Skeptic and former parapsychologist Susan Blackmore was one of the respondents in this year's Edge Foundation question, "What have you changed your mind about?". She tells how she was originally enthusiastic about the paranormal and parapsychology, but after numerous experiments came to the conclusion that there is no evidence for psi:
I did the experiments. I tested telepathy, precognition, and clairvoyance; I got only chance results. I trained fellow students in imagery techniques and tested them again; chance results. I tested twins in pairs; chance results. I worked in play groups and nursery schools with very young children (their naturally telepathic minds are not yet warped by education, you see); chance results. I trained as a Tarot reader and tested the readings; chance results.
...Parapsychologists called me a "psi-inhibitory experimenter", meaning that I didn't get paranormal results because I didn't believe strongly enough. I studied other people's results and found more errors and even outright fraud. By the time my PhD was completed, I had become a sceptic.
Synchronistically, when I read this entry I had just finished reading a section of Chris Carter's Parapsychology and the Skeptics (available from Amazon US), in which he talks about...Susan Blackmore! His comments are interesting:
In a number of publications, Blackmore claims to have become increasingly skeptical of the existence of psi phenomena after "ten years of intensive research in parapsychology." These claims led parapsychologist Rick Berger to critically examine the Blackmore experiments in great detail, and he found that "The claim of 'ten years of psi research' actually represents a series of hastily constructed, executed, and reported studies that were primarily conducted during a 2-year period." These consisted of a set of experiments conducted between October 1976 and December 1978 for her PhD dissertation.
Blackmore reported 29 experiments completed over this two-year period, of which 21 were eventually published as separate experiments in five parapsychology journal papers. Seven of these experiments produced statistically significant results. Although these experiments form the basis of Blackmore's claim of "failing to find the paranormal", the odds against 7 successes out of 21 attempts happening by chance are over 20,000 to one!
So, how does Blackmore reconcile the fact of 7 successful experiments out of 21 total experiments with her often-repeated claim that her own research led her to become a skeptic? Simple: As Berger pointed out, Blackmore applied a double-standard to her experiments. When her experiments seemed to show evidence of psi, the results were dismissed as due to flaws in the experiment. But when the results did not seem to show evidence of psi, she simply ignored the quality of the study.
Berger's own conclusion regarding Blackmore's claim that her experimental work shows evidence for the non-existence of psi is damning:
Blackmore's claims that her database shows no evidence of psi are unfounded, because the vast majority of her studies were carelessly designed, executed, and reported, and in Blackmore's own assessment, individually flawed. As such, no conclusions should be drawn from this database.... Blackmore is extremely vocal in decrying psi research in her writings, on television and radio, and before the skeptical advocacy group CSICOP (the Committee for Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal), citing her own work as the basis for her strong convictions. ...[She] has achieved a notable position in the skeptical community based on her conversion from believer to skeptic during her "ten years of negative research." Her insistence to the contrary notwithstanding, 1 believe that my review of her psi research has achieved a constructive end by showing that her conversion from parapsychologist to CSICOP Fellow had no scientific basis in her own experimental work.
Carter writes that after Berger's critique, "Blackmore was willing to concede in an academic journal that 'I agree that one cannot draw conclusions about the reality of psi based on these experiments.' But her writings in the popular press have not reflected this admission.
It seems the latest Edge piece is no different...
Blackmore
Hi Greg,
From what I remember about things she's written, Susan Blackmore began with an enthusiasm for the subject - I seem to recall her even spending nights in graveyards. But as her work continued she became more and more sceptical.
Now despite her scepticism, she is quite mystical, into deep meditation, etc. Such conflicts lead me to conclude that her scepticism is more the result of disappointment in not experiencing things, rather than anything else.
...
Relaity, like time, is relative to the observer
Anthony North
Blackmore II
I concur with this assessment...Disappointment often leads to someone drastically changing the way they look at things.
Dweller73
Projections
Human psychology subjectively projects what it believes or feels the results of an action should be.
If the results do not fit the projection, they are dismissed rather than consider the projections as faulty.
This is, to me, the fundamental flaw in research. Specific results are sought and it focuses the mind, rendering it blind to what is just there, besides the expected.
nothing
A lot of research is done looking for unusual stuff. Things that don't fit the normal patterns. A lot of plain old observation in everyday life is the same. We notice that something has changed. Perhaps something in our field fo view has changed color. Perhaps something appeared that wasn't there before. Perhaps something is gone that was there.
So these changes are interesting, or threatening, and then we focus attention on that. After we notice that something has changed.
These changes, or unusual things we observe, are against a background of boring low level noise. Research somewhat reflects that.
The way research is published, both in the professional media and in the consumer media, is quite misleading. The publishing process (and the funding process) projects that researchers start out looking for one specific thing. They don't. They noticed something unusual, and then they look at is more closely.
Maybe that is the root of the term research. To look again at what was unexpected.
Then again, what I called the "background of boring low level noise" can be interesting. Why does it not change? That can be interesting in itself.
There is a Sherlock Holmes story, where the solution depends on the critical fact that a dog did nothing at the time of the crime. The absence of anything interesting can be interesting itself.
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If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure.
(Bill Clinton, and perhaps others)
You are quite rigth Earthling
I found your post most interesting.
My starting point was related to the inclusion of the ego factor as a conditioned observer.
But what you are saying is quite right.
Earthling's "nothing"
What you wrote, Earthling, is so true.
This has nothing to do with the current subject, but it does pertain to your remark that 'nothing' can often cause us to look for 'something'.
Today we had rain, not a lot, but it was overcast and drizzly although still warm. Tonight it is silent. Absolutely silent. This is not normal, thus something has changed or is about to change.
Due to the rain there should be several varieties of frogs croaking - there are none. At this time of year the chorus of crickets and cicadas at night can be quite deafening - tonight they are all silent. There is no breeze thus there are no rustling leaves outside. I have about 6 possums living in my ceiling - tonight I have not heard them scampering across the roof as they go out to forage.
The silence outside is quite eerie, and thus both puzzling and a 'nothing' I would like to find the answer for. I probably won't, but it is an instance of where an unusual event provides the reason to look for a cause because the unusual event was noticed in the first place.
Regards, Kathrinn
Susan Blackmore's Claims
Now despite her scepticism, she is quite mystical, into deep meditation, etc. Such conflicts lead me to conclude that her scepticism is more the result of disappointment in not experiencing things, rather than anything else.
Anthony North
Expectations are interesting. My most profound personal experiences have occurred at times I wasn't actively looking for them, and attempting to recreate them appears to prevent them. Paradoxes abound.
The idea must be to "just be" . . .
Expectations
The ego works with the form. In other words, the ego has a hard time with anything it cannot quantify or compare. So, it keeps on expecting a particular 'form' of experience.
The soul is contemplative and constantly seeks to repeat memories that it found pleasant and, of course, seeks to stay away from those memories unpleasant.
But memories are forms as well and being in the memory of an event is being outside of the time of consciousness, memory being a reflection of the past.
The ego ends up torn between the template memory affords and the freedom of spirit outside of the form. This prevents the ego from 'just being', being forced into a never ending circle of comparisons with a past experience to validate its immediate reality.
Trying to be spontaneous
I agree, Michael and Richard. Synchronicity occurs when you're not looking for it. You can't try to be spontaneous, afterall. As the Zen buddhists say (with a nonchalant, but knowing, shrug of the shoulders), it is or it isn't so "just be".
Remembering
Good morning everyone,
It's like that piece of information you can't remember, and you try and try and it won't come. Then, clear your mind, forget it, and up it pops.
...
A brilliant idea crawls out of the corpses of a hundred failures
Anthony North
Remembering, realizing, and all mental processes
It appears to me that regardless of the process, as soon as the ego 'wants' something particular, he projects it based on his past and becomes stuck in that past. He wants then to condition what lies in front of him based on that past onto which he is constantly reflecting.
As Anthony points out, when the ego stops projecting, he can escape his past and what is can reveal itself, when it wants to.
We had a discussion about what we called inspiration that touched this subject a little while ago.
While someone struggles to fit reality to his understanding or to what he wishes reality was, he automatically creates a division between reality and himself.
The human mind in its current general state is a divided mind that tries to compartmentalize everything it touches, therefore dividing ever more what he believes are elements of reality. He then consider them one by one as if they were independent from each other and has a divided view that reinforces itself in the process.
This intense exercise is based on memorial functions and again, as Anthony pointed out, when that function is set aside things can become quite clear without so much efforts to freeze the flow of energy into a memory.
Finding what we are looking for
Hi Rick.
Exactly.
We always find what we are looking for. The problem is that what we are looking for happens to be a form that is already conditioned by our way of seeing things and that this way of seeing things is already conditioned by ignorance (otherwise, we would of course not be looking for everything, right?)
Obviously, this means that what we are looking for is flawed from the beginning, therefore so is what we find, because it will be interpreted in relation to the conditions that already wrapped what we were looking for.
But perhaps we just refuse
But perhaps we just refuse her arguments and conclusions, because we don't want her to be right? Then it is easier to come with all kinds of simple psychological explanations as to why she says, what she is saying, instead of listening to what she is saying.
From the Berger quotation it is hard to see, wether or not he has done any thorough examinations of Blackmore's research. It seems more as if he is just critizing her general statements. If does disagree with her, he will have to prove that she has misinterpretated her own results.
"Critically examined the Blackmore experiments in great detail"
But perhaps we just refuse her arguments and conclusions, because we don't want her to be right? Then it is easier to come with all kinds of simple psychological explanations as to why she says, what she is saying, instead of listening to what she is saying.
Hi,
Thanks for the comments. Certainly, I'm not refusing her arguments? Blackmore could well be right in her opinions, although from my own reading I would lean towards saying there's something to psi. What I *am* interested in doing though, is keeping the so-called 'skeptics' honest - as they seem to be given a free pass in the mainstream media as to being the arbiters of how science and reality are defined. Experience has shown, however, that their opinions are often badly flawed...and rooted in materialist assumptions, rather than scientific.
From the Berger quotation it is hard to see, wether or not he has done any thorough examinations of Blackmore's research. It seems more as if he is just critizing her general statements. If does disagree with her, he will have to prove that she has misinterpretated her own results.
See:
Berger, Rick, 1989a "Discussion: A Critical Examination of the Blackmore Psi Experiments" Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, Vol. 83, April 1989, pages 123-144.
Kind regards,
Greg
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You monkeys only think you're running things
Conclusions and arguments
To me, science cannot dictate reality, regardless of its conclusions. I have first hand experience with what is called ESP and I don't need experiments to prove me the nature of ESP or this or that about ESP.
Experiments and conclusions are for those who seek an explanation on one hand, or who seek to prove where the phenomena is beyond their experience.
For instance, if a scientist were to tell me that its all an illusion created by electro-chemical interactions in my brain, I would be forced to tell him that his interpretation must therefore be an illusion based on the electro-chemical interactions in his own brain.
If he were to show me data as facts, I would be forced to tell him that first hand experience also may stand as fact.
You can't allow anyone to dictate to you what you know or not just because it fits a consensus or not.
All these argumentations are not, generally speaking, meant to reach a heightened vision of the phenomena but rather to satisfy the need of gaining consensus for a particular thought system, be it materialistic or metaphysical. It does not matter, both are thought systems so both are limitative.
Must be a hoax
I heard a record by Django Reinhardt, and man, was his scale run fast, zooooom right up the fret board.
practically supernatural.
So ... I decided to test that. I spent nearly all one afternoon practicing and practicing and practicing and practicing, holy cow almost the entire afternoon except for two coffee breaks and the phonecall from my mom and few hours I spend reading the Daily Grail, but practically the whole afternoon, just practicing that scale.
At the end, I measured my speed and it was a tiny teeny fraction of the speed on that Django record, and littered with mistakes.
I have concluded that Django Reinhardt did not exist.