Scientific evidence for precognition? Bem publishes follow up to "Feeling the future"

originally posted by: ElectricUniverse
Perhaps it has to do with how the scientists approach the experiments. The scientists own thoughts, if negative, could influence the experiments and make them fail.

There are a number of different ways that of why the other experiments could have failed, and it has nothing to do with the findings of the paper this thread is about being wrong.

Two things:

1. It was incorrect when SuperFrog claimed that no one else could produce those results, so I wouldn’t worry too much about trying to explain why they all failed, because they didn’t.

2. Yes, scientists could influence the experiments to make them fail -- but only if psi were real. This could be due to the familiar psychological experimenter effect, or to the greater psi abilities of the more successful experimenters, which is known as the parapsychological experimenter effect. The latter is a partial dependence of the obtained data on the psi abilities of the experimenter.

However, you don’t need to rely on quantum mechanics for the above to be true, and your articles on observation affecting reality are not really relevant to that point. Yes, it’s true that with the empirical confirmation of Bell’s theorem in 1964, we know that quantum physics cannot be represented by any version of the classical picture of physics. In other words, any physical reality that is to be compatible with quantum mechanics must be nonlocal: it must allow for the possibility that particles can interact and become entangled, so that even when they are later separated by arbitrarily large distances, an observation made on one of the particles simultaneously affects its entangled partners in ways that are incompatible with any physically permissible causal mechanisms.

This doesn’t mean that findings in quantum mechanics prove psi, or prove the mechanism for which psi operates on. We have yet to reconcile quantum mechanics with classical physics, so it is too much of a jump to try and explain psi in terms of quantum theory. The articles you posted relate to observation on the quantum level, yet these psi experiments are conducted on the macroscopic-level. It’s not yet clear what the implications of these observer-effects are on the macroscopic level.

originally posted by: GetHyped
Convenient way to make your claims unfalsifiable.

"Didn't work? You just didn't believe hard enough!"

You have a point, but I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily unfalsifiable. If you could devise a way to objectively measure experimenters’ psi beliefs/psi abilities, and then found that experiments conducted by those who were pro-psi correlated with significant results whereas the other experimenters’ results did not, then that might provide evidence for ElectricUniverse’s claim.

originally posted by: pl3bscheese
Yea it's super weak, especially considering the opposite has more likelihood of having merit. That being a single chump really wanted this to be so his "positivity" influenced the results that nobody else could replicate. People believe what they want to, but fortunately science doesn't rely on belief.

Indeed, science in an ideal world would theoretically not rely on belief, but unfortunately in experimental conditions involving humans, that is just not the case. The experimenter effect is well-known amongst researchers and it is often difficult, if not impossible, to completely eliminate all experimenters’ subtle cues or signals that affect the performance or response of subjects in the experiment (e.g. upon the subject’s motivation). The cues may even be unconscious nonverbal cues, such as muscular tension or gestures.

But yes, if nobody could replicate it at all (which isn’t the case here), then this would hardly be a good explanation for why they all failed. However, people still need to be aware that science is not completely unbiased when humans are involved.

originally posted by: fluffy
1. It was incorrect when SuperFrog claimed that no one else could produce those results, so I wouldn’t worry too much about trying to explain why they all failed, because they didn’t.

Care to elaborate??

Anyone not associated with Dr. Bem had somewhat similar results?

Sorry, but I stay correct - no other group of scientist ever was able to reproduce it. This does not mean someone might not do it in future, but at this point, everything just points to simple fraud in research, that simply is not scientific, as it is not repeatable.

a reply to: GetHyped

Perhaps you need to understand it better.

How about using the two/double slit experiment?

Here is a good video showing what this experiment is about, and how "observation" will influence the wave/particle duality of electrons.




Also in the following link this experiment and the strange results that have occurred are explained. Including the fact that observing the experiment, influenced the results of the experiment.

physics.about.com...

a reply to: ElectricUniverse

Now you're quoting "The Secret", a bunch of pseudo-scientific garbage. They don't quite make the leap to explicitly trying to say observer = consciousness in that particular snippet but it still doesn't support your claim.

You've gone from:

Wikipedia (said the opposite of what you said)
A message board (said the opposite of what you said)
The Secret (didn't support what you said, and it's not even a scientific source)

a reply to: GetHyped

You think you are smart but you really aren't at all...

Expanding the Double Slit Experiment

Still, once the photon theory of light came about, saying the light moved only in discrete quanta, the question became how these results were possible. Over the years, physicists have taken this basic experiment and explored it in a number of ways...

In the early 1900s, the question remained how light - which was now recognized to travel in particle-like "bundles" of quantized energy, called photons - could also exhibit the behavior of waves. Certainly, a bunch of water atoms (particles) when acting together form waves. Maybe this was something similar.

One Photon at a Time
It became possible to have a light source that was set up so that it emitted one photon at a time. This would be, literally, like hurling microscopic ball bearings through the slits. By setting up a screen that was sensitive enough to detect a single photon, you could determine whether there were or were not interference patterns in this case.

One way to do this is to have a sensitive film set up and run the experiment over a period of time, then look at the film to see what the pattern of light on the screen is.

Just such an experiment was performed and, in fact, it matched Young's version identically - alternating light and dark bands, seemingly resulting from wave interference.

This result both confirms and bewilders the wave theory. In this case, photons are being emitted individually. There is literally no way for wave interference to take place, because each photon can only go through a single slit at a time. But the wave interference is observed. How is this possible? Well, the attempt to answer that question has spawned many intriguing interpretations of quantum physics, from the Copenhagen interpretation to the many-worlds interpretation.

It Gets Even Stranger
Now assume that you conduct the same experiment, with one change. You place a detector that can tell whether or not the photon passes through a given slit. If we know the photon passes through one slit, then it cannot pass through the other slit to interfere with itself.

It turns out that when you add the detector, the bands disappear! You perform the exact same experiment, but only add a simple measurement at an earlier phase, and the result of the experiment changes drastically.

Something about the act of measuring which slit is used removed the wave element completely. At this point, the photons acted exactly as we'd expect a particle to behave. The very uncertainty in position is related, somehow, to the manifestation of wave effects.
...

physics.about.com...

a reply to: ElectricUniverse

None of that supports your claim that consciousness = observer.

a reply to: GetHyped

...

Take another experiment...

The "spooky action at a distance" that stumped even Einstein.

...
In quantum physics, entangled particles remain connected so that actions performed on one affect the other, even when separated by great distances. The phenomenon so riled Albert Einstein he called it "spooky action at a distance."

The rules of quantum physics state that an unobserved photon exists in all possible states simultaneously but, when observed or measured, exhibits only one state.

Spin is depicted here as an axis of rotation, but actual particles do not rotate.

Entanglement occurs when a pair of particles, such as photons, interact physically. A laser beam fired through a certain type of crystal can cause individual photons to be split into pairs of entangled photons.

The photons can be separated by a large distance, hundreds of miles or even more.

When observed, Photon A takes on an up-spin state. Entangled Photon B, though now far away, takes up a state relative to that of Photon A (in this case, a down-spin state). The transfer of state between Photon A and Photon B takes place at a speed of at least 10,000 times the speed of light, possibly even instantaneously, regardless of distance.
...

www.livescience.com...

The above shows that entangled particles even when separated by a large distance know what is happening to the other instantaneously, and faster than the speed of light.

Back to the double slit experiment. Even when we use an instrument to measure the experiment, the consciousness of the observer is linked to the experiment through the instrument. The result of the experiment only changed when it was being observed as the experiment was occurring. If the experiment was left alone it gave a different result.

a reply to: ElectricUniverse

Yet again, your source does not support your claim. This is getting quite tiresome.

originally posted by: ElectricUniverse
a reply to: GetHyped

Back to the double slit experiment. Even when we use an instrument to measure the experiment, the consciousness of the observer is linked to the experiment through the instrument. The result of the experiment only changed when it was being observed as the experiment was occurring. If the experiment was left alone it gave a different result.

Incorrect. Per your prior link, the "observer" is the instrument itself. There is no link in "consciousness" between the instrument and the observer. They are one in the same.

All that is happening here is confusion between statistics and probability. The "wave" represents probability, and the direct snapshot of each action is a statistic, or data-point. That's it.

If I flip a coin the probability for 6 tosses is 3 heads and 3 tails. The statistics may be different. Each toss can be marked as occurring as heads or tails, but if the instrument used for measurement (my eyes) does not exist all that can be said is there is a 50/50 chance. It's the same damned thing.

originally posted by: SuperFrog
Care to elaborate??

Anyone not associated with Dr. Bem had somewhat similar results?

Sorry, but I stay correct - no other group of scientist ever was able to reproduce it. This does not mean someone might not do it in future, but at this point, everything just points to simple fraud in research, that simply is not scientific, as it is not repeatable.

Of course, if no one were ever able to reproduce Bem's results, then it would likely just be a fluke result (or at worst, fraud, like you suggest). I wouldn't necessarily go that far though, as there is always the chance that a researcher can get a significant result even when there is no actual effect (because experiments are conducted on the basis of probabilistic certainty, not actual 100% certainty). That's why science needs replication, to give certainty on a finding.

However, that's exactly what Bem's latest meta-analysis is about: to show that others have repeated his experiments, and that the overall pattern of the dataset was significant (i.e. the overall results of all experiments that have attempted to replicate Bem's were significant). I don't know where you are getting the idea that no other scientists have ever been able to reproduce his results when his meta-analysis shows a significant overall effect, of which only 10 of the 90 experiments included were from Bem himself? If you examine the data provided, you'll see that it isn't just his experiments which produced a significant result.

I also don't know what you mean when you say "associated" with Bem. Other researchers might know Bem, or have used his resources in their experiments (in fact, this should be the case for any researchers who wish to conduct an exact replication). However, many are done in different laboratories and countries, without Bem's oversight. These are independent replications and perfectly acceptable to science. It may be that you are associating all experiments in his meta-analysis as his, which is certainly not the case, and I responded to why you may have misunderstood what a meta-analysis is in my response on page 2.

Take as another example "the global consciousness project".

...
The Global Consciousness Project (GCP) is an international effort involving researchers from several institutions and countries, designed to explore whether the construct of interconnected consciousness can be scientifically validated through objective measurement. The project builds on excellent experiments conducted over the past 35 years at a number of laboratories, demonstrating that human consciousness interacts with random event generators (REGs), apparently "causing" them to produce non-random patterns. A description of the technical implementation is given under procedures.

The experimental results clearly show that a broader examination of this phenomenon is warranted. In recent work, prior to the Global Consciousness Project, an array of REG devices in Europe and the US showed non-random activity during widely shared experiences of deeply engaging events. For example, the funeral ceremonies for Princess Diana, and the international Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, created shared emotions and a coherence of consciousness that appeared to be correlated with structure in the otherwise random data. In the fully developed project, a world-spanning array of labile REG detectors is connected to computers running software to collect data and send it to a central server via the internet. This network is designed to document and display any subtle, but direct effects of our collective consciousness reacting to global events. The research hypothesis predicts the appearance of coherence and structure in the globally distributed data collected during major events that engage the world population.
...

noosphere.princeton.edu...

a reply to: ElectricUniverse

Long debunked, and also nothing to do with consciousness = observer.

I think this has run its course. Not only is it off-topic, but you've failed to post up anything relevant after, what, 5, 6 attempts? Posting up random snippets of QM that say nothing about consciousness or random studies that have the word "consciousness" in them and nothing to do with QM has absolutely nothing to do with your claim that consciousness = observer. Even your own sources have debunked your claim.

a reply to: ElectricUniverse

Really wanting to believe so skewing the statistics. It's common.

GCP

I'm sorry but this is just so easy to call out that anyone but someone needing to hold a belief in woowoo is not phased. Not going to continue on... I have better things to attend to.

a reply to: pl3bscheese

Wrong. The experiment has been done several times. The results did not show as chance. When the experiment was observed as it was occurring it changed the result and protons behaved like particles all the time. When the experiment wasn't observed/measured as it was occurring the result was always a wave effect. The instrument you use for observation is not that different form other instruments used during the experiment. The only difference is the direct link to the consciousness of the observer as the experiment is occurring.

Our thoughts are energy, and according to the law of conservation, energy cannot be created nor destroyed. it simply changes from one form to another. Our thoughts are energy, and as such they can interfere with subatomic particles which react to our consciousness.

a reply to: pl3bscheese

woo woo?... I guess Quantum Physics is not for you then... Lots of ....woo woo there...

i rather believe the researchers and their data than wikipedia.

...
Summary: Through analysis of 144 sliding windows, from 5 minutes to 12 hours, in 5 minute increments, we find that over a period of 3 months, one date is associated with a statistical anomaly: September 11, 2001. On this date, the time range appearing most often is 6 AM - 10 AM, peaking around 9:00 - 10:00 AM, and the location primarily the East Coast of the USA.

noosphere.princeton.edu...

a reply to: fluffy

GetHyped already answer this one, but let's just repeat rather obvious - no experiment without Dr. Bem were successful. Sure, nothing is definite in science (yes, we can't disprove God either) but we can conclude with high probability that Dr. Bem's experiments are fluke and rather statistical errors then abnormalities.

And before you say - they did not try - they did - they followed his paper, but were not able to reproduce results he had. As someone else already mentioned, don't you think this would help people playing card games in Vegas??

originally posted by: SuperFrog
GetHyped already answer this one, but let's just repeat rather obvious - no experiment without Dr. Bem were successful. Sure, nothing is definite in science (yes, we can't disprove God either) but we can conclude with high probability that Dr. Bem's experiments are fluke and rather statistical errors then abnormalities.

And before you say - they did not try - they did - they followed his paper, but were not able to reproduce results he had. As someone else already mentioned, don't you think this would help people playing card games in Vegas??

Ok, what is obvious is that you didn't read the meta-analysis, nor did you read any of my previous responses. Otherwise you wouldn't keep repeating that "no experiment without Dr. Bem were successful" because in the meta-analysis, you can clearly find a few other replications that were successful.

So all that is happening here is that you are saying "no, it can't be" and I'm saying "actually, it is the case". The difference is that I actually understand statistical research methods and have actually read the papers we are referring to. Am I convinced of psi? Not necessarily. But I'm not emotionally attached to the topic as you quite clearly are. And since you keep repeating the casino (as though it ends all arguments) but won't read my previous reply, I'll put it right here for you again:

originally posted by: fluffy
Not necessarily. If it were real, many players (even unknowingly) may be trying to use psi to their individual advantage, with the net effect being that nobody's psi is noticeably productive. Also, in experiments where psi is supported, the deviation from chance is very small. In fact physicist Nick Herbert calculated that the odds on even the most favorable casino games are about 100 times larger than most of the deviations from chance observed in PK experiments.

It should also be noted that even if psi could tilt the odds in a player's favor, it is unlikely to occur in the real-world since a casino is designed to be distracting and to prevent careful thought and concentration (whereas experimental conditions are designed to be as psi-conducive as possible, e.g. quiet and relaxing with few distractions). This is why experimental sessions are usually limited to 15-30 minutes (to stop boredom and fatigue). To win at the casino over the long run, people would need to perform consistently at an optimal level, perhaps over a period of months or even years. In theory, it could be possible, but who would really be able to do this with the bright lights, loud music, scantily clad women, and free alcohol.

On top of all of this, the actual house take is usually much larger than its theoretical advantage. This is because people rarely play consistently, and they often reinvest their winnings.

So yes, if psi were true, it would be theoretically possible for an individual to beat a casino (if they understood the strategies of each game they played, consistently played according to those strategies, stopped when they were ahead, and consistently applied strong, reliable psi). But most people still wouldn't beat a casino. So I don't think it's the case that casinos would have gone out of business long ago if psi were real.