Re: psi as a boundary breaking possibility

From: Damien Broderick (d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Thu Jul 13 2000 - 18:54:04 MDT


>At 01:37 PM 12/07/00 -0400, Eli wrote:
>
>>Joe McMoneagle wrote:
>>>
>>> The target was later independently judged by a person who was not
>>> participant to the experiment, producing a significant effect size
>>> of 0.710 +/- 0.289 (p=0.007).
>>
>>How on Earth do they judge the significant effect size without a control
>>group? Did they try having the judge check the guy's drawings against a
>>randomly selected photograph as well as the target?

Here is Joe's reply. Not especially detailed, alas, but provides some sense
of methodology. Of course, if we set off from the assumption that this *has
to be bogus*, since known physics excludes the possibility of RV, his reply
will look evasive. Given the formal evaluations done on the declassified
elements of the STARGATE project by Profs Hyman and Utts (readily available
on the net), I think such dismissal would be premature.

He comments on his claim of 55% `success rate':

==========
That would mean "average correct response" about any randomly chosen target
[location, photograph, person, event, etc.], once one has also taken into
consideration all responses [including wrong ones for the same target].
Usually its merit is considered only for those items that are meaningful to
a site as regards content - not the fact that since it's outdoors it has to
have grass present [which wouldn't be considered.] I might add, that the
content in almost all cases is determined prior to inclusion into a common
target pool. This also includes targets "hit" versus targets "missed",
missed being a function of obviously not making any connection with a target
in the first place. And yes, it is generating any description for what could
be anything, against chance expectations for same.

Of course I do not include here any form of targeting done outside a
laboratory controlled environment. While those may be equally as impressive,
they should not go towards accuracy since they were not controlled in the
scientific sense.

=====================

Damien Broderick



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