Volume 1, Issue 1 of Antimatters published

Congratulations to Ulrich Mohrhoff and his collaborators for publishing the first issue of AntiMatters.

This journal looks to be of significant interest to readers of AMNAP. . .

New Skeptiko forum

Jacob of mind-energy.net has created an official forum for the Skeptiko podcast. He also has other forums for discussion of psi-related topics.

Thanks Jacob for providing this service!

UPDATE: Jacob brought to my attention that the second link was incorrect. Fixed now.

"As skeptical as Pat Robertson or Billy Graham". . .

I really enjoyed listening to this Skeptiko podcast with B. Alan Wallace. Here's a brief quotation from Alan (emphasis added by me):

The author of "The Discovers" wrote: "The greatest impediment in the whole history of science to progress is not ignorance, but the illusions of knowledge". Thinking that we know something that we've actually assumed. Susan Blackmore's words there, I think in many respects. . . have expressed illusions of knowledge rather than actual knowledge. . . In this regard her statements are enormous impediments to knowledge rather than knowledge. She said we must start with what we know of reality, and then she goes on to this whole sequence of things she says we know [but don't]. . .

What do we know about what happens to consciousness at death?. . . Do we have any means of measuring the presence of consciousness? The answer is no. . . Is there any scientific definition . . .of consciousness? The answer is no. We don't know whether insect-eating plants are conscious. We don't know whether coral are conscious. What are the causes of consciousness? We don't know. . . This is a massive amount of ignorance. . . If we take that as a starting point. . . how on earth with confidence can we say we know anything about what happens to consciousness at death with all that ignorance? And so to start off and say any spiritual practice has to take place in terms of what we know, very good. But why don't we be a bit skeptical about what people think they know as opposed to what has actually been demonstrated in a rigorous scientific fashion? So this is what bothers me about many of the so-called skeptics. What they're doing is defending the status quo, which doesn't take a whole lot of guts, frankly. The status quo, where so much money, power and status is, of materialism. And so no skepticism is required there at all, and so standing up in front with a whole team of scientists behind one all agreeing on the same metaphysical worldview, and then saying "we're skeptics", they're about as skeptical as Pat Robertson or Billy Graham. . . I just don't see much difference in the skepticism of a religious fundamentalist and the skepticism of a hard-core committed scientific materialist. . .

Coal-colored glasses?

Watch Michael Prescott go to town on a positional skeptic's review of Blum's seminal Ghost Hunters.

Remote Viewing study

This remote viewing study was published in the Journal of Scientific Exploration 14.1. Here is the abstract:

Abstract—Remote viewing (RV) is a perceptual ability whereby individuals are able to describe and experience objects, pictures, and locations that are blocked from ordinary perception, either by distance, shielding, or time. RV is usually carried out as a team effort, consisting of a viewer who is attempting to describe a target, and an interviewer who assists the viewer in exacting images and sensations from his of her subconscious process. We report a RV experiment carried out at a conference in Arco, Northern Italy, with a class of 24 participants, many of whom were healers and “energy workers.” Based on previous work of the authors, great attention was given to creating a feeling of community and coherence of intention within the group during the threeday class. In the fourth of the five sessions of the class, a formal, RV experiment was conducted with class members working in pairs, wherein each person served alternately as viewer and interviewer. Viewers were asked to describe a picture of an outdoor scene, encased in an opaque, sealed envelope, which they would be shown immediately after the session. The interviewer then was directed to take the viewer’s sketches and written impressions to the front of the room and rank order the material (from 1 to 4) against the four possible pictures from a preset target package. In this blind-ranking protocol, 6 first-place matches would be expected by chance from the 24 viewers. Instead, 14 first-place matches were achieved. The binomial probability of this outcome is 5 ´ 10- 4, with an effect size Z/(N)1/2= 0.64

Below are photographs of two of the remote viewing session drawings that were blindly matched with the correct target, and the target and decoy photos.

Parapsychology dispute

Looks like two of George Hansen's initial blog posts amount to swipes at Dean Radin's statistical credibility.

Disputes in academia are nothing new, but thanks to the internet, and the fact that both Radin and Hansen are bloggers, this one has the potential to be a lot more public than many previous dust-ups in parapsychology. . .

UPDATE: Radin has addressed Hansen's critique here. H/T Book Surgeon, in the comments. . .

O/T Rant about obnoxious website behavior. . .

If you are distributing prerecorded audio content online for people to listen to, you need to distribute MP3 files. End of story. Not any of the myriads of protected formats like Real, various flash-based players, etc.

When I want to listen to internet content, I want to download it and listen to it later, usually while driving home from the office. And many people like to listen to audio programs on their iPods or other MP3 players. The protected / streaming formats do not allow this.

I consider seeing a site with audio content where MP3 files are not provided as evidence that that site is completely clueless about how people wish to use the internet. For a media organization like Wisconsin Public Radio to offend in this manner is simply beyond acceptable.

Get with the program, folks!

A real treat. . .

Tomorrow (Tuesday August 7th), Marcel Cairo has a real treat for us: parapsychology researcher and author of The Trickster and the Paranormal, George Hansen.

Hansen's book is a must-read for those interested in psi phenomena and why they inhabit the murky and ill-defined edges of our knowledge and institutions. Don't miss it.

As always, this show will begin at 4:00 PM PDT, 7:00 PM EDT.

UPDATE: The show is now scheduled for tomorrow, August 7th.

Remote Viewing

Remote Viewing is a psi technique where some people claim to be able to perceive aspects or features of some location through some kind of non-physical perceptual process. Of currently living Remote Viewers, Joe McMoneagle is probably the most famous.

In 1994 the ABC news show "Put to the Test" created an informal test for McMoneagle.

Skeptoicriticized McMoneagle's interpretations of the scene, but I found their critisms rather strained. McMoneagle's drawing was of a river with straight sides, and a bridge, which were obvious matches for the target site and not the other three sites. A few of their criticisms were very misleading. . .

She's looking up at it. This would apply best to the treehouse, the waterslide, or the Water Wall. There was really nothing to look up at at the dock.

Did the skeptoid commentor actually watch the entire video? First of all, McMoneagle said "There's something tall at the target. She keeps looking up at it". The video footage clearly shows her repeatedly looking up at the bridge, which looks to be over 100 feet tall. For the skeptoid commentor to make this misleading comment is ridiculous. Of course, he is correct that the other sites also have something tall at the target site, and if they were chosen it is likely that the individual at the target site would have looked up at them as well.

She's standing on an incline. She was not standing on an incline, and there were no apparent inclines at any of the four locations.

McMoneagle never said this. He said "the actual target itself is more on an incline". And the bridge, the most prominent visual feature of the target site and target photo, is certainly on an incline up from ground level to high above the river, curving back down to an incline on the opposite bank.

There's a river or something riverlike nearby, with manmade improvements. Houston is a famous river town, so this was a pretty good bet. It applies equally well to the waterslide and to the dock.

I saw no evidence in the photographs or video footage that the other two sites fit nearly as well with this description. Perhaps they were near a river, but the target photo and video footage from ABC made it clear that the important aspects of the other potential targets was something completely different. Certainly the dock is the best possible fit for the illustrations and commentary McMoneagle provided during the program.

I argue that the target person could have been at any one of the four locations, and Joe's psychic predictions would have seemed equally impressive. Joe made numerous sketches, but the only two that they showed were a sketch of a squiggly river (the river at the dock is between straight cement seawalls) and a vague triangular shape, which they interpreted as similar to a crane on a barge when seen from a certain angle.

The river McMoneagle drew was clearly squiggly in the distance, but the part in the foreground was drawn with completely straight banks, which fit the manmade straight lines of the dock area perfectly.

In addition, ABC news showed many more than two sketches. Again I find myself questioning whether Skeptoid bothered to watch the entire video carefully?

An interesting video, certainly not a scientific test, and not proof of anything, but I found it intriguing and entertaining.

I'll address a more formal study of remote viewing soon here on AMNAP.

UPDATE: Brian in the comments questions whether the woman was looking up or not.

Based on these stills from the video, I would say it appears to me that she was looking "up" at the bridge, which is very large and a hundred feet or more high. Now if Joe had suggested that she was looking "straight up" that would be obviously inaccurate.

Interesting test of mediumship. . .

Michael Tymn writes about the "Newspaper Tests". . .

H/T Michael Prescott, who also writes about the same tests. . .