the efforts of J. B. Rhine and others. The world's first experimental parapsychology unit was established at Duke University, North Carolina, in 1927 (later to become the independent Rhine Research Center).
Their work had several aims: to provide parapsychology with a systematic, progressive program of sound experimentation, rather than merely trying to prove the existence of psychic phenomena; to gain academic status and scientific recognition and to show that psychic ability was not restricted to a few gifted individuals, but was widespread, and perhaps latent in everyone. Skeptics were soon questioning how successful Rhine and others were in achieving these aims.
Rhine also helped found the Journal of Parapsychology in 1937 and the Parapsychological Association (PA) in 1957. As well as this, Rhine coined the term "extra-sensory perception", it being the title of a paper he published in 1934.
The PA affiliation - and an increased permissiveness regarding psychic and occult phenomena in the 1970s - led to a marked increase in parapsychological research. Other organizations were formed; the Academy of Parapsychology and Medicine (1970), the Institute of Parascience (1971), the Academy of Religion and Psychical Research, the Institute for Noetic Sciences (1973), and the International Kirlian Research Association (1975). Each of these bodies performed experiments to some extent. Parapsychological work was also conducted at the Stanford Research Institute, California around this time.
[edit] Parapsychological Claims
The scientific reality of parapsychological phenomena and the validity of parapsychological research is a matter of continued dispute and criticism. It is regarded by some critics as a pseudoscience, but proponents claim that parapsychology research results are scientifically rigorous. Despite criticisms, a number of academic institutions now conduct research on the topic, employing laboratory methodologies and statistical techniques, such as meta-analysis. The Parapsychological Association (PA) was made an affiliate of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 1969, largely due to the influence of AAAS member Margaret Mead.
It is claimed by some in the field that at least a small amount of data from properly controlled experiments can be trusted and is indicative of some kind of psi phenomena. Other parapsychologists believe that this evidence is not definitive, but suggestive enough to warrant further research. Others believe that a great deal of evidence has been collected, which, if it addressed more conventional phenomena, would be seen as sufficient to provide proof in any orthodox field of science.
A typical researcher in parapsychology is Dean I. Radin who has written:
- "After being engaged in the scientific investigation of such phenomena for 25 years, I've become convinced that some psychic experiences are genuine. Of course the topic is exploited for entertainment purposes, and there are always unscrupulous individuals who falsely claim psychic abilities, so I understand why many scientists avoid this topic. Nevertheless, because the laboratory evidence shows that some psychic effects can be repeatedly observed under controlled conditions, these phenomena require an expansion to prevailing scientific models of who and what we are. I've also learned that those who are most hostile to this topic know little or nothing about it, and that the hostility is usually motivated by fundamentalist beliefs of the scientistic or religious kind."
[edit] The Best Evidence
Radin believes some compelling positive results have been achieved in a variety of parapsychological fields. Some experiments have tested the ability to use ESP to get above-average scores when guessing targets such as cards, pictures, or videos. There have also been many ganzfeld experiments testing the ability to influence random number generators. Many of these experiments have allegedly had positive results, with subjects scoring significantly above chance. Other studies have returned results which are not significantly above chance, which is usually defined as a 95% confidence interval. However, when results of positive, negative, and inconclusive studies are combined in meta-analyses, they tend to return highly significant results in favor of the existence of ESP. Although statistical significance is high, the results do not seem impressive to many, because the effect size is often only a few percentage points above chance. For instance, where in a four choice task chance = 25%, an alleged psychic may score between 33% and 37%.
Proponents claim that controlled parapsychological laboratory research, often using meta-analyses of many experiments performed by different researchers, has yielded the following:
- Clairvoyance and telepathy experiments: several categories of experiments ranging from ESP card tests, to dream and ganzfeld telepathy studies, to remote viewing and PEAR precognitive remote perception studies, all normalized for chance hit rate of 50%, the categories range from about 54% to 67% hit rate, averaging about 60%.
- Dice throwing: 51.2% hit rate (chance rate: 50%) over 148 experiments from 1935 to 1987, involving thousands of participants and millions of throws.
- Random Number Generator (RNG) studies: 51% hit rate (chance rate: 50%) over 832 studies from 1959 to 1987 (1989 analysis).
- The on-going PEAR (Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research) program, started at Princeton University in 1979, analyzed millions of random bits. They found a small deviation from the 50% chance expectation, of the order of 0.01%. While this effect is tiny, it is statistically significant: with 7 standard deviations, the probability that the origin of the effect is a statistical oddity (odds against chance) is around 10 − 12.
- Distant mental influence on human electrodermal activity: 53% (chance rate: 50%), over 400 sessions as of 1997.
- Feeling of being stared at: 63% (chance rate: 50%) over studies from 1913 to 1996.
- Some experiments have tested the ability to foretell future events, both consciously, and unconsciously by using electrodes to measure galvanic skin responses to future stimuli, and have obtained positive results.
The odds against chance alone accounting for many of these statistical outcomes are extremely high, often ranging from one in thousands to one in trillions, i.e. statistically large effects.
Other experiments aimed at detecting psi, especially those performed by experimenters or subjects who disbelieve in psi, have scored significantly below chance. This is called psi-missing, and is considered further evidence for the existence of psi, since any deviation from chance may be significant.
Even some skeptics, such as Ray Hyman, say that some parapsychological studies may have merit:
- "I have argued that the case for the existence of anomalous cognition is still shaky, at best. On the other hand, I want to state that I believe that the SAIC [Science Applications International Corporation] experiments as well as the contemporary ganzfeld experiments display methodological and statistical sophistication well above previous parapsychological research. Despite better controls and careful use of statistical inference, the investigators seem to be getting significant results that do not appear to derive from the more obvious flaws of previous research."
Proponents of parapsychology generally argue that those who hold critical views are not familiar with the published literature of the field, such as that found in the Journal of Parapsychology, the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, or in the proceedings of the annual convention of the Parapsychological Association. Skeptics are accused of having relied on analyses made by other members of the skeptical community, who are themselves accused of assuming that all parapsychological experiments suffer from flaws, and therefore no parapsychological result can be considered conclusive. Active psi researchers claim to welcome criticisms which are not psychologically or ideologically biased and which are based on knowledge of the peer-reviewed, published literature in the field.
[edit] Parapsychology as a Premature Science
A common idea running through the literature on the paranormal is that disciplines like parapsychology are simply ahead of their time. Comparisons are often made with other recognised premature theories, like the heliocentric theory and Alfred Wegener's theory of continental drift.
Parapsychologists have stated that the anomalies they claim to have discovered will eventually generate pressure within orthodox science - and lead to a paradigm shift in scientific knowledge (as, for example, when Newtonian mechanics came under the umbrella of Einsteinian mechanics). Thomas S. Kuhn, author of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, who popularised the term 'paradigm' in this context, has been referenced to support such an idea.
Parapsychologists claim that their findings to date are significant and are generating pressure for change, but they argue that the real importance of this pressure is being ignored within mainstream science because of scientific dogmatism.
[edit] Skeptical Responses
[edit] Statistical Evidence
Skeptics have noted how significantly the overall field of evidence has shrunk - grandiose and impressive feats involving dire predictions, levitation, mind reading, contact with the dead, etc. no longer form part of the core evidence. Instead, the best evidence relies on effectively non-observable factors and interpreting their significance using statistical analyses.
The lack of tangible effects is disappointing and, in a similar way, statistical anomalies seem weak. In spite of the claims that meta-analyses have produced results that should make people sit up and take notice, skeptics remain unimpressed. Moreover, skeptics claim that many meta-analyses are flawed in their attempts to control for the file-drawer effect. A meta-analysis is no better than the statistical tools used to undertake it, and skeptics allege that parapsychologists often use the wrong tools in the wrong way. [1]
Critics have also said parapsychology suffers from what is called the "psi assumption": Just because there exist allegedly inexplicable positive results gained from apparently sound experiments does not prove the existence of psi. Rather, the assumption that any statistical deviation from chance is, strictly speaking, only evidence that either this was a rare, statistically unlikely occurrence that happened by chance, or that something was causing a deviation from chance. Flaws in the experimental design are a common cause of this, and so the assumption that it must be psi is fallacious.
Skeptics believe that there would be little benefit in continuing parapsychological research on this basis.
[edit] Fraud
Many mediums, psychics, spritualists, etc. who have had good reputations have been exposed as fraudulent by the likes of Harry Houdini. Others have been strongly suspected of cheating. Critics say that some of the positive results of parapsychological experiments are probably due to fraud. Though parapsychologists point to the rigour of research methods and the peer-reviewed journals in the field, skeptics have maintained that research has been dogged by deception, fraud, and incompetence in both the setting up of properly controlled experiments and in evaluating statistical data.
A notorious case of fraud occurred in the 1940s - the Soal-Goldney experiments. The parapsychological community and others outside it often cited this work as convincing evidence of precognition. It was a serious blow to parapsychology's standing when analyses decades later confirmed previous suspicions that Dr. Samuel G. Soal had doctored his original score sheets in telepathy tests.
More recently (1979), James Randi trained two young magicians with the specific aim of exposing poor experimental methods and credulity thought to be common in parapsychology (dubbed 'Project Alpha'). Both of Randi's trainees reportedly managed to deceive experimenters at Washington University's McDonnell Laboratory for Psychical Research, St. Louis, Missouri, over many hours of experiments.
On other occasions, the remarkable naivety of researchers has been exposed. Professor John Hasted of London's Birkbeck college tested the paranormal metal-bending skills of children using glass spheres and paper clips. One child, "Andrew G.", produced globes containing an entangled mass of bent paper clips, which Hasted apparently viewed as compelling evidence of psychokinetic ability. However, the glass globes had a hole in them (no bending occurred using a completely enclosed sphere) and clips were never seen to bend in front of researchers. It emerged that the children could even take the globes home to do the bending (tests showed how easy it was to replicate the results by putting bent clips through the hole and allowing them to intertwine naturally). Such serious methodological failures have been cited by skeptics as evidence of the probability that most if not all parapsychological results derive from error or fraud of some kind.
[edit] Psychological and Cultural factors
Skeptics, as well as citing instances of fraud, flawed or potentially flawed studies, also point to the psychological need for mysticism as a way to explain parapsychological results. Psychology professor David G. Myers has written:
- "Why, then, are so many people predisposed to believe that ESP exists? In part, such beliefs may stem from understandable misperceptions, misinterpretations, and selective recall. But some people also have an unsatisfied hunger for wonderment, an itch to experience the magical. In Britain and the United States, the founders of parapsychology were mostly people who, having lost their religious faith, began searching for a scientific basis for believing in the meaning of life and in life after death."
Skeptic (and former parapsychologist) Susan Blackmore also states that:
- "People's desire to believe in the paranormal is stronger than all the evidence that it does not exist."
Even 'insiders' in the parapsychological community worry about the possible harm that naive belief in paranormal phenomena can have on individuals, culture and societies. A great deal of effort has been put into the development of expertise in dealing with reported experiences both in a clinical sense, and as a topic of investigation. J.B. Rhine warned that the 'occult wave' which became prominent in the Western countries during the seventies and included acupuncture, Kirlian photography and astrology, was very dangerous for the image of parapsychology as an experimental science. He also wrote:
- "Parapsychologists had better give some thought to the fact that their kind of psi is no longer nearly as securely under their own social control as in the past. The time has come when we who work with psi need to decide whether we really do know where we belong and just what our territory is... Is there any other experimental science that rests on such a slight basis of uniformity and standardization?"
One point raised by both proponents and skeptics of parapsychology is the need to be critical of the theory, methods, and conclusions of all persons who investigate or comment on parapsychology as a science, no matter what point of view they represent. In order to be an objective professional, a commentator must understand the vast past and present published scientific literature in the field of parapsychology, have a respect for the art of conjuring and its masters, and an unbiased attitude. Selective and historically uninformed armchair cheerleading and armchair skepticism are equally useless in all fields of inquiry and science.
[edit] Lack of Theory
Despite the alleged positive results of psi experiments, parapsychology remains highly controversial, partially due to the lack of a theory which explains its results - even after a century of serious study.
Much effort has been made to establish supporting theories, notably utilizing the theories of modern physics. Physicist and Nobel Laureate Professor Brian Josephson went as far to observe (in The Iceland Papers):
- "It is not too far fetched to say that if psychic phenomena had not been found experimentally, they might have been predicted by an imaginative theoretician."
Most scientists disagree, alleging that parapsychologists and others have made illegitimate use of well established scientific theories in their somewhat desperate eforts to underpin the subject with a plausible theory. Many ideas in physics have been invoked to explain or justify the existence of putative psi phenomena: Relativity theory and the concept of simultaneity; the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) paradox; time reversal; tachyons and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle - the latter having been used to explain negative results ('experimenter', 'shyness' and 'sheep-goat' effects). As James E. Alcock has noted:
- "Ideas emanating from modern physics are often pushed to great lengths to support a belief in parapsychology, and such ideas may appear convincing to the individual totally unfamiliar with relativity and quantum mechanics."
However, Alcock and others have maintained that:
- "Casual, almost flippant, references to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle are often used to suggest that at the sub-atomic level determinacy breaks down, and that physics and metaphysics merge into one. Most parapsychologists... appear to "latch on" to Heisenberg as a way of demonstrating the "scientific" basis for their position".
Even some parapsychologists have stated that modern physics should not be used to explain psi, and that difficult issues, like the EPR paradox, do not necessarily require a psi explanation:
- "Modern physics, to be sure, is concerned with phenomena which can be as bizarre at first as psi, and the two can sometimes resemble each other on a superficial level. But on closer inspection, the physics problems turn out to be comprehensible within a powerful and coherent set of ideas which have brilliantly withstood years of testing."
Others have been more scathing in their criticism. In 1979, physicist John Archibald Wheeler was invited to speak at the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He chose to lecture on a topic on which he had frequently expounded - quantum theory and observation. Because Wheeler was sharing a platform with speakers who had pro-paranormal views he was concerned that the audience would think that all the speakers condoned each other's views. He closed his speech thus:
- "And let no one use the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen experiment to claim that information can be transmitted faster than light, or to postulate any "quantum interconnectedness" between separate consciousnesses. Both are baseless. Both are mysticism. Both are moonshine."
Wheeler wrote two appendices to the transcript of his speech including one titled Drive the pseudos out of the workshop of science. In both, Wheeler attacks what he saw as the flagrant abuse of his and many physicists' 'honest' work. He refers to the "buzz of absolutely crazy ideas put forth with the aim of establishing a link between quantum mechanics and parapsychology - as if there was any such thing as 'parapsychology'." In a letter written at the same time, he asked the American Association for the Advancement of Science to reconsider whether it should have any connections with parapsychological research.
[edit] Isolation of Parapsychology
There are claims that, because parapsychology has attracted researchers from biology, physics, psychology, etc., it is an interdisciplinary field. However, as Alcock has noted:
- "Physicists and paraphysicists do not overlap in their research. Physicists do not find it necessary to turn to the parapsychological literature to gain insight into problems that they are working on, nor do psychologists".
Though Brian Josephson suggested that imaginative physicists might have predicted the existence of psychic forces, his view is not shared by the rest of the scientific community. Psi phenomena do not appear to interfere with the work of other scientists. Particle physicists have seen no need to invoke "experimenter" or "shyness" effects to explain anomalous observations: they are not confronted with phenomena that are produced only when a certain physicist wants them to be reproduced, nor do they have to keep people skeptical of quantum physics out of the laboratory. Moreover, skeptics have argued, if physicists, for example, did not read the parapsychological literature, they would be unaware of any psi observations that supposedly require an explanation.
Skeptics point to the isolation of parapsychology within science to bolster their claim that whilst parapsychologists may not be practicing bad science, they may be searching for and trying to study non-existent phenomena.
[edit] A Premature Science?
Skeptics claim that Thomas Kuhn's work is misinterpreted by parapsychologists: According to Kuhn, the pressure for paradigm change usually comes from within orthodox science rather than from fringe or isolated researchers. Anomalies accepted as such by those within a given field are the ones that generate a pressure that leads to major change. The problem for parascientists is that there has been no pressure within any scientific field - psychology, physics, neuroscience, etc. - to suggest that a paradigm shift is needed to account for any anomalies that could be called paranormal phenomena. Physicist M. A. Rothman has written:
- "The major difficulty with the notion that parapsychology is going to produce a paradigm revolution in physics is the fact that most physicists are not unhappy with basic laws... The parapsychologists may be dissatisfied, but that does not produce a revolution in physics."
Comparisons with Wegener's continental drift theory, first proposed in 1912 but not universally embraced within science until the 1960s, are dubious. Parapsychologists have claimed that mistakes, arrogance and suppressive forces were at work, thus unjustly preventing Wegener's theory from being accepted. They infer that parapsychology is being similarly suppressed today. However, the main reason Wegener's theory was not validated sooner was because essential corroborative evidence was not available until suitable technology (deep water sonar) was developed in the 1960s. Skeptics point out that convincing corroborative evidence soon emerges within most legitimate sciences - even new ones - but such evidence has not emerged in the case of parapsychology after a century of study.
[edit] Where Are All The Rich Psychics?
It has been suggested that psychics could make a lot of money predicting future results or even controlling (via psychokinesis) the outcomes of boxing matches, football games, roulette wheel spins, individual stock price changes, and so on, but none of them seem to do so. This, argue skeptics, is a strong indication that psychic powers do not exist.
To date, mainstream science maintains that no scientifically validated and accepted demonstration of ESP (in any form) has taken place. The James Randi Educational Foundation offers a million dollar prize for such a demonstration and it is still waiting to be claimed.
[edit] Noted Psychical Researchers or Parapsychologists
- Hans Bender
- Giuseppe Calligaris
- William Crookes
- Max Dessoir
- Charles Honorton
- Stanley Krippner
- Oliver Lodge
- Thelma Moss
- Julian Ochorowicz
- John Palmer
- Charles Panati
- Harry Price
- Dean I. Radin
- Joseph B. Rhine
- Charles Robert Richet
- D. Scott Rogo
- William G. Roll
- Carl Sargent
- Helmut Schmidt (parapsychologist)
- Gary Schwartz
- Ian Stevenson
- Ingo Swann
- Charles Tart
- Jessica Utts
[edit] Noted Skeptics of Parapsychology
- James E. Alcock
- Banachek
- Susan Blackmore
- Derren Brown
- Milbourne Christopher
- Paul Daniels, UK magician
- Persi Diaconis, US statistician and magician
- Martin Gardner
- Ray Hyman
- James Randi
- Marcello Truzzi (deceased)
- Richard Wiseman
- Harry Houdini (Ehrich Weiss)
[edit] References
James E. Alcock Parapsychology: Science or Magic?, Pergamon Press, 1981
Martin Gardner Science, Good,Bad and Bogus, Prometheus Books, 1981
Dean I. Radin The Conscious Universe: The Scientific Truth of Psychic Phenomena, Harper Edge, ISBN 0-06-251502-0
Dean I. Radin Entangled Minds , Simon & Schuster, Paraview Pocket Books , 2006
www.deanradin.com
James Randi The Skeptical Inquirer, 'The Project Alpha Experiment: Part one - The First Two Years', Summer, 1983
Scott, C. and Haskell, P. (1973) "Normal" explanation of the Soal-Goldney Experiments in extra-sensory perception, Nature, 245, 53-54
