Dean Radin on Psychic Gorillas
Wednesday, August 6th, 2008I’ve personally argued with a fellow experimental physicist about the validity of research done at PEAR (Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Center). I’ll confess that I am unfamiliar with the vast majority of the mathematical and statistical babble in the PEAR papers, but over on the archives of Good Math, Bad Math Mark has some excellent rebuttals. My chief objection to the PEAR studies doesn’t really take a dissection of their methods to get to: their studies are not double blind.
The most frequent counter to my rallying for double blind studies is the claim that the data will be the same regardless of the blindness of the study. This I agree with. However, what will change is the researchers’ interpretation of the data. To clarify the importance of double blinded studies, see the control group article on Skepdic. Personal anecdotes and discussion of the actual subject line occur below this wonderful fold. (more…)