I guess the public has gotten wise enough to not fall for snake oil when you call it snake oil.

Ah, come on. That would be organic snake oil!

You know, it’s fun to make fun of now, but actually studying the paranormal in a rigorous scientific fassion is not a waste of money. Well, now it is, but before it had been, it wasn’t. After all, many centuries of accounts of paranormal need to be tested at least a few times. If it’s real, it would be a fundamentally new way of looking at the universe in one of those “holy crap we’ve had it all wrong” ways that shake up the scientific world from time to time. And if not, well, at least you have evidence that the BS is actually BS.

In the cold war, it was definitely a worthwhile long shot. A true psychic or remote viewer would obsolete many field agents and save many lives (on your side anyway).

But, as we all know here, it’s all crap so now we laugh about it. Good times.

Just as long as no MORE tax dollars are spent on this garbage.

@Another Steve
Thanks for the info. Although I know about double blind studies. Pretty much the only way to test the effects of something.

I saw The Great Randy visit the Russian facility where the “positive results” had been achieved. It turns out that the guys doing the experiments had used exactly zero scientific rigger.

One of the techniques used was that an experiment was set up to test for result X. Once the data was collected, the analysis revealed that in fact result X had been observed. Never once did they use a double blind study, or any real statistics to actually test the test.

During the cold war, all of this worked because they had pulled the wool over the eyes of some rather gullible generals and/or party officials. The testing was classified, and no one ever exposed the fraud. Under the Soviet/Communist system once you had the patronage of a higher up, no one could touch you for fear of making the patron mad.

Subsequent with Randy supervising the test, re-running of the experiment revealed shockingly…nothing. Researchers were unable to detect any psychic effects within the confines of a double blind study.

Cheers

Your tax dollars at work.

Of course, this all falls under the heading of “stuff I heard”.

My advice to them is to stay away from the lady with the Barbie wand. They might say something inappropriate.

You mean like how the Barbie wand has a better use as a sex toy?

I thought I heard some encouraging results came out of the research at Duke, once upon a time?

If you heard it in the mainstream media, you almost certainly heard wrong. Mainstream media almost universally get scientific reporting wrong.

Back in the 90s, I did read a report about a telepathy experiment that showed a positive result. It was never replicated.

The way that happens is the way statistics works. They usually use a 95% confidence level, which means one time out of every 20, they will get a false-positive. I’m guessing that is what happened in that case.

The telepathy thing is unlikely to work, since there is still no credible evidence that such a phenomenon exists.

I thought I heard some encouraging results came out of the research at Duke, once upon a time?