Talk:Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Lab/Archive 1

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Out of sheer curiousity

Out of sheer curiousity, why is PEAR considered to be a genuine science and engineering department at Princeton, a supposidely prestigeous university? -Love, Hnoj.

• Well there is no question that Princeton is one of the top rated schools in the world and the research that pear does has been subject to vastly more rigorous examination over the last 20 or so years than most other studies, research, labs, etc. I posted an interesting article from wired that you should check out here. Also if you get a chance it's worth reading bill Bryson's Brief History of Nearly Everything TitaniumDreads 06:50, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

• Sorry, but "vastly more rigorous examination over the last 20 or so years than most other studies, research, labs" doesn't follow their research methods. Princeton *is* a top rated school, which makes this department all the more confusing.

As you can see, boasting is an important part of the "scientific argumentation" in parapsychology. Since the line of reasoning in parapsychology is "we couldn't find a natural explanation, so there probably is no natural explanation", parapsychologists need to create the impression in public that they are so immensely smart and knowledgeable that this line of reasoning is justified. It doesn't convince me. Nobody is smart enough to justify that. Especially not people who can't see that this reasoning is fallacious. --Hob Gadling 12:27, July 22, 2005 (UTC)

The reasoning appears to be sound, what I find suspect is the DATA! Have a look at http://www.princeton.edu/~pear/correlations.pdf and then tell me again what your objection is? I have to assume that the data described by this paper must be erroneous or simply faked. Either that or the world is a whole lot weirder than I thought (it's pretty weird as it is). --David Battle 02:11, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

The reasoning is not sound at all. If "we couldn't find a natural explanation, so there probably is no natural explanation" were allowed, this would lead to:

• stupid researchers being more successful than smart ones,
• ignorant researchers being more successful than knowledgeable ones,
• unmotivated researchers being more successful than motivated ones.

The reason: Stupidity, ignorance, and lack of motivation can prevent scientists from finding an explanation. If not finding an explanation can be used as evidence, scientists who have those properties will be more successful. Therefore, disciplines where this reasoning is allowed will accumulate that type of scientist. And indeed, what I have seen of parapsychologists... well, let me just stress that they are not very motivated when it comes to trying to find a natural explanation. Whenever people suggest one, some parapsychologists get angry or even claim that doubting their results (i.e. not accepting their infallibility in finding explanations) is unscientific.

Regarding the data: Looks like a systematic error to me - and as I said, parapsychologists lack motivation to find those. --Hob Gadling 14:38, August 1, 2005 (UTC)

Ok, you misunderstand me. I am not suggesting that it is sound reasoning to say that "if we can't find an explanation there must not be one". What I am saying is that if they are really observing what they claim to be observing (count are higher when people are trying to "think" them higher, and lower when people are trying to "think" them lower), how can that be explained by systematic error? If there was some drift, for example, why should the drift be aligned with the desires of the "operator"? I am more inclined to believe that the data is simply being faked. It is hard to see how any kind of systematic error could consistently agree with the operator's desires. --David Battle 22:58, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

I think there are always systematic errors, some smaller, some bigger. (That can be a hole in the setup, for example the boss walking to and fro between the sender room and the receptor room in a telepathy experiment and asking the receptor leading questions now and then. This will generate a small effect.) Scientists normally expect some specific result. Systematic errors are detected and removed when the result differs from the expectation. But in parapsychology, expecting results is pooh-poohed - you have to accept what you find. Therefore, systematic errors are not detected (or only when skeptics who expect a null result look at the experiments). Also, parapsychologists often say really naive things showing that they are not aware of gaping holes in their setup. Purposely faking data is not necessary. --Hob Gadling 15:01, August 17, 2005 (UTC)

The answer is money. Lots of dumb rich folks donated lots of money for dumb shit like this. Stuff like this (and worse) tends to happen in private universities. But OTOH, PEAR is a fucking joke and nobody takes them seriously. Go to Princeton's physics department and ask them about it. It's a black eye for princeton, but not as bad as being Kansas. Worse things have happened in universities, like libraries and scholarships being named after racist motherfuckers in Georgia (CHF 15:50:47, 2005-08-11 (UTC))

I added a section referencing the controversy of their findings, as the entry looked like a standard PR piece and didn't go very much into their research. If anyone could go more in-depth as to the scope of their research, that would be wonderful :)

Stub article

I tagged this article with a parapsychology stub tag because, although it has a lot of text, there are only three sentences about the actual subject. All the rest are credits, which frankly look more like self-promotion and PBS-like kudos to financial supporters. I suspect that the choice of "parapsychology" will not sit well with PEAR supporters, because PEAR specifically claims not to be investigating paranormal behavior. But in the interest of calling a duck a duck, I suggest that this the most approrpriate category for the following reasons:

1. The studies PEAR executes are designed to detect the use of human consciousness as a medium either to communicate information or to affect objects or electronics, deliberately ruling out the medium of either physical contact or electronic communication. These phenomena are, by definition, telepathy and psychokinesis, which are, again by definition, paranormal activities. This doesn't rule out the possibility that a natural explanation will be found, but until the medium for such anomalies is discovered, it falls into the paranormal category.
2. The lab's title itself includes the phrase "engineering anomalies", a clear acknowledgement that they investigate phenomena that are anomalous to engineering; i.e., have no current scientific explanation. (All PEAR reports is statistical anomalies; it doesn't become science until theories are proposed, tested both for truth and falsity, and reproduced by other scientists.)

To be a non-stub article, I would suggest that there needs to be some detail about what actual tests and analyses PEAR has performed, as well as peer reviews of such tests (and not just the favorable ones). This would provide a balanced article discussing a prominent organization. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 08:40, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

NPOV

Someone should check facts in detail, grey the redlinks to non-notable persons, and generally check for WP:NPOV and WP:VAIN problems. ---CH 00:41, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Ditto that. http://skepdic.com/pear.html seems to indicate that the PEAR thing isn't as cut-and-dried as it this article makes it seem to be. I suggest putting a POV tag on this article because it seems like a lot of the importance of this project's results depends on the fine details of the statistical analysis. Statistics can be used to propagate lies too. But I'm not sure I'm perfectly neutral myself, so I have refrained from putting a POV tag on this article myself. Peter 03:51, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

I added the NPOV tag. Why does this have a tone implying this is ordinary, credible, uncontested science? Why is there no criticism section? Why nothing about the highly unusual circumstances of the project, or general reaction from the scientific and/or Princeton community? I'm going to watch this article, and hopefully help fix it over the next few days. Mycroft7 05:48, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Shouldn't the disclaimer take care of any NPOV worries? There should be a criticism section, but that doesn't mean that what is there is POV. Martin^phi _{(Talk Ψ Contribs)} 07:52, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, insisting that there is a "Criticisms" section in every article is kinda POV in and of its own right, and I do believe that the unambiguous disclaimer in the opening paragraph promotes a level of NPOV that is absent in 99% of Wikipedia articles. On a second note, the PEAR Lab (among other things) is notable as it is (er... I should say "was" as it just closed down) one of the only paralabs sponsored by a major university and has a large body of published research in reputable journals. If someone can find published criticism, by all means include it, but let's not make a section until there's something to fill it with. :-) אמר Steve Caruso _(desk/AMA) • Give Back Our Membership! 03:07, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Since much criticism has been made of PEAR (that is arguably PEARs basis for relevance), its inclusion is totally relevant. Also this article, as well as Robert Jahn's page, claims that results were "statistically significant", which is a contentious claim when dealing with < 1% statistical variance, even without going into the accusations of methodological flaws, that claim is biased. The call for references would be totally appropriate, if the rest of the article had any, but to tell one side of the story without ref, and then say we should not state the other (arguably more relevant and common) perspective is not NPOV. Dgandhi360 (talk) 18:57, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

This article still has real NPOV issues. Titanium Dragon (talk) 21:53, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. I'll look into it, need to do more research before I tackle.Sanitycult (talk) 06:52, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Hmmm... These results have important philosophical implications, if they are true. So it is important that the discussion must be settled, into this page and abroad:

-if the PEAR was an "embarassment to science" and a possible mistake, see fraud, why did they remained so long into the Princeton University without being fired? There must be some peer control in Princeton, first in line to nab any bad work even before it is known outdoors, and remove any credit or support to it with some kind of official statement. Nothing such happened in THIS instance, so it must be because they found nothing bad... accusing the PEAR lab of mistake (or fraud) is equivalent to accusing Princeton itself of being lax.

-values of 1% indicated into this discussion does not make sense. The accuracy of a statistical result depends on the number of drawings. Political polls generally use about 1000 persons panels, which give a (theoretical) accuracy of about 1%. In the case of the PEAR experiments, drawings were tens of millions, or more, which give a much higher accuracy, especially when meta-studies agglomerate still much more data. The claim of PEAR is that their results are valid because this higher accuracy allowed them to highlight such weak deviations from pure random, impossible to observe with smaller experiments.

-in more, the effects detected much varied from a person to another (while remaining somewhat consistent for each person), and they were often found opposite of what was intended. My personnal opinion is that larger than expected variance would be a better indicator than just deviations from average.

-What I would like to see, if PEAR is false, is not comments like "embarassment to science" or other ideological/despising words, but clear indication of where the flaw is, into the method for gathering data, or into the calculus used to highlight the statistical deviations. And this possible flaw should also explain why the results appeared for analog random generators, and not for pseudo-random generators, while both were processed into the same way.

Persons who think the PEAR experiment is not valid should clearly reply to these questions, and provide checkable sources on this.

Richard Trigaux, France. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.129.178.156 (talk) 06:38, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Amen! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.146.87.105 (talk) 20:51, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Remote perception

Something about the results from these experiments would be good. 93.96.236.8 (talk) 13:59, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Notability tag

I just added a few sources that should be enough to pull the Notability tag. They include two more sources on PEAR's closing, a decently in-depth treatment from 2003, and several pages in Robert Park's new book. Agree/disagree? - 2/0 (cont.) 15:48, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Fair enough. Tags removed (feel free to restore). Verbal chat 17:02, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Merge discussion

Certain comments on Global Consciousness Project made me suspect that there was a separate page for PEAR. As the first mentioned study is a direct continuation of the PEAR experiment after Princeton finally shut the PEAR experiment down they would be more appropriate merged into a single article. Neither article is overly long. I am not advocating removal of reliably sourced material from either article, just a merge.Simonm223 (talk) 15:51, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. Can always be spun off again if it gets too much (unlikely). Verbal chat 16:09, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose. Not a valid reason/rationale for a merge. There is no consensus over GCP's being PEAR's a direct continuation. As Wikipedia:Merging clearly states "the topics are discrete subjects and deserve their own articles even though they may be short". Even if GCP was a direct continuation of PEAR, since the topics are discrete the merge would be controversial. Consider also ongoing ANI discussion about Global Consciousness Project. Logos5557 (talk) 16:35, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Another point: How many different kinds of experiments were conducted in PEAR? Logos5557 (talk) 16:37, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

The fact that you have made a complaint at WP:ANI doesn't mean I can't propose a merge of two topics that should be covered on the same article. If consensus supports the merge it will be merged. If consensus does not it will not be. Simonm223 (talk) 17:03, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

It's sad that you see "incident reporting" as "complaining". For the ANI process to progress and to culminate healthily, I believe we should slow down this merge proposal/discussion. Logos5557 (talk) 17:22, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Slow down? Who precisely is rushing? I made a proposal. One person, excluding me, supports it, one person opposes it. This is not consensus either way. We will wait until there is consensus one way or the other before doing anything at all. However your WP:ANI complaint (as what you did was not a dry "incident report" but was a complaint) has no bearing one way or the other. Simonm223 (talk) 17:40, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose merge. Both projects are independently notable, and while GCP is in a sense a continuation of PEAR, the projects are also distinct. Merging is unnecessary, and risks conflating the two projects. Fences&Windows 19:27, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose. PEAR has a distinct and long history surrounding the work of Robert Jahn. Independent work not involving Jahn, and not conducted at this laboratory, is not relevant to this article. --Nealparr ^{(talk to me)} 01:40, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

• Withdrawn It is clear consensus does not support this merge and so I withdraw the proposal. Simonm223 (talk) 21:08, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

"Humanists" alongside various scientists in lead

I looked at the reference quickly, I did not see any reference to Humanists being officially part of this research. Humanists are not scientists, so there is no reasonable justification to place them along psychologist, engineer, etc, as a source of scientific research.--Tallard (talk) 21:33, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Agree, change made. This page is filled with NPOV from bias sources against the idea. Antenarrative (talk) 09:30, 17 June 2012 (UTC)