Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Journal Article On Precognition Sparks Outrage

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the but-magic-is-fun dept.

thomst writes "The New York Times has an article (cookies and free subscription required) about the protests generated by The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology's decision to accept for publication later this year an article (PDF format) on precognition (the Times erroneously calls it ESP). Complaints center around the peer reviewers, none of whom is an expert in statistical analysis."

3 of 319 comments (clear)

  1. Great response paper by 246o1 · · Score: 5, Informative

    For those who haven't seen it, here's a pretty sharp takedown of this paper, as well as some notes on statistical significance in social sciences in general: www.ruudwetzels.com/articles/Wagenmakersetal_subm.pdf

    --
    Although the moon is smaller than the earth, it is farther away.
    1. Re:Great response paper by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      And for those who still haven't seen it, here's a proper link.

  2. Re:Why Is It Wrong to Call This ESP? by AlecC · · Score: 5, Informative

    From the summary, the implication is that the data analysis was not proper - or at least, not shown to be proper. Since the claimed effect is a fairly small artifact only detectable by sophistcated statistics, it seems reasonable that the reviewers should include those who have a deep understanding of such statistics - which, it is claimed, they did not.

    --
    Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.