99% of paranormal phenomena are natural - its the 1% thats interesting!

[Dr B]

Ever heard sayings of this type before? I have always found these types of comments to amount to little more than nonsense.

Most science would put effects of 5% and 1% (and below) down to noise and error. Indeed, this is a fundamental part of statistical testing.

So is it not the case then that these people who make this claim are really saying - "we are chasing noise" or "we are chasing random and chance nothingness because something interesting may lie within"

Why would anyone think that there is something in the 1% error component that is more important than the 99% effect component? Am I missing something here.....:-\


Science accepts a level of noise and error - is it a coincidence that paranormalists claim that their effects exist in that error????

[Cuddles]

Surely all paranormal phenomena are natural? It's just that we don't necessarily know the explanation behind the 1%.

I think I've mentioned something similar on the JREF forum before. It's the "psychics of the gaps" problem. 99% of paranormal things have been shown not to be paranormal, so those studying them have to retreat to a position that hasn't been disproved yet. It's exactly the same problem religion has, the more we discover the less we need god, or psychics, as an explanation.

What is especially sad is that this means what people believe and what they think they believe actually bear little resemblance to each other. Christians say they believe in the god of the bible, but the vague "start of everything but doesn't interfere with running the world much" god that most believe in has very little in common with the bible's "all-powerful, all-smiting, jealous burning bushes" god that the bible actually has. It's the same with psychics. Take PEAR as an example. People believe in telekinesis because they think there are big effects that have been noticed during normal life at a human scale. However, PEAR did not look for this, they looked for tiny effects that required small measurements and lots of statistical analysis. What they looked for had absolutely nothing to do with what they thought they were looking for. The 1% is interesting for people because statistical noise is the only place left for the psychics of the gaps to hide.

[Dr B]

Surely all paranormal phenomena are natural? It's just that we don't necessarily know the explanation behind the 1%.

Indeed - I dont think anything above is incompatible with that


I totally agree with the your comments - it is odd that searching for such low percentages seems perfectly reasonable to some people. Obviously some effects out there in natural science are small and depict rare phenomena - which i think is where the twisted version from the paranormalists may come from.

The question for them now becomes - how do they distinguish rare real phenomena from noise? Obviously we all know statistics can help here - but maybe we can devise a non-technical shorthand as a rule of thumb (no doubt based in observable measurable evidence).....hhmmm

[Legaleagle]

Ever heard sayings of this type before?

Yes! in respect of EVP and Orbs on many discussion forums.

I have always found these types of comments to amount to little more than nonsense.

Agreed

Most science would put effects of 5% and 1% (and below) down to noise and error. Indeed, this is a fundamental part of statistical testing

So is it not the case then that these people who make this claim are really saying - "we are chasing noise" or "we are chasing random and chance nothingness because something interesting may lie within"

Why would anyone think that there is something in the 1% error component that is more important than the 99% effect component? Am I missing something here.....:-\


Science accepts a level of noise and error - is it a coincidence that paranormalists claim that their effects exist in that error????

Are you referring to actual scientific results produced by parapsycologists or just the sort of made up waffle statistics that Paranormal beleivers normally concoct for the sake of argument?

For example the "1% of Orbs which can't be explained" is simply a wrong, made up statistic. Ask a Ghost Luvvie where the 1% statistic actually comes from and then watch them squirm. I would not even dignify these type of "statistics" with the reply that you have given above.

[Dr B]

Yes! in respect of EVP and Orbs on many discussion forums.
Are you referring to actual scientific results produced by parapsycologists or just the sort of made up waffle statistics that Paranormal beleivers normally concoct for the sake of argument?

For example the "1% of Orbs which can't be explained" is simply a wrong, made up statistic. Ask a Ghost Luvvie where the 1% statistic actually comes from and then watch them squirm. I would not even dignify these type of "statistics" with the reply that you have given above.

It applies to all as the point is a conceptual one. 1% is the level of error and noise.

btw - welcome to the forum.....

[Admin]

I've made such comments before but what I mean by it is that to experts in the field, 99% of claims/stories/anecdotes can be explained very easily whereas the other 1% may require a bit more delving.

I see your point though Dr B.

In most testing, psychology and biology for example, the statistical significance level is (arbitrarily) set at 1 in 20 (usually seen as P<0.05).

What this means is that if 2 groups are compared, say psychics versus a control group, then there will be a difference between the scores of the 2 groups (which could be a real difference or due to chance). What we'd look for is that the difference is so large that the odds are 1 in 20 (or less) of it happening by chance before we'd say it's statistically significant. i.e. if the scores of the psychics exceeded the control group's and that odds of this happening by chance are less than 1 in 20 we'd say the psychics achieved a statistically significant result.

The problem with this approach is that for every 20 experiments done, 1 of them will show a statistically significant result purely by chance (a false positive).

And of course the more flaws there are in the experiments done the more false positives will occur.

This is why there's always plenty of 'proof' that homeopathy works or that some people have ESP etc. Are these results meaningful or are they the result of false positives (random noise in the data)?

This is why experiments need to be scrutinised for methodological error and repeated. If an effect is real is will be repeatable.

PSI experiments tend not to produce repeatable results. So is taking their few positive results seriously worthwhile or are they just looking for an effect amongst the noise?

I know what I think.