Radin gets into double slit experiments

From the abstract:

The results appear to be consistent with a consciousness-related interpretation of the quantum measurement problem.
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So he's claiming that using your "mind powers" you can make the slit pattern change? Yup, sounds like crap to me.

But we'll see what he actually comes up with in the way of his research. Btw, is Physics Essays an actual respected peer-reviewed physics journal or just a front for "quantum-woo" and other nonsense? I've never heard of it before.
 
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MattusMaximus said:
But we'll see what he actually comes up with in the way of his research. Btw, is Physics Essays an actual respected peer-reviewed physics journal or just a front for "quantum-woo" and other nonsense? I've never heard of it before.
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Nope, it's a crackpot journal. Usually attracts more of the "Einstein was wrong" crowd.
 
Except for the past knowledge with the specific journal (that is legitimate evidence as would be past knowledge with the researcher himself), there seems to be judging here based on expectations, not based on the evidence.

It's one thing to say something like, "extraordinary claims...(you know the rest)," or, "I can't imagine a mechanism whereby this would occur," or other comments along that line.

But "sounds like crap" and "create false correlations" is not evidenced in the methodology that is described.

The double slit experiments defy skeptical logic so does quantum entanglement. It would seem to me additional extraordinary findings should not be so readily dismissed without a closer look.

I'll take a closer look at the journal.
 
Looking at the Journal, Physics Essays, it lists the editorial board without listng their credentials. And as I looked at Emilio Panarella, the Editor in Chief, and who looks to be the creator of the journal, it looked at first as if he had no credentials.

But then I found, he has a doctorate in Navigational Sciences from the University of Naples, Italy, Department of Navigational Sciences (an interdisciplinary Department between Mathematics and Physics that pays special attention to problems of Navigational Astronomy and Astrophysics).

Of course there are plenty of examples of credentialed crazies out there, and I have no idea if any of the following awards mean much:
Mr. Panarella is an elected Fellow of the American Physical Society and of the New York Academy of Sciences. He is a Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, as well as member of several learned societies, such as the European Physical Society, and the Canadian Nuclear Society. He is the editor of the journal Physics Essays, an international journal dedicated to fundamental questions in physics. He has published well over 100 papers, and holds a patent on the generation of soft Xrays from vacuum sparks. He has been invited to speak at several leading institutions, including Los Alamos National Laboratory, Imperial College, and Centre de Recherches Nucleaires.
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So I'll leave it to others more familiar with this field to chime in with their opinions and more information.
 
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Why would 'testing the possible role of consciousness in the collapse of the quantum wavefunction' be more meaningful than testing the effect of hair falling on the ground during a haircut (provable event) in China on the possible eruption of the Yellowstone volcano?
 
Regarding Physics Essays, the way I know it's a crackpot journal is that it publishes vast reams of crackpot papers. They used to have an issue or two, and full table of contents, online, but don't any more. Their papers are uniformly "Einstein was wrong", "I drew pictures of vortices, and this theory replaces quantum mechanics", "here is my theory of quantum consciousness cosmology", etc.

I don't know anything about Panarella. Sure, he could be a crackpot. He could be a non-crackpot in one context but a crackpot in others. He could be a mainstream physicist who believes (on a principle I actually agree with) that it's important for the world to have *at least one* genuinely open-access, unrefereed venue for amateur physicists, and volunteered to serve as masthead editor.

The important thing is: don't take "Radin was published in Physics Essays" as evidence that Radin's work passed muster with any sort of mainstream reviewer. It doesn't. Physics Essays will, presumably with a minor filter for appropriateness (no spam, no zombie/regency fiction mashups, etc.), publish whatever you send them. Read Radin's article however you like, but don't add credence to it because it has a journal title and a sciencey citation.
 
ben m said:
Regarding Physics Essays, the way I know it's a crackpot journal is that it publishes vast reams of crackpot papers. They used to have an issue or two, and full table of contents, online, but don't any more. Their papers are uniformly "Einstein was wrong", "I drew pictures of vortices, and this theory replaces quantum mechanics", "here is my theory of quantum consciousness cosmology", etc.
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They do have older contents at the home page:

http://www.physicsessays.com/

But why only up through 2007? If you click on the "purchase Articles" link, you get this page:

http://physicsessays.org/

Then click on "Current Issue":

http://physicsessays.org/toc/phes/24/4

I'm not physicist, but many of those articles sound reasonable. This one, however, sounds "interesting":

http://physicsessays.org/doi/ref/10.4006/1.3655848

as does this one:

http://physicsessays.org/doi/ref/10.4006/1.3653237

~~ Paul
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
The double slit experiments defy skeptical logic so does quantum entanglement. It would seem to me additional extraordinary findings should not be so readily dismissed without a closer look.
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Double slit and quantum entanglement experiments are oft repeated experiments with perfectly cromulent scientific descriptions of expected results. That these results fly in the face of mundane macroscopic logic is irrelevant, they're an observed empirical fact of our reality and their extraordinarity is not comparable to the extraordinarity of "lets think at them and see if they change".
 
bjornart said:
Double slit and quantum entanglement experiments are oft repeated experiments with perfectly cromulent scientific descriptions of expected results. That these results fly in the face of mundane macroscopic logic is irrelevant, they're an observed empirical fact of our reality and their extraordinarity is not comparable to the extraordinarity of "lets think at them and see if they change".
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I did not suggest this research was confirmatory. Obviously repeatable results will be critical as will be investigations of other explanations for the findings.

I merely suggested criticisms should be articulated with something more specific than skeptical sarcasm.
 
Daylightstar said:
Unfortunately, the man and the subject of his experiment have a track record.
We're not talking spring chicken stuff here.
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His track record just like the journal's track record are fair game. That's not what I was talking about.


I was referring to this hand waving dismissal:

MM: "he's claiming that using your "mind powers" you can make the slit pattern change? Yup, sounds like crap to me."

and

Yours: "He will most likely create false correlations from whatever 'data' he will gather."

Regarding MM's comment: The research findings were presented with enough methodology detail to suggest variables were controlled for, the sample size and research conditions were described and appeared reasonable. The hand waving dismissal sounded a tad closed minded for a skeptic.

Your comment would have been reasonable had you said, I'm familiar with this guy and he's unreliable. Now that you say that's what you meant, fine.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
His track record just like the journal's track record are fair game. That's not what I was talking about.


I was referring to this hand waving dismissal:

MM: "he's claiming that using your "mind powers" you can make the slit pattern change? Yup, sounds like crap to me."

and

Yours: "He will most likely create false correlations from whatever 'data' he will gather."

Regarding MM's comment: The research findings were presented with enough methodology detail to suggest variables were controlled for, the sample size and research conditions were described and appeared reasonable. The hand waving dismissal sounded a tad closed minded for a skeptic.

Your comment would have been reasonable had you said, I'm familiar with this guy and he's unreliable. Now that you say that's what you meant, fine.
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In my opinion, my comment will cease to be valid once Dean Radin will actually get around to
Dean Radin on his blog "deanradin.blogspot.com/2012/01/consciousness-and-double-slit.html" said:
Subvert the dominant paradigm
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and come forward with an actual valid hypothesis and actual results, instead of fluff, like stats gobbledegook.

In the mean time, I still wonder:
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=7971415&postcount=7
Daylightstar said:
Why would 'testing the possible role of consciousness in the collapse of the quantum wavefunction' be more meaningful than testing the effect of hair falling on the ground during a haircut (provable event) in China on the possible eruption of the Yellowstone volcano?
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Skeptic Ginger said:
I did not suggest this research was confirmatory. Obviously repeatable results will be critical as will be investigations of other explanations for the findings.

I merely suggested criticisms should be articulated with something more specific than skeptical sarcasm.
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Dean Radin is a well known parapsychologist pattern miner, looking for miniscule correlations in mountains of data with dubious methods, not a physicist. The double slit experiment is a well understood if one accept the counter intuitive nature of the quantum world. The involvement of consciousness in quantum interactions is a well known misunderstanding and hobbyhorse of the woo woo set.

Asking for something more specific would have been reasonable. Discussing tone would have been reasonable, but your first post went straight to assuming the dismissals arose as an uninformed knee jerk reaction and went on to curiosity and misinformation about current knowledge of physics.

there seems to be judging here based on expectations, not based on the evidence.
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The double slit experiments defy skeptical logic so does quantum entanglement. It would seem to me additional extraordinary findings should not be so readily dismissed without a closer look.
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Steve001 said:
Side note. it's note a recognized word. But what it means is it sounds ironically legitimate, but in reality spurious and not at all legitimate.
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It's more legitimate than Radin's experiment.

(probably not what you meant)
 
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bjornart said:
Dean Radin is a well known parapsychologist pattern miner, looking for miniscule correlations in mountains of data with dubious methods, not a physicist. The double slit experiment is a well understood if one accept the counter intuitive nature of the quantum world. The involvement of consciousness in quantum interactions is a well known misunderstanding and hobbyhorse of the woo woo set.

Asking for something more specific would have been reasonable. Discussing tone would have been reasonable, but your first post went straight to assuming the dismissals arose as an uninformed knee jerk reaction and went on to curiosity and misinformation about current knowledge of physics.
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I suggest you re-read my post because I went into detail what my objections were and it would seem you read the post with your own confirmation bias. But whatever.

And find me the post before my comment that suggested the complaints were based on familiarity with Radin. I can't find it. :cool:

Daylightstar had to make it clear in a subsequent post that he was familiar with Radin and I acknowledged that clarification.
 
Someone recently told me that Dean Radin was doing legitimate science that shows all kinds of psychic phenomena exist. I decided to take a look to bask in the glory of the massively obvious methodological flaws.

Pretty much every aspect of his interpretations has nothing to do with the results, even if the results were legitimate. His quantum nonsense is whackily wrong. This much was obvious. Take this, for example:

"TESTING NONLOCAL OBSERVATION AS A SOURCE OF INTUITIVE KNOWLEDGE"

He thinks that people can influence an interference pattern, by remote viewing which of two slits a photon goes through, as far as I can tell. He thinks that this solves the measurement problem and is evidence that quantum something is a source of intuitive knowledge. This is quite incoherent and stupid.

However, I could not spot any obvious flaws in method, or obvious data mining. He makes two predictions, does one series of experiments, and for one result p = .002, for the other p = .00001. It looks kind of like evidence that intentions can influence interference patterns. The other studies of his I have looked at are similar. Total gibberish in his descriptions of the implications, but no obvious flaws in method, and tiny p values.

I am not an experimental scientist. Has anyone gone through his studies in detail and found flaws that an amateur like me would miss? Does he falsify data? Anyone know?
 
MattusMaximus said:
So he's claiming that using your "mind powers" you can make the slit pattern change? Yup, sounds like crap to me.
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Just some background here for anyone who's not familiar with this particular brand of woo:

In the famous two-slit experiment, if you add a detector to one slit to determine which slit the electron passes through, then you no longer see the interference pattern, meaning that the act of observing it at the plane of the slits, forces it into a particle state and not in a probability wave. Woo-meisters have long interpreted this to mean that consciousness is what is forcing one state.

However, they're wrong. Observing the electron does force it into the particle state, but it doesn't require consciousness. A simple particle detector is enough of an observer to do the trick.
 
BenjaminTR said:
Someone recently told me that Dean Radin was doing legitimate science that shows all kinds of psychic phenomena exist. I decided to take a look to bask in the glory of the massively obvious methodological flaws.

Pretty much every aspect of his interpretations has nothing to do with the results, even if the results were legitimate. His quantum nonsense is whackily wrong. This much was obvious. Take this, for example:

"TESTING NONLOCAL OBSERVATION AS A SOURCE OF INTUITIVE KNOWLEDGE"

He thinks that people can influence an interference pattern, by remote viewing which of two slits a photon goes through, as far as I can tell. He thinks that this solves the measurement problem and is evidence that quantum something is a source of intuitive knowledge. This is quite incoherent and stupid.

However, I could not spot any obvious flaws in method, or obvious data mining. He makes two predictions, does one series of experiments, and for one result p = .002, for the other p = .00001. It looks kind of like evidence that intentions can influence interference patterns. The other studies of his I have looked at are similar. Total gibberish in his descriptions of the implications, but no obvious flaws in method, and tiny p values.

I am not an experimental scientist. Has anyone gone through his studies in detail and found flaws that an amateur like me would miss? Does he falsify data? Anyone know?
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I think the appropriate skeptical response is to treat Radin's work like any other scientist's and wait for independent replication. The experiments he has published come across as interesting pilot studies, but considering they refute a century of prior work, it's most likely they are methodologically flawed.

Regarding flaw in methodology: historically the flaws have been undocumented procedural errors. Usually improper blinding that leads to unintentional selection bias when recording results.

Since this has to be observed as it actually happens and cannot be deduced from the paper itself, independent replication is necessary to distinguish between external event vs corrupted experimental protocol.
 
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What jumps out at me immediately from the abstract is that if this experiment was valid, he wouldn't need to appeal to consciousness in order for this to be a remarkable result. He's got an experiment repeated with a change of one variable, a variable which quantum mechanics predicts should play zero role in the measurement outcome. He's claiming that the experiment produces two different results. That means that one or both result is in conflict with quantum mechanics, which means that either he screwed up the experiment, or quantum mechanics is wrong. Forget for a moment what this other variable is: he's claiming he has demonstrated that quantum mechanics is wrong. That would be a remarkable observation. THAT should be the focus of his paper, not this consciousness crap which relies on interpretations that can't be proven. But it's not. In fact, no indication is even provided as to which scenario conflicts with quantum mechanics. Is quantum mechanics wrong when the person is watching, or when the person isn't watching? Or both? Why does he not seem even mildly curious?

But of course, I'm quite confident the entire experiment is crap, and this guy is a crackpot. Why do I say this? Well, from the comments, he says, "One way to reduce the decline effect (a double negative?) is to avoid exact replications by adding novel elements to the new studies. That's what I've done."

He's arguing that his results are not repeatable, and that he's designed his experiment specifically to avoid repetition.
 
CurtC said:
However, they're wrong. Observing the electron does force it into the particle state, but it doesn't require consciousness. A simple particle detector is enough of an observer to do the trick.
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That's the non-solipsistic answer. The problem is that quantum solipsism (not a standard term, but I think you can get what I mean) isn't falsifiable. You can't actually distinguish between the detector collapsing the electron wave function and the detector merely becoming entangled with the electron, with the observer collapsing both the electron AND the detector. But it's also precisely because we could never disprove it that we have no reason to believe it either.
 
Ziggurat said:
But of course, I'm quite confident the entire experiment is crap, and this guy is a crackpot. Why do I say this? Well, from the comments, he says, "One way to reduce the decline effect (a double negative?) is to avoid exact replications by adding novel elements to the new studies. That's what I've done."

He's arguing that his results are not repeatable, and that he's designed his experiment specifically to avoid repetition.
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I'm not sure he's exactly saying he's designed the experiment to be impossible to repeat, but rather saying he advises against independent replication because the effect will probably disappear.

I think that's the crackpot part: he's managing cognitive dissonance by avoiding contrary information. Scientists treat the decline effect as 'discovering reality' - he is treating it as a frustrating interference with his pet theory, to be avoided at all costs.
 
CurtC said:
In the famous two-slit experiment, if you add a detector to one slit to determine which slit the electron passes through, then you no longer see the interference pattern, meaning that the act of observing it at the plane of the slits, forces it into a particle state and not in a probability wave. Woo-meisters have long interpreted this to mean that consciousness is what is forcing one state.

However, they're wrong. Observing the electron does force it into the particle state, but it doesn't require consciousness. A simple particle detector is enough of an observer to do the trick.
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And the concept of an "observer" is specific for the Copenhagen interpretation. The Many Worlds Interpretation does not have "observers".
 
blutoski said:
I'm not sure he's exactly saying he's designed the experiment to be impossible to repeat
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I meant that he would avoid repeating things himself. My phrasing was ambiguous. :o

I think that's the crackpot part: he's managing cognitive dissonance by avoiding contrary information. Scientists treat the decline effect as 'discovering reality' - he is treating it as a frustrating interference with his pet theory, to be avoided at all costs.
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Yup.
 
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