Nobody else has been able to replicate their "results".
> Schiltz is a psi believer [... but Wiseman] is a psi skeptic [...]
> The idea was to plan an experiment together, with both of them agreeing on every single tiny detail. They would then go to a laboratory and set it up, again both keeping close eyes on one another. Finally, they would conduct the experiment in a series of different batches. [...]
> The results? Schlitz’s trials found strong evidence of psychic powers, Wiseman’s trials found no evidence whatsoever.
Running experiments and collecting data is necessary, but not sufficient. Bias and other failures are extremely hard to avoid.
Saying "it's not science" is (derogatory) shorthand for the assertion that their results are due to failures in their process, as opposed to being reflective of reality.
0: http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/28/the-control-group-is-ou...
Consider that they may be falsifying or misinterpreting data. The only way to be sure they aren't -- or pretty sure, anyway -- is to have independent researchers be able to follow the same repeatable process in order to replicate the results.
I don't know enough about this case to say whether they have a good repeatable experimental process -- it's possible that the website just smells so strongly of woo that nobody has even tried to replicate their results in the first place. But without that independent verification, the proposed results seem questionable.
A couple of issues I remember:
1. They only publish results for positive events. They only use pseudorandom data, not sampling other time frames of their existing data
2. Their random source showed consistent bias (I believe it was something like 51% chance of 1 vs 49% of 0. This is after Von Neumann whitening which means they have some additional biases in their random sampling
2. Possibly, but unavoidable to get rid of a systematic error which would pollute everything else. Details are here: http://noosphere.princeton.edu/gcpdata.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princeton_Engineering_Anomalie...
Is it magical that you can see a running rabbit and throw a stone and hit it? Certainly the subjective experience of doing something like that is just as problematical for science as the research above. I have in my pocket a tiny machine that uses crystals to shake light to send my voice etc. to far receivers practically instantly. Is it really so strange to consider something like that being done biologically?
I'm glad somebody's doing science to it. ;-)
When it comes to "what we are measuring" the story becomes
more complicated because there is no real understanding of
the mechanism whereby an REG [Random event generator]’s
behavior can be altered by thoughts and emotions or
intentions.
[...]
We do not know how a mental state such as an intention or
emotion is able to inform the physical system to affect
its behavior. In addition, all of the robust measures we
have providing evidence for the anomalous effects are
statistical in nature, and the signal to noise ratio is
extremely low. This means that we typically cannot be
sure that the "signature" of an effect in any individual
analysis is driven by the hypothesized influence of
consciousness. The details written in the data from
single instances are more likely to be chance
fluctuations than consciousness effects. Only in larger
concatenations, gathering the weak signals from many
separate events, can we be satisfied that trends and
structure represent the hypothesized effect.