Jack comments on Rationality quotes January 2012 - Less Wrong

9 Post author: Thomas 01 January 2012 10:28AM

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Comment author: Jack 03 January 2012 10:56:40AM 2 points [-]

The positive results in parapsychology tend to be like 35% hit rates where chance would give a 25% hit rate. It isn't really financially feasible for researchers to gather enough data for a p value of 0.000001 (which, quite reasonably is what Randi requires-- who wouldn't take a 5 in 1000 shot at a million bucks?).

Which isn't to say I think psy is the best explanation for the p= 0.005 results out there, just that no one challenging for the Randi prize doesn't say much about academic parapsychology.