Does psi exist? In a recent article, Dr. Bem conducted nine studies with
over a thousand participants in an attempt to demonstrate that future events
retroactively affect people’s responses. Here we discuss several limitations
of Bem’s experiments on psi; in particular, we show that the data analysis was partly exploratory, and that one-sided p-values may overstate the
statistical evidence against the null hypothesis. We reanalyze Bem’s data
using a default Bayesian t-test and show that the evidence for psi is weak
to nonexistent.
I read the NYT link yesterday or something, and IIRC, they mention somewhere that the statisticians had already found major flaws—like that. I’m a little surprised anyone feels a need to ‘defy the data’.
One lesson of the common misuse of statistics is to not “defy the data” until you’re sure what it says.
Here’s an important reply cited in the other threads:
http://www.ruudwetzels.com//articles/Wagenmakersetal_subm.pdf
I read the NYT link yesterday or something, and IIRC, they mention somewhere that the statisticians had already found major flaws—like that. I’m a little surprised anyone feels a need to ‘defy the data’.