Remote Viewing in the Telegraph

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Grahame
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Remote Viewing in the Telegraph

Post by Grahame »

An interesting article in the Telegraph about Remote Viewing:
Can psychics be good for your health?
A phenomenon known as remote viewing, which claims to use psychic powers to 'see' what is invisible to the naked eye, may have an intriguing role to play in healthcare

By Lucy Pinney
Published: 7:00AM BST 31 Aug 2009

Three months ago, Twitter hosted its first scientific experiment and invited users to help demonstrate the existence of psychic powers. Professor Richard Wiseman, of the University of Hertfordshire, recruited 7,000 volunteers via the social messaging service to investigate "remote viewing" (RV). A remote viewer is a gifted individual who claims to be able to "see" events in the past, present and future, and identifying distant locations.

The psychology professor, famed for his mass-participation experiments, which explore the curious science of everyday life, travelled to a mystery site in the UK, whereupon he sent a Tweet. Participants were asked to pinpoint his location by selecting it from a line-up of five photographs. As only 15 per cent of people correctly predicted Prof Wiseman's location – despite a 20 per cent probability – he pronounced RV to be a hoax.
Rest of article can be found here.

I can't say I'm impressed by Prof. Wiseman's 'experiment', which makes no attempt to adhere to any remote viewing protocols or indeed to select a group with any RV experience; just a random group of Twitterers making guesses from a selection of five pictures. That's hardly a test of remote viewing per se, is it? There seem to be no controls on the experiment at all. And this is supposed to be scientific?
The NHS is involved in an ongoing trial to establish whether RV has social and medical applications.
Andrew Usher, dean of the British Institute of Homeopathy, and a (non-clinical) partner in an NHS practice in Scotland, is working with a GP to determine if RV can save lives. Usher's Med RV project uses a team of remote viewers around the world who try to detect illnesses that have been missed by conventional scientific and medical procedures.
Andrew (who is a member of this forum), needless to say, is somewhat miffed at his remarks being taken out of context; particularly the inference that the NHS is officially funding or is otherwise involved in RV research, which is most definitely not the case. His website has had over quarter of a million hits since yesterday, and he's had 1500 hate emails. And people wonder why folk like dowsers are often reluctant to talk to the press...<sigh>

The comments after the article make interesting reading too, although predictably they seem dominated by the usual sceptical hyenas. Both Andrew and remote viewer Daz Smith defend themselves admirably, and even President of the IRVA Paul H. Smith makes an appearance. His comments on Wiseman's 'experiment' can be found here.
Grahame
The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it - Terry Pratchett.
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Re: Remote Viewing in the Telegraph

Post by Ian Pegler »

Grahame Gardener wrote:I can't say I'm impressed by Prof. Wiseman's 'experiment', which makes no attempt to adhere to any remote viewing protocols or indeed to select a group with any RV experience; just a random group of Twitterers making guesses from a selection of five pictures. That's hardly a test of remote viewing per se, is it? There seem to be no controls on the experiment at all. And this is supposed to be scientific?
True to form the skeptics once again get results worse than chance - indicative of what Serena Roney Dougal calls "psi-blocking". As far as the protocols go, Rupert Sheldrake and the parapsychologists might as well go band their heads against a brick wall - that would be more productive.

Arch-skeptic Prof. Chris French is doing a study on the relationship between handedness and belief in the paranormal. Note the use of the word belief. So the results will say that "this group of people are more likely to believe than that group of people because they have these personality traits etc." it's nothing to do with any kind of paranormal ability because Prof. French doesn't believe that you have any.

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Re: Remote Viewing in the Telegraph

Post by mike »

I think every dowser when they have worked and dowsed for a while know what level of hits and misses they have had during that period, and if you are lucky/skilled enough to have more hits than misses this allows you to carry the belief you are on the right path when you work and dowse about.It does not make you better at dowsing, just gives you the boast to try harder things, and not be put off by the odd bad day, when perhaps your mind or skill is not so hot/correct...Remote viewing I think is just another path dowsers can take, if you can dowse well enough, then try remote viewing folks, cloud busting and all manner of things, spread your net wide and enjoy...Both remote viewing and dowsing suffer from the same faults, in that no rules apply, so any result comes from that single persons mind and his or her feelings at the time,given you have a set of rules to follow, the results would always be better than expected as you confine your search to a known format/window.
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