Dean Radin: Consciousness influence over matter and physical devices

 

Dean Radin, PhD on the logical structure of invalid criticisms. A commentary on Radin's insight for other fields of rational inquiry

Dean Radin, one of the world's leading experimental parapsychologists, has provided a cogent explanation of the scientific structure  and properties of valid and invalid criticisms. In this article, Radin comments:

It is commonly thought that all criticisms in science are equal. This is not so. In fact, criticisms must have two properties to be valid. First, it must be controlled, meaning that the criticism cannot also apply to well-accepted scientific disciplines. In other words, we cannot use a double standard and apply one set of criticisms to fledgling topics and an entirely different set for established disciplines. If we did, nothing new could ever be accepted as legitimate. Second, a criticism must be testable, meaning that a critic has to specify the conditions under which the research could avoid the criticism, otherwise the objection is just a philosophical argument that falls outside the realm of science.

Keep in mind that Radin is postulating two properties which are necessary and sufficient for a criticism to be valid, namely, that it be controlled and testable. As consequence, a criticism will be invalid it doesn't satisfy at least one of both conditions.

So, Radin comments "Some skeptics have protested that “It’s impossible to distinguish between psi and chance effects even in a successful experiment without the use of statistics.” This criticism is invalid because the same can be said for almost all experiments in biology, psychology, sociology and biomedicine"

Technically, we could define the concept of an invalid criticism like this: A criticism is invalid, if and only if, it is uncontrolled and/or untestable. 

It is uncontrolled if the criticism also applies to well-accepted scientific disciplines or hypotheses. 

It is untestable if it doesn't specify the conditions under the which the criticism would fail.

Most of the professional skeptics' objections to the scientific evidence for psi are invalid criticisms. The most egregious example of this is Richard Wiseman's concession that the evidence for ESP satisfies the standards of any other are of science, but it is still unacceptable to parapsychology. (See more evidence in this link)

INVALID CRITICISMS IN OTHER FIELDS OF RESEARCH AND INQUIRY

Radin's insight also applies to other fields of rational inquiry, for example in philosophy. Here I'll mention just one example:

Richard Dawkins' "main" criticism against the hypothesis "God explains why something exists rather nothing" is an egregious example of invalid criticism, because it is "uncontrolled", namely, it also applies to many well-accepted scientific hypothesis.

Dawkins' criticism is that if we posit God as an explanation for the existence of the universe (or for the complexity or apparent design of it) we explain absolutely nothing, because the existence of God himself remains unexplained. Watch it for yourself:

Dawkins' criticism implies that no scientific hypothesis could be ever accepted, because each time you posit some explanatory entity E for explaining the fact X, you will need an explanation for the explanation (otherwise, your explanation couldn't be accepted). This is obviously false, and if accepted, it would lead to an infinite regress of explanations and science would be destroyed.

Sophisticated philosophers have exposed Dawkins' invalid criticisms. For example, Daniel Came, an atheist philosopher from Oxford University, comments "Dawkins maintains that we're not justified in inferring a designer as the best explanation of the appearance of design in the universe because then a new problem surfaces: who designed the designer? This argument is as old as the hills and as any reasonably competent first-year undergraduate could point out is patently invalid. For an explanation to be successful we do not need an explanation of the explanation. One might as well say that evolution by natural selection explains nothing because it does nothing to explain why there were living organisms on earth in the first place; or that the big bang fails to explain the cosmic background radiation because the big bang is itself inexplicable."

On Radin's criteria, Dawkins' criticism is demostrably invalid, because it is uncontrolled.

Radin's thoughtful insight about the structure of invalid criticisms is a fruitful one. It doesn't apply to science alone, but also to other fields of rational inquiry, like philosophy or history (for example, atheist Richard Carrier's obscurantist views on the non-historicity of Jesus is an invalid criticism, because it is uncontrolled: most of such skeptical criticisms also apply to other individuals in ancient history, like Socrates, Buddha or Julius Caesar, individuals that no serious professional historian or scholar denies).

If you master the structure of invalid criticisms, you can easily recognize that most of the common objections posed by atheists and "skeptics" are demostrably invalid criticisms and hence worthless.

I suggest you to think in deep about the structure of invalid criticisms, and find your own examples of them in the atheistic and pseudoskeptical literature.

Dean Radin exposes moderate skeptic Chris French's misleading claims about the Milton/Wiseman 1999 "failed" replication study

In the book Debating Psychic Experience, "moderate skeptic" Chris French repeats a skeptical fallacy common among professional "skeptics", namely: that the Milton/Wiseman 1999 study failed to replicate Bem and Honorton's 1994 meta-analysis. In his own words: "Although Bem and Honorton’s (1994) original meta-analysis of 11 ganzfeld studies appeared to provide strong evidence of a replicable anomalous cognition effect, Milton and Wiseman’s analysis did not (although it should be noted that some commentators have argued that this is because many of the more recent studies were process-oriented rather than proof-oriented; Bem, Palmer, & Broughton, 2001; Storm, 2000; Storm & Ertel, 2001). (p. 56. Emphasis in blue added)".

This clearly shows that French is not a "moderate skeptic" at all, but a strong anti-psi believer (otherwise, how the hell can we explain that he continues to repeat an objection against parapsychology that is demostrably false? Is it an example of "moderate skepticism"?). Critical thinking, rationality, honesty and objectivity demand to correct our own opinions when the evidence shows they're false or misleading.

French is clever to affect the position of being "moderate" in order to avoid accusations of dogmatism. Affecting to play the impartial observer (making concessions against skeptics and making positive and sympathetic comments regarding to parapsychologists) has the rhetorical adventage of looking as a non-committed individual whose only purpose is to find the truth, whatever it leads. The actual purpose is to get a high credibility in the eyes of naive or ignorant readers.

But you can see French's actual (non-apparent) position in the way in which deals with the most important facts regarding the case for the existence of psi. If these facts are misrepresented, you can be sure the individual in question is motivated by an agenda.

In reply to French's misleading statement, Dean Radin wrote: "But is it really true that the Milton/Wiseman (M/W) meta-analysis failed to replicate the Bem/Honorton (B/H) outcome? The answer is no, it is not true. As I have pointed out (Radin, 2006, p. 118), and later confirmed by statistician Jessica Utts in a conference presentation attended by both Richard Wiseman and Ray Hyman, when the M/W database is evaluated using the same method as B/H (i.e., as a simple hit/miss statistic) it results in a significantly positive outcome. The reason the M/W meta-analysis purportedly failed is because the authors used an unweighted statistic that did not take into account each study’s sample size. If they had performed the correct analysis, M/W would have reached a conclusion that was diametrically opposed to the “failure” trumpeted in the title of their paper. Unfortunately, the skeptical mythos has uncritically adopted the wrong conclusion, and as such this may become an instance where myth is more comfortable than reality, and so the fictional story sticks." (p.114)

Why didn't French mention these problems in the Milton/Wiseman's analysis? Simple: Because mentioning that flaw would cast doubts in the conclusion of that study and therefore it couldn't be used anymore to favor the skeptical case against psi.

In order to give credibility and plausibility to his own skeptical position against the scientific replicability of psi, French is forced to intentionally conceals or disregards the key facts that would destroy his position.

In fact, the rhetorical trick is even more effective when French adds an "although" apparently in favor of parapsychologists (he says: "although it should be noted that some commentators have argued that this is because many of the more recent studies were process-oriented rather than proof-oriented) But note that this "althought" is intended as a red herring in order to look (in front of naive readers) as objective and impartial: the crucial, key and essentially relevant facts about the unweighted statistic used by Milton/Wiseman study that did not take into account each study’s sample size (and hence, which were responsible for the misleading conclusion) are never mentioned.

Explaining and expanding Radin's point, Chris Carter (in his updated review of Wiseman's research), comments in more detail the technical flaws of the Milton & Wiseman study: "The 30 studies that Milton and Wiseman considered ranged in size from 4 trials to 100, but they used a statistical method that simply ignored sample size (N). For instance, say we have 3 studies, two with N = 8, 2 hits (25%), and a third with N = 60, 21 hits (35%). If we ignore sample size, then the unweighted average percentage of hits is only 28%; but the combined average of all the hits is just under 33%. This, in simplest terms, is the mistake they made.

Had they simply added up the hits and misses and then performed a simple one-tailed t-test, they would have found results significant at the 5% level. Had they performed the exact binomial test, the results would have been significant at less than the 4% level, with odds against chance of 26 to 1. Statistician Jessica Utts pointed this out at a meeting Dean Radin held in Vancouver in 2007, in which he invited parapsychologists and skeptics to come together and present to other interested (invited) scientists. Richard Wiseman was present at this meeting, and was able to offer no justification for his botched statistics.

And this was not the only problem with the study. Milton and Wiseman did not include a large and highly successful study by Kathy Dalton (1997) due to an arbitrary cut-off date, even though it was published almost two years before Milton and Wiseman’s paper; had been widely discussed among parapsychologists; was part of a doctoral dissertation at Julie Milton’s university; and was presented at a conference chaired by Wiseman two years before Milton and Wiseman published their paper.

Here we have a case in which Wiseman nullified a positive result by first engaging in “retrospective data selection” - arbitrarily excluding a highly successful study - and then, by botching the statistical analysis of the remaining data."

I ask the objective readers of this blog: Do you think that French is showing a "moderate skepticism" when part of his skeptical case rest on such crucial factual omissions (against parapsychology) concelead with a language of moderation, impartiality and objectivity?

I let you to make your own mind.

Dean Radin on the positive definitions of PSI and James Alcock's skeptical cavils

Dean Radin

James Alcock

One of the main and repetead objections of James Alcock against parapsychology is the use of "negative" definitions.

In particular, Alcock says: "Not only does parapsychology have difficulty in deciding just what is its legitimate subject matter, but unlike the various domains of mainstream science, it deals exclusively with phenomena that are only negatively defined. Extrasensory perception? It can be said to occur only when all normal sensory communication can be ruled out. Psychokinesis? It is claimed to have occurred when an individual can produce effects on the physical environment without the application of any known force. Such definitions tell us not what the phenomena are, but only what they are not."(Debating Psychic Experience, p. 33. Emphasis in blue added)

When we're examining an objection, we have to try to read it in his best, strongest formulation, in order to avoid straw men, and give the critic the best or more sympathetic reading of his argument (it is not say that it's always easy; many times we unconsciously misrepresent other people's position. But we need to do an effort in order to avoid this).

So, read carefully Alcock's objection. He's saying that psi phenomena are not defined positively, but negatively (i.e. in terms of what they're NOT).

Let's to examine this objection in detail:

1-It's false that psi is defined negatively. In 2006, in his book Entangled Minds, Dean Radin addressed this objection: "As a positive definition, psi is a means by which information can be gained from a distance without the use of ordinary senses"(p.284)

Now, Alcock would reply that it is still a negative definition, because psi is still a phenomenon which occurs when the use of ordinary senses are discarded. In fact, in his reply to Chris Carter (when Carter quoted Radin's above citation in order to refute Alcock's objection), Alcock said: "He [Carter] totally misunderstands my concern about the negative definition of psi, and quotes Dean Radin’s view that psi is positively defined as a means by which information can be gained from a distance without the use of the ordinary senses. This of course means that one must first rule out “the use of the ordinary senses,” which is, of course, the very essence of a negative definition." (p.130)

Alcock clearly missed Carter's and Radin's point. The essence of the definition of psi is not that "one must first rule out" anything. The latter is only a methodological requeriment in order to test psi in the laboratory (not in order to define it).

Alcock, showing again his lack of training in logic, conflates the definition of psi with the methodological procedures used to detect it under controlled conditions.

As Dean Radin mentioned in Entangled Minds: "the "what psi isn't" definition reflects how psi is investigated in the laboratory, not what's thought to be"(284).

Alcock clearly conflates the methods of investigation of a phenomenon (which in case of psi, implies discarding normal sensory perception) with the definition of the phenomenon (which says what the phenomenon IS, regardless of how it is investigated in the particular cases).

The reason why Alcock doesn't understand this difference is because he is ignorant of logic. In any textbook on logic, in the chapters about definitions, you will never found that definitions of an object are identical to the ways to test the existence of such object.

So, I don't think that Alcock is being dishonest in his criticism. I do think his criticism is fully rooted in his sound ignorance of logic and how to define a construct.

In fact, look carefully at Alcock's definition of extrasensory perception given above: "Extrasensory perception? It can be said to occur only when all normal sensory communication can be ruled out."

Ruling out normal sensory communication is needed to KNOW the occurrence of ESP under experimental laboratory conditions, not to define ESP. In fact, if ESP exists, it could occur even in cases where we have not idea of such occurrence, and outside of laboratory conditions. In other words, if ESP exists (as an ontologically real fact), it is independent of the methods used in order to know it (which is an epistemological problem, not an ontological one).

Alcock defines ESP not in terms of what it is supposed to be (ontologically = as a putative objective fact in reality), but in terms of how we KNOW that such ESP has occured (which is an epistemological and methodological question). He conflates methodology of psi research (which implies excluding and ruling out certain factors in order to ascertain the existence of ESP in the laboratory) with the definition of ESP in ontologically terms (which positively asserts what ESP is supposed to BE regardless of the methodological controls used to test its putative existence).

So, it's unlikely that Alcock will recant of such objection. His objection is based on a studied ignorance of the distinction between ontology and methodology, and specially of the different kinds of definitions (e.g. essential definitions and operationalist definitions).

The only remedy to this is a deeper knowledge of logic and philosophy.

2-But let's assume, for the argument's sake, that psi is defined purely in negative terms, which is the problem with it? Why is it an objection against parapsychology? Which is exactly what is supposed to follow from this?

As Radin wrote in his reply to Alcock: "Even if this assertion were true, so what? Negative definitions are common in many disciplines, ranging from physics, where concepts like dark energy and matter are defined by what they are not, to psychology, where concepts like inattentional blindness, implicit cognition, and unconscious processing are defined by contrast to conscious awareness, i.e., to what is not conscious. (Debating Psychic Experience, p.119)

Look at wikipedia for scientific definitions of many scientific facts in which the definitions are clearly negative ones:

-Spontaneous remission: "The spontaneous regression and remission from cancer was defined by Everson and Cole in their 1966 book ^[1]: "The partial or complete disappearance of a malignant tumour in the absence of all treatment, or in the presence of therapy which is considered inadequate to exert significant influence on neoplastic disease."" (emphasis in blue added)

Note that in order to call a healing of cancer as a "spontaneous remission" according to the above definition, you need to rule out the use of "all treatment". And that ruling out is, according to Alcock, the "very essence of a negative definition". So, the scientific definition of spontaneous remission of cancer is demostrably a negative definition.

Is Alcock (and his skeptical fellows) going to challenge that scientific definition of spontaneous remision on the grounds of being a negative definition?

-Unconscious processes: "Unlike in the psychoanalytic research tradition that uses the terms "unconscious", in the cognitive tradition, the processes that are not mediated by conscious awareness are sometimes referred to as "nonconscious"... Specifically, the process is non-conscious when even highly motivated individuals fail to report it, and few theoretical assumptions are made about the process"

Is the psychologist Alcock going to challenge scientific concepts like the above ones, because they're "negatively" defined?

Even concepts beloved by "skeptics", like scientific naturalism or metaphysical naturalism are defined negatively. According to infidels.org, naturalism is defined like this: "The hypothesis that the natural world is a closed system, which means that nothing that is not part of the natural world affects it... naturalism implies that are no supernatural entities- including God"

So, the view that nature is a closed system (essential to naturalism) means that NO entities outside of this system will be causally efficacious in that system. In other words, EXTRA or SUPER natural entities can NOT affect the natural world. And this implies that causally active on nature entities (like God, minds, spirits, etc.) DON'T exist. So, naturalism implies atheism (=the negation of theism).

Would Alcock criticize the infidels.org explicit definition of naturalism as a anti-scientific or pseudo-scientific definition? Is the "hypothesis" of naturalism a wrong one, because it's defined negatively (i.e in terms of which it discards or rules out, namely God and other extra-natural entities with causally active powers?).

Obviously not. Alcock's objection against parapsychology is a mere cavil, rooted in his ignorance of logic and in his personal prejudices against psi research (prejudices which are direct and necessary consequences of his ideological commitment to the negatively defined metaphysical naturalism and atheism).

3-Moreover and finally, Radin also offered in his reply explicit positive definitions of particular kinds of psi phenomena: "In any case, a positive definition of telepathy is easy to state: “A means of communication between people who are isolated by distance or shielding.” Likewise, precognition may be defined as “a means of perception through time.” Psychokinesis as “mind/matter interactions.” And so on." (emphasis in blue added).

Such positive definitions should settle the question once and for all, and prevent skeptics of using this cavil again.

Why does Alcock keep repeating his cavil about negative definitions of psi as an objection to parapsychology, when POSITIVE definitions are available and have been explicitly mentioned? Is Alcock being objective in his criticisms? Is it a valid criticism or objection against parapsychology which is unanswered or unanswarable by psi researchers? Obviously not, the criticism is invalid, irrelevant, based on injustifiable double standards and demostrably false.

So, the next time that you see a professional skeptic repeating the same objection about "negative definitions", you'll know you're dealing with a person with a personal ideological agenda against parapasychology, not an objective and reliable researcher.

Dean Radin and The Enduring Enigma of the UFO: A first-rate noetic scientist and parapsychologist comments about ufology

As a rule, parapsychologists, psi researchers and noetic scientists don't typically address the field known as ufology. And ufologists, as a rule, don't seem to have any deep knowledge of psi research.

In an interesting article entitled "The Enduring Enigma of the UFO", first-rate scientific researcher of psi phenomena, Dean Radin, shares some ideas and reflections about the ufo phenomenon.

Personally, and after being initially skeptical of ufo phenomena, I've became convinced (after studying some literature on ufology and discussing the topic with many very well informed people) that the so-called ufo phenomenon deserves a carefully and scholarly study.

A preliminary conclusion about it is that any simplistic answer to the phenomenon is wrong. It seems the phenomenon is highly complex, and it involves not only possibly the existence of extraterrestial intelligence (as many people think), but deep aspects of consciousness and even of spiritual realities or phenomena.

In any case, read Radin's article and think hard about it.

Religion and UFOs:

For unknown reasons, I've been asked frequently if in my opinion Christianity conflicts with UFOs or the existence of aliens. Not being myself properly a Christian (nor a "Christian scholar"), I don't consider myself competent to answer this question in any authoritative way. However, in my humble opinion, I don't see any reason to think that the existence of aliens (if they actually exist) conflicts with Christianity.

In any case, a prominent Christian scholar (William Lane Craig) has given some ideas about Christianity and aliens in this podcast.

I agree with Craig that the existence of aliens would be improbable given metaphysical naturalism, since in such worldview the phenomenon of life and specially consciousness are a kind of monumentally improbable cosmic accidents. And, even assuming that life were common in the universe, in the naturalistic-materialistic worldview, there is not reason to think that such life will evolve to produce intelligent, conscious and rational beings "out of brute matter".

Consciousness, normative properties and values and rationality are phenomena at variance with naturalism and ontological materialism. Therefore, if naturalism is false (as I think it is), we'd expect precisely that life, consciousness and spiritual-rational beings in general (in several degrees of evolution) exist in other parts of this universe, and hence that intelligent aliens will exist too (if they're actually visiting us or not is separate question).

The point is that spiritually evolved and intelligent aliens are more probable to exist given the falsehood of naturalism than in case of naturalism being true. And given that we have strong philosophical, ethical and scientific reasons to think that naturalism is false, we're rationally forced to conclude that it is likely that spiritually evolved beings in other planets (i.e. aliens) actually exist.

Debate on precognition in the Skeptical Inquirer: Daryl Bem vs. James Alcock

Daryl Bem
(Professor emeritus of psychology at Cornell University)

James Alcock
(Professor of psychology, Glendon College, York University, Toronto)

In the online version of the pseudoskeptical and profesional debunking journal Skeptical Inquirer, you can read a debate between psi researcher Daryl Bem and professional debunker and denialist of psi, James Alcock, regarding the scientific evidence on precognition published by Bem (which has attracted the media attention too, as seen in the New York Times and NPR. When good evidence for psi has some public impact, professional debunkers got desperate and, predictably, they try to refute the evidence or research in order to keep their materialistic ideology untouched and solve the strong cognitive dissonance felt by the few but extremely fanatical and dogmatic public of hard-core atheist readers).

-The debate began when Alcock wrote for the Skeptical Inquirer an article criticizing Bem's research.

-Bem replied and refuted Alcock misleading and false assertions and (intentional?) distortions, and caused a very emotional impact in Alcock, as you can read in Alcock's final and very emotionally laden reply.

-Dean Radin wrote a comment on Alcock's article too.

Just an example of Alcock's pseudoskeptical biases and misleading handle of the evidence:

In his article criticizing Bem, Alcock says:

"Daryl Bem subsequently published an overview of Ganzfeld research in the prestigious Psychological Bulletin (Bem & Honorton, 1994), claiming that the accumulated data were clear evidence of the reality of paranormal phenomena. That effort failed to convince, in part because a number of meta-analyses have been carried out since, with contradictory results (e.g., Bem, Palmer & Broughton, 2001, Milton & Wiseman, 1999)." (emphasis in blue added)

Note that Alcock includes, as evidence of his claim of meta-analyses with "contradictory results", the meta-analysis of Milton and Wiseman, published in 1999.

However, as has argued Dean Radin, "The Milton & Wiseman (1999) analysis was flawed because it used unweighted statistics. When proper methods, based on a simple hit/miss count, are employed, that meta-analysis produces a statistically significant positive outcome"

Explaining and expanding Radin's point, Chris Carter (in his updated review of Wiseman's research), comments the technical flaws of the Milton & Wiseman study: "The 30 studies that Milton and Wiseman considered ranged in size from 4 trials to 100, but they used a statistical method that simply ignored sample size (N). For instance, say we have 3 studies, two with N = 8, 2 hits (25%), and a third with N = 60, 21 hits (35%). If we ignore sample size, then the unweighted average percentage of hits is only 28%; but the combined average of all the hits is just under 33%. This, in simplest terms, is the mistake they made.

Had they simply added up the hits and misses and then performed a simple one-tailed t-test, they would have found results significant at the 5% level. Had they performed the exact binomial test, the results would have been significant at less than the 4% level, with odds against chance of 26 to 1. Statistician Jessica Utts pointed this out at a meeting Dean Radin held in Vancouver in 2007, in which he invited parapsychologists and skeptics to come together and present to other interested (invited) scientists. Richard Wiseman was present at this meeting, and was able to offer no justification for his botched statistics.

And this was not the only problem with the study. Milton and Wiseman did not include a large and highly successful study by Kathy Dalton (1997) due to an arbitrary cut-off date, even though it was published almost two years before Milton and Wiseman’s paper; had been widely discussed among parapsychologists; was part of a doctoral dissertation at Julie Milton’s university; and was presented at a conference chaired by Wiseman two years before Milton and Wiseman published their paper.

Here we have a case in which Wiseman nullified a positive result by first engaging in “retrospective data selection” - arbitrarily excluding a highly successful study - and then, by botching the statistical analysis of the remaining data."

Now, to the truth seekers out there I will ask: Why didn't Alcock mention the flaws of the Wiseman/Milton study? Why did he use it as evidence in his favor and against psi research, when it is demostrably the case that the study is technically flawed, and that when correct methods are applied, the meta-analysis produces significantly positive results?

The reason why Alcock didn't mention the flaws of the Milton/Wiseman paper is that he needs, at all costs, to refute and discredit Bem's research, even if in the process he needs to use flawed evidence. Demostrably, his purpose is not to find the truth (wherever it leads), but to defend a cherished anti-psi belief (because the materialistic ideology exerts strong pressure to exclude any evidence favourable to the existence of psi, which would refute such ideology).

As Chris Carter has brillantly explained: "Essentially, this debate is not about evidence. The debunkers and the deniers are defending an outmoded world view in which psychic phenomena and the separation of mind from body are simply not allowed to exist. It’s essential to realize that most of these deniers and these phony skeptics are militant Atheists and secular Humanists. For various reasons these people have an ideological agenda, which is anti-religious. One of the pillars of their opposition to religion and superstition is the doctrine of Materialism. That is, the doctrine that all events have a physical cause and that the brain therefore produces the mind. If they conceded the existence of psychic ability such as telepathy, if they conceded the existence of the near-death experience as a genuine separation of mind from body, then Materialism, this pillar of their opposition to religion, would crumble. This explains their dogmatic denial of all the evidence that proves Materialism false."

If you fully understand Carter's point, you'll understand Alcock's reactions (including its strongly emotional reply to Bem) and even you will can predict, with a probability bordering certainty, the pseudoskeptical reactions against specific cases of good scientific evidence for psi.

What Gorilla?: Why Some Can't See Psychic Phenomena by Dean Radin, PhD.

What Gorilla?: Why Some Can't See Psychic Phenomena by Dean Radin, PhD.

Imagine you're watching a basketball game. Your favorite team is wearing white and the other team is in black. In the midst of the action, someone in a dark gorilla suit calmly walks to the center of the court, waves to the crowd, then walks off the court. Do you think you would notice this peculiar event? Most people might say yes. Most people would be wrong.

Our perceptual system unconsciously filters out the vast majority of information available to us. Because of this filtering process, we actually experience only a tiny trickle of information, by some estimates a trillionth of what is actually out there. And yet from that trickle our minds construct what we expect to see. So when we pay attention to our favorite white-shirted basketball team, the likelihood of clearly seeing darker objects moving about is substantially reduced. That includes even obvious objects, like gorillas. Psychologists call this phenomenon "inattentional blindness," and it's just one of many ways in which our prior beliefs, interests and expectations shape the way we perceive the world and cause us to overlook the obvious.

Because of these blind spots, some common aspects of human experience literally cannot be seen by those who've spent decades embedded within the Western scientific worldview. That worldview, like any set of cultural beliefs inculcated from childhood, acts like the blinders they put on skittish horses to keep them calm. Between the blinders we see with exceptional clarity, but seeing beyond the blinders is not only exceedingly difficult, after a while it's easy to forget that your vision is restricted.

An important class of human experience that these blinders exclude is psychic phenomena, those commonly reported spooky experiences, such as telepathy and clairvoyance, that suggest we are deeply interconnected in ways that transcend the ordinary senses and our everyday notions of space and time.

Exclusion of these phenomena creates a Catch 22: Human experiences credibly reported throughout history, across all cultures, and at all educational levels, repeatedly tell us that psychic phenomena exist. But Big Science -- especially as portrayed in prominent newspapers and popular magazines like Scientific American -- says it doesn't.

Well then, is this gorilla in the basketball game, or not? One way to find out is to study the question using the highly effective tools of science while leaving the worldview assumptions behind. That way we can study the question without prejudice, like watching a basketball game without preferring either the white or black team. Neutral observers are much more likely to spot a gorilla, if one is indeed present.

This form of investigation has been going on for over a century, and despite official denials, the jury is in: Some psychic phenomena do exist. But like blindingly obvious gorillas, not everyone can see them. (Actually, like the majority of the general public, many scientists do have these experiences, but as in the parable of the Emperor's New Clothes, fledgling science students quickly learn in college that it is not politically expedient to talk about it.)

Here's an example of not seeing. In the July/August 2008 issue of the Skeptical Inquirer (the Playboy of the enthusiastic debunker), neuroscientist Amir Raz and psychologist Ray Hyman describe their impressions of an invitation-only scientific meeting held on "anomalous cognition" at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in July 2007. Anomalous cognition is a neutral euphemism for psychic or "psi" phenomena, one that avoids the connotation of séances and ghostbusting associated with the touchy p-words. I was a co-organizer of the UBC meeting. Sixty prominent scientists and physicians were invited to the meeting, including a couple of Nobel Laureates, representing a variety of disciplines and perspectives.

Not surprisingly, given the skeptical focus of the magazine in which their essays appeared, Raz and Hyman both concluded that they were not persuaded by what they heard at the meeting, that nothing interesting was going on, and that the scientific pursuit of anomalous cognition is akin to a misguided search for the Tooth Fairy (Raz's term).

Now, let me preface what I'm about to say by first noting that I respect Raz's and Hyman's opinions and I'm glad that they attended the UBC meeting. There is always room for critical debate in science; as President Dubya once said in another context, "Bring it on." But what I am concerned about is that sometimes holding a fruitful debate stalls before it can get off the ground because one side regards the topic as fantasy. And so to make a point I'll be ruthless in pointing out problems with these two authors' opinions.

One of Raz's principal complaints was that he would "be curious to see compelling scientific demonstrations of psi (i.e., a string of multiple successful experiments by several independent investigators producing lawful and replicable outcomes). Alas, I have found none to date."

When I first read that statement I felt like I increasingly do these days when driving past a gas station. What did that sign say? A gallon of gas costs what? Didn't we discuss several classes of repeatable experiments at the UBC meeting? For example, I presented an overview of "presentiment" experiments, an unconscious precognitive effect that has been independently and successfully replicated numerous times. (Nearly all of the 20 experiments I'm aware of to date have produced results in the predicted direction, and of those 10 were independently statistically significant.)

And among researchers who have closely studied the psi literature, the vast majority have little doubt that something interesting is going on, something not easily attributable to chance or to any known conventional artifacts. These effects are in principle no more difficult to demonstrate than the efficacy of new pharmaceutical drugs or medical procedures. Such effects tend to be small in magnitude, they are highly reactive to the psychosocial context and other environmental factors, and they take substantial amounts of careful data collection to overcome the statistical noise generated by dozens of poorly understood interactive factors. But they are real, and they are repeatable in the laboratory.

Real and repeatable, and yet what Raz meant by a "compelling" demonstration does not exist for him, at least not yet. When one regards evidence from a position where the claimed phenomenon is viewed as exceedingly unlikely, like a gorilla on a basketball court, then the evidence required to change one's mind must be super-powerful. Not merely a string of successful experiments by independent investigators, as Raz calls for, but effects that are robust enough to be easily repeatable by anyone, anywhere, any time, and highly stable over long periods of time. And better yet, the effect should be predicted by a theory that doesn't do much violence to orthodox dogma about how the world works.

This is what I call the "UFO landing on the White House lawn" type of evidence. Alas, such robust evidence is rarely available when dealing with phenomena at the bleeding edge of the known. And it's true that the evidence for psi today does not quite achieve the status of a Special News Bulletin interrupting the season finale of Lost by reporting a UFO landing on the White House lawn (would anyone believe such a story, even if it were true?). Instead, the evidence available today for psi is more like a formation of UFOs repeatedly flying over the US Capitol, captured on film and spotted simultaneously by radar, jet pilots, and hundreds of witnesses on the ground. Well, surely that would convince a few people.

Oh, wait. Such a UFO sighting actually did occur in Washington DC in 1952. All the major newspapers carried the story. But who remembers that today?

Perhaps Ray Hyman does. Hyman earned his PhD in 1953 at John Hopkins University, near Washington DC. Today, Hyman is a retired psychology professor who has been one of the premier academic critics of parapsychology for over 50 years. In his essay in Skeptical Inquirer, his major complaint was the lack of easy repeatability of psi effects. To support his claim he cited "a psi proponent reported a meta-analysis of [a class of telepathy experiments] with an average effect size that significantly differed from zero with odds of more than a trillion to one while another meta-analysis ... concluded that the average effect size was consistent with zero." (A meta-analysis is a quantitative review of many similar experiments.) He bolstered this assertion by citing a few parapsychologists who have acknowledged difficulties in producing "UFO on the White House lawn" form of evidence. From this viewpoint, he concluded that parapsychology does not deserve serious scientific attention. He's been repeating this opinion for 50 years.

Except there's a small problem. The parapsychologists mentioned by Hyman were expressing well known difficulties in producing robust repeatable effects on demand. But none of them doubt that the preponderance of evidence strongly indicates the presence of genuine anomalies. Hyman's selective reporting is akin to dismissing as worthless a clearly visible formation of UFOs flying over the US Capitol, because of a stubborn insistence that the only acceptable data are UFOs landing on the White House lawn precisely at high noon, followed by alien pilots emerging from their crafts, offering tea and biscuits to the President and Vice President of the United States, and then soberly shooting the VP in the face with a projectile weapon (due to regarding that act as a sign of diplomatic friendship, having unfortunately misinterpreted a news story regarding the Vice President's shooting his friend in the face -- but I digress).

There's another problem, one more substantial. Hyman's damning denouement was that not all meta-analyses of telepathy experiments were judged to be positive. By mentioning the meta-analysis where the "average effect size was consistent with zero," he reinforced his contention that telepathy experiments are slippery and unrepeatable, and not to be trusted. The study he cited appeared in a 1999 publication by British psychologists Julie Milton from the University of Edinburgh and Richard Wiseman from the University of Hertfordshire. They analyzed a selected subset of telepathy experiments, ended up with a positive but statistically non-significant result, and then quite reasonably concluded that nothing interesting was going on. Well, as I said, there's always room for debate. Except when conclusions are based on a mistake. It turns out that their analysis was miscalculated.

Jessica Utts, a professor of statistics at the University of California at Irvine, explained at the UBC meeting that Milton and Wiseman had employed a technique that underestimated the actual telepathy effect. If they had used the same (simpler and more powerful) technique employed in all of the other published telepathy meta-analyses, they would have reached the same conclusion that everyone else did: There is indeed significant positive and repeatable evidence for telepathy obtained under controlled laboratory conditions.

Hyman was in the audience during Utts' presentation. I don't know why he choose to ignore her analysis, although if he had acknowledged it that would have neutralized his own arguments. So perhaps its exclusion is not so puzzling.

Speculations aside, one thing is crystal clear: It can take a White House lawn party to overcome one's long-held beliefs, so if nothing obviously wrong can be found in a reported experiment, skeptics will still worry if the experiment was conducted by "believers," because they imagine that believers would not be as rigorously careful as "non-believers." Indeed, fervent skeptics are quite vocal in asserting that non-believers cannot get the same results in these experiments. Unfortunately, the fact is that skeptics hardly ever conduct these studies, and on the scant occasions when they do, they rarely publish them in sufficient detail to evaluate the results. So we really don't know whether the suspicion is justified or not.

That is, until recently. In 2005 two keenly skeptical psychologists, Edward Delgado-Romero from the University of Georgia and George Howard from the University of Notre Dame, conducted the same type of telepathy experiment under consideration here. To their chagrin, they not only obtained a significant positive outcome after conducting a series of eight studies, but their results were perfectly in alignment with the earlier meta-analytic estimates. That is, based on thousands of previous trials, it is possible to estimate the "hit rate" one should get when running a standard telepathy experiment. Delgado-Romero and Howards obtained exactly that value. To their credit, they published their results.

But their article also included an astounding twist: They ended up rejecting their own experimental evidence based on a single additional study they conducted, which they based on an ad hoc, untested design they proposed, and which ultimately resulted in a statistically significant negative outcome! Strong negative outcomes are just as important statistically speaking, and just as unlikely to occur by chance, as strong positive outcomes. Both indicate that something interesting is going on.

Another way of illustrating the invisibility of gorillas is by revealing an asymmetry in how psi experiments are reported in newspapers. In January 2008, newspapers around the world hailed the first conclusive test for telepathy conducted by two Harvard University researchers. According to the Boston Globe: "Brain scan tests fail to support validity of ESP. Research on parapsychology is largely taboo in academia, but two Harvard scientists recently set out to settle, once and for all, the age-old question: Is extrasensory perception, or ESP, real? Their sophisticated experiment answers: No, at least, not as far as they can tell using high-tech brain scanners to detect neural evidence of it."

Finally. Once and for all. A sophisticated magnetic resonance imaging brainscanner was used (technically, an fMRI), for the first time, to answer this age-old question. The high-tech "no" answer seems conclusive unless you read the actual article, which reported that one of 16 tests conducted showed a stupendously significant outcome exactly in alignment with what was predicted if psi were real. But the authors then took pains to explain why that result was probably an artifact, and so the newspapers didn't mention that one intriguing outcome. (It also makes one question why they employed an experimental design which allowed positive results to be explained away so easily.)

But the study was conducted at Harvard, for goodness sake, so surely that's the last word on ESP. After all, for the first time ever Harvard scientists used one of those expensive and mysterious fMRI brainscanners to peer deep inside the brain, and they didn't see any psi in there. End of story, no?

Well, no. Was this really the first psi study conducted using an fMRI? No, it wasn't even the second such study. Or the third. Or fourth. Or fifth. It was the sixth. And all of the earlier experiments, all conducted since 2000, showed significant evidence for psi effects. Somehow the newspapers overlooked this, despite the fact that most of those studies are freely available in an instant via PubMed.gov, the National Institutes of Health massive online bibliography of scientific articles related to health and healing.

I could continue along the same vein ad nauseum when it comes to how scientific evidence for psi is often ignored or distorted beyond recognition. Unfortunately, there are countless other tales of ignoring other invisible gorillas at the frontiers of knowledge. They include serious scientific arguments that global warming is not being caused by human activities, analyses suggesting that HIV does not cause AIDS, repeatable electrochemical-nuclear reactions once known as "cold-fusion," credible reports of UFOs, and so on. All of these ideas encounter strong sociopolitical resistance in academia, so credible counter-arguments are difficult to locate and even more difficult to discuss in scientific forums unless you have a phalanx of beefy bodyguards watching your back. One of the best sources of information about these "frontier" science topics is the Journal of Scientific Exploration, a peer-reviewed multidisciplinary journal published by the Society for Scientific Exploration.

Without belaboring the point, such tales expose a skeleton in the closet of Big Science. From the popular perspective, science is portrayed as a flawlessly rational enterprise, where accumulating evidence slowly but surely overcomes stubborn skepticism. In reality, science is like any other human activity, and as such, emotions always trump reason. There is as least as much pig-headedness and motivated inattention in science as in politics and religion.

Given the non-rational skeleton, will mainstream science ever be prepared to admit that psychic phenomena warrants serious investigation? I believe the answer is yes. Acceptance someday is inevitable. We are dealing with human experiences reported since the dawn of human history, experiences that do not go away in tightly controlled laboratory tests using the most sophisticated experimental tools and designs. So some of these phenomena will eventually become integrated into the mainstream. Exactly when I cannot say. Perhaps one to five decades.

Will this happen because the accumulated data will overwhelm skepticism? Probably not. As Max Planck, the physicist who dreamt up the idea of the "quantum" in quantum mechanics, once wrote, "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it." Some of the 60 participants at the UBC meeting represented that younger generation, and while a handful of the older crowd are certain to remain mulishly skeptical to their deaths, based on the written opinions of many of the participants collected before, during and after the meeting, it was clear that the majority were more open to anomalous cognition after the meeting than they were before. I expect that trend to continue, and then one day a threshold will be crossed, and on that day some of the invisible gorillas in our midst will become a bit easier to see. The very next day no one will remember that this topic was once considered controversial.

Dean Radin Google Talk Lecture: Science and the taboo of psi

See Radin's recent post on the psi taboo in action.

Noetic Scientist Dean Radin, PhD: Quantum Theory and Distant Healing

The Noetic Universe by Dean Radin. Essential reading for the noetic sciences fans

The book "The Noetic Universe" by real-life noetic scientist Dean Radin, is a reprint of highly acclaimed book The Conscious Universe, to be published in the UK soon.

For this reprint, Dr.Radin wrote a new Preface, which is aimed to ride the wave of interest in noetic science as a result of Dan Brown's lastest best-selling book The Lost Symbol, which includes a fictional characther name Katherine Solomon who's a noetic scientist.

Radin is one of the world top noetic scientists, whose books are a must read for noetic sciences fans, general public and specialized scholars like philosophers and professional scientists.

If you want to watch some of Dean Radin's videos and audios, please visit this link in my blog.

For more information on Radin, visit his website and his blog.

For more information on noetic sciences, visit the Institute of Noetic Sciences.

A lecture on the lastest findings of noetic sciences by Dean Radin may be watched here:

Noetic Sciences researcher Dean Radin on consciousness

Dean Radin - Where Science Meets Psi

Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS), Katherine Solomon and The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown

In his lastest book "The Lost Symbol", Dan Brown writes about Katherine Solomon, a fictional character who's a scientist in the Institute of Noetic Sciences in California.

Robert Langdon, the well-known star of Brown's books, when was explained about the concept of noetic sciences, asserted "Sounds more like magic than science" (a typical reply by a conventional scholar when confronted with a new field like that of noetic science)

According to Dan Brown: "Katherine’s two books on Noetics had established her as a leader in this obscure field, but her most recent discoveries, when published, promised to make Noetic Science a topic of mainstream conversation around the world."

It reminds me of real-life noetic scientist Dean Radin, whose books "The Conscious Universe" and "Entangled Minds" have brought of field of noetic science to almost mainstream discussion (remember that Radin's first book was reviewed in leading scientific journal Nature. For a criticism of that biased review, see Nobel Prize-winner physicist Brain Josephson's commentary in this link)

As an example of real-life noetic science research, see this brief talk by Dean Radin on mind-matter interface (a key topic in noetic sciences):



Let's to return to to Brown's book. On Solomon character (and showing that Brown is informed about some the lastest findings of actual neotic sciences), he writes: "Deep within this building, in the darkness of the most remote recesses, was a small scientific laboratory unlike any other in the world. The recent breakthroughs Katherine had made here in the field of Noetic Science had ramifications across every discipline—from physics, to history, to philosophy, to religion. Soon everything will change, she thought"

"Experiments at facilities like the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) in California and the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Lab (PEAR) had categorically proven that human thought, if properly focused, had the ability to affect and change physical mass. Their experiments were no “spoon-bending” parlor tricks, but rather highly controlled inquiries that all produced the same extraordinary result: our thoughts actually interacted with the physical world, whether or not we knew it, effecting change all the way down to the subatomic realm.

Mind over matter."

For more information on real-life mind-matter interaction research, see this talk by the Society of Scientific Exploration:





Brown continues " In 2001, in the hours following the horrifying events of September 11, the field of Noetic Science made a quantum leap forward. Four scientists discovered that as the frightened world came together and focused in shared grief on this single tragedy, the outputs of thirty-seven different Random Event Generators around the world suddenly became significantly less random. Somehow, the oneness of this shared experience, the coalescing of millions of minds, had affected the randomizing function of these machines, organizing their outputs and bringing order from chaos.

The shocking discovery, it seemed, paralleled the ancient spiritual belief in a “cosmic consciousness”—a vast coalescing of human intention that was actually capable of interacting with physical matter. Recently, studies in mass meditation and prayer had produced similar results in Random Event Generators, fueling the claim that human consciousness, as Noetic author Lynne McTaggart described it, was a substance outside the confines of the body . . . a highly ordered energy capable of changing the physical world. Katherine had been fascinated by McTaggart’s book The Intention Experiment, and her global, Web-based study— theintentionexperiment.com—aimed at discovering how human intention could affect the world. A handful of other progressive texts had also piqued Katherine’s interest."

For a commentary the Global Consciousness Project and the events of the 9/11, see Dean Radin's real noetic sciences book "Entangled Minds"(pp. 195-202), and these brief videos:





For a information on The Intention Experiment, watch this interview with Lynne McTaggart:



It's interesting to note that, even though Brown's book is "fictional", the character of scientist Katherine Solomon is based in actual, real-life noetic scientists like Dean Radin and others.

So, if you have interest in noetic sciences or are a fan of Brown's books, you'll enjoy his lastest one "The Lost Symbol":

Scientific Parapsychology with Dean Radin

Source: Shrink Rap Radio.

-A transcript of this interview is available here.