Just read about a new study in the American Psychological Association's Journal of Personality and Social Psychology that claims to prove ESP can accurately predict the future. ABC News ran a piece on it last night. Here is a link to it. . . http://tinyurl.com/2fbcttt

Is it just an odd chance that the study's author is also a magician?

Haha! It's funny that this could be considered worthy of a news report. His logic for 53% being significant was that in an election this might often be considered a landslide, but this is completely ignoring the relevance of the sample sizes.

I was really hoping to see him doing OOTW, though

Joe

Why any institution would not abandon such an affront to science (presuming things which are not subject to experimental verification is against the principle of parsimony) and instead offer such works for peer review and then to the public - remains a question.

As was pointed out some time ago, the card playing environment offers similar aversion/liking (you STRONGLY desire the cards you need to get a winning hand rather than others) and so we have a huge body of evidence which supports the null hypothesis - that random chance is a favored hypothesis over any additional factors of vague definition (call it psi if you must).

Anecdote: Some time ago in (as best I recall) there was an article in Physical Review Letters B (theoretical particle physics) on an effect predicted to occur between two metal plates which are not touching but VERY close. The idea is fine, yet for some reason the authors proceeded to conclude their discussion by suggesting that aliens might be using this as a basis for first greatly enlarging the quantum effect produced to macroscopic engineering size and secondly for using that larger version of the effect for space travel. Not long after a professor described string theory with tiny strings vibrating in many dimensions. I asked how loose strings might vibrate from experience it would appear that strings have to be kept taught to vibrate. Anyway, with that in mind I decided to learn what math I could and move my focus of serious study to psychology.

Lots of news organisations report "interesting" stories to keep you coming back.

Is there any other thoughts on this?

I have yet to find anything that the researcher wrote, either in his own words or in qoutations.

All I've read so far is what the skeptics say. I want both sides of the story!

If anyone has any links please feel free to post. Until then I will continue my search.

Read what the researcher himself said, and you have the other side.

I think there was quite a bit of distortion as to what the actual conclusion of the study was.

"Evidence of" is absolutely NOT "Proof of" !

Read it for yourself, it's not difficult reading:

http://dbem.ws/FeelingFuture.pdf

Check with Sally Rhine at Duke University. Her dad had a lot to do with real ESP.

Decompetent

Hardly appropriate when addressing magicians or in serious discussion.

Gibbering about bizarre subjects on threads where whispers from the mist where extra dimensions impinge upon our own are well received in other areas on this BBS - fine for plot and theatrical design. That is unless you are attempting humor.