It does indeed - some people seem to think that ψ experiments are somehow special in that they deal with statistics. Of course, statistics are also implicitly important in still more experiments that rely on statistical mechanics.
Statistics is a tool, ψ experiments are special in that they apply statistics to an assumption without any underlying theoretical framework.
I'm afraid that IMHO in the current climate, researchers fear being labelled 'woo' and shun such subjects. This inhibits the normal operation of science, which would otherwise research these subjects to the point where we would know if they were real or not.
What inhibits the normal operation of science is the lack of strong positive proof for ψ.
The leading ψ researchers are stuck in a form of complacency.
They cry conspiracy and bask in the admiration of a handful loyal followers, meta-analyse till the cows come home, that is the easy thing to do.
They are hardly challenged by their peers, they operate in the convenient isolation of a self-proclaimed field of science.
To keep relevant, and attract young scientists, parapsychology is in bad need of an experiment is that simple and robust, one that gives a clear result, something to work with.
The Sheldrakes, Radins, bems should try to do the hard thing and pull all their resources together to come to such an experiment.
If they would have such a litmus test for ψ, scientists could come to the field on a base that relies less on faith.
But in that quest they need to to the even harder thing of staying open the possibility that ψ is non-existent.
Well, as I understand it, every Higgs particle detection requires the filtering of 10^12 events! That is positively scary, because the possibility of a minute systematic error generating a spurious result. A ψ experiment that had such a tiny effect size would be laughed out of court.
David
Any experiment with a basically non-existent theoretical base would probably not even be discussed in physics.
I think that is the difference between the use of statistics for counting what was predicted and fits perfectly in an evolving theory, and using statistics to show an anomaly without knowing what it is
.