Gorilla video

A poster at Skeptiko recently brought up an article from Dean Radin talking about the disconnect between his perception of the strength of the evidence for psi, and how that evidence seems to be ignored by scientists in general.  I wrote a response, not realizing that the article was 5 years old, mostly because the mis-use of the gorilla video is a pet peeve of mine.  (By the way, this particular book is invaluable for releasing pet-peeve-tension.) :-)

https://realitysandwich.com/7283/what_gorilla/

Radin:
"Imagine you're watching a basketball game. Your favorite team is wearing white and the other team is in black. In the midst of the action, someone in a dark gorilla suit calmly walks to the center of the court, waves to the crowd, then walks off the court. Do you think you would notice this peculiar event? Most people might say yes. Most people would be wrong."
...
"Because of these blind spots, some common aspects of human experience literally cannot be seen by those who've spent decades embedded within the Western scientific worldview. That worldview, like any set of cultural beliefs inculcated from childhood, acts like the blinders they put on skittish horses to keep them calm. Between the blinders we see with exceptional clarity, but seeing beyond the blinders is not only exceedingly difficult, after a while it's easy to forget that your vision is restricted.

An important class of human experience that these blinders exclude is psychic phenomena, those commonly reported spooky experiences, such as telepathy and clairvoyance, that suggest we are deeply interconnected in ways that transcend the ordinary senses and our everyday notions of space and time."

My response:
"A bit of a nitpick (because the gorilla video experiment has been over-used and abused)...what you describe isn't related to the inattentional blindness demonstrated in the gorilla video.  Merely having a preference for one or the other team, while watching a game, does not lead to missing the the gorilla.  Most people notice the gorilla under those conditions.  You have to give people a different task which fully occupies their attention, if you want them to fail to notice the gorilla.  And even then,  half the people will still notice the gorilla.

What you are describing, with respect to the perception of psi among scientists in general, is the effect of how our prejudices tend to influence our judgement.  In this case, fans of the white team will see the gorilla.  But whether they see it as disruptive vs. helpful to their team may depend upon its colour.

I agree that discussions which take place in the media tend to misrepresent what is happening at the scientific level.  I propose that the way to draw other scientists into taking the research seriously is to follow the path of evidence-based medicine, with respect to practices which reduce the risk of bias and the production of false-positive results.  As it is, research performed under conditions where problems in design, implementation and/or analysis can grossly inflate the number of falsely positive studies, can be easily dismissed as reflecting the result of bias, rather than a true effect."

Linda

Low-hanging Fruit

I have long been interested in ideas which hang around the edges of science.  If you are looking for discussion of these ideas, you fairly quickly come across two camps which tend to dominate the debates - the Skeptics and the Believers.  I hung around for several years on one of the more active skeptical sites, the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) forum.  My username there was "fls".  A few years ago I moved over to one of the more active believer sites, the Skeptiko forum, where I kept the same username.

Both kinds of sites are dominated by attacks on the low-hanging fruit, those ideas and behaviours which are fairly easily derided as silly - psychics like Sylvia Browne who seem to be phoning it in, critics of psi who proudly declare they haven't read the paper they are criticizing.  And both kinds of sites seemed devoted to polarizing the debate.  Psychics are all deluded or frauds.  Skeptics are close-minded sheep.  And on it goes.  Alex Tskaris, the founder of Skeptiko, coined the phrase "Stuck on Stupid" to refer to anyone who doesn't share his beliefs.  James Randi coined "Woo-Woos" to refer to those who believe in the paranormal.

Many people are certainly profiting (some in terms of cash, many in terms of credit) from making this all about a culture war.  But what gets lost in all this is that there are some damned interesting aspects to discuss in terms of evidence, the way in which science is practised, and why it matters.  Along the way, I have found a few people interested in engaging with these topics - thoughtful, funny, knowledgeable people who are a pleasure to talk to.  But these discussions seem to get marginalized and over-run by those who need to turn this into an Us vs.  Them culture war.  I've given up (at least for the moment) looking for a place where proponents and non-proponents engage in reasonable discussion.

I've started this blog in order to talk about evidence and speculation in the presence of evidence rather than its absence, moving beyond the low-hanging fruit.  My perspective comes from many years working with and teaching evidence-based practices in medicine, and I apply the same approach when looking at those ideas and phenomena which fall under "paranormal" as I do to those ideas and phenomena which fall under "health".  I am hoping others will join me here, although I have an unfortunate tendency to enjoy talking to myself. :-)

Linda