Tuesday, April 20, 2010

What the Ganzfeld Database Needs.

This is what the Ganzfeld needs. This is what parapsychologists still have to do:

(1) Apply stringent, well thought out, fair exclusion and inclusion criteria and apply it to the entire database. This will lead to database (A).
(2) Apply independent heterogeneity (standardness) criteria to database (A), resulting in database (B). Bem's criteria will do fine, as long as it's independently applied.
(3) Slice the database's (A) and (B) into post-joint communique and pre-joint communique databases, resulting in (A)#1, (A)#2, (B)#1, (B)#2.
(4) Calculate the chance-odds for all four databases (p-values).
(5) Calculate the file-drawer requirement (Rosenthal's N) in an attempt to either outrule or suggest as possible publication bias or the file drawer effect as contributing in any significant way to the results.
(6) Create polynomial AND linear regressions for the Effect Sizes for the four databases outlined in (3) to outrule or support the hypothesis that methodological flaw is contributing in any significant way to the chance deviations.
(7) Make conclusions, or be very very close to one.


(1), (2) have been done for sporadic portions of the database.
(3) hasn't been done properly, thus (4) hasn't been done appropriately
(6) has never been done, except for Bierman's flawed attempt (only captured about 1/2 of the database, is thus flawed).
(7) has been attempted, but since (1) (2) (3) (4) (6) haven't been done either at all or to an appropriate extent, any attempt at (7) is possible but at the same time iffy - it'll be speculation of a conclusion, not an actual conclusion.

Who am I?

I'm a second year business student at university in Australia. I ended up doing what I dislike, which is a shame. However, this doesn't bother me, my interests can be fulfilled more efficiently through independent research. My main and only interests include physics, philosophy, and all branches of parapsychological research. All these interests do not titilate me in themselves, they are mainly systemic of my goal of arriving at an ontic framework that fits the data - one arrived at without insulting the tenets put forward by logicians and epistemic philosophers. This daunting goal that will surely test my ability to apply induction and deduction without influence from cognitive dissonance is one that I hope to achieve in the next few years. At this point in time, it is taking preference over all other areas of my life. If I am not able to reach an ontology consistent with the data due to reasons that may include a lack of research in an area, or an internal struggle with the dichotomy of speculation and conclusion; my search through the data and the limits of applied logic will continue to dominate my life.

In response to the question "Why do you care so much?", the only retort I can muster is "How can you not care as much as I do?".