Mary’s Monday Metazoan: Shakin’ the dust off » « Steamroller. We are unstoppable.

What have the students been up to this week?

It’s another update on the bloggin’ students in my Neuroscience course, and what they’ve been thinking about.

They all welcome visits and comments!

(Also on Sb)

Mary’s Monday Metazoan: Shakin’ the dust off » « Steamroller. We are unstoppable.

Comments

  1. 'Tis Himself, OM says

    I would like to make a comment on Dkmecik’s blog about mind reading software. However I’m not willing to sign up for UM’s blogs if they’re going to be sending me periodic emails making sure I’m still alive.

  2. says

    Gee, I wonder if evolution would work to greatly enhance any ESP, or wouldn’t it be of reproductive benefit?

    That’s why I always think these minor “wondrous” abilities that some of us are supposed to have are such a crock. It wouldn’t be just “some people” who can read minds and predict the future with a high error rate, we’d all be capable of reading minds and predicting the future quite well, since evolution would select strongly for those abilities.

    Yet another reason evolution is such a valuable concept. Only types of creationism with some sort “degeneration” of powers would make sense of iffy but spectacular powers, while evolution tells us that there’d be nothing weak or rare about paranormal abilities, if they existed at all.

    Glen Davidson

  4. 'Tis Himself, OM says

    Oh sure, now we’ll probably have a war on cupcakes

    We already have a war on cupcakes, Cupcake.

  6. nazani14 says

    Now I want to learn more about delamination.
    However, you might point out that writing in hipster-ese takes up a lot more space than normal English and distracts from the subject matter.

  7. Reginald Selkirk says

    ESP … Does it exist? That’s for you to decide.

    Either it exists or it does not, no matter what you decide. You do not decide it into existence.

    Rhine … was convinced that this proved ESP’s existence. However, many scientists and skeptics have had a hard time replicating the same results in their experiments which leads to the idea of experimental design flaws in Rhine’s work.

    “The idea”? How about the KNOWN experimental weaknesses, the KNOWN experimenter fraud, the KNOWN manipulation of data? And Rhine offered to let any other scientist replicate his work – by using Rhine’s existing experimental data. Here was a man who does not understand the scientific method, and what is meant by replication of results. For an excellent and thorough evaluation of the early history of ESP research, check out:
    “ESP: A Scientific Evaluation” by C.E.M. Hansel (Scribner, 1966)

    Princeton University’s Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) conducted experiments

    Once again, their studies have been criticized for many KNOWN experimental weaknesses, none of which you mention. Here’s a start:

    The End of PEAR

    The entire history of ESP research is riddled with: inadequately controlled experiments, fraud by subjects and fraud by researchers. You haven’t given a very complete or accurate impression of that.