Arete

Actually I did around ~150 posts ago.

Levity aside, you're now confounding two issues: 1) You simply can't reliably use two different psi wheels to take measurements and expect to generate a useful dataset. You need to design the experiment so that control and test measurements are taken using the same device. 2) The concept of a blind trial has been explained many times - it doesn't literally mean "blind", it means that the subject isn't self reporting. Human brains are great at finding correlations even when they don't exist - EE is doing it in this thread - wheel is moving = "It must be my TK"; wheel is still = "something must be blocking my TK". You need to eliminate such cognitive bias to generate a result of any worth. A third issue is the psi wheel itself. It's a poor measurement device due to it's propensity to be perturbed by external influences. Combine that with poorly controlled "experiments" and the cognitive bias that people convinced they have psychic abilities inherently display, and it's no wonder it's a favorite device. In theory, a mustard seed in a jar with the lid screwed on would be lighter and therefore require less energy to move - and be much better controlled than anything you can devise with the wheel. However, no one uses such a device to demonstrate their psychic ability... funny that...

I guess we will just have to agree to disagree.

As previously explained - no two wheels are exactly identical - you're simply switching the bias with each replicate. Maybe that will even out over enough replicates, maybe it won't. A much better experimental design would use SAME one to measure test and control.

If you're still intending to use separate devices to measure control and treatment, and not blind the subject from the result, I would personally consider the experiment flawed to the point of worthlessness. Using a piece of paper balanced on a pin as a measuring device is questionable at best, and probably still pretty dismissable even under optimal conditions - my participation here is really to talk about experimental design in general, as trying to control the "psi wheel" experiment is kind of trying to polish a turd, for lack of a better phrase. EE would be much better served by using a device less susceptible to confounding forces, as has been suggested by others. Ultimately we're talking about an exceptional claim, which requires exceptional evidence. It's much less easy to explain, say a mustard seed moving about in an enclosed vessel using known phenomena, than it is to explain a piece of paper, balanced on the point of a needle moving about using known phenomena. Occams razor would appear to be the curse of the psi wheel.

Quite the opposite. The experimental design simply needs to minimize the chance that the wheel will move due to something other than telekinesis. The steps I've outlined are actually pretty basic, general experimental practices (minimize confounding outside forces, eliminate subjective bias, eliminate instrumentation error). If you don't design and conduct the experiment properly, it doesn't test the hypothesis at hand and doesn't prove the point. The reason EE's experiments to date are so unconvincing is because they are so uncontrolled. The propensity for external influence and the application of Occam's Razor means that the only scientifically valid conclusion is that there is no evidence of his abilities util such time as a decently devised study is conducted. Conducting a well considered, controlled study is so you can rely on your data to tell you the outcome, and specifically to eliminate bias towards one outcome or the other.

Absolutely. With a homemade device like a "PSI" wheel, it would be virtually impossible to get the friction coefficients of two wheels identical - meaning they would move different degrees given the same input. Also, in a home setup, it would be virtually impossible to isolate them from every possible source of vibration and air movement. I would therefore argue that it's not only possible, but likely that you would observe some bias when using two separate apparatus to take control and test measurements. As I elaborated earlier - even in a genuine laboratory, using professionally constructed, precision instruments, you would never measure controls and treatments using different instruments. It's an obvious source of error -or at least I would have thought it to be obvious. You know posts are time and date stamped, right? I first used the term on "27 January 2016 - 07:52 PM" Furthermore I defined type 1 error the same day: I FURTHER clarified in a subsequent post: Again, to clarify, a type 1 error is any error that leads one to conclude that an experiment has measured a treatment effect, when none is actually present. As statistical tests are specifically implemented to control for both types of error, this often when the concept is first introduced to the student. I mean no offense, but it appears that the issue here is the rote regurgitation of definitions, rather than grasping the actual concept behind them. A statistical analysis is only as good as the data used to perform it. If your experimental design is flawed, your statistical analysis is worthless, no matter how sophisticated. To provide an in context hypothetical example: You have a control wheel, and a test wheel. Due to inherent imperfections, the test wheel spins slightly more freely than the control. You have controlled as best you can for external influences, but the hot water pipe under the floor intermittently causes some vibration. As a result, the test wheel moves slightly during the experiment, but the control does not. You perform a t-test on the replicated results, and the effect is significant at the predetermined 95% confidence level. Hurrah! you've proven telekinesis, pass go and collect your Nobel prize... only you haven't, you've made a type 1 error due to flawed experimental design. The entire purpose of the scientific method is to control for error - experimental design, analysis and interpretation all control for errors and bias. That's why it works. Is that any clearer? Is anyone else having trouble with comprehension?

The issue is one of cognitive bias. A person being tested has a tendency to record results which lead towards a conclusion which favors their preconceptions - even when they are attempting to remain objective. As a result, having results recorded by a subject, regardless of the experiment, leads to biased results. Given the nature of TK, it involves self reporting (i.e. you cannot objectively measure when a person is attempting to use the "ability" and when they are not) the only true way to eliminate that source of bias is to control for it by blinding the subject from the result. Same applies to the drug studies cited earlier. Imatfaal explicitly cited a previous post made by me when commenting about the blinded nature of the experiment. If he meant something different, I'm sure he can clarify. This is confusing, as we are discussing the design of an experiment. Controlling for both types of error is inherently a component of experimental design, analysis and interpretation. What is it exactly that you are considering separate to experimental design? Also, any measurement made during the course of a experiment which is a false positive is a type 1 error, not just rejection of the overall experiment.

A single blind experiment is an experiment in which the subject is not made aware of the results of the study (e.g. a test drug is administered, but patients do not know if they got a placebo or a drug) . In a double blind, the researcher is also unaware until the experiment is concluded (e.g. a test drug is administered, but neither the researchers or the patients know who received a placebo or a drug). In this case, you would conduct the study in a manner which prevented the person being tested for their TK ability from seeing the wheel when during the course of the experiment. The purpose is to remove subjective bias (a source of type 1 error) from experimental results.

With all due respect to you and SwansonT, if I were designing this experiment I would argue strongly against using two sets of equipment - Alternating between measuring treatment and control on the same setup would be simpler (which comes from a background in experimental evolution, where experimental designs tend to get out of hand quickly). All this is rather moot without some sort of proposed mechanism, and I think we can all be fairly certain what the results of a properly designed experiment would be... but hopefully someone out there has learned something about designing sound experiments along the way

Just another tip on experimental design: the above suggestion is flawed. One should never measure controls and treatments using different equipment, due to the potential for confounding effects of differential calibration: different scales, ph meters, balances, spectrometers, etc all generally produce slightly different measurements of the same samples, potentially introducing type 1 error. In the case at hand, EE is using entirely uncalibrated, homemade devices, so the resulting measurements of "telekinetic forces" is likely to be highly variable between wheels. Another important aspect I should have included in the previous list of suggestions is to conduct the study with the subject blind - conduct the experiment so that the subject cannot see the wheel, and have them tell you when they are, and are not spinning the wheel (or direct them when start and stop) further eliminating confirmation bias.

Sound experimental design IS what limits false positive results (i.e., type 1 error). A false positive is simply a measurement that is mistakenly attributed to the treatment being tested - leading to rejection of the null hypothesis, when it arose another source. Statistical analysis - in combination with good experimental design, is used to quantify the potential effects of false positive on an experiment. This is to prevent the overall result of an experiment being misleading, and assuming that a treatment effect is observed when in fact it either isn't, or cannot be determined to have been observed. Sound experimental design explicitly addresses errors of both kinds. If you think that good experimental design and controlling for errors are mutually exclusive, your day of research has provided you with an incomplete understanding. To make it clearer in the example at hand, observing the wheel spinning due to air movement in the room, and falsely attributing that movement to telekinesis would be a type 1 error. by placing a glass bowl over the wheel, you limit (i.e. control for) type 1 error.

All experimental designs should control for type 1 error. Without some form of control for false positive results, an experiment is hardly worth conducting. In this instance I can see 4 things that would need to be done: 1) Isolate the apparatus from confounding perturbations. In this case, isolate the wheel from environmental forces which may spin it, and be falsely interpreted as telekinesis. Putting a glass bowl over it might help somewhat with air currents, but additionally, it should be on a sturdy surface which vibrations do not affect, and away from differential light sources which may cause convective currents, etc. 2) Remove confirmation bias by having an observer, or better yet a binary device like a motion detector record results rather than the subject himself. 3) Quantify false positives using a control. In this case have the subject do exactly what they do to spin the wheel physically, and get them to not try and spin the wheel. Record movement. 4) Replicate to statistically compare the treatment to the control. The OP's experience with limited type 1 control (i.e. the bowl) was reduced treatment effect, which suggests that increased type 1 control is likely to lead to non-significant results. In addition, any convincing case for telekinesis would require a plausible mechanism. This is where the "defies the laws of physics" comes in, as energy would need to be transferred from the subject to the object being moved, somehow. In any case, the current evidence here is not compelling.

If you aren't controlling for type 1 error in your experimental design, any results you present are of limited worth.

I can just see the overly honest methods post now: "When we controlled for environment, our results became non-significant. Rather than accepting the null hypothesis, we stopped controlling for environment."

The main issue I see is your experiments are not controlled. It remains plausible that other mechanisms generate the observations you have recorded - given that these mechanisms (e.g. air movement in a room, heat from your hands, disruption from breathing, etc) are simpler in explanation than you being telekinetic, the application of Occam's Razor compels one to conclude that your experiments thus far do not support a conclusion that you are telekinetic. In order to conduct a controlled experiment, you need to do three things: 1) Isolate the device from other forces. The glass bowl as previously suggested would suffice for a home experiment. 2) Conduct a negative control - i.e. do exactly the same things you do when you get the pinwheel to spin, but do not try to spin it using your abilities. Conduct this for the same duration as the experiment, and record the number of times it moves when you are not trying to spin it, vs when you are. 3) Replicate the experiment. You need to conduct both the experiment and the control a number of times, in order to generate a number of data points that allow one to statistically verify that the pinwheel spins only when you are using your ability. If you are unwilling/unable to do the above, I'm afraid your observations are, scientifically speaking, invalid. Best of luck with your endeavors.

This is copypasta from a previous eugenics thread, however it applies here too: a) For multi-genic, environmentally correlated, abstractly interpreted traits like intellect and personality traits, there is so many interactions between variable genotypes that a selective breeding regime is highly unlikely to produce a predictable outcome. b) Any selective breeding regime decreases Ne (effective population size) which reduces the genetic variability of a given population, which has demonstrably negative impacts on the evolutionary potential of the population in question. c) Selective elimination of individuals in which recessive deleterious conditions from the breeding population will not significantly reduce the expression of those genes, which are carried without expression in a much larger proportion of the population than the proportion in which they are expressed e.g. for every sufferer of an autistic condition, there are 35 silent carriers of the associated genes. So eugenics violates basic population genetic principles, reduces the evolutionary potential of a population and ultimately doesn't work.

I have stretched earlobes, dermally punched helices and visible tattoos in a short sleeved shirt - mostly due to my misspent youth hanging around at punk and metal shows. Given it's been 14 years since I added any significant ink or piercings, so honestly I don't think terribly much about it on a day to day basis. I know I have been judged based on the way I've chosen to look - people have concluded that I'm mentally ill, a criminal and a drug addict, among other things, but at this stage in my life I can't say I really care a whole lot. Knowing that some people will jump to negative conclusions about me based on my physical appearance alone helps remind me to avoid doing it myself, and the fact that it happens means I probably avoid speaking to some boring, narrow minded people. Ultimately, people will judge you based on your appearance regardless of how you look. Wear a fancy watch if it makes you happy. If you see someone wearing a fancy watch, try not to assume it means anything other than they like to wear a fancy watch.

In terms of authoritative people genuinely trying to reconcile religion with modern science, I would strongly recommend both Francis Collins and Francisco Ayala. Both are theists, actually qualified as scientists in relevant fields, and provide perspectives on reconciling religion with the theory of evolution. I would strongly suggest anyone coming to terms with science and religious belief reading pieces by both of them. Werner and his lipstick on a pig version of Creationism really has no place in an intelligent discourse on the topic.

Fear would be the wrong word. Disdain would be closer to the mark - even a hobbyist fossil collector/zoologist could have explained to him the concept of taxonomic characters and why photographs of museum exhibits are not useful for species diagnosis. As an MD, he should be able to grasp the concept (e.g. you can't diagnose an illness without an examination in most cases). So he's either woefully uninformed regarding the very basics of the study he's trying to do (and claiming to be an expert in), or he's a charlatan. I find either option to be problematic and the shortcomings of his contribution to be worth noting. I'm also confused as to how his contributions help "bridge the gap" between creationism and science; he's explicitly trying (very badly and quite possibly dishoneslty) to bring the science into question and further the case for creationism - thus widening the gap. Unless the fact that he seemingly accepts geological time, and you see that as a step forward from young earth creationism?

Because the question is trivially answered using overwhelming available evidence. It's an irrelevant question in any contemporary, rigorous scientific setting. It's a notably poorly executed attempt to provide scientific looking legitimacy to an argument for creationism that has none - and in doing so is dishonest. Acting as if it's a legitimate question and pretending to have authority on the subject matter is dishonest, and the "experimental design" of the "study" conducted to supposedly "test" the hypothesis is atrocious - I have literally seen more rigor at an elementary school science fair. I think it does the opposite of helping creationists come to terms with evolution. It provides false information to give the appearance of scientific uncertainty when there is none, potentially duping the gullible into thinking that there is merit in a creationist argument when in fact there isn't.

From his website (easily found with a google search, so I'm not going to link it and drive traffic there): "Dr. Werner asks the simplest question. Was life completely different in the past (evolution) or did some animals and plants simply go extinct (creation)?" So his central premise is that fossil organisms ARE representative of extant taxa, and that speciation never occurs. As explained earlier this is trivially proven false and his experiment of taking photos of museum exhibits and comparing them to modern taxa is laughably poor attempt to provide evidence for this entirely incorrect argument. Time to move along?

Thinking about it further (i.e. procrastinating about actual work) the central premise of the argument is even more flawed than the simple fallacies regarding fossils and extant taxa. Dr. Werner seems to be implying that species cannot be created, all species have existed in the past and we simply lose some as time progresses (ergo "evolution is wrong"). That argument is proven false by the fact we have directly observed speciation events in a number of species like the apple maggot fly and the yellow fever mosquito. This means that it is a fact that new species can evolve. So even if his "grand evolution experiment" as he terms it on his website of photographing fossils in museums and saying they look like modern organisms actually proved that they WERE modern organisms (and it certainly doesn't) it wouldn't disprove evolutionary theory. I'd also like to point out that he is an MD who practices family medicine. He is in no way qualified in paleontology, evolutionary biology, taxonomy, systematics, biology or any other field related to his "grand experiment". This is a tactic that creationists use that I really dislike - throwing about erroneous titles to provide the illusion of authority in a given topic area. He isn't a "Dr" in anything relevant to the subject area, and should not be using the title to give the impression that he is.

The difficulty with the claim of his that you've posted - to paraphrase that fossils of most/all modern organisms have been found in Triassic/Jurassic sediment layers is that it's just plain wrong. They haven't. He's not an expert on echinoderm taxonomy, so he's giving a couple of pictures a good old layperson's eyeball and calling "same enough" which to any taxonomist in any field is laughable. He may as well be holding up a picture of a woolly mammoth and African elephant and making the same ridiculous argument. You'd need the specimen in hand, and to compare the diagnostic characteristics as even the most rudimentary start to calling them the same thing - even then, you'd need to account for potential convergent evolution and evolutionary stasis explaining the physical similarity between specimens. Then, to have any sort of robust analysis, you'd need a decent sample size of fossils and extant echinoderms to compare. I'm going to self cite here, even if he demonstrated that they are phenotypically indistinguishable, that isn't enough. Cryptic species can be physically identical and sympatric - distinguishable only using multiple genetic markers. We encountered this in desert geckos. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1055790313001085 Given that the echinoderms in question are temporally separated by roughly 65 million years, I and the rest of the scientific community would generally expect some pretty compelling evidence that they are the same species, and "they look the same to me in a photo I took at the museum" isn't going to cut it, ever. It's a flagrant display of his own lack of understanding regarding taxonomy, speciation, evolutionary processes and paleontology.