Talk:Remote viewing/Archive 1
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I made a number of significant edits to this article, attempting to give it a NPOV. It should now represent that remote viewing is a technique which was used in a research project, which had certain factual results, and that there are multiple interpretations of the results of this research project. Cortonin 00:22, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)
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This article appears to be written from the point of view that Remote Viewing is a real phenomenon. Most scientists would disagree, I believe. This article needs a rewrite for NPOV.
- Remote viewing means putting blindfolds on your customers and stealing their wallets. This article could be edited into something NPOV, possibly, but as it stands it is an affront to NPOV (and common sense). Ortolan88
- Someone just removed the following:
- The reality of remote viewing is contested, with many scientists considering it to be a fictitious phenomenon, and studies into it to be pseudoscience at best, and fraud at worst.
- on the ludicrous grounds that its presence made the article less NPOV! What remains is all POV, and dubious at that. Ortolan88
I think it was just moved. Almost the exact same thing now exists above the "history" heading. It could still use some NPOVing, though. Tokerboy 19:16 Dec 6, 2002 (UTC)
The original writer made a good effort to write a fair treatment of the subject. The opponents introduced POV with dismissive comments from a vague "most scientists" and adding unfounded allegations of fraud. Where is the evidence or even a specific claim of wallets being stolen? If you really believe that this is pseudoscience, would it not be better if you provided evidence for your POV? Eclecticology 19:22 Dec 6, 2002 (UTC)
- Oops. Sorry for misreading your edit, but this is still a ludicrous subject/article. I don't buy this article as a good effort to give a fair treatment; it is filled with undocumented assertions taken as gospel. I don't have to provide any countering evidence because in all the wordy length of this article there is not one single citation of anything that anybody ever viewed remotely, not even as an example, not to mention as an instance of any benefit to anyone, just a lot of undocumented assertions of the general type: "if you only knew what we know you would believe it too". Ortolan88
- Ortolan, the subject definitely deserves an article -- after all, US taxpayer money was really spent on this. (Fortunately, unlike the infamous MKULTRA mind control program, this doesn't seem to have involved dangerous experiments on humans.) The article still needs NPOV work, though, and needs to accurately reflect the scientific consensus. --Eloquence
- Okay, let's have an article then, not a press release for FATE Magazine. Has any remote viewer ever seen anything? So far as I know, it's all been like the conversation between Polonius and Hamlet (Act iii. Sc. 2.):
- Hamlet: Do you see yonder cloud that ?s almost in shape of a camel?
- Polonius: By the mass, and ?t is like a camel, indeed.
- Hamlet: Methinks it is like a weasel.
- Polonius: It is backed like a weasel.
- Hamlet: Or like a whale?
- Polonius: Very like a whale.
- That skeptical guy, Ortolan88
As the original author of this article, I appreciate the feedback. As you can tell, I'm new to the Wikipedia. The concensus criteria that this community uses for NPOV is still not clear to me. I figure that none of us individually has an NPOV, so as I understand the theory of it, the wiki process will evolve an article to that NPOV state, or close enough to it for consensus, so if I continue to hang around and contribute and read, I will eventually learn by example.
Already I'm learning, and I still have plenty of questions. For example, I did not realize that adding citations for specific cases or remote viewing sessions might add to NPOV. Most of the wikipedia articles I have read are very brief. I was worried that the article was a little long as it was, and adding too many details might make it seem like I'm trying to build a case for RV (which I am not). I was under the impression that an encyclopedia article's purpose is not to convince the reader of any particular point of view, but to describe the topic (from several points of view, in the case of controversial topics), provide some history or background when applicable, and provide pointers to further information for those who want more details. Any rules of thumb that you folks use to decide when to add more detail vs. when to delete? And any rules of thumb on limiting how many external links one might include in an article?
Grizzly
- I think your approach is essentially correct. I may have been critical of some of your writing style, but that can be cleaned up easily enough. As long as you were not appearing as a registered user you would receive more than usual scrutiny. Common vandalism, or just weird things often come from unregistered users. By choosing a controversial subject you were bound to draw attention. When it comes to anomolous science the forces of scientific orthodoxy are quick to dismiss these things as pseudoscience or frauds; in doing so they tend to completely ignore scientific method.
- Keep up the efforts. Eclecticology 11:03 Dec 7, 2002 (UTC)
Extreme views aside - I'm not quite clear on what these 'extreme views' are that are being set aside. Does it refer to the views expressed in the para above of "mainstream science"?? -Martin
I was refering to the view that (all) parapsychology is pseudoscience, i.e. that parapsychologists are not really scientists and are not taking a scientific approach to their subject. Likewise the view that all parapsychologists are practicing fraud. Grizzly 06:37 Dec 12, 2002 (UTC)
- They don't have to be acting in bad faith, but there is still nothing in this article showing any practical demonstration of anyone's being one place and seeing something somewhere else and proving it. Penn and Teller viewed the future of the Superbowl and teleported it into a pickle bottle guarded by Marines in the middle of Times Square, but they didn't claim to be scientists. Let these sincere scientists show their tricks to Penn and Teller. Ortolan88
I've done considerable revisions, as you can see. The historical portions were taken mostly from Puthoff's own historical overview, as many of the other sites contain history at odds with his. For instance it appears to be the case that the CIA approached him AFTER he started the experiments with Swann, yet almost all other histories claim the opposite.
Also to add to the debate here, in general the research carried out by Puthoff and Targ at SRI is considered by books on the topic to be shoddy at best, and outright fraud at worst. Puthoff was seemingly willing to promote any evidence as positive, ignoring the rest. For instance in one case Swann suggested remote viewing Jupiter just prior to the arrival of Pioneer 10, which Puthoff mentions as being positive. In fact Swann described a 30,000 foot tall mountain range, a physical impossibility (due to gravity alone, not just that the planet is made of gas). This part of the "positive result" is conveniently missing from his mentions of the run, and any mention at all is generally missing in most articles. In other examples they are apparently unable to demonstrate the tests even took place. You can read about these problems, notably the "missing" results, in a number of Gardner's books. SRI seems to have been happy to continue their tenure as long as they were bringing in money, but when the project ended it seems they both left (or were canned) and formed their own company to make money using PSI on the silver futures market. I consider the whole SRI era to be generally laughable.
The SAIC experiments, on the other hand, cannot be critisized on this basis. They were well run, fairly rigorous in terms of methodology, and did return an overall positive result. The only serious concern brought forth was the widespready use of a single judge, which, admittedly is fairly disconserting. However the results are interesting, and indeed as Utts points out, the ganzfield experiments are similarily free from obvious error. Why well-contolled experiments like these were not carried out from the very start of the parapsychology era is a matter of historical interest I suppose, but the field is now certainly "tainted" by these earlier results. Nevertheless both reports agree that the results de deserve further research.