New
Scientist response to my letters re the Ganzfeld experiments (ESP). They inform me that this correspondence will
be published on the New Scientist web site, 21 April 2001.
From:
<John.Hoyland@rbi.co.uk>
To:
<c.h.thompson@newscientist.net>
Subject:
RE: Error Some Place!
Date:
Monday, April 02, 2001 1:02 PM
Dear
Caroline
We
forwarded your message to Morris. Here's what he said:
Dear Mr.
Masood,
Thanks for
pasing on the letter by Ms. Thompson. If other readers have
raised the
same objection, it may be worth putting in a short
clarification.
I have added a very short note below. It could be
important
in ensuring that other readers do not come away with the
impression
that a lot of fuss is being made over what might seem like a
very sloppy
procedure. The 100 potential targets were divided into 25
pools of
four targets each, preselected to be unlike each other. Each
session one
film clip was selected randomly and served as the target.
When it
came time to judge, the other three clips from that pool plus
the actual
target were automatically randomised and presented to the
receiver
for judging in a random order. Thus each of the four was
equally
likely to have been chosen as the target and once the target
picture was
chosen at the start the other three members of the pool
containing
it automatically became the comparators against which the
receiver's
impressions were to be judged. Neither the receiver nor the
experimenter
thus had any clues as to which of the four was the actual
target.
Unfortunately in a short, edited interview about a procedure
with many
safeguards built in, it is difficult to include sufficient
details on
them all and alert skeptical readers will be good at finding
the
apparent holes. At one point I do say that, 'During judging the
receiver is
shown a duplicate of the target clip and three others
equally
likely to have been selected randomly as the target.' Hopefully
most
readers would infer from that that we were not waiting to see how
the
conversation went and then selecting other clips to maximise our
chances.
That would be either true stupidity or, more likely, blatant
cheating.
The scenario produced by Ms. Thompson would of course be
worthless
as evidence of anything more than the incompetence or
dishonesty
of whomever designed the protocol. Please thank her for me
for
pointing out the potential ambiguity in the way the description was
phrased. I
should have caught that in my reading of the edited
transcript.
Best
wishes,
Bob Morris
http://www.aber.ac.uk/~cat