Talk:Daryl Bem/Archive 1

New study

This guy will get a lot of attention soon for this research study that's about to be published (http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-11/precognition-research-shows-human-mind-can-perceive-future). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.15.102.58 (talk) 04:43, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Successful replications?

"Wiseman has also set up a register to keep track of other replicating efforts and plans to conduct a meta-analysis on registered replication efforts, beginning Dec, 1st 2011.[21][22] However, at least one other replication of this experiment, also registered on Wiseman's site, successfully replicated Bem's findings." -- Where are these studies? Where is the study that 'successfully replicated Bem's findings' ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 205.228.53.13 (talk) 23:53, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Akvadrako added 2 successful replications (1,2), however one is an unpublished preprint and the other is self-published. Neither are WP:RS, so I removed them. Their inclusion alongside, and in opposition to, a published study was also WP:UNDUE. ← Randomnonsense ^talk 18:23, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

Refs

Some possible refs for the Feeling the Future section:

• For future reference, Wagenmakers et al have submitted a manuscript in reply to Bem, Utts and Johnson response to their critique (preprint here).
• There are only two published replications (both failures), one by Ritchie, Wiseman and French in PLoS ONE and the other by Robinson in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research. However JSPR is a fringe journal, so I doubt it merits inclusion.
• A paper in Psychonomic Bulletin & Review by Gregory Francis finds statistical evidence of publication bias in Bem's paper (paper here, preprint here).
• A meta-analysis of Bem's experiments by Rouder and Morey in Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, which also discusses the Wagenmakers et al critique, "A Bayes factor meta-analysis of Bem's ESP claim".
• A paper by LeBel and Peters in Review of General Psychology, "Fearing the Future of Empirical Psychology: Bem's (2011) Evidence of Psi as a Case Study of Deficiencies in Modal Research Practice".

← Randomnonsense ^talk 20:56, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

New test of "retroactive priming"

A new test of Bem's "retroactive priming" has appeared in Memory & Cognition : Feeling the past: The absence of experimental evidence for anomalous retroactive influences on text processing. --92.4.165.211 (talk) 15:32, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Probably more interesting is that Galak et al. seem to have managed to get J Pers Soc Psychol to publish their replications/meta-analysis. Online first article here, free SSRN preprint here. --92.4.165.211 (talk) 20:36, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

A couple of issues

Two recent edits added the lines "Much of his work is controversial and has been characterized as pseudoscience" and "... his shoddy research that has been discredited on many accounts by prominent critics...". The former is original research by someone only familiar with Bem's work on psi. Bem is a well respected professor of psychology with a large body of work unrelated to psi that cannot be characterized as pseudoscience. The latter is a specific characterization of Bem's work on 'retroactive influences', but contradicts the general response to Bem's paper in the peer reviewed literature. If you look at these responses you will see that a common comment is that this work was of good quality. --92.2.87.77 (talk) 00:00, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Major undue weight

Bem invented self-perception theory, a major contribution to social psychology and the theory for which the article states that he is best-known, yet there are two sentences on his contributions to self-perception theory, and the rest of the article is about "exotic becomes erotic" and the psi controversy? Major undue weight here. This article is severely unbalanced. Either the sections on "exotic becomes erotic" and the paranormal controversy need to be reduced, or the section on his contributions to self-perception theory needs to be expanded a lot. I'm voting for both. Firecatalta (talk) 17:46, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Update: I've expanded the section on self-perception theory. I still think the other two sections need to be somewhat reduced, especially the play-by-play nature of the controversy section rather than just describing what the controversy was about & its significance. I do think it's important to have a thorough discussion of the controversy, but surely 7 paragraphs are not necessary.

The Feeling the future material has significant weight, IRWolfie- (talk) 23:33, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Oh, absolutely. It definitely does, and I think it should be thoroughly discussed in the article. But does it have more weight than Bem's invention of self-perception theory, which has heavily shaped both social and clinical psychology? I don't think so. Firecatalta (talk) 16:54, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

It's very clear by comparing cites and discussions in books that the number of reliable sources on Bem's self-perception theory dramatically outweighs the number of reliable sources on "Feeling the Future", so something does need to be done. There are aspects of the "Feeling the Future" section that could be cut. For instance, Alcock's commentary does not merit inclusion alongside the peer-reviewed sources that are available (e.g. Wagenmakers et al., Rouder & Morey, etc.). The trouble Ritchie, French & Wiseman had publishing their replication would be probably be more appropriate in an article on "Feeling the Future" rather than in a biography of Bem. The claim that Bem prevented the publishing of their replication in the British Journal of Psychology is possibly a BLP violation, as it is sourced only to an article authored by French. Wiseman's registry has had very little impact on the discussion of Bem's paper, and I haven't see any meta-analysis from them, so I'm not sure why it needs to be mentioned. Too much weight is being given to Francis; the consistency test/test for excess significance isn't exactly uncontroversial. Having noted all this, some things do need to be added to the "Feeling the Future" section. Galak et al. (2012) needs to be included, for instance. Also, a number of papers have been published that discuss Bem (2011) in the context of replicability in psychology. -- 92.4.164.78 (talk) 00:56, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

Coming back to this, I made a couple of edits a short while ago removing a little of the undue material but was reverted. Lacking a coherent argument that this material has due weight, I am going to remove it again. To lay the problem out once more, simply looking at cites [1][2] shows that having almost half of the article devoted to "Feeling the Future" is massively undue. Given the current state of the article, a couple of paragraphs would be more appropriate. -- 92.2.70.41 (talk) 21:10, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

You failed to count a multitude of coverage existing outside of Google Scholar. In any case, the weight of "Feeling The Future" is appropriate to the coverage given to it. By the way, have you been contributing to this article as 92.2.70.41…92.4.164.78...92.2.87.77…95.97.122.97…not to mention a whole range of 24, 2.227, 67, and other IP ranges? WP:SCRUTINY? - LuckyLouie (talk) 17:40, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

I'm not discounting coverage outside of the academic literature, I am assigning it less weight as the subjects at hand are scholarly ones, which means that the sections on these should primarily be constructed from secondary and tertiary scholarly sources. In any case, I'm not at all sure that the existing media coverage of feeling the future comes anywhere near outweighing the decades long discourse on Bem's self-perception theory. Can you back this up with recourse to actual sources? To the latter, laughably ridiculous accusation, I believe I have already told you that I edit from 92.4.* and 92.2.*, something that hasn't changed in years. Those IPs are mine. The other IPs you seem to have indiscriminately collected from the article history, they are not me. There is no violation of WP:SCRUTINY here. You've been here for some years LuckyLouie, you should know better than to behave like this. -- 92.2.70.41 (talk) 22:08, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

Re Feeling the Future" section: are you suggesting we remove material from Alcock, Francis, and Wiseman because you feel those particular sources deserve less WP:WEIGHT?

Re your choice of having a rotating IP rather than a permanent account: very simply, it makes it difficult for myself and other editors to tell if the Talk page comments requesting removal of material from "Feeling the Future" section originate from yourself, or from a number of other individuals. - LuckyLouie (talk) 23:26, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

I am suggesting a fairly drastic reduction in the size of the section, leaving a couple of paragraphs briefly summarizing the controversy so that this biography gives a proportionate (with regard to sources) account of Bem's career. That would involve removing Alcock's commentary and Wiseman's registry, proportionately reducing the weight given to Francis, and removing or minimizing other portions. Essentially, after describing the paper itself and noting the media interest, I would have a paragraph stating that the paper has been criticized on methodological and analytical grounds and that two replications have failed to find evidence of the effects reported by Bem. I would then note that the paper has helped spur debate about the prevalence of questionable research practices within psychology. I would actually rather that there was a separate article on this, so that an appropriately detailed account could be given without skewing the biography of a living person, but I don't intend to create an account just to do so.

To the latter, prior to your arrival here I had told you that I edit from 92.2.* and 92.4.*. That you knew this and yet have come here claiming confusion makes you seem rather disingenuous, and that's not to mention the bizarre accusations that WP:SCRUTINY had been violated and that I was seemingly every IP editor that had ever touched this article. -- 92.2.70.41 (talk) 16:06, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

Google reports 19.9k self-perception, 6.97k exotic becomes erotic, 37k feeling the future. That's about the roughest of notability indicators, but it at least indicates the treatment given in the article is reasonable.

The current spread in the article is roughly 1/4 Self-perception theory, 1/4 Exotic Becomes Erotic theory, 1/2 "Feeling the Future" controversy. I don't think anyone would object to expanding the first two a little and/or trimming the third a little, but I don't see a reason for the drastic measures proposed. Vzaak (talk) 17:14, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

It is really not appropriate to use google hits as a measure of weight, remember that we are interested in reliable sources. -- 92.2.70.41 (talk) 17:41, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

Like it or not, subjects become covered more -- and thus become more notable -- because of popular interest. There has always been widespread public interest in parapsychology and the results of parapsychological research. The first page of feeling the future points to Wired Magazine, Daily Grail, and The Guardian, all of which are suitable as sources. An academic assessment of Alec Guiness' work would hardly warrant a mention of Star Wars, but Wikipedia has relatively massive coverage of it.

I agree that more should be written on Bem's self-perception theory, but I'm not convinced that existing material should be deleted. Vzaak (talk) 19:02, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

Your argument ignores policy, weight is determined by reliable sources only, google hits are meaningless. Also, google hits are heavily dependent on your search terms, for instance searching for "Bem" AND "self-perception" returns 188K hits while "Bem" AND "Feeling the Future" returns 47K hits. Regardless, any argument about weight must be based on reliable sources, this is especially true in a BLP. -- 92.2.70.41 (talk) 19:21, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

You've suggested "removing Alcock's commentary and Wiseman's registry" and "proportionately reducing the weight given to Francis". What about these sources do you feel are not reliable? - LuckyLouie (talk) 19:46, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

The latter doesn't follow from the former, and it is certainly not an argument I have made. -- 92.2.70.41 (talk) 21:52, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

So then I must concur with Vzaak that the present WP:WEIGHT of the section is appropriate to the topic's coverage in reliable sources. The widespread public attention given to these critics makes their critiques notable. For example, I think the article would be remiss in not reporting Ritchie, French and Wiseman's difficulties publishing their results in a journal refereed by Bem. - LuckyLouie (talk) 23:27, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

Did you miss that I already agreed with you? I said that more should be written on self-perception. Feel free to expand it. I am not suggesting to ignore policy. I gave three reliable sources from the first page alone, the implication being that we could go through thousands of them. I see no reason to significantly cut the existing material because it's obviously notable and widely referenced. The general point I am making is that widespread public attention also drives notability as reflected in coverage in reliable sources. E.g. Star Wars and Alec Guiness. Vzaak (talk) 19:58, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

Your agreement is partial, you seem to view weight as an isolated issue taken on a section by section basis, hence why you don't seem to consider reducing the feeling the future section an option i.e. sources exist ergo weight is appropriate regardless of the rest of the article. This is not the case, weight is determined with respect to both sources and the presentation given by the article as a whole. You actually do seem to be ignoring policy, in that you are making an vague inference based on google hits and using this to state that the weight given to feeling the future is appropriate. Widespread public attention is not a factor in determing the weight to give a source. So far you have pointed to 3 media sources that are reliable in some respects. Those 3 sources (and what others exist on feeling the future) are weighed against the thousands of scholarly cites to Bem's self-perception theory and the many more cites to the rest of his work. What we have here is a BLP which presents feeling the future as by far and away the most prominent aspect of Bem's career, a heavy emphasis on negative material. An examination of reliable sources tell us that this is a skewed presentation of his career, worse it is skewed in a negative fashion as his career in social psychology appears to have been quite successful. This is a problem in light of WP:NPOV and WP:BLP. It could be partially solved by a considerable expansion of the other sections, but I don't have the knowledge to do so, do you? In the absence of an expansion something must be done to reduce the weight given to feeling the future, otherwise the article continues to be a misrepresentation. Giving a briefer presentation of the feeling the future business is a perfectly acceptable solution in line with policy. -- 92.2.70.41 (talk) 21:46, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

As I mentioned earlier, I don't think anyone will object to trimming it a little. For instance the LeBel study does not seem essential. And streamlining the wording while preserving the information also seems unobjectionable.

I don't think notability is confined to counting scholarly references. That's not a fair comparison in at least two ways. First, the precog paper was published within the past few years, while self-perception theory dates to the 1960s and 1970s. Second, parapsychological papers are less cited by nature since their results don't connect to other areas, having essentially no implications except to those who want to do more experiments in parapsychology.

I would say it's nearly a matter of fact that Bem is notable for "Time-Traveling Porn", as Colbert called it. Bem, through his appearance on Colbert and other media outlets, appears to embrace his role of a credentialed professor making extraordinary claims that are gobbled up by popular media. That's what I was getting at with the google search -- some rough demonstration that this is what Bem is popularly known for. Actually by specifying the exact paper title I culled too many results; a more realistic representation would be 'bem feel future' at 66 million, quite a difference from the 190k of 'bem self-perception'.

I think this in line with what WP considers notability. I don't know of any WP policy being violated, and I'm not aware of the requirement that article section length be pegged to citation counts. Vzaak (talk) 00:48, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

Your argument is in explicit violation of policy, you are essentially arguing based on your own perception of notability and google hits. WP:NPOV expressly directs us not to count the opinions of wikipedia editors or the general public in determining weight: "The relative prominence of each viewpoint among Wikipedia editors or the general public is not relevant and should not be considered" and "Keep in mind that, in determining proper weight, we consider a viewpoint's prevalence in reliable sources, not its prevalence among Wikipedia editors or the general public." Only reliable sources matter: "Neutrality requires that each article or other page in the mainspace fairly represents all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in the published, reliable sources." Until you or LuckyLouie bring reliable sources to bear that come anywhere near the number of scholarly sources I have pointed to, neither of you have a legitimate argument. PS. There is no requirement that weight be pegged to citation count, it is simply a useful metric in this case, one that I don't need to go beyond to make my case. -- 92.2.70.41 (talk) 17:01, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

You're still misunderstanding my reference to google hits. As I said it's simply to indicate, in an obvious way, that Bem is quite notable for precog porn. It got widespread coverage -- he got the Colbert bump, no less -- and the Average Joe is quite likely looking for the precog material. And as I said, we can start going through the 66 million hits to grab the reliable sources. Just in the first 10 are [3] [4] [5] [6]. Bem's precog study is prevalent in reliable sources! It is crystal clear that Bem is notable for this.

I think you're also misunderstanding WP:UNDUE, which relates to weighing differing points of view, such as to what extent creationism should be mentioned in the evolution article. Bem's precog study isn't a different point of view from his self-perception theory; they don't compete in any sense. As I said, there's no policy of which I am aware that pegs scholarly references to lengths of sections.

Bem has put himself out there, prominently in media outlets, in support of his precog work. That was his choice. And this is naturally reflected in coverage in reliable sources. It is only appropriate that WP cover it. I am still unconvinced that, because of citations in Google Scholar to a theory from the 60s and 70s, the precog section should be significantly cut, though it could probably use a little trimming and streamlining. Vzaak (talk) 18:14, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

P.S. I should also mention that a paper published in a respected journal claiming to demonstrate precognition is highly significant in itself, regardless of Bem's public support. He is claiming something incredible, amazing, turn-science-on-its-head revolutionary. There is every reason for WP to cover it carefully. Vzaak (talk) 18:34, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

I think it's clear that I'm not misunderstanding anything here. Your argument rests on google hits as a measure of public notability and your own personal opinion, something expressly forbidden by WP:NPOV. Read the WP:BALASPS section, it should help clarify your confusion about the application of WP:UNDUE. By the way, considered in itself, I agree that we should have a detailed account of this affair, just not in this biography given its current state. The sources easily support a separate article that we can link to and summarise here in the same way that there is a separate article on self-perception theory. -- 92.2.70.41 (talk) 19:13, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

No, my argument rests on the widespread coverage in reliable sources of Bem's revolutionary upend-our-understanding-of-the-universe claims of precognition in a well-respected journal. WP:BALASPS is exactly the policy telling us that WP should cover it. Your disagreement is rather amazing and is a reflection of your personal opinion. One way you could change your mind is to just look at the hoopla over Bem's paper as reflected in a simple google search, and to read a few of the reliable sources therein. That's all the help I can offer. Vzaak (talk) 19:49, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

Yes, coverage of the hoopla is quite far reaching, e.g. New York Times and Scientific American (that are oddly absent from the article.) - LuckyLouie (talk) 20:17, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

Earlier in the thread I noted that there were thousands and thousands of scholarly sources on self-perception theory and only a few hundred on feeling the future, can you point me to where you countered this with recourse to reliable sources? Thus far you have linked several times to google searches, noted 4 actual reliable sources, made some very vague, implicit extrapolations about google search results and reliable sources, and posted a lot of personal opinion about the significance of this paper. It's hard to see how you saying that your argument rests on reliable sources reflects reality. By the way, I thought it was plain that I did not want to prevent this debacle being covered. I am not attempting to whitewash this article and my opinion of Bem and his parapsychological work is really rather low. The only issue is how much detail this article should go into given the presentation in the article as a whole. If you could show that there are many more reliable sources on feeling the future than his other work, then I would concede the point. -- 92.2.70.41 (talk) 20:55, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

I've already answered these arguments. You haven't really responded to what I've said, just contradicting then restating your "Google Scholar count = length of section" premise which is unsupported by WP policy. A paper that "received a great deal of coverage from mainstream science media around the world"[7] should also be covered by Wikipedia, it's that simple.

I removed some material that was tangentially related to Bem himself. I also noticed French said "pretty sure" about Bem's involvement with the publication rejection, which is obviously not good enough. Vzaak (talk) 23:36, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

Bem confirmed it as the source states, IRWolfie- (talk) 00:26, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

@Vzaak You really, really haven't answered these arguments. You've made no effort to enumerate reliable sources except to point to google hits, but the number of google hits doesn't tell us anything about the number of reliable sources or the prominence of the subject in reliable sources and policy tells us that we may only determine weight according to prominence in reliable sources, not random websites. Citation count is a direct measure of the prominence of something in reliable sources and tells us a lot about how much weight we should accord it. This is not "unsupported by WP policy", in contrast using google hits to determine weight is definitely unsupported by WP policy. Your quote from the Guardian tells us that there was a considerable amount of media coverage, but how much? Have more sources appeared in the last two years on feeling the future than the thousands and thousands of sources that have accumulated in decades of scholarly discussion of self-perception theory and Bem's other work? You simply don't know this and definitely haven't backed it up. If you can, please do so. -- 92.2.70.41 (talk) 14:18, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

Arbitrary section break

@92.2.70.41: There does not appear to be any support for your "Google Scholar count = length of section" premise, the discussion is going round in circles and has now devolved into abstractions. Maybe it would be helpful to focus on your proposed changes to the article. If you'd like to post a draft here on the Talk page of how you feel the Feeling the Future section should read, that might bring clarity. - LuckyLouie (talk) 14:48, 31 August 2013 (UTC)