Design an experiment to test paranormal abilities?

Dave!

Hey folks,

As I'm sure some of ye are aware, I'm of a skeptical disposition when it comes to the paranormal (and everything else I suppose), so if that doesn't interest you ya might as well click away!

What I'd like to start a discussion on is, what kind of scientific/controlled experiment could you (specifically the paranormal/supernatural inclined/interested) design or think up to test your own, or someone else's, specific abilities?

There are some abilities that I would think are reasonably black and white and have quantifiable outcomes that could be tested and studied - dousing is the one that I mentioned in another thread.

Out of body experiences are also testable - there's a study going on at the moment involving placing a piece of card with a random string of letters/numbers above an operating table, which can only be seen from above. Obviously it'd be interesting if someone claimed to have an OBE and could recount the numbers.

Others are considered a bit more subjective and imprecise to be testable, eg. psychic readings/mediumship.


I'd rather not get into taking existing studies and scrutinising/critiquing them or we'll end up getting nowhere, so what I'm interested in is:

1. The paranormal topics you're interested in - are they testable? If not, why not?

2. If so, what kind of experiment would you propose would be a good way of testing it?

We could offer feedback on each others suggestions and discuss things that way - eg. "You'd need to control for X, you should do Y to minimize the chance of bias, etc...."

Any thoughts?

An Ri rua

Hi Dave,

as I mentioned to you before in another thread, there are online testing forums replete with data repositories. See www.gotpsi.org.

I'm a huge advocate of methodology. I don't like wishy-washy subjective info but I do like qualitative analysis when performed correctly.

maccored

one thing I am presently working on isnt necessarily a paranormal test as such (theres just too much covered by the word 'paranormal' I think, to be able to make one test for it all) - more a kind of debunking/test tool.

I have a friend making me a multi-sensor array set to datalog information into a computer. The sensors would be one of each for temperature, emf, elf, infrasound and RF. If, say for example, you happened to record an evp with a recorder set alongside the sensors, then you could check the data to see if, for example, the RF range had changed at all, since if it did, then you could show it was a radio signal in the area that caused the EVP.

There a lot of similar research already ongoing in the paranormal field, but it gets more complicated. David Rountree's Medium experiment for example, is interesting.

I was thinking about possibly getting a medium to give a reading to somebody chosen by a third party , Over the phone.

Another test i want to do is on a cold reader. See if its possible for a cold ready to give a reading to an audience.

MrMojoRisin

Deleted User wrote: »

Another test i want to do is on a cold reader. See if its possible for a cold ready to give a reading to an audience.

Derren Brown did that before, didn't he? I don't know if this is the same one, but I remember him giving a 'successful' reading to an audience of Americans before.

http://youtu.be/LhYSI5sWi8s

MrMojoRisin

MrMojoRisin wrote: »

Derren Brown did that before, didn't he? I don't know if this is the same one, but I remember him giving a 'successful' reading to an audience of Americans before.

http://youtu.be/LhYSI5sWi8s

Thats a TV show for entertainment. Cold reading needs to be probed further. Also Cold reading is not 100% accurate. Alot of people talk about cold reading and really know nothing about it.