Miguel,
You are not alone regarding your views on such allegations. After reading
Paul Brandon's post I spent the better part of Thursday afternoon and
evening composing a response, deleting said response, and then repeating
those steps several times again. Finally I realized I needed to stop and
reflect first before responding. Where was all this anguish I was feeling
coming from?
But in the meantime, your response regarding the notes was exactly what I
intended to write (though probably far less succinctly).
To my esteemed colleagues on this list, I pondered Miguel's question about
the impetus behind the ire. I believe that I understand from whence some,
but not all, of it may come. [This was written before I read the post from
Jim Clark confirming this concern-I hadn't heard of the case mentioned,
though it sounds chilling.] I suspect that part of it derives from a
concern for the welfare of our students, who will benefit from clear and
rational thinking habits. I agree wholeheartedly with that concern. But,
can't we strive to assist our students in honing their thinking skills
without making any of those students feel ashamed? I'm specifically
referring to a very small minority of students who experience anomalous
experiences.
As I noted in a previous post, the criticisms made (actually, I just wrote
allegations and then changed it, but that reflects the "feel" of this to
me)...the criticisms made regarding lack of replicability, allegations of
fraud, and lack of theoretical mechanisms are the very same criticisms
repeatedly leveled at psychoneuroimmunology (PNI) before the advent of
meta-analysis. Researchers in PNI were seen as pseudo-scientists by many,
including Marcia Angell who wrote a damning editorial in the New England
Journal of Medicine in 1985. Now all that contempt and scorn has given way
to standard sections about PNI in the health psych portions of our
introductory textbooks. And yet, in a recent interview with Robert Ader in
the APA Monitor, Ader said that despite the now consistent replications,
there are still a few holdouts who refuse to believe that there can be any
effect of the mind on immune function.
<http://www.apa.org/monitor/jun99/pni.html>
Incidentally, although we make much of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal
(HPA) axis as a theoretical mechanism in PNI, it's merely our best guess.
In that same interview, Ader goes beyond acknowledging this saying "there
are many psychological phenomena, and medical phenomena for that matter, for
which we have not yet defined the precise mechanisms. It doesn't mean it's
not a real phenomenon."
Doesn't our history with PNI at least counsel us to remain curious if also
skeptical? And with such, at the time, mixed findings, what do you suppose
motivated those scientists to keep looking. Were they just lucky to have
their blind faith justified? Hardly. We may not like to talk about it
because it's hard to prove, but our brains are peerless when it comes to
pattern recognition (although that false positive rate is real bear). Those
researchers stuck with it because their instincts or intuition said there
something there. My point-mired as it it in digression-is that, if we do
not affirm the null hypothesis regarding psi, yet convey contempt in our
voices to students, I fear we may be crushing valuable curiosity...and also
esteem.
I feel ambivalent about this issue. On the one hand, I grew up knowing I
was gay, and seeing all the harm that some people-using organized religion
and various kinds of sloppy thinking-cause to gays and lesbians. So, in
fact, I am strongly motivated to see that our students receive training in
critical thinking.
On the other hand, I was one of those rare (?) students who had anomalous
experiences. I AM one of those adults who has anomalous experiences. Since
around the age of 13 I have seen a blue light around living and sometimes
non-living things. Let me state at the outset that I do NOT consider myself
psychic; indeed, I have never pursued anything regarding this "light" or
visual anomaly since I was a teenager. Most importantly, never has it
seemed to confer any benefit or advantage, of which I'm aware. (Certainly,
some "information transfer" would have been NICE during visits to Las Vegas,
but alas....)
You may well ask why I even make the connection between this anomaly and
anything paranormal. I do, only because when I first read a little about
the paranormal, descriptions by those who described "auras" bore a striking
resemblance to what I saw and in the places where I tended to see it. That's
it. But like I said, it's never conferred any kind foreknowledge or
specialized "power" (ugh) beyond what my clinical acumen tells me about
clients. Pretty uninteresting, believe me.
I have never spoken of this in any public forum and I feel intensely
vulnerable about doing so now. I have been interested in science since I
was a child. I only had passion for a career in which science played a role.
After learning about the scientific (mainstream) view on psi as a young man,
I studiously avoided trying to see this anomaly. And yet, if I am honest
with myself, I have to admit that it was perhaps partially what guided my
interest in PNI as a grad student. PNI was just safe enough because we were
dealing with biology, and 'what could be more solid than counting cells or
measuring immunoflourescence?' But my willingness not to uncritically
believe every canon of science arose because my personal experience-this
visual anomaly-suggested that we scientists did not know everything yet.
Why do I even bring this up? Because being gay taught me the cruel pain of
those who, not knowing I was gay, felt they could make hateful comments
about my brothers and sisters, about me-comments made by the "blind" to
children who must remain "dumb"...or suffer the consequences (see Matthew
Shepherd). It's strange for me to be linking together two issues that had
always seemed completely "orthogonal," if you will. But right now, the
feelings of shame about this dirty little secret seems quite similar to how
I used to feel as an adolescent about being gay.
Yet coming out as gay in some ways was easier than revealing this anomaly.
When I was young at least, I discovered there were many gay people who
seemed, to my adolescent view-forgive me-normal. I have only found in very
round-about ways, one other psychologist-a prominent researcher in child
development-who has different, but anomalous experiences. She and I have
talked about the feeling of unintentional oppression from our colleagues
regarding this. This is sad: scientists being made to feel like heretics by
other scientists? But now I'm coming to appreciate the source of that:
concern for the welfare of students.
For my part, I realized late Thursday night the origin of the anguish I had
been feeling regarding recent posts on psi. I felt anxiety for the students
who might have some type of anomalous experiences and yet hear that
undertone of derision in some professor's voice. I have no desire to prove
or disprove the theories of the parapsychologists. And I would prefer not
to say anything more about my visual quirks, because frankly, I don't know
anything and haven't the desire to explore something that at worst makes me
sound delusional and at best something less than the rational psychologist I
consider myself to be. (And for the curious (mild defensive tone), until
fairly recently, my vision was better than average. Now it's down to a
measly 20/20.)
To you, my colleagues, even if you discount everything that I've written
(and why wouldn't you?), BUT you also care about ALL of your students-and I
believe, without data, that you do-I have a request. I would request for
that young man who I used to be, and for other young men and women that may
currently be, in your classes and labs today-a rare few of whom may
experience inexplicable, neurological glitches-please, do teach those
critical thinking skills, but do so with humor and perhaps an awareness that
there MAY be additional explanations for paranormal phenomena that do not
involve revoking the laws of physics or faking data. The history of PNI at
least should caution that much.
And thanks, Miguel. Your courage in responding reminded me 'to thine own
self be true' even if that means risking tenure for a job that I really
love. (That sounds way more melodramatic than I intended, but it's what it
is).
Respectfully,
Christian Hart, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Psychology
Department of Behavioral Studies
Santa Monica College
Postscript from today 9/19: My personal experience studying PNI before and
after it became "respectable": the lay public vastly overestimates the range
of effect sizes for the relationships typically studied; and they almost
never distinguish between an immune parameter and "health." BUT I also
noted among the hard-core biomedical types (at UCLA medical center) the
equally inaccurate assessment that there could be no relationship beyond the
theoretically less interesting pathways of diet, exercise, etc.
-----Original Message-----
From: Miguel Roig [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Saturday, September 16, 2000 8:46 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Fwd: Re: James Randi & Daryl Bem
I hope that I am not alone on this list in holding the view that allegations
of
fraud in ANY area of SCIENTIFIC investigation should be taken very seriously
and should NOT be made lightly. So, let's review for the moment what has
transpired:
In a previous post Jim Clark stated:
> For a discussion of possible ways of and
>evidence for cheating in lab studies, including labs involved in
>many of the Ganzfeld studies, see Blackmore's "In search of the
>light: The adventures of a parapsychologist."
I felt that the above statement unfairly casts a pretty dark shadow, not
only
on an entire area of research, i.e, the ganzfeld, but also, on the entire
already badly battered field of parapsychology and those individuals, many
of
them psychologists who currently work in it. Given my familiarity with
parapsychology (relative, it appears, to the rest of TIPs members) and not
having immediate access to either edition of her books, I asked Jim for
additional clarification on Blackmore's claims. He then posted the
following:
>It is not easy to isolate a few quotes. Blackmore presents a
>lengthy description of some anomalies that she observed in
>Sargent's lab (she does cite and quote from the articles Miquel
>quoted) when she visited because of her own failures to obtain
>the Psi effects that Sargent was reporting. Essentially, there
>were some indications that someone might have been controlling
>which envelopes were being selected. There was a set of
>identified envelopes in a drawer. These were supposedly used
>just to replace envelopes selected from the target pile. The
>numbers of cards remaining in the drawer after several
>experiments were inconsistent with what they should have been.
>She also reports that they found various envelopes "hidden"
>around the room, which would have been necessary if substitution
>was going on. There was also a short comment on possible
>prompting of subjects by Sargent.
First, based on Jim's clarification of his previous statement we find that
Blackmore's allegations of possible cheating apply to only one lab
experiment,
possibly two (I do not know how many ganzfeld experiments she had actually
observed). Furthermore, the above characterization is consisted with my
quote
of Berger's review of her first edition of the book: Blackmore observed some
inconsistencies in _one_ laboratory protocol which _could conceivably_ be
interpreted as cheating/fraud. Based on that evidence Jim states that:
>She acknowledges that what she
>observed could not account for the degree of hits obtained.
So, does Blackmore really offer "evidence for cheating in lab studies,
including labs involved in many of the Ganzfeld studies"? No. According to
Jim's posts there is evidence from one experiment (perhaps 2) in one lab
that
can be interpreted as cheating or as mere procedural errors. Such evidence,
in
my view, is less suspicious than, say, some of the evidence found against
Cyril Burt's which included, the exact same correlation coefficient
repeatedly
found over several studies (incidentally, Jensen has argued that it may very
well be that such correlations of IQ between mono zygotic twins reared apart
represent the actual parameters of that population [Jensen, 1992]). At any
rate, Jim then adds:
>I was not referring to methodological concerns when using the
>term "cheating." Contrary to Miquel, I do not see the charge as
>a worse ethical violation than leaving Psi results to stand
>without including this hypothesis.
How can I possibly respond to this?
As David Epstein pointed out in a previous post in another reference to
research fraud (f-word) unrelated to parapsychology:
"The f-word can end a career, and thus it
can be used to intimidate researchers whose results make us
uncomfortable."
Perhaps the possibility of the existence of ESP makes Jim Clark and others
on
this list a little uncomfortable?
Miguel - spelled with a g not a q
Reference
Jensen, Jr., A. R. (1992) Scientific Fraud or False accusations? The case
of
Cyril Burt. In Miller, D. J. and Hersen, M. Research fraud in the
behavioral
and biomedical sciences. New York: Wiley.
<>< <>< <>< <>< <>< <>< <>< <>< <>< <>< <>< <>< <><
Miguel Roig, Ph.D. Voice: (718) 390-4513
Assoc. Prof. of Psychology Fax: (718) 442-3612
Dept. of Psychology [EMAIL PROTECTED]
St. John's University [EMAIL PROTECTED]
300 Howard Avenue http://area51.stjohns.edu/~roig
Staten Island, NY 10301
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