"The field of Parapsychology generally gets dismissed to easily. The top people know they will get criticized, so they tend to design their experiments and statistics to standards higher than most if not all fields of study."

Heh.

https://slate.com/health-and-science/2017/06/daryl-bem-prove...

"That is, in let’s say a drug testing experiment, you give some people the drug and they recover. That doesn’t tell you much until you give some other people a placebo drug you know doesn’t work – but which they themselves believe in – and see how many of them recover."

There is actually a science of studying Placebos. It is not as simple as most think. For example the strong the drug in many trials, the stronger the Placebo effect is. Things like the total number of trials of the drug become relative. Spatial Separation does not necessary imply Independence.

Yes, but what's your control for the placebo study?

To prove the placebo effect exists, you need to have a group that thinks it's getting a placebo, but actually gets nothing...

To be clear, I'm not just making a joke, I think the ideas people have about the placebo effect are deeply incoherent and harmful.

Ummm... sure? I mean, cool, sounds like an interesting subject.

But... that is not at all what the linked essay is about? There's one paragraph in a 4.5k word essay explaining what a control group is that mentions the concept of a placebo because that's a concept related to control groups that the reader might be familiar with.

Here's the same author treating the subject of placebos more seriously: https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/01/31/powerless-placebos/

is the james randi prize still available? that frosted glass trick would be an easy million dollars

Unfortunately not, ended a few years ago and the money was repurposed I assume for other ventures. I guess its hard to keep that price going, you need skilled people (like Randi) that knows the usual tricks.

You also need to have objective people, unlike Randi.

One lady did keep passing all of his tests, all day long, so they keep fiddling with the test to "improve it". Until the lady was completely exhausted and failed the test. Guess which test result they used?

After this no one took Randi seriously, so no one with skill bothered.

Do you have a link for that? That's very much different from how I understand the tests were undertaken, so I'd be very interested in reading about it.

Not familiar with that story, but here's a scientist's response to one of Randi's rebuttals.

https://www.sheldrake.org/reactions/james-randi-a-conjurer-a...

Randi's the worst kind of enemy science can have, someone who violates every principle of scientific inquiry for the sake of his own dogma, while claiming to care about the integrity of science.

You're claiming that a professional magician is a bad scientist? He's an entertainer and not a trained scientist.

Here's a statement from Randi about the dog ESP:

“I over-stated my case for doubting the reality of dog ESP based on the small amount of data I obtained,” he wrote. “It was rash and improper of me to do so. I apologise sincerely.”[1]

Sounds like he's willing to revisit his initial claims. Has there been further evidence of dog esp that you're aware of?

[1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/film-news/11270453/...

>"I apologize sincerely"

As sincerely as when he said he'd replicated the experiment no doubt. And if he isn't capable of reproducing an experiment, what the frack was the prize supposedly for? I don't think he'd be capable of sincerity if he tried.

As for your other question, I saw a response Sheldrake posted about someone else's rebuttal stating that if the rebuttal's raw data were analysed the way his data was, it would have led to the same conclusion. That the attempt at replication looked at the first time the dog went to the window, rather than the average time it spent at the window. Don't have a link right now though.

Dog ESP is a pretty niche experiment though, I just brought it up because it's one of the more egregious lies Randi was caught in. If you're interested in psi data, there are much larger datasets with experiments into ganzfeld and skin conductivity precognition.

This came up in a group discussion of parapsychologists that I hang out with form time to time. Some of the top people in the world. I expect you could find it covered in the Journal of Parapsychology as a place to start looking.

There are many people doing experiments with independent replication. Both experiments that succeed and fail. We learn from both. Sadly people would rather dismiss such things as impossible dogma rather than learn new things on the leading edge of science.

Sadly, with that we can't know if it's actually something that occurred, an anecdote, or something conceived of to explain a failure or bias.

What does one do to qualify as one of the "top parapsychologists"? And how do you determine which bits are "the leading edge of science" and which are just bunk?

This did not happen.

Before dismissing something, might want to check the physics:

[Concetto R. Giuliano, 1981]

Concetto R. Giuliano, "Applications of optical phase conjugation," Physics Today, vol. 34, no. 4, pp. 27-35, Apr. 1981.

Abstract: Light waves that are, in effect, time-reversed images of their original can serve to restore severely aberrated waves to their original state.

It's also important to understand the physics.

This is just a mirror that keeps the shape of the wave intact, but moving the other way (but still forward in time).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase_conjugation

https://www.jstor.org/stable/24975872?seq=1#page_scan_tab_co...

I expect you might find these obscure papers of interest:

* Yoseph Imry and Richard A. Webb, "Quantum Interference and the Aharonov-Bohm Effect," Scientific American, vol. 260, no. 4, Apr. 1989.

Abstract: Can electrons be influenced by a nearby magnet so well shielded that its force field cannot be detected? The counter intuitive answer is yes:an energy emanation from the magnet known as the potential does indeed affect the electrons' wave function. This quantum-mechanical effect is being brought to bear on the development of new microelectronic devices.

* Capt. Robert M. Collins (TQTR), "Soviet Research On The A-Vector Potential and Scalar Waves (U)," Unknown.

Abstract: Active in the areas of the Aharonov-Bohm effect as applied to the A-vector potential and scalar fields as applied to solving force related problems.

* Capt. Robert M. Collins (TQTR), "Soviet Research On Unified Field Theories, False Vacuum States, and Antigravity (U)," Unknown.

Abstract: Theoretical progress in dealing with unified field theories...new concepts in weapons, transportation, propulsion.

* Dr. Jack Dea, "Fundamental Fields and Phase Information," vol. 4, no. 3 Unknown.

Add to those the list of patents by Raymond C. Gelinas assigned to Honeywell from the 1980's and what today is being called Extended Electrodynamics as well:

L.M. Hively & G.C Giakos, “Toward a more complete electromagnetic theory”, Int. J. Signals & Imaging Syst. Engr., 5, 3-10(2012).

L.M.Hively, “Methods and Apparatus for Generating and/or Utilizing Scalar-Longitudinal Waves”, US Patent #9,306,527, (Apr. 6,2016).

L.M.Hively & O.Keller, “Electrodynamics in curved space-time: Free space longitudinal wave propagation”, Phys. Essays, 32 (3), Sept 2019.

Can't really get more up to date than a paper published this month. Sad that people will still be quick to down vote things without knowing what is going on in the world today. :-(

The Aharonov-Bohm Effect is indeed interesting, but how is it, or are any of those, related to parapsychology?

It was your jstor link that sent me down the A-B path. I apologize if I miss understood your intention.

I apologize if I misunderstood yours.

If we've changed topics to physics, I agree it's very interesting. The more we learn the stranger the universe seems.

The original subject here was a about reversal of time.

I mixed the two subjects of Parapsychology and Optical Phase Conjugation under that heading. They have nothing to do with each other (as far as we know at the moment).

It's not about reversal of time so much as time-reversal symmetry in a physical system (putting a -t in place of a t).

In the case of Optical Phase Conjugation that is correct. Which is why I said "apparent" in my original post. Physics allow for -t in many places.

However in the case of psi it is about time, that is effect happens before the cause.

"... PAA [predictive anticipatory activity, an other term for Presentiment], the predictive physiological anticipation of a truly randomly selected and thus unpredictable future event, has been under investigation for more than three decades, and a recent conservative meta-analysis suggests that the phenomenon is real. ..."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3971164/