In Defense of Skeptical Marketing

My apologies to those of you who may have been following this blog at one time or another. It seems a bit cliche to apologize for non-blogginess, as all of us have our relapses. Such are the problems with unpaid duties! That said, I was recently prompted to write a little something by a Twitter guy by the name of Greg Taylor from Australia. His Twitter handle is @DailyGrail.

Greg actually seems like a decent guy and his challenging tweets against me are of a respectful tone, so I can't take him on personally. I do disagree with his overall assessment of the situation surrounding the JREF's Million Dollar Challenge. If you're not yet in the loop, here's the JREF's press release:

JREF’s $1,000,000 Paranormal Challenge Now Easier Than Ever

And here's Greg's thoughts on the matter:

Million Dollar Hustle

I see Greg's criticisms as being misguided. Yes, the MDC is a PR campaign. If I proposed that I think blonde haired kids have a better than average chance of picking the suit of a hidden playing card and went to the JREF with the proposal that we join forces and test the proposed phenomenon, they'd decline such an offer. They aren't an organization dedicated to the tireless search for psychic abilities. They ARE a watchdog group that stands in defiance to those who claim to have proven psychic abilities. I will simply state in my argument against Greg that JREF was loudly criticized from the psi community for the stringent rules. Now that they've relaxed them, you're criticizing. I suspect you'd have similarly criticized them had they tightened the rules but I certainly have no way of reading your mind, so I cannot claim that with any fair level of assuredness.

Your argument that they should be approaching more reputable "psychics" similarly falls flat. Randi has for years challenged every major psychic in the world, and they've all avoided it entirely. Perhaps they have their reasons, but I fail to see why they wouldn't at least propose a fair test publicly in counterpoint to Randi's challenge. Instead, they dismiss it as a publicity stunt. No, they don't need the money in many cases, but when a woman like Sylvia Browne claims such a connection to God, wouldn't her religious beliefs compel her to snatch the million and give it to a deserving charity? Just my analysis. If I had a lot of money and psychic abilities, I'd go for it just to shut Randi up.

The Problems with Psychic Research

When tests were recently announced that supposedly proved a certain small level of precognition, I watched more than one television reporter report the results with zero critical analysis. It was trumpeted as "proof found" of certain psychic abilities. Never mind that the tests were cherry picked to show anomalous results that have yet to be replicated. "Psychic abilities proven!" was the story of the day. It was a great story as long as those middling little facts didn't get in the way. The MDC stands as a counterpoint PR campaign to raise awareness of the complete lack of any solid proof of psychic ability.

Part of the problem with psi research stems from misunderstandings of randomness. If I give 100 people a piece of paper and ask them to plot 30 dots in random locations on the paper, the vast majority of the people will produce decidedly non-random results. They will spread the dots out in a somewhat even pattern, subconsciously making sure not to place any two dots too near one another. This is what we think of as random. It is not. It is evenness. Random plotting would leave awkward concentrations of dots, possibly even connecting dots while large areas of the paper would remain blank. It's not until we get into huge numbers (ie: if I asked them to randomly plot 100,000 dots) that we see things gradually shift toward an overall evenness.

I was recently in a casino and chuckled to myself as I watched people at the roulette table analyze the past 30 numbers to have come up. The casinos helpfully display the past numbers so gamblers can make an assessment as to what will come up next. Of course, this is ridiculous and the casino knows they are merely conveying a false sense of assuredness to help people lose their money with more confidence. Each roll of the ball is completely autonomous and independent of any past or future rolls. It is the purest definition of randomness. But what do you think I saw when I looked at the display? The number 16 had come up 4 times in the past 30 rolls. Statistically probable? Heck no. Random? You betcha.

Let's say that ahead of time I had placed 30 people in the room with that Roulette wheel and asked them all to individually concentrate on a single number. Would it be reasonable for me to take the person who was concentrating on 16 and claim that they alone must have some sort of supernatural sway? I hope I don't have to answer that for you. How about the person who was concentrating on a number that never came up? Could I conclude that they must have prevented the ball from landing on that number with their psychic mojo? Unfortunately, this is exactly what many paranormal researchers do. They expect evenness when they should expect chaotic, unpredictable randomness. When results happen to go in favor of what they were looking for? Voila! We've discovered psychic ability!

Randomness assures clunky, awkward results. Science is plagued with paths that led to nowhere because of anomalous results that eventually disappeared under large scale testing. Psi research is not immune to the fact that enough testing will produce positive results here and there, sometimes even impressively positive results. The sheer lack of replicability in those studies indicates that they were simply looking at a strange mass of random dots that happened to land in a single section of the page. If results disappear under attempts at replication, it's reasonable to conclude that the original results were statistical anomalies that we'd expect to happen here and there due to randomness. I've heard psi researchers claim over and over again that psychic ability is simply unpredictable, or that it disappears under the negative energy of skeptics, yada yada yada. Post hoc rationalizations abound, none of which explain why "positive" psychic results routinely display exactly what we'd expect to see under the theory that psychic abilities don't actually exist. We'd expect random results. This is what we see.

Greg goes on for a bit on P values, though I failed to see the P values touted by Greg explained in the MDC test rules. It did state that the results necessary for a "pass" will be agreed upon by both parties as will the test protocol and supervisors. I would ask from the JREF a clarification on Greg's accusation that their rules would prohibit a 19/20 result from being a win when chance would expect around 10/10. I similarly suspect that this is a red herring, but I'll allow the JREF to comment of they are so inclined. In the next few weeks, I'm actually scheduled to interview a few key players at the JREF for my podcast "Meet The Skeptics," so I'll ask for clarification at that time so long as we can coordinate schedules.

For now I'll simply say that the MDC stands as a critical and necessary PR tool to counteract the lack of critical analysis in the general news media. Whether or not the rules are easy or difficult concerns me not. As long as it is there, more people will take unfounded stories with a grain of salt.