#  ESP and Bayes at the Times 

 





January 06, 2011

 

 

You say you wanted an update on that ESP paper where a professor of psychology “time-reversed” some classic experiments? The New York Times [has you covered](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/06/science/06esp.html?hp=&pagewanted=all). Want to see more discussion of null hypotheses and Bayesian analysis in the NYT? Also covered:

> Many statisticians say that conventional social-science techniques for analyzing data make an assumption that is disingenuous and ultimately self-deceiving: that researchers know nothing about the probability of the so-called null hypothesis.

The *so-called* null hypothesis? Take that, Fisher! Oh, there’s more:

> Instead, these statisticians prefer a technique called Bayesian analysis, which seeks to determine whether the outcome of a particular experiment “changes the odds that a hypothesis is true”…

Also, the last paragraph of the story seems *very* relevant:

> So far, at least three efforts to replicate the experiments have failed.

Posted by [Matt Blackwell](http://www.iq.harvard.edu/blog/sss/archives/author/matt-blackwell/) at January 5, 2011 10:57 PM



 

 

 



 

 

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