Pseudoscience and the scientific status of parapsychology

I am ill today - your work is to write this essay:

"Discuss the scientific status of the study of paranormal cognition and paranormal action." (8 + 16 marks)

Researchers in this field (carrying out ganzfeld studies into ESP, or looking for evidence of Micro- or Macro-PK) claim they are carrying out well-controlled scientific investigations. You need to outline the claims made against them (that parapsychology is in fact a 'pseudoscience') - for AO1 - and assess the validity of these claims, and their importance - for AO2.

There is some overlap here with other questions we have looked at - the methodological issues in ganzfeld and PK research - but there are other issues too. Where you are using the same material as previous essays you need to use it in a slightly different way, to comment on the reputation of the subject.

Issues that we have already looked at that you can use:

• Subjective rather than objective measures of 'success' - lack of objectivity. 
• Researchers looking for evidence of the paranormal, rather than attempting to falsify their hypotheses - lack of falsifiability - and parapsychologists being fooled by 'charlatans'. 
• Investigator effects suggesting that experiments are not well controlled - confounding variables may well be giving an illusion of psi abilities.

Anther important issue:

• The impact of cases of confirmed scientific fraud - where the researcher has deliberately cheated to produce false data (Soal's ESP research, and Walter Levy Jr's PK research).

For AO2:

• Give some evidence to back up the claims made against parapsychology.
• Explain why these issues matter so much, especially in this field.
• Defend parapsychology - is it really so different from other fields? Arguably autoganzfeld experiments are better controlled, with more objective measures and better falsifiability than most psychological research!

Spearman's rho

Today we carried out our first statistical test, Spearman's rank (or rho). We discussed probability, significance and type 1 and 2 errors, and why psychology generally uses a significance level of 0.05 or below. Spearman's rho is the test to use when the hypothesis predicts a correlation between two sets of data and when the data is ordinal or interval (definitely not nominal). You worked through two examples and the worksheets are here and here and all instructions for carrying out the test are on the first sheet.

The ppt on probability and significance is here (slides 9 onwards). 

We also concluded that there is no correlation between the expense and tastiness of milk chocolate (though I should point out that Spearman's rho becomes increasingly unusable with small sample sizes like these). 

Resources update

Herein is a long blog post containing links to all the resources we have used this half term.

I posted last about psychological explanations of schizophrenia. We then moved on to the biological therapies. We focused on drugs & ECT. You need to know how the drugs work and the pros and cons of using them - do look back at the criticisms of biological therapies in general from your abnormality work last year. ECT isn't used for schizophrenia nowadays but has been in the past and so you should be able to evaluate why not. The ppt is here.

We then moved on to the psychological therapies for schizophrenia. We looked at why Freud said that psychoanalysis was unsuitable (this involved some Freudian theory that should come in handy across the spec), uses of psychoanalysis nowadays, and then cognitive behavioural therapies. The ppt on psychoanalysis is here and the CBT one is here.

It is really important that you are able to evaluate both biological and psychological therapies in terms of their appropriateness (are they ethical? are they suitable?) and their effectiveness (do they work?), as this is how the spec divides up the evaluative material.

We then moved on to the research methods section of the unit 4 spec. I provided booklets to work through at your own pace for a large chunk and a copy is here. A lot is revision from AS. I have taught the trickier bits of the research methods. The ppt on reliability is here and the one on validity is here. It is important that you know the difference between internal and external reliability and validity, and also ways to improve all of these. This is more complex than work done last year on these topics. Finally we looked at probability and significance in preparation for our work on the statistical tests and the ppt is here.

Paranormal Action - Psychokinesis

I am ill today - here is the work.

Psychokinesis is moving objects with paranormal mental activity. If this is on the scale of objects that can be seen, e.g. moving small objects like pencils or bending spoons, it is known as 'Macro PK'. 'Micro PK' involves influencing computer circuitry, usually to cause a 'random event generator' to produce a less random string of events.

James Hydrick is an interesting character and a good example of a Micro PK psychic. Here he demonstrates his powers on American TV show 'That's Incredible!' before failing to do so when sceptical stage magician James Randi puts some 'controls' in place (there is a longer Youtube clip of this same episode if you prefer):

Far more famous is Uri Geller - famous for bending spoons and performing a range of other psychic feats. Geller was studied by a number of parapsychologists who were convinced that his powers were genuine. Randi narrates this video, giving some useful background and explaining his roll in another prime-time TV failure of psychic power:

Randi's Project Alpha is not a piece of research, but a publicity stunt aimed at exposing the flawed nature of research carried out at Washington University in St Louis (the lead researcher was Shafer). The quality of this video is horrible but it gives a good overview (again there is a longer documentary on Youtube if you are interested):

Ganzfeld research into ESP

Although our results when Hazel and Gina acted as 'receivers' were unimpressive, numerous studies using the ganzfeld technique have produced 'hit rates' well above chance - apparently evidence for the existence of Extra Sensory Perception (or 'paranormal cognition').

Below are questions to make notes on for next Tuesday's lesson. Here is the sheet with the six key characters / researchers.

·    What is the ganzfeld evidence for the existence of ESP?
·         What is the counter-evidence?
·         How have positive results been explained by the sceptics?
·         How have the believers responded?
·         Does ganzfeld research deserve to be labelled 'pseudoscience'?
·         What is your conclusion?

Here is a presentation which covers the introduction to anomalistic psychology and pseudoscience. Here is one for ganzfeld and psychokinesis research (which we'll move onto next week).

On Tuesday 12th we will be doing a timed essay test on the influence of culture on romantic relationships (revise this) and hearing about your qualitative interview research.