Psi research is a fascinating field, responsible for lots of improvements in study design, metastudy statistics and criteria, whatnot.
Like, it is hard to control your experiment so that you don’t accidentally measure side channels as telepathy or whatnot. Or subjects having hit rates because they have the same cognitive bias as experimenters selecting cards “at random”. The list is endless.
Sceptic: “Your study has these and these flaws”. Psi researcher: “We’re using state of the art experimental design, accepted in every other field, and are open to suggestions”. Sceptic “…damnit”. I guess at least half of Psi researchers are consciously trolling for the heck of it, the bulk of the rest is dabblers, full-on crackpots are actually a rarity. Crackpots don’t tend to have the wherewithal to get their stuff into a form that’s even remotely publishable.
barsoap@lemm.ee 1 week ago
Psi research is a fascinating field, responsible for lots of improvements in study design, metastudy statistics and criteria, whatnot.
Like, it is hard to control your experiment so that you don’t accidentally measure side channels as telepathy or whatnot. Or subjects having hit rates because they have the same cognitive bias as experimenters selecting cards “at random”. The list is endless.
Sceptic: “Your study has these and these flaws”. Psi researcher: “We’re using state of the art experimental design, accepted in every other field, and are open to suggestions”. Sceptic “…damnit”. I guess at least half of Psi researchers are consciously trolling for the heck of it, the bulk of the rest is dabblers, full-on crackpots are actually a rarity. Crackpots don’t tend to have the wherewithal to get their stuff into a form that’s even remotely publishable.