A2 PSYCHOLOGY PSYA 4

ANOMALISTIC PSYCHOLOGY UNIT OF LEARNING ONE

Theoretical and methodological issues in the study of anomalous experience

SPECIFICATION DETAILS

The study of anomalous experience / Pseudoscience and the scientific status of parapsychology
Methodological issues related to the study of paranormal cognition (ESP, including Ganzfeld) and paranormal action (psychokinesis).

Anomalistic psychology examines paranormal events, experiences and related beliefs and attempts to explain these through psychological and physical factors. The study of anomalistic experience is at the edge of science; many ideals that conventional research uses and that are respected are not used in anomalistic studies. Often there is a lack of carefully controlled and thoughtfully interpreted experiments that are the basis of the natural sciences and contribute to their development.

Scientific and pseudoscientific methods

Bauer (2004) noted that the

boundaries between science

and pseudoscience are often not clear.

What does ‘being scientific’ mean?

Science might be thought of as a

quest for understanding that usually

creates laws and principles that can be

tested experimentally.

Pseudoscientific information may be seen as a ‘mistaken belief’ due to its lack of testability and inability to stand up to critical analysis and falsification. This makes it unscientific.

Science means ‘knowledge’.

The defining feature of the scientific approach is its method; a systematic approach designed to objectively collect information and test theories.

Central characteristics of this are:

objectivity,

replicability

and empiricism (a view that suggests that experience is central the development and formation of knowledge, thus central to the scientific method.

Experience or evidence arises out of experiments not intuition or revelation. Science approaches its study in a rational and logical manner. Reasoning is based on evidence, verification and support.

Karl Popper’s influence on the scientific method was profound, suggesting that science should advance using the hypothetico-deductive method.

Hypothetico – deductive reasoning suggests that it should always be possible to show that theory is false. A theory can never be proven right, but one piece of evidence against a theory can prove it wrong.

Due to the subject matter of anomalistic psychology, there will always be a lack of scientific rigour and opportunities for fraud.

It is important to appreciate that scientific knowledge is based on experimental evidence. New evidence will change scientific knowledge. It is also a requirement for scientists to communicate information and ideas in appropriate ways using appropriate terminology. In sharing their research, scientists give other researchers in the field the opportunity to replicate and test their work. The question is, to what extent can a pseudoscience such as the study of anomalistic experience match these criteria?

Some of the characteristics of science and pseudoscience

SCIENCE / PSEUDOSCIENCE
Findings are expressed primarily through scientific journals that are peer-reviewed and maintain rigorous standards for honesty and accuracy. / Literature is aimed at the general public, there is no review, no standards, no pre-publication verification, no demand for accuracy and precision.
Replicable results are demanded; experiments must be precisely described so that they can be replicated exactly or improved upon. / Results cannot be replicated and therefore not verified. Studies, if any, are always so vaguely described that one can’t figure out what was done or how it was done.
Failures are searched for and studied closely, because incorrect theories can often make correct predictions by accident, but no correct theory will make incorrect predictions. / Failures are ignored, excused, hidden, lied about, discounted, explained away, rationalised, forgotten, avoided at all costs.
Over time, more and more is learned about the physical processes under study. / No physical phenomena or processes are ever found or studied. No progress is made, nothing concrete is learned.
Convinces by appeal to the evidence, by arguments based upon logical and/or statistical reasoning, by making the best case. Old ideas are abandoned when new evidence contradicts them. / Convinces by appeal to faith and belief. Pseudoscience has a strong quasi-religious element: it tries to convert, not to convince. You are to believe in spite of the facts, not because of them. The original ideas is never abandoned, whatever the evidence.
Does not advocate or market unproved practices or products. / Questionable products marketed (such as books, courses, and dietary supplements,) and/or pseudoscientific services (such as horoscopes, character readings, spirit messages, and predictions).
See page 242 Holt & Lewis

Science and pseudoscience: a methodological comparison

Similarities / differences
Some areas of pseudoscientific research use similar methods of research. Both gather data, both have a research question on which hypotheses are based, the investigation tests the hypothesis, the results are then published / The way that results are interpreted and communicated is different. Science ensures peer review of findings, whereas often in pseudoscience there is direct communication of results to the public. This avoids the critical assessment of the research that scientists can’t avoid.
Both scientists and pseudo scientists pick and choose their areas of study. In both areas researchers have been found to be biased and serving their own interests. / Most scientists would argue that their selection of what to study is dictated by their knowledge of what areas would genuinely benefit the advancement of human understanding whereas those studying areas of pseudoscience may not always be driven in the same way.
Both use similar experimental methods and both use a range of methods to collect data. / Science formulates hypotheses and the information and then gathers the data whereas pseudoscience often formulates hypotheses to support the data gathered.

Currently, there is a divide between those who believe in the benefit of understanding anomalous experience and those who are sceptical of the explanation of anomalous experience (French and Wilson, 2006, 2005). These sceptics have good reason to be critical as throughout history there have been examples of scientific frauds that make scientists question the integrity of anomalistic psychology.

The reality of scientific fraud

Scientific fraud is not confined to the area of anomalistic psychology. Cyril Burt was the president of the British Psychological Society and the first British psychologist to be knighted. He was found guilty of tweaking his findings in order to support his hypothesis that the genetic inheritance of IQ was greater than environmental influences. Burt was accused of inventing participants (identical twins in this case).

Is anomalistic psychology experience or fraud?

In assessing whether reality or fraud dominates this area of research, most have focused on demonstrating the existence of ESP.

ESP (extra sensory perception) relates to the ability to perceive outside the sensory system (beyond what can be seen, heard, etc). This is usually a collective term for a range of skills such as telepathy (mind reading), clairvoyance (contact with the non-living) and precognition (predicting future events) (Reber and Reber, 2001).

The academic need to prove the existence of ESP skills often leads scientists to manipulate their experiment or interpret their data in a way that might support the existence of their claim. There has been a series of well known studies in psi phenomena that were initially very convincing, but then turned out to be based on fraudulent claims.

The area of anomalistic psychology is wide open to fraudulent claims, e.g. the Cottingley fairies, the research study of Soal-Goldney (1938 – 41), Walter J. Levy Jr (1974), Sylvia Browne (American TV host) and many more.

Summary

·  Science is characterised by objectivity, replicability and empiricism.

·  Pseudoscience deals with information that is untestable and unable to stand up to critical analysis

·  The boundaries between science and pseudoscience are not always clear.

·  Some authorities would view anomalistic psychology as a fringe science because of its lack of methodological rigour.

·  There are some similarities, but there are greater differences between science and pseudoscience. Radner and Radner (1982) reinforce this point.

·  The fraudulent activities of a few researchers in this area put even more pressure on those academics seriously trying to establish anomalistic ability.

·  Fraudulent research in most cases has encouraged serious researchers of the topic to create research programmes that are so tightly controlled that the opportunity for fraud is drastically reduced.

Methodological issues and ESP

What is ESP?

ESP (extra sensory perception) relates to abilities beyond the understanding of science where the perception of phenomena is possible outside of the normal five senses. These abilities are usually categorised into:

Telepathy,

Psychokinesis

Clairvoyance

Precognition

ESP is a term that was introduced by J.B. Rhine at Duke University in the US. He used Zener cards in his early experiments and had some influence in establishing the plausibility of anomalistic phenomena in a quasi-scientific manner. The Zener cards used to research telepathy are made up of five cards that show a circle, a cross, wavy lines, a square or a star. Rhine would shuffle these and lay them out in a line. The sender would view them and ‘transmit’ them to the receiver.

The ganzfeld studies

Ganzfeld means ‘total field’ in German. The earliest forms of ganzfeld experiments were designed to ensure that signals received by participants were coming from their own mind, not an audible or visible stimulus.

The participant’s eyes are covered with half ping-pong balls and a red (or pink) light is shone on them. The participant keeps their eyes open and the semi-translucent plastic of the ping pong balls diffuse the light so that they experience a homogenous visual field that seems warm and cosy but because the light stimulus is unpatterned and unchanging the brain habituates to it and may even cause ‘blank out’ periods in which the participant has no visual experience at all. Such an uninteresting visual experience can lead to ‘sensory hunger’, in which attention is drawn away from the visual system and towards more internally-generated sensations, in the form of hallucinations that have a dream-like quality. The ganzfeld is thought to facilitate the flow of ideation and imagery (Bertini et al, 1964) so that these impressions can seem very spontaneous, creative, and independent of any conscious thought processes.

A similar auditory effect is achieved by playing ‘white noise’, a sound signal that evenly represents the whole audible frequency range to give an unpatterned hiss that sounds rather like the rush of cascading water. Again, sensory hunger can lead the participant to incorporate their own internally-generated material into the signal, giving the impression that certain sounds (such as noises, music, voices) can be heard in the white noise just on the edge of hearing.

In a typical ganzfeld study, participants are recruited in pairs, with one to serve as the sender and one as the receiver. The sender is placed in another room (the further away the better). The sender has a selection of non-transparent packets, each containing a set of slides or pictures (video footage in later experiments). There is no link between the images, and ideally the target image is chosen randomly. The sender concentrates and tries to use mental intention to telepathically communicate information about the image to the receiver.

Sessions begin with the sender, receiver and experimenter all present in a sound attenuated room (to further block out possible normal communication from the sender or other confederate) as the receiver is prepared for the session. The receiver lies back in a reclining chair and gets comfortable, removing shoes and covering themselves with a blanket if they like. He wears headphones with a microphone attached through which he can communicate with the experimenter and be heard by the sender during the session. The receiver and experimenter remain unaware of the selected target.

The receiver then removes the ping pong balls and is presented with a set of images (usually four) and asked to what degree they think each stimulus was the target image. If the highest rating is awarded to the target it is recorded as a hit. Using this method, the expected hit rate by chance will be 25%. Later advances in computer technology meant that improvements in security and preciseness could be achieved. In the autoganzfeld experiments, four video clips were used and randomly selected by a computer.

Most ganzfeld sessions last about 25 – 30 minutes and after this time the experimenter reviews the receiver’s mentation with him to see if anything needs to be added, elaborated or modified while they are both still blind to the target identity.

Ganzfeld studies: criticisms and controversy

The validity of theories produced by anomalistic psychologists is only as strong as the methods they use when conducting research. With many of the earlier studies, there were problems of sensory leakage (I.e. other means by which information could have been indicated to the receiver) and randomization of anomalies. From 1989 onwards this criticism was tackled by the use of automated slides – part of what was known as the autoganzfeld method. Magicians are sometimes employed as consultants to ensure that protocols are followed and that inadvertent sensory leakage does not occur (Bern, 1994).

Problems of randomization can be seen in the research done by Sargent. In the early 1980s, Hyman conducted a meta-analysis of 42 pieces of research. As a result of this, he argued that there was insufficient evidence to prove the existence of psi because of the flaws in the ESP research. He suggested three areas where there were flaws:

·  Security

·  Statistical analysis

·  Procedure

His meta-analysis used 48% of the ganzfeld database, suggesting that more methodologically rigorous studies need to be conducted before any conclusions are drawn from the body of research. In evaluating the ganzfeld data, Harris and Rosenthal (1988) comment that for every study showing a significant effect, there is at least one critical commentary of it. Hyman (1996), a strong critic of psi research did not consider later studies using the ganzfeld technique as any better than earlier ones.

Meta-analysis is good for evaluating studies, but has drawbacks of its own. Figures can be tweaked up or down (the file drawer effect where studies are ‘selectively’ selected). Therefore, they are of limited value in an area that is known to have questionable methodology and limited success and replicability.

Hyman felt that he had identified weaknesses in the design of some of these studies that would reduce the hit rate to chance levels once they were taken into account. The kind of factors Hyman had in mind included the following: