Dr. Bem Psi Research Editorial

[Angel of Ioren]

Here's a really interesting article about the research being done in Psi and the findings of Dr. Bem that were discussed on this forum recently. I'll post the abstract and a link to the full article:

Eric Jan Wagenmakers, Ruud Wetzels, Denny Borsboom, & Han van
der Maas

University of Amsterdam

Abstract

Does psi exist? In a recent article, Dr. Bem conducted nine studies with
over a thousand participants in an attempt to demonstrate that future events
retroactively affect people’s responses. Here we discuss several limitations
of Bem’s experiments on psi; in particular, we show that the data analysis
was partly exploratory, and that one-sided p-values may overstate the
statistical evidence against the null hypothesis. We reanalyze Bem’s data
using a default Bayesian t-test and show that the evidence for psi is weak
to nonexistent. We argue that in order to convince a skeptical audience of a
controversial claim, one needs to conduct strictly confirmatory studies and
analyze the results with statistical tests that are conservative rather than
liberal. We conclude that Bem’s p-values do not indicate evidence in favor
of precognition; instead, they indicate that experimental psychologists need
to change the way they conduct their experiments and analyze their data.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1018886/Bem6.pdf

It's a really interesting article.

 

[Hotkafka]

Here's a really interesting article about the research being done in Psi and the findings of Dr. Bem that were discussed on this forum recently. I'll post the abstract and a link to the full article:

Eric Jan Wagenmakers, Ruud Wetzels, Denny Borsboom, & Han van
der Maas

University of Amsterdam

Abstract

Does psi exist? In a recent article, Dr. Bem conducted nine studies with
over a thousand participants in an attempt to demonstrate that future events
retroactively affect people’s responses. Here we discuss several limitations
of Bem’s experiments on psi; in particular, we show that the data analysis
was partly exploratory, and that one-sided p-values may overstate the
statistical evidence against the null hypothesis. We reanalyze Bem’s data
using a default Bayesian t-test and show that the evidence for psi is weak
to nonexistent. We argue that in order to convince a skeptical audience of a
controversial claim, one needs to conduct strictly confirmatory studies and
analyze the results with statistical tests that are conservative rather than
liberal. We conclude that Bem’s p-values do not indicate evidence in favor
of precognition; instead, they indicate that experimental psychologists need
to change the way they conduct their experiments and analyze their data.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1018886/Bem6.pdf

It's a really interesting article.

Interesting, yes, but I've learned through my academic pursuits that research can be perpetually reframed to fit someone's bias, and amongst the scientific community, there is a never ending debate on what constitues good research.