Slashdot Mirror
Journal Article On Precognition Sparks Outrage
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."
I predicted this would happen.
on precognition (the Times erroneously calls it ESP).
Why is that erroneous? Precognition and premonition are two facets of Extrasensory Perception. From its wikipedia article:
Extrasensory perception (ESP) involves reception of information not gained through the recognized physical senses but sensed with the mind. The term was coined by Sir Richard Burton,[citation needed] and adopted by Duke University psychologist J. B. Rhine to denote psychic abilities such as telepathy and clairvoyance, and their trans-temporal operation as precognition or retrocognition.
So if you were dealing with anything of the above or anything external to our normal senses, I think that qualifies as ESP and calling it ESP. Sure that acronym has a lot of baggage but from the study itself:
... this is an experiment that tests for ESP (Extrasensory Perception).
That's what the tests subjects were told and I don't think the article is erroneous.
My work here is dung.
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.
I haven't yet had a chance to read the paper fully (it's 50 or so pages), but if they are actually that confident in their evidence that precognition has been found, the James Randi Foundation has a million dollars waiting for them.
There are many types of ESP, covering different aspects of life. Each is differentiated by a letter.
For example, the 14th type of ESP covers sports. It is called ESPN.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair
Basically, a physicist made up some BS and got it published in a journal called Social Text about postmodern cultural studies. He then came out later and revealed the hoax, embarrassing the reviewers and the journal. Lack of intellectual rigour seemed to be the target. This time, it seems to be more specifically aimed at the lack of understanding of statistics in certain subjects.
I'm a Ph.D. candidate in EE, and I'm sometimes invited to review papers for IEEE journals.
I always read the paper carefully at least 3 times, read the important parts of references that are new to me, check all the math and sometimes even reproduce some simpler simulations.
Most reviewers aren't this careful. They either don't have the time or don't have the expertise to find some flaws. Keep in mind that reviewers aren't paid, and are anonymous. Also, the best reviewers are the best researchers, who are usually busy with their own projects.
I often find serious flaws that my fellow reviewers completely overlook. Fortunately in these cases, the editors have always used my reviews to override the other two (the review decision is not a majority vote). Given the quality of the reviewers out there, some papers are accepted simply because the editor invited 3 incompetent reviewers, which is not very unusual. And we're talking about IEEE journals, which should be the best in the field.
So in practice, peer review is only a weak pre-screening process that often rejects good papers and accepts bad work. Science progresses because once something is published, other people attempt to reproduce it. If the idea works, then it's incorporated into other work and becomes famous. Otherwise, people just ignore it.
Maybe this is a hack. They say he has a sense of humor.... think of this... he did design his studies well, at least the ones that I have read about. The effects of this "time leaking" are fairly small. Perhaps the entire point...is to make a point about statistics.
Added bonus? Put the ESP issue to bed. Him doing this, and specifically doing it so publicly and getting it passed peer review and publication, ENSURES that these studies are going to be replicated by numerous people, for the next several years. That, in and of itself, could produce enough evidence against ESP to really put the issue to bed :)
Say what you want about his paper, the effects reported are as large as many "well accepted" study results. Which may be the scariest part of all.
That said, I am no ESP believer (that may be obvious) but, some of the statements that are made against it are ridiculous too. "Why aren't people winning the lottory with their perfect precognition". The effects he is talking about here are on the order of a few percentage points better than random... which is more than the house advantage at many casino games (assuming optimal play)
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Why settle for just 1M? Play the lottery for a few weeks and you don't even have to bother writing an article to be rich.
So I realize a lot of people aren't going to read the article but here's the meaty parts for you statistics snobs (and really, the Bayes folks are going to be all over this one):
Across all 100 sessions, participants correctly identified the future position of the erotic pictures significantly more frequently than the 50% hit rate expected by chance: 53.1%, t(99) = 2.51, p = .01, d = 0.25.3 In contrast, their hit rate on the nonerotic pictures did not differ significantly from chance: 49.8%, t(99) = -0.15, p = .56. This was true across all types of nonerotic pictures: neutral pictures, 49.6%; negative pictures, 51.3%; positive pictures, 49.4%; and romantic but nonerotic pictures, 50.2%. (All t values < 1.) The difference between erotic and nonerotic trials was itself significant, tdiff(99) = 1.85, p = .031, d = 0.19.
There's a lot more about eliminating random number generators (by using this little guy) leading to prediction as well as running more tests where they are asked to pick a preference of two identical images. The most interesting part is that these results seemed to hinge on pornography. The individuals only exhibited this "precognition or premonition" when they were picking erotic images or rewarded with erotic images (albeit from the International Affective Picture System).
The skeptic in me is very pleased and excited about this part of the paper:
Accordingly, the experiments have been designed to be as simple and transparent as possible, drawing participants from the general population, requiring no instrumentation beyond a desktop computer, taking fewer than 30 minutes per session, and requiring statistical analyses no more complex than a t test across sessions or participants.
Grad students across the country: get to work!
:-)
But you would have to have the lottery involve some sort of erotic pictures containing the known numbers in order for this edge to be garnered. Which would be impossible unless the lotteries changed how they worked. Maybe play blackjack with a set of playboy cards?
My work here is dung.
Across all 100 sessions, participants correctly identified the future position of the erotic pictures significantly more frequently than the 50% hit rate expected by chance: 53.1%
It's pretty easy to come up with significant results in this field: Just do a sufficiently large number of experiments, and you will inevitably come across some significant results. This works for any definition of significance, though of course it's easier for low standards.
The reason they published this is because they wanted to study the effect of negative reinforcement on ESP ability, but as you can see, that's just pissing people off.
'If Christ had tweeted the sermon on the mount, it might have lasted until nightfall.' - John Perry Barlow
The headline SO should have been:
Journal Article On Precognition Sparks Outrage BEFORE IT'S PUBLISHED.
That is all. I expect more out of an editor.
-knewter
Exactly. One out of every twenty "statistically significant" effects (P value =.05) is due to random chance.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Mass Hysteria, Dogs and Cats living together, etc.
Please read my Canon EOS tech blog at http://www.everyothershot.com
It's a compelling model that addresses a lot of tricky questions very neatly.
For instance, if you combine this with many-worlds theory, you can eliminate the paradox of free will - that is, when I make a decision, what internal process prompted me to make that decision? And what prompted that? And so on.
If you think of the universe as a static object that at every instant in time (or "the fourth dimension," if you prefer) branches off into multiple possible realities, then you can think of yourself as having made every possible decision, but being able to remember only one, because the state of your brain in this particular branch of the decision tree is only consistent with one past.
It works the same way as the anthropic principle. Why is the universe perfect for supporting life? Because if it wasn't, you wouldn't have asked. Why did I make that particular decision? Because you're thinking about the decision from the perspective of a universe in which that particular decision was made. This also explains why consciousness appears to have a special place in quantum collapse. It's really an illusion, and there is no "collapse" - you have just chosen a particular viewpoint that is only consistent with one specific observation.
Problem is, this hypothesis may be nondisprovable.
Step into a huge movement. Don't Tread In Me.
Those who "don't believe" precognition of any sort is possible do not experience it in their day-to-day lives, whereas those who do experience it regularly.
It's called confirmation bias.
I looked at the paper. I don't believe the conclusions. But they seem to present all the necessary data so that you can do your own statistical analyses, and they offer to give you the software.
I don't see any reason for people to get "outraged" over this. Publication in a peer reviewed journal is not a guarantee of correctness (in fact, probably the majority of peer reviewed publications contain significant errors), it merely means that the paper meets basic scientific standards in terms of approach and analysis.
If there is an error in the methodology or results, then people should respond by publishing a paper pointing those out. That way, everybody can benefit from the discussion. So, that's where all those people who are "outraged" should channel their energy.