From: fudley (fuddley@fastmail.fm)
Date: Mon Jan 02 2006 - 14:30:41 MST
On Mon, 02 Jan 2006 "Richard Loosemore" <rpwl@lightlink.com> said:
> If someone is able to influence an experiment in such a
> way was to make the number of hits consistently below
> chance, they are doing something just as paranormal as
> someone who makes them come out above chance.
The odds that your horse will come in first are less than the odds it
will come in first or last. And the entire problem is that psi ability
is not the only way to influence an experiment in such a way as to get
an extraordinarily good (or bad) score, not when the experimenter is so
gullible that he has a transundendal experience when he sees a magician
at a birthday party pull a quarter out of a child’s ear.
> They give these kinds of problems to first year psychology
> undergraduates to trick them, in their statistical design
> of experiments classes.
Oh, he had a very high score so psi must be real. Oh, he had a very low
score so psi must be real. Oh, he had a very average score so psi must
be real, I mean if you flip a coin a million times the chance you will
get exactly 500,000 heads is very low. Oh….
John K Clark
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