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.
-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.
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