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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!floyd!harpo!seismo!flinn
From: flinn@seismo.UUCP (E. A. Flinn)
Newsgroups: net.misc
Subject: ESP
Message-ID: <595@seismo.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 6-Feb-84 14:53:38 EST
Article-I.D.: seismo.595
Posted: Mon Feb  6 14:53:38 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 9-Feb-84 08:54:49 EST
Organization: Center for Seismic Studies, Arlington, VA
Lines: 32


	This weekend I read for the first time Martin Gardner's and
James Randi's books on ESP.  I hadn't realized just what a preposterous
state the 'science' of parapsychology is in.  It must be frustrating to
the honest and serious scientists (I suppose there must be some)
investigating paranormal phenomena to have the field so pervaded by
fraud, incompetence, and experimental bias.

	Fraud?  Exposed again and again.

	Incompetence?  A mild word for people like Targ and Puthoff
who are so desperately eager to find positive results that the
experiments they design are just ridiculous - riddled with
opportunities for conscious or unconscious bias that vitiate their
results.  Moreover, T&P and those like them have never answered the 
legitimate objections of their critics, and show no interest in 
enlisting the help of people like Gardner and Randi to design 
experiments in whose results one can place some confidence.  
	There is an extremely simple answer to the question of why
supposed paranormal effects can be seen only under circumstances that
arouse the suspicions (or worse) of professional stage magicians.
Any experiment which is designed in such a way - or carried out 
under circumstances - that allow the possibility of bias or cheating, 
has been designed by incompetent or dishonest people.

	Bias?  It seems clear that the reason T&P et al. keep 
coming up with flawed experiments is that rigidly controlled experiments 
produce no positive results. 

	I have yet to hear of *any* experimental results in
parapsychology which have produced reliable evidence that paranormal 
phenomena actually exist.