“Therefore, this kind of experiment can never convince me of the reality of Mrs Stewart’s ESP; not because I assert Pf=0 dogmatically at the start, but because the verifiable facts can be accounted for by many alternative hypotheses, every one of which I consider inherently more plausible than Hf, and none of which is ruled out by the information available to me.
Indeed, the very evidence which the ESP’ers throw at us to convince us, has the opposite effect on our state of belief; issuing reports of sensational data defeats its own purpose. For if the prior probability for deception is greater than that of ESP, then the more improbable the alleged data are on the null hypothesis of no deception and no ESP, the more strongly we are led to believe, not in ESP, but in deception. For this reason, the advocates of ESP (or any other marvel) will never succeed in persuading scientists that their phenomenon is real, until they learn how to eliminate the possibility of deception in the mind of the reader. As (5.15) shows, the reader’s total prior probability for deception by all mechanisms must be pushed down below that of ESP.”
I found this (and the preceding bit) noteworthy on two points; first in the obvious mathematical respect that explains the relationship between favored hypotheses and less favored hypotheses which are both supported by data;
Second, by the realization that researchers favoring ESP most likely fail to apprehend the hypothesis that they are testing, w/r to their critics. In the case in question, they collected 37100 predictions, which seems a little excessive considering it had essentially no persuasive power to skeptics.
“Therefore, this kind of experiment can never convince me of the reality of Mrs Stewart’s ESP; not because I assert Pf=0 dogmatically at the start, but because the verifiable facts can be accounted for by many alternative hypotheses, every one of which I consider inherently more plausible than Hf, and none of which is ruled out by the information available to me.
Indeed, the very evidence which the ESP’ers throw at us to convince us, has the opposite effect on our state of belief; issuing reports of sensational data defeats its own purpose. For if the prior probability for deception is greater than that of ESP, then the more improbable the alleged data are on the null hypothesis of no deception and no ESP, the more strongly we are led to believe, not in ESP, but in deception. For this reason, the advocates of ESP (or any other marvel) will never succeed in persuading scientists that their phenomenon is real, until they learn how to eliminate the possibility of deception in the mind of the reader. As (5.15) shows, the reader’s total prior probability for deception by all mechanisms must be pushed down below that of ESP.”
ET Jaynes, Probability Theory (S 5.2.2)
I found this (and the preceding bit) noteworthy on two points; first in the obvious mathematical respect that explains the relationship between favored hypotheses and less favored hypotheses which are both supported by data;
Second, by the realization that researchers favoring ESP most likely fail to apprehend the hypothesis that they are testing, w/r to their critics. In the case in question, they collected 37100 predictions, which seems a little excessive considering it had essentially no persuasive power to skeptics.