4 ms·

Oh it's far worse than that. Iirc about a third of studies fail to replicate, and in psychology it might be higher. In fact we even have a control group for sci

Oh it's far worse than that. Iirc about a third of studies fail to replicate, and in psychology it might be higher. In fact we even have a control group for science. A fake field of research that spends it's time studying phenomena which can't possibly be real, the paranormal researchers. They produce tons of positive results anyway. See The Control Group is Out of Control: http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/28/the-control-group-is-out-of-control/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/28/the-control-group-is-ou...

jldugger 10y ago
Nosek's finding was that half to two thirds fail to replicate: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/349/6251/aac4716 http://science.sciencemag.org/content/349/6251/aac4716
pknight 10y ago
If your view is a priori that psi effects are impossible all you will see in the studies that 'it must be invalid and flawed or faked'. Yes, this makes people doubt scientific practices in general. You will always feel you are winning that argument, no matter what criteria those scientists meet. But psi researchers these days jump through far more hoops, run far more replications, spend far more time looking for weaknesses and alternative explanations, garner far more scrutiny and second guessing. To call that a 'fake field of research' when it is more rigorous is disingenuous. Negative results do get published regularly. And more replications take place. It is quite hilarious really, because it makes people panic about what is wrong with the methods we apply across the board in science. Skeptics just raise the bar abritrarily and shift the goalposts as a means of sweeping things under the rug while calling it scientific rigour. We have also now gotten to the point that the fact that we commonly have failed replications (across all social science), it means the whole premise of a line of research must be completely flawed. But we should expect failed replications - for one, it's impossible to repeat a set of circumstances exactly. Many replications aren't true replications.
- Dylan16807 10y ago
  > But psi researchers these days jump through far more hoops, run far more replications, spend far more time looking for weaknesses and alternative explanations, garner far more scrutiny and second guessing. To call that a 'fake field of research' when it is more rigorous is disingenuous. So what's a good study you can point me at? The nice thing about psi testing is that you can get a result sample every few seconds. It should be easy to turn even a moderately small effect into a five sigma result that's immune to publication bias.
  - pknight 10y ago
    Try: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/pe/pe/2016/00000029/00000001/art00004 http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/pe/pe/2016/00000029/00... "During 2013 and 2014, a total of 1479 people from 77 countries contributed 2985 test sessions. Over the same period, 5738 sessions were run as controls by a computer programmed to simulate human participants. The results showed that with human observers the fringe visibility at the center of the interference pattern deviated from a null effect by 5.72 sigma (p = 1.05 × 10−8), with the direction of the deviation conforming to the observers' intentions. The same analysis applied to the control data resulted in an overall deviation of −0.17 sigma." There are some presentations on Youtube that go into the details of the double-slit line of experiments.
- tgb 10y ago
  The point of the linked article is exactly that psi researchers go through far more rigorous methods than most researchers. The fact that they still come up with wrong results tells us just how far the goal posts need to be moved - but not just for psi, for all of psychology and other fields too.
  - pknight 10y ago
    This hinges on the premise that any kind of psi-like-effect is impossible. And that comes from a belief rather than from evidence.
- TeMPOraL 10y ago

jldugger 10y ago

Nosek's finding was that half to two thirds fail to replicate: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/349/6251/aac4716 http://science.sciencemag.org/content/349/6251/aac4716

pknight 10y ago

If your view is a priori that psi effects are impossible all you will see in the studies that 'it must be invalid and flawed or faked'. Yes, this makes people doubt scientific practices in general. You will always feel you are winning that argument, no matter what criteria those scientists meet. But psi researchers these days jump through far more hoops, run far more replications, spend far more time looking for weaknesses and alternative explanations, garner far more scrutiny and second guessing. To call that a 'fake field of research' when it is more rigorous is disingenuous. Negative results do get published regularly. And more replications take place. It is quite hilarious really, because it makes people panic about what is wrong with the methods we apply across the board in science. Skeptics just raise the bar abritrarily and shift the goalposts as a means of sweeping things under the rug while calling it scientific rigour. We have also now gotten to the point that the fact that we commonly have failed replications (across all social science), it means the whole premise of a line of research must be completely flawed. But we should expect failed replications - for one, it's impossible to repeat a set of circumstances exactly. Many replications aren't true replications.

Dylan16807 10y ago
> But psi researchers these days jump through far more hoops, run far more replications, spend far more time looking for weaknesses and alternative explanations, garner far more scrutiny and second guessing. To call that a 'fake field of research' when it is more rigorous is disingenuous. So what's a good study you can point me at? The nice thing about psi testing is that you can get a result sample every few seconds. It should be easy to turn even a moderately small effect into a five sigma result that's immune to publication bias.
- pknight 10y ago
  Try: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/pe/pe/2016/00000029/00000001/art00004 http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/pe/pe/2016/00000029/00... "During 2013 and 2014, a total of 1479 people from 77 countries contributed 2985 test sessions. Over the same period, 5738 sessions were run as controls by a computer programmed to simulate human participants. The results showed that with human observers the fringe visibility at the center of the interference pattern deviated from a null effect by 5.72 sigma (p = 1.05 × 10−8), with the direction of the deviation conforming to the observers' intentions. The same analysis applied to the control data resulted in an overall deviation of −0.17 sigma." There are some presentations on Youtube that go into the details of the double-slit line of experiments.
tgb 10y ago
The point of the linked article is exactly that psi researchers go through far more rigorous methods than most researchers. The fact that they still come up with wrong results tells us just how far the goal posts need to be moved - but not just for psi, for all of psychology and other fields too.
- pknight 10y ago
  This hinges on the premise that any kind of psi-like-effect is impossible. And that comes from a belief rather than from evidence.
TeMPOraL 10y ago