Originally Posted by spockman
Simple not as in poorly thought out. Obviously detailed thought would have to go into a study to eliminate as many variables as possible. Research into the actual supernatural claims and opinions held by whatever subject you are testing would have to be accounted for as well. But honestly, the concepts are not that complicated. For example, a simple study for a remote viewer would be to find out a place said viewer has claimed to have gone to before in an astral form. Assuming they claim to be able to do it reliably, with good detail, and in real time, have them go the location and explain how it looks. Shortly after alter the location or else add things to it and see if they can identify it. If the person could not identify the changes, perhaps they are not a remote viewe or perhaps they were unable to identify with the place after the changes or whatever. It wouldn't prove a negative. BUT should the person identify specific changes, it would not take many repeats of the test to reach astronomical odds that something paranormal is not going on, (assuming outside influences and variables have been sufficently curtailed.)
If you disagree I am more than willing to here why. I am not well versed in the supposed paranormal enough to claim that I understand variables that would make such a study difficult. But based on how studies on other, material things are handled, I know that very often the base concept that the study frames around is pretty basic if you understand the scientific principles involved.
Well, depending on the place and the stuff being added there, it might be too simple and the person can just guess around, or be too complicated and will fail. Though if you are going to work on the variables, I don't see much of a problem (If done properly).
Anyway, what I mean by simple is that generally, the one who is the head of the experiment already believes on the stuff and oversimplifies said experiment (Consciously, unconsciously, doesn't matter) to get positive results, in which case, I wouldn't consider that as proof. And then we have the other side, the ones who don't believe make it too complicated and make it so that they will get negative results, so it’s just as unreliable.
Now then, RV is one of the phenomena which would be "simple" to prove, but a lot of the others are a bit harder. Like when working with dreams, you can't expect people to give each other passwords reliably, or for OBEs you can't trust people that they are indeed doing an OBE and not just WILDing without knowing, or stuff like AP which simply can't be proven, or TK which would require several tests with different materials to make sure the test isn't being blocked or cheating, and so on and so forth. (Though most of the problems are technical, so I guess you are right)
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