I can’t really explain the apparent lack except by postulating that casual readers haven’t looked very closely at the parapsychology literature. Many have noted that parapsychology experiments are significantly more rigorous than other experiments in psychology because the standards are so high. Note that parapsychologists go out of their way to set up environments where you’d least expect psi, ’cuz those are the only environments that don’t have a huge amount of confounding factors. Even under such austere conditions there are many rigorous experiments confirming psi. Here is a source of some clearly rigorous studies.
Note that there is a huge amount of motivated skepticism in the parapsychology literature; many papers attack other papers merely because it is incredibly easy to gain status by attacking low status ideas. Many complaints about statistical deficiencies are in fact retarded. E.g. in many cases there will be complaints about the file drawer effect even in scenarios where such complaints are patently ridiculous.
In the end it seems to me that one can either tentatively accept the results of parapsychology or conclude that statistics simply does not work. I think the latter hypothesis is rather plausible, but anyone who goes down that route should know that the heuristics and biases and social psychology literature is chock full of results that are significantly less well pinned down than those of parapsychology. The social sciences rarely tell us anything useful with any confidence.
Also note that there are legitimate problems with the results from parapsychology and one should look out for attempts to conceal these problems. The results clearly indicate that psi is capricious. If you wish to skip ahead to the biggest problems with the results, you can find a summary and some proposed explanations here. Because capriciousness and experimenter effects look so shifty some parapsychologists have tried to hide them or minimize their importance, further damaging the reputation of parapsychology. Pay careful attention to make sure that the experimenter isn’t trying to sweep something under the rug.
It perhaps might be best to focus on a single experimenter. Then you can be more confident that there isn’t substantial fraud going on or huge file drawer effects. Looking at the PEAR results exclusively might be a good idea so as to indicate what you can expect from the rest of the field.
Note that I do not take the evidence from parapsychology as strongly suggesting for or against psi. I haven’t yet looked at it very carefully and am skeptical of the benefit of continued searching considering I’m not willing to do a detailed analysis of the statistics used in every paper. If I did not have evidence outside of the parapsychology literature then I would not be as confident of the existence of psi. The parapsychology literature provides merely one kind of evidence, namely statistical evidence, and alone isn’t enough to suggest clear conclusions.
Can you at least tell us how your hypothesis explains the apparent lack of statistically rigorous experiments confirming psi?
I can’t really explain the apparent lack except by postulating that casual readers haven’t looked very closely at the parapsychology literature. Many have noted that parapsychology experiments are significantly more rigorous than other experiments in psychology because the standards are so high. Note that parapsychologists go out of their way to set up environments where you’d least expect psi, ’cuz those are the only environments that don’t have a huge amount of confounding factors. Even under such austere conditions there are many rigorous experiments confirming psi. Here is a source of some clearly rigorous studies.
Note that there is a huge amount of motivated skepticism in the parapsychology literature; many papers attack other papers merely because it is incredibly easy to gain status by attacking low status ideas. Many complaints about statistical deficiencies are in fact retarded. E.g. in many cases there will be complaints about the file drawer effect even in scenarios where such complaints are patently ridiculous.
In the end it seems to me that one can either tentatively accept the results of parapsychology or conclude that statistics simply does not work. I think the latter hypothesis is rather plausible, but anyone who goes down that route should know that the heuristics and biases and social psychology literature is chock full of results that are significantly less well pinned down than those of parapsychology. The social sciences rarely tell us anything useful with any confidence.
Also note that there are legitimate problems with the results from parapsychology and one should look out for attempts to conceal these problems. The results clearly indicate that psi is capricious. If you wish to skip ahead to the biggest problems with the results, you can find a summary and some proposed explanations here. Because capriciousness and experimenter effects look so shifty some parapsychologists have tried to hide them or minimize their importance, further damaging the reputation of parapsychology. Pay careful attention to make sure that the experimenter isn’t trying to sweep something under the rug.
It perhaps might be best to focus on a single experimenter. Then you can be more confident that there isn’t substantial fraud going on or huge file drawer effects. Looking at the PEAR results exclusively might be a good idea so as to indicate what you can expect from the rest of the field.
Note that I do not take the evidence from parapsychology as strongly suggesting for or against psi. I haven’t yet looked at it very carefully and am skeptical of the benefit of continued searching considering I’m not willing to do a detailed analysis of the statistics used in every paper. If I did not have evidence outside of the parapsychology literature then I would not be as confident of the existence of psi. The parapsychology literature provides merely one kind of evidence, namely statistical evidence, and alone isn’t enough to suggest clear conclusions.