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.

Julio Siqueira's review of The New Atheism: Taking a Stand for Science and Reason by Victor Stenger

This is Julio Siqueira's Amazon review of the book entitled The New Atheism: Taking a Stand for Science and Reason by Victor Stenger. I publish this review in my blog with Julio's permission. I'd suggest the readers of my blog to take a look at atheist philosopher Julian Baggini's article entitled "The New Atheist Movement is destructive", in order to complement Julio's review of Stenger's book.

Julio's review

Robert B. Zannelli, Brent Meeker, Yonatan Fishman. What do these guys have in common? The answer is that they all gave five stars to Victor Stenger's book "The New Atheism" in their review of it; and... they are all cited on page 263 of this book, acknowledgments' section...(to his credit, Meeker mentions this). They are hard-core members of Stenger's email discussion list, avoid-L. So this question comes to my mind: if they know so God dammed well the weaknesses in Stenger's work (and they surely do), how come they do not have a constructively critical stand towards his book? (actually, Fishman did present some critical outlook, though seemingly pretty much "restrained"...). I very much respect the works of parapsychological researcher Dean Radin. Yet, when reviewing his book "Entangled Minds," not only did I NOT give him five stars, but I showed problematic spots in the book as well (similarly with the book "Irreducible Mind," by other highly respectable authors).

So, where is the "Taking a Stand for Science and Reason" (as the subtitle of Vic's book falsely advertises) in this behaviour above? Nowhere. And, as a matter of fact, I just could not find either Science or Reason in this book. But I did find incorrect information, prejudicedly biased attitude, emotionally driven blind beliefs, and corrupt conduct. Smells like a new (bad) religion is born...

The book begins with "dedicated to..., no-one-ever-heard-of, Paul Kurtz, who has contributed more to the advance of science and reason than any other of his generation." (what an offense to those who were truly the ones who did the most to the advancement of science and reason!). What Stenger really means is that Kurtz crafted (together with other cunning fellows like Martin Gardner - religious man... - and James Randi - debunker and cheater) CSICOP, CFI, and Prometheus Books publishing company (also Skeptical Inquirer magazine), therefore publishing aplenty Stenger's dubious "works" (books). I also suspect Kurtz helped (directly or indirectly) Stenger get a position as... adjunct professor of philosophy (???!!!) at the University of Colorado, even though Stenger knows nothing of philosophy to qualify for that; when Stenger mistakenly used the word "epiphenomenon" to mean "side effect" instead of its true meaning in modern philosophy of the mind (which traces back at least to renowned psychologist William James, more than a century ago!), Stenger replied, at avoid-L, that his dictionary did not list it the way I said. I only replied asking him what his dictionary was (and by that I meant that Webster's Dictionary already has the definition that philosophers of mind use, epiphenomenon being roughly an effect that does not act back on its causal source). He did not reply.

This book is so intricately flawed that I will have to comment on it through sections:

1 - UNDUE OFFENSES TO RELIGIONS AS A WHOLE

On page 11, we get to know that the attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, was the primary motivator for the birth of the so called New Atheism. Sam Harris was the crackpot mostly responsible for it (not for the attack on WTC, but for the birth of New Atheism), as it seems (Sam Harris is also known as Sammy the Nuker, and Harry Pothead, for his defense of obtaining confessions through torture and of preemptive nuclear attacks on weaker nations - typical atheist...). The untold history is that the Organized Skeptic Movement (the nest of Vic Stenger and Paul Kurtz, headquarters at CSICOP) needed new fresh air. They tried it, unsuccessfully, some years before with the Brights Movement, a silly idea endorsed by the silly Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett (check it out on page 37). September 11 was the bell that got these guys back on their successful money-seeking path, and so they decided to harness all the hatred against Islam so that they could profit as much as they could. I see very little true idealism and social concern in their actions, Vic Stenger included. That is why I consider them, their actions, so despicable. They are like vultures feeding on corpses that should be respected. So, if religion was not responsible for September 11, what was the cause?

To begin with, religion is not a monolith, and must not be treated as such. It is silly, it is irrational, it is unscientific, to treat religion this way. And, topmost, it is counterproductive to do so. And that is precisely what New Atheists do. The excesses of one subset of a specific creed did have some part in the attack on the WTC. It was not Islam as a whole: it was a subset of it. It was not all this subset: it was a group of people who embrace it. And this group of people was motivated by several reasons for attacking the WTC. Religion, i.e., their very specific way of embracing their religion, was only one ingredient of the explosive mixture. Trustworthy and enlightening insights into September 11 and its many facets can be garnered through authors like Michael Moore and Noam Chomsky. So, if a simple question is asked this way, "Was Religion Responsible for September 11"?, the answer would have to be a straightforward NO. That is why I think that the true motivation of these "New Atheists" is to twist facts to get money pumped into their pockets.

So the pumping goes on...: we are told, on page 15 (and also elsewhere) that faith is always foolish. Always. Also, that Judaism, Islam, and Christendom have done little (little) to alleviate the sufferings in the world (never built a single hospital, as it seems...). On page 22, we get to know that it is immoral (so Vic thinks) to be born of a virgin... (yes, he truly said that!). On page 51, not only do we get to know that "under the spell of the theocons, George W. Bush relied for eight years on faith rather than reason to make decisions, such as invading Iraq," we also learn that Bush was convinced by these guys (theocons) that he was doing God's work... Wow! Does Stenger really believe all this? Bush invaded Iraq based on faith, believing to be doing God's work? Question: where is Science in all this above? Where is Reason in all this above? I can only see Stenger's foolish beliefs, probably targeted at cashing in on easy money... Not satisfied with so much "trustworthy teaching," Stenger tells us, on page 115, that the popes during the Dark Ages (actually Mediaeval Times) were people "whose motives can surely be attributed, partly or wholly, to religion." This man is a mighty Historian! (popes' motivations were rather earthly greed and political ambitions). Last but not least, we read Stenger hallucinating these words on page 116: "Perhaps some insight into how killing in the name of God comes so easy to true believers can be gained by looking at" (blah blah blah). If you are a true believer, killing comes easy to you. Again, unscientific hasty generalizations.

2 - UNSOUND NAIVE OUTLOOK ON ATHEISM AND ON ATHEISTS

Surprisingly enough, the other side of the coin is not to be taken at face value. That is, believers err due to religion (or strongly influenced by it), whereas atheists might err, but they do so *despite* the beneficial influence of atheism, as it seems...

Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot committed atrocities *despite* being atheists. Also, the aggressiveness of Diderot is, I believe, justified, when quoted by Stenger as having said (page 107): "Men will never be free until the last king is strangled in the entrails of the last priest." Could at least have been a little more merciful and have them all smashed (leveled actually) under Stenger's "light" weight... Then we have a quote (page 159) from Thomas Edison: "Nature made us...not the gods...religion is all bunk..."; so nice from the maniac inventor (and enthusiast...) of the electric chair who would fry countless animals alive, including an elephant, testing his invention. All this to win his private war against Westinghouse... All *despite* atheism.

And it just gets worse: Victor Stenger and his fellows at avoid-L email discussion list have...condoned racism! Where the hell is Science and Reason in this? Telling the story: first, James Watson (non avoid-L member) said all scientific studies show black people are less intelligent than whites (which is a lie, to begin with, for not ALL studies show it), and that bosses should promote whites instead of blacks other things being equal... This assertion from this atheist was neither scientific nor ethical. Then comes Richard Dawkins. He says Watson may be wrong scientifically (MAY be... - that is a lie to begin with, because Watson IS wrong. Not ALL tests show blacks to be less intelligent than whites!), but Watson is not wrong ethically (it seems Dawkins finds it ok to prefer whites being promoted, other things being equal). Then come the avoid-L fellows. Not a single one of them agreed with me that Dawkins was endorsing racist views with his assertions. Instead, some of them even mocked me! Where is Science in all this? Where is Reason? All the while, Victor Stenger himself remained...silent! Why didn't they just say Dawkins was wrong? Well, because of corrupted reasons. They were to have a meeting with him and other new atheists in the near future (NYC Conference on Secularism; November 9, 2007). Imagine if Dawkins heard one of them had said Dawkins' assertions amounted to endorsement of racist attitude...

So just as in Religion (Yes) and in Politics (Yes), New Atheism is prone to corruption. So what is the source of our social problems? Religion itself? It doesn't seem like. Politics per se, or money? I guess not. Atheism, old or new? I do not believe it. The problem lies elsewhere, in many different places. And silly oversimplifications are only sure to make things worse.

3 - SLOPPY SCIENCE AND FAULTY INFORMATION

I have been saying for years now that Stenger simply does not read what he cites. As a consequence, he often cites things wrongly. But...no one cares! And I ask: is this Science? Is this Reason? Let me now comment on some mistakes from him in this book.

On page 21, Stenger says that technically atheist is someone who is not a theist. The name of this mistake that he is committing is "Folk Etymology." If one was to follow Stenger's "technical" assumptions, one would conclude that "theist" and "deist" are perfect synonyms (both terms trace back to Greek, though the latter through Latin).

Worse still, on page 23, Stenger decides to equate "nonreligious" with "nonbeliever." That is because he did not read the source that he cited. He's been doing it often, over the last years. And no one cares. (Science and Reason...). His source is Adherents.com. Had Stenger read his source, he would not be surprised that half of his supposed "nonbelievers" would say YES to the question "Do you believe in God?" (last phrase of the second paragraph in "Secular/Nonreligious/Agnostic/Atheist" from adherents.com religions by adherents). What a philosopher...

Even worse still (!), on pages 69 and 75 Stenger mentions the article by Larson (1998), which I had demonstrated to him and to his fellows at avoid-L (back in 2007! - readers can check it out on my review of "God the Failed Hypothesis," on amazon.com) to be a highly faulty article. Stenger says of it, wrongly, again, that "Only 7 percent of the members of the National Academy of Sciences believe in a personal God, with the remainder either nonbelievers or agnostics." (page 69). Then, wrongly too, he says "on a survey of the 517 members of the National Academy of Sciences." The correct statement that can be made based on Larson study is that "At least 10% of NAS Members do not believe in a God in *intellectual* and *affective* communication with humanity." NAS does not have 517 members; it has more than 2000 (at the time Larson made his study, in 1998). 517 were polled, but only about 50% replied! And the question they were asked was: "Do you believe in a God in *intellectual* and affective communication with humankind"? (emphasis mine). Stenger disregarded all my meticulous and painstaking analysis and presentation to him at his own turf (avoid-L) and keeps bringing in highly faulty information (and his fellows know it!). Is this Science? Is this Reason?

Continuing, on page 81, Stenger decides to cremate Popper and falsificationism by declaring that Einstein's Relativity has not proved Newton's Mechanics wrong (philosopher, at Colorado...).

Then, on pages 146/147, Stenger concludes that "reincarnation is falsified beyond a reasonable doubt" because no one "remembers something from her previous life that she could not possible (misspelling of possibly) have known and that is verified as correct by other, objective means." He forgets completely about the works of Ian Stevenson and followers (acknowledged even by Carl Sagan as early back as 1995), instead of beginning a true scientific investigation of the subject by, for example, reading the following recent high quality citation: "Children Who Claim to Remember Previous Lives: Past, Present, and Future Research. Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 21, No. 3, pp. 543-552, 2007. Jim B. Tucker." Again, where is Science? Where is Reason?

Similarly, Stenger does not present any feedback whatsoever about the best studies (and the best results) from the parapsychological research, including the results from "telepathy" studies using the Ganzfeld protocol. These have been published somewhat regularly on prestigious mainstream scientific journals.

On page 212, Stenger tells us that "(Fritjof) Capra does not tell us to turn inside," even though, at the very first paragraph of the epilogue of "The Tao of Physics," Capra explicitly talks about it...

On page 107, Stenger decides to believe that polytheism is good, while monotheism is bad (???).

And on page 152, he desperately tries to belittle the "Love Thy Enemy" breakthrough in true humanism from Jesus (or "Jesus," if you will...) by saying it is similar to the Taoism concept he mentioned a little above it, when actually it is very different! (they mention something like "Love the Bad Guys" and not "Love the Bad Guys who Bully You" - that is very different).

Finally, on page 183, Stenger, again, refuses to acknowledge the discussions that took place in his own email list (avoid-L), by saying that "experts in statistics uncovered a number of errors in Radin's (Dean Radin) analysis, rendering his conclusions useless." He cites for that Stokes and I.J.Good. Since 2005 I have been telling Stenger that this is wrong information. First, Radin has incorporated Stokes criticism in his analysis, and found his results still robust. Second, Radin replied to Good in Nature scientific journal, correcting the wrong numbers Good had worked with. We had a heated discussion over that in the avoid-L email list. Main contenders in this instance were William Jefferys and Brent Meeker. The former, a renowned statistician, referred to Radin's works as "*shiHhHhHhnonsense*." I asked him to indicate two scientific articles by Radin with problems. He never presented any... As to Meeker, he told me "Interesting that data in a sixty year old book (Rhine's) which is supposedly at the foundation of a whole field of research is not available in the public domain. Why don't you just buy the book and tell the list exactly what these results are that Radin says imply odds of 10^21 or 10^2000"? And so I did exactly this. I bought the book by Rhine (U$ 50,00) and gave it for free to both Meeker and Jefferys. Can you believe what they did? Absolutely nothing whatsoever! All the while I had been in contact with Dean Radin, who was always offering to help in the analysis if and when Meeker and Jefferys did their part or seemed willing to. Jefferys decided to close his email account to me (!?). And Meeker...fled. Vic Stenger saw all that. And did, and said, nothing. Now, he just...forgets (reminds me of Ronald Reagan on the Contras affair...).

So this is all that the New Atheism is about: lies and deceit. Where are the scientific studies that show that *religion* (or *faith*) is evil? Nowhere. Where are the scientific studies that show that *atheism* is beneficial? Nowhere. Similarly, where is Science and Reason in the New Atheism movement?

Needless to answer...

End of Julio's review

Jime's additions:

-On Paul Kurtz, see my post on Prometheus Books and the Center For Inquiry.

-On Stenger's intentionally misleading definition of atheism as "non theism" (i.e. lack of belief in theism), see this video by Christian philosopher and scholar William Lane Craig:

You could wonder why some atheists, like Stenger, try to misrepresent the actual definition of atheism (the view that God doesn't exist) to conflate it with non-theism (which includes agnosticism, i.e. simple non-belief regarding God's existence or non-existence), so conflating atheism with agnosticism.

You have to keep in mind that this conceptual confusion is intentional and it is based on the logical implications of each definition, that many people don't realize. Atheist propagandists, fully knowing such implications and realizing the extreme weakness of their atheisitc position, conflate the concepts in order to cause confusion, fool the audience and win debates. It's a very common trick in the handbook of atheistic sophists.

As Craig has explained in his website "there is an important logical difference between believing that there is no God and not believing that there is a God. Compare my saying , “I believe that there is no gold on Mars” with my saying “I do not believe that there is gold on Mars.” If I have no opinion on the matter, then I do not believe that there is gold on Mars, and I do not believe that there is no gold on Mars. There’s a difference between saying, “I do not believe (p)” and “I believe (not-p).” Logically where you place the negation makes a world of difference.

If atheism is taken to be a view, namely the view that there is no God, then atheists must shoulder their share of the burden of proof to support this view. But many atheists admit freely that they cannot sustain such a burden of proof. So they try to shirk their epistemic responsibility by re-defining atheism so that it is no longer a view but just a psychological condition which as such makes no assertions. They are really closet agnostics who want to claim the mantle of atheism without shouldering its responsibilities.

This is disingenuous and still leaves us asking, “So is there a God or not?”

Now, you're in position to know that atheists who, instead of holding that "God doesn't exist" (the correct definition of atheism), simply try to define themselves as "non-theists" or "someone who lacks belief in God", are being intentionally dishonest and misleading, in order to avoid the burden of proof of their position. You'll realize that such people are intentionally dishonest sophists and charlatans, unworthy of intellectual respect.