>Selina, that sounds like a fun way to practise what you are learning in
>class to reinforce good methodology.  I know there are either-or people
>out there who just can't see shades of gray or accept that anyone else
>does, but good science involves having to stay open and putting less
>emotional value into hypotheses than into good questions.  have to be
>careful about emotional attachments to possible answers.  Of course,
>you already KNEW that, but maybe not everyone did, and I think that is
>why this got to be an upsetting topic for some folks.
 
there are lots of weird things in life!  I was recently directed to
an article (which I can't find now, but here's a link to the project
http://luckfactor.co.uk/home.html) which mentioned some common links
are found as to why some people are lucky and some aren't, and based on
these findings establish a luck "school" experiment which improves the
luck of some "unlucky" people.  it is a scientific study and I find it
quite intriguing.... will have to get the book sometime.
 
more thoughts on actual testing...
 
the flaw I see with the site that Dr Kemmerer provided is that it tests
only one person at a time, and as such, even if a person succeed in
showing he/she is psychic, it shows nothing except that either that one
person is psychic (not very useful for the rest of us), or he/she is
smart enough to cheat the system.  and the number of people who failed
could just be due to pressure, whether they admit it or not.  also, their
experiments did not prove that psychic ability doesn't exist.  I think it
will be very hard to prove psychic ability, or animal communication, or
aliens, or leprechauns, doesn't exist...
 
and I don't see why animal communication has to work 100% of the time,
after all, a lot of other abilities don't (top basketball players don't
make the basket all the time, do they?).  so lots of room for shades of
gray.  and don't know if anybody uses Rogaine for hair growth (I don't
:p, but my dad was considering it), and it is "proven" to work, but what
the proof was is that it works 60% of the time, which is 20% more than
the placebo (power of human thought is amazing, isn't it?).  my numbers
may be off since I'm remembering this from several years ago.  but
similar numbers like this may cause a lot of skeptics to reconsider.
 
I'm having fun thinking about how the experiment should be set up, and
this is what I would propose.  have a number, say 20, of dogs/cats, who
are fed a treat out of a black bag or a white bag (dogs/cats see in
shades of gray, I believe).  then have a number, say 20, of people, half
AC's and half not.  both groups would be allowed to interact with each
animal before guessing whether the animal was just fed a treat out of a
dark or light bag.  of course, to avoid confusing to each animal, each
one would be given a treat in a room by itself, and the opposite coloured
bag would not be present so they don't have that image in their head to
confuse the AC.  interaction between human and animal will also be
singly.  and this experiment should be repeated two weeks apart, possibly
with different animals, maybe 5-10 times.  my hypothesis is that if
animal communication is effective, then the placebo group will guess
correctly around 50% of the time, and the AC group should guess correctly
at least 70% of the time.  I think this experiment can be easily extended
to handle long distance animal communication as well.
 
of course, no hypothesis is proven unless you also prove the null
hypothesis.  in this case, I think would be that if the dog/cat is given
a treat out of a black and white stripped bag, then the guesses for the
AC's and non AC's should both be work out to be 50% black and 50% white?
maybe the AC's will end up saying the animals say something else, which
would be futher proof of their abilities.  there might be a flaw in my
null hypothesis....
 
hope I haven't offended anybody.  my background is more scientific, so I
like proofs, and thinking about experimental setup for such things is fun
for me.  please do point out flaws and other problems with my ideas.  and
as I said in my previous posting - fairies, pixies, and leprechauns
exists unless proven otherwise :)
 
// ***************************************
// Selina, Sprite, Sand, Bear, Dart & Clef
// in spirit - Birch, Dief & Storm
// http://www.cgl.uwaterloo.ca/~ssiu
[Posted in FML issue 4096]