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Example research essay topic: Gallup Poll Meta Analysis - 1,918 words

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... meta-analysis obtained overall target hit rates of approximately 35 percent, where chance performance would be only 25 percent. Moreover, Bem and Horonton reported several psychologically meaningful predictors of Ganzfield performance. Subjects who 1) were artistically creative (music, drama, and dance students recruited from the Julliard school), 2) extroverted, 3) had previous ESP-like experiences (but were novices, i.

e. , had no previous experience as Ganzfield subjects), and 5) received high scores on self-report indices of emotionality and perceptual orientation to the environment obtained especially high hit rates. In addition, experimental conditions using dynamic visual stimuli yielded higher hit rates than those using static visual stimuli. Bem and Horonton's findings, which were widely disseminated in both the popular and academic press have stirred fresh hopes I the parapsychology community that a truly replicable method of eliciting ESP effects may at last e at hand. More over they have been cited in several popular books, including Dea Rating The Conscious Universe, and Courtney Browns Cosmic Voyage, as providing very promising, if not conclusive, support for the existence of ESP. Although some critics, like Ray Hyman, found statistical anomalies in the bem and Horonton data set suggesting the possible existence of subtle but damaging experimental artifacts, Bem and Horonton's meta-analysis was regarded by many as offering the most compelling laboratory evidence to date for the evidence of ESP (Lilienfeld, 1999).

Now, psychologists Julie Milton of the University of Edinburgh and Richard Wiseman of the University of Hatfield, England, have pooled the results of 30 ganzfield experiments using an updated statistical method of meta-analysis. In the same journal in which Bem and Horonton presented their results, the researchers report that their analysis shows no consistent evidence for psi. Milton says, Although the new studies failed to replicate the effects of earlier studies, it is not clear why they did so (Carpenter, 1999). Specifically, Milton and Wiseman reported a mea effect size across all thirty studies of. 013, which corresponds to essentially chance performance and can most charitably be described as negligible. This has been the history of parapsychology for about 150 years, remarks psychologist Ray Hya of the University of Oregon in Eugene. Procedures look good at the beginning, and then they fizzle out.

Whether or not this is different is hard to say, but this meta-analysis suggests that on the average it doesnt look like there is much going on. The meta-analysis has generated heated discussion among psychologists. Some argue that Milton and Wiseman were unjustified in lumping 30 studies together because their results were so desparate. Milton contends that a standard statistical test of variation among the results showed that they could treat the studies as a uniform set. Bem, says however, The reason the effect isnt significant is that there are three studies that are pulling down the average, and those studies are very nonstandard. Further 6 of the 30 studies showed significant psi effects more than would be expected by chance, he adds (Carpenter, 1999).

It seems likely that Milton and Wiseman's meta-analysis will not be the final word on the Ganzfield technique, and the question of whether this technique will prove to be the replicable paradigm long sought by parapsychologists or merely another tantalizing will-o-the-wisp is far from conclusively resolved (Lilienfeld, 1999). In a hundred years of ESP research, a number of facts emerge: 1) In a small number of reported experiments, above chance scores have been reported that are due either to ESP or to experimental error or trickery (Kurtz, 1985). (2) There has been a high incidence of trickery in parapsychology and a long history of inept experimentation. (3) A repeatable demonstration has not been forthcoming. (4) Results reported at low levels of confidence tend to be confirmed by parapsychologists at low levels of confidence. 123 The main outstanding problem is to understand why experimental results as reported should be in disagreement with one another (Kurtz, 1985). Further understanding on this point is thought to require comparison of the design and procedures of experiments that fail to confirm a particular result with those that confirm it. Also, the comparisons of those experiments who produce results claimed to be due to ESP with those experiments who fail to do so. Today ESP is no nearer to being established than it was a hundred years ago.

The long history of trickery and inept experimentation, and the inability to confirm ambitious claims, serves to confirm the view held at the start by the majority of the scientists that perception is mediated by the senses- that without sensory processes, perception is not possible. The parapsychologist should ensure, before publishing ambitious claims, that he has confirmed his own findings to such an extent that he ca be reasonably certain others will be able to confirm what he as done (Kurtz, 1985). 124 C. Dimensions of Human Experience: A Gallup poll reveals an increase in the proportion of people expressing belief ina wide variety of paranormal phenomena. More than half of American adults believe in the devil and deja-vu. One quarter believe in ghosts, and 18 percent believe that it is possible to communicate with the dead, according to the Gallup Poll. Belief in some phenomena is slipping while others are gaining adherents.

The share of those who believe in extra sensory perception has slipped from 51 percent of adults to 49 percent since 1978 (Schwartz, 1991). According to McRae, a former investigative reporter for Columnist Jack Anderson, tells of this type of clandestine assignation and of other operations between the Pentagon and the so-called psychic community in his book Mind Wars (Gale, 1999). According to McRae, who is skeptical of psychic claims, the Department of Defense has spent $ 6 million annually in recent years to research such phenomena as extrasensory perception and mental telepathy. Mcrae claims the Pentagon financed psychic research to study the shell game basing mode for the Mx missile, a system that would attempt to confuse Soviet military strategist by shifting missiles among a number of concrete shelters.

Other esoteric programs uncovered by McRae include titles like Novel Biological Information Transfer Systems, apparently te Pentagons way of saying E. S. P. Back in December 1980, Military Review, a journal of the U. S. Army, carried a cover story titled The New Mental Battlefield.

In his quirky essay, Lieut. Colonel John B. Alexander wrote that there are weapon systems that operate on the power of the mind and whose lethal capacity has already been demonstrated. He equated the first strategic breakthrough in defense E. S. P.

with sole possession of nuclear weapons and urged the U. S. to step up its research in the field. I know the governments involved, says Physicist Russell Targ, co-author with Keith Harry of the forthcoming book Mind race. I did the work, he contends. Because he was working with special clearances while at SRI International, a California research institute, Targ will not specify whether the Defense Department, the CIA or both funded hi psychic research progra's, but he maintains that there was a multimillion-dollar project, part of which focused on remote Viewing experiments.

Representative Charge Rose, a North Carolina Democrat on the House Select Committee on Intelligence, says it may be worth a look. Some people think this is the work of the devil, says he. Others think it may e the holy spirit. If the Soviets, as is evident, feel it is worthwhile, I am willing to spend a few bucks (Gale, 1984).

Here are some examples of human experiences that make some thoughtful persons accept the super-psi hypothesis and understand the effects of ESP. These samples of experiences include out of body experiences, near death and deathbed experiences, survival after death cases, and reincarnation (Scmeidler, 1988). The experience that ones consciousness, ones self, is located somewhere outside ones own body is fairly common in some cultures and among some groups, but is rare in others. This implies that the experience is partly dependent on ones readiness for it. Most psychiatrists consider the experience a symptom of psychosis. Parapsychologists test for evidence that claims are valid, and while some conclude that the self can indeed temporarily separate from the body others explain the difference as a special combination of memory and imagination.

The most famous case dates from the days before there was transatlantic cable. It was reported by a woman whose husband had gone overseas. She did not know when he would return home; she worried about his safety. One night she had a vivid experience: that she was in a ships cabin and saw her sleeping husband in a lower bunk and a strange man in the upper one. In fact her husband was on a ship that night, and was in a lower bunk while a man the wife did not know was in the upper bunk. But now comes the striking part of the case.

On what seems to have been the same night that the woman felt she was in the cabin, the man whose bunk was above her husbands was shocked to see a woman in her nightdress walk through the cabin, caress the man in the lower bunk, and then disappear. There are other spontaneous cases of this type, some well attested, but any particular case can be attacked on various grounds. Most of the research begins by finding some subject who claims to be able to go out of the body at will, then uses one of three methods, or a combination of them. The most common method is to ask the subject to some distant targets location and report on the target- this is equivalent to the operation for clairvoyance or GESP.

Another is to see if the person can produce an effect at some distant place-this is the operation for PK, and PK can be effective at a distance. A third is to measure the EEG of a person who is succeeding at either of the first two methods. Some persons in coma, and some who were medically diagnosed as clinically dead, have been restored to life. A large proportion of them report that they had vivid experiences while apparently unconscious. The experiences they describe often include one or more common elements, such as going through a tunnel, hearing a sound, coming to a light, or contact with a glowing, loving powerful presence.

Occasionally a report also describes accurately events, which occurred while the person seemed unconscious and which the person could not have normally known even if awake. When such evidence of ESP occurs it is embedded in a description of out of body travel. For deathbed and near deathbed experiences, a psi or super-psi theory can encompass the cases of paranormal information. Gold in 1982 gives a thorough, thoughtful, critical survey of the traditional lines of research on whether a self or spirit survives death. There are many of these lines. Five of them include sittings with psychics, cross correspondences, spontaneous cases ad hauntings, drop in communicators and codes.

Case after case, from all these lines of investigation except codes, has been claimed to give such accurate information as to prove that a dead persons spirit has survived. Any single case and some some broad categories of cases, can be explained breaking enough assumptions about psi ability. To explain all the well attested cases demands many such assumptions. There is no guide except ones judgment about whether the accumulated weight of all those assumptions about psi is more than the super-psi hypothesis ca tolerate (Scmeidler, 1988). Bibliography:


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