Re: Actually, Psychological Bulletin is a mainstream publication

From: Damien Broderick (thespike@satx.rr.com)
Date: Fri Dec 30 2005 - 14:34:58 MST


At 04:13 PM 12/30/2005 -0500, Richard Loosemore wrote:

>I predicted the correlation ahead of time, and the first time I did the
>experiment, it turned up and if the effect was pure fluke, then it was a 1
>in 200 chance.
>
>But what a bitchin' result! All those guesses matching up with some
>predetermined random numbers in a book, with the only degree of freedom
>being the seed point into the book!
>
>Darned if I can make sense of it.

Here's my (non-precognitive) guess at the explanations likely to be offered:

1) since you did it by hand, the discrepant correlation was introduced
in recording errors, or

2) more likely, you're simply lying about the whole thing -- making it
up out of whole cloth (that is, you never did such an experiment), or you
got chance results and lied about the deviation, or

3) your results are only to be expected by sheer chance, because
hundreds of would-be parapsychologists are doing this sort of experiment
every year, so one or two of them are bound to get results at least as
impressive as yours, but we never hear about the others (the so-called File
Drawer explanation).

Which of these would you prefer? :)

Damien Broderick



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