I was talking about that list.
Scole Experiments and the future of mediumship studies
- Thread starter Will
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I was talking about that list.
I think it has. I recall they at one point they asked a photograph man ( don't know the name of this expertise) and he claimed all photos could be achieved by various means, so the mechanism does exist. And yes, IIRC Dr. Gauld claimed that, for example, the dragon film could be achieved in a matter of seconds with a certain technique. Don't know the other ones. I can dig in the Report for the quotes if you wish.
The fact that this was "Alan Box" ( a box crafter by a familiar of Alan, the medium), that it was easily open by Dr. Gauld, and that it was manipulated by unknown hands doesn't give me much trust in all this, specially since this wasn't filmed so we can see exactly what happened in that struggle. Just my personal opinion, but I think the controls weren't that tigh on this one.
Lusikka
New
I said that in The Scole Report there are two lists of sittings, one with 19 sittings and one with 36+1 sittings. And then you said:
That is impossible: your list has 31 (or 35?) sittings. Then you said "a few had all the investigators present". I checked that and here is the result: all the authors of the Report were present in 12 sittings, two of them in 7 sittings, only one in 11 sittings, and there were only other investigators present in 6 sittings.
I don't think 12 sittings are only "a few". It seems you think that the critics of the case are right and that there was nothing paranormal in Scole. Is that true?
I'll try to come to the criticisms rather soon.
n=12 isn't usually an amazing sample size, as far as how normal studies go.
Lusikka
New
Fine, neither I am sure, but I think the evidence is very strong. Now we can discuss that further on.
Lusikka
New
There is the question if the criticism of the Scole Experiment has been fair. In my opinion it has been anything but fair, because it has not been balanced. Maurice Grosse has said that very nicely in his comments – I would not have been able to say it more clearly (p.448):
Reading the criticisms has made me think the critics have not been able to think realistically and logically. There is much background information they have not come to think. And they have done serious harm to the whole field of psychical research by giving weapons in the hands of skeptics and skeptical scientists. Those can now quite reasonably say: "The whole case of Scole is a pure hoax, you can see that the colleagues of the "investigators" have shown that quite clearly".
Maurice Grosse said:
Reading the criticisms has made me think the critics have not been able to think realistically and logically. There is much background information they have not come to think. And they have done serious harm to the whole field of psychical research by giving weapons in the hands of skeptics and skeptical scientists. Those can now quite reasonably say: "The whole case of Scole is a pure hoax, you can see that the colleagues of the "investigators" have shown that quite clearly".
If we assume--for the sake of argument--that there was no fraud and this is 100% a replication of SPR's previous work in the last century on this subject, has it told us anything we didn't already know from going back and checking their books? I don't know that it has.
We need more bulletproof studies (like Beischel's post-Schwartz revised protocols, but with Ganzfeld size N's) and film showing up on the easiest box to defraud (and nowhere else) is far from bulletproof. SPR established years and years ago that the traditional style of seance research is only ever convincing to people who are actually there when they are done.
Lusikka
New
There is a picture of one of the two film boxes on this video:THE AFTERLIFE INVESTIGATIONS: The Scole Experiments - FEATURE FILM
I tried to get the picture here but didn't succeed this time. You can stop the video and look at the picture. I did not find information which box it is, but I assume it is the Alan box. Alan Gauld comments the box (pp. 404-405):
Seems quite simple, but it is not so simple after all. There was a paint seal upon the screws holding the arms. Gauld said the arm could be rotated without breaking the seal, but when he gave the box back, the seal was broken. He did not tell why and how it was broken.
There are technical problems with the arm. If the Scole group used this method to deceitfully open the box, the arm was rotated very many times and the screws would have been rather rapidly loosened and the paint seal would have been broken as well. And after all it became broken only after Gauld rotated the arm. Walter Schnittger would also have been a liar because he said he could keep one finger on the lid all the time.
There would have been clearly visible traces of the rotations on the box surface and scratches on the arms, seen by using a microscope. I am rather unhappy because the investigators did not use a microscope in their inspections and did not use photographing and precision weighing to prevent changing. They could also have used different materials on the surfaces of objects, for example talcum powder, soot and soft sticky materials. It is impossible to handle objects without leaving traces in such surfaces and talcum powder or soot would also have been visible on the fingers of hoaxers.
I tried to get the picture here but didn't succeed this time. You can stop the video and look at the picture. I did not find information which box it is, but I assume it is the Alan box. Alan Gauld comments the box (pp. 404-405):
Alan Gauld said:
Seems quite simple, but it is not so simple after all. There was a paint seal upon the screws holding the arms. Gauld said the arm could be rotated without breaking the seal, but when he gave the box back, the seal was broken. He did not tell why and how it was broken.
There are technical problems with the arm. If the Scole group used this method to deceitfully open the box, the arm was rotated very many times and the screws would have been rather rapidly loosened and the paint seal would have been broken as well. And after all it became broken only after Gauld rotated the arm. Walter Schnittger would also have been a liar because he said he could keep one finger on the lid all the time.
There would have been clearly visible traces of the rotations on the box surface and scratches on the arms, seen by using a microscope. I am rather unhappy because the investigators did not use a microscope in their inspections and did not use photographing and precision weighing to prevent changing. They could also have used different materials on the surfaces of objects, for example talcum powder, soot and soft sticky materials. It is impossible to handle objects without leaving traces in such surfaces and talcum powder or soot would also have been visible on the fingers of hoaxers.
I find the criticism regarding Scole to be slighly different than what Maurice Grosse put. One of the interesting features of the Scole experiments was that the alledged spirits weren't just intending to produce some paranormal activity, but that they were intending to produce paranormal activity aiming specifically at proving it was paranormal. So it comes as strange, for example, that the Dragon Film was produced leaving characteristics quite common for a mixture of acetate. I must say, again, that I find strange that beings that can alledgedly time travel (the 1945 WAR! Daily Mail Apportation, which may had been possible to acquire from a collecionist IMHO. As I see it, it would had been much impressive if they acquired an extremely rare object, like an Action Comics #1 fresh (that can cost like a million dollars!), a Nintendo Worldchampionship gold cartidge game, or one of those ultra-rare stamps that where quite common in the past, but that only a few or only one is known to exist at the current times), change things up to the molecular level ( if they can produce images in a film), move objects without physical contact, etc couldn't just simply take away the acetate of a picture. Or why, the only relevant images where produced in the Alan Box, the box made by a faimiliar of Alan ( the other images, IIRC were made while using a film provided by Foy, one of the mediums ), or why the use of non-invasive thermal image systems wasn't allowed but the use of a tape recorder was (both being electronic apparatuses), or why the Ruth poem contained only parts that, while existing in an obscure book, contained only the parts that existed in that obscure book instead of the parts of the poem that were incredible more hard to find.
The fact that there are "fishy" things, when both the investigators, the team and the spirits aimed specifically at the supression of fishy things is quite strange, and gives more support to the critics, IMHO.
It seems, as I see it, that any time where a paranormal object was tried to be made, something failed to be bullet-proof, despite the effort of several spirits to produce bullet-proof situations.
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Lusikka
New
BTW, do you think the criticism has been fair?
We have two problems here. For the first, extremely small part of people knows those old cases and the meticulous work that was done then. For the second, if they would know something about those researches, they usually think they are outdated. Therefore we have a strong need to get modern research of physical mediumship and fair criticism to it.
Unfortunately there are no "bulletproof studies" in empirical science and never will be:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science#Certainty_and_science:
Theories are never bulletproof and single cases are even less certain. But nowadays we have possibilities to nearly bulletproof results by using modern micro-instruments and -methods. They are impossible to detect and don't disturb the mediums. IMO we would need such evidence.
I think the best evidence would come from a trully impressive apportation. Like, bringing a living dinosaur from the late Triassic, or something like that. It's literally impossible to fake, and it would be there to be examined by thousands of people, be filmed, analyzed and be recorded for future generations. It doesn't even need to be a dinosaur, it can also be an animal we know for sure it's extinct in the late or recent years.
This is assuming attributes that have not been established, however. Why would the dinosoar have any interest in talking to a human? Most of the literature we have (however reliable one considers it) quite plainly states that effort has to be made by both parties for there to be an effect, so its unlikely that random animals would be interested.
I would have to actually read the whole report and then spend a week seeing what the skeptics have been touting about it; from the sidelines it looks like the same ordeal that SPR used to deal with, except SPR eventually started hosting a skeptic in every seance.
A lot of that old work was mental mediumship, which has only ever been debunked as either overt cheating and cold reading. Both of those have been controlled for quite effectively in increasing years. I don't know that physical effects have ever had a strong pull outside of people that actually sat there when it happened--there's just so much you have to control for to rule out fraud when it comes to making objects appear in the dark.
By apporting the dinosaur I don't mean the dinosaur would want to talk us as if the spirit of the dinosaur would enter the room. I mean grabbing a dinosaur from the past ( a small one, inofensive one), and then bringing it physically, as in, the real dinosaur body, into the room. Then you just put it inside a cage, call the press and say you've got an actual living dinosaur from the distant past thanks to mediumship. Anyone trying to debunk it is free to go and study the dinosaur and of course, then try to explain how you got a 60 millions years old extinct being into a modern room. So far apportations seem to just bring things like pennys, books, and boring stuff.
It doesn't need to be a living being though, you can grab other interesting stuff. Like, I don't know, rocks from mars that can be later confirmed to be from mars?
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I don't really put stock in that kind of phenomenon. I'm willing to buy telepathy, even potentially apparitions as an extent of that, but I've not read any verifiable cases of objects being teleported through psi.
Lusikka
New
The Scole Report about the apports (p.170):
I wonder how old-fashioned parapsychological researchers can be when they seem not to understand what could be done even with all those smaller objects. The apports ought to be left without touching in bare hands and be investigated with forensic methods. It is possible that very convincing evidence would be the result.
Are there fingerprints and dirt on the surfaces or are they as newly cleaned? We have nowadays modern investigation methods for analyzing very small particles such as pollen and so on.