talkmagic.co.uk

Oh dear... http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/short ... nline-news

When I see something like this, there' s always a part of me that wants to know what worked so well the first time round. Was it just luck, was there some trickery involved or was there some crucial factor that was responsible for the success which wasn't mentioned or possible even noticed in the write up? Maybe it was successful not for some 'supernatural' reason but for some previously unnoticed natural phenomenom which would be as interesting to investigate as ESP luck the case of Clever Hans.

A J Irving wrote:When I see something like this, there' s always a part of me that wants to know what worked so well the first time round. Was it just luck, was there some trickery involved or was there some crucial factor that was responsible for the success which wasn't mentioned or possible even noticed in the write up?

Interestingly enough, quite a lot of papers on ESP - particularly those related to remote viewing - recognise the impact of the "First-Time Effect" (also known as "beginner's luck").

LINK

Indeed. This stuff goes back to at least the 1880s. In volume 2 of Phantasms of the Living (the journal of the Society for Psychical Research) Oliver Lodge goes to Manchester to test a couple of mill girls who are reported to be able to communicate telepathically. Under test conditions, they're a good deal vaguer than reported. The best they can suddenly come up with is "a silver duck" for a picture of a teapot, etc. Very much shades of Uri Geller's vague reproductions of a house/picture/whatever-you-think-it-is 90 years later.