Assignment for X200: Write out detailed answers to any two problems from the first section, i.e. select two from Exercises 2 - 10; also write out detailed answers to one problem selected from Exercises 11 - 15 in the second section plus problems 16 and 17 . Turn in the answers to these five problems on Friday.

EXERCISES for Chapter 4: Extraordinary Claims and Anecdotal Evidence

Exercises 1-10 involve extraordinary claims. Design a good test for each. Try to devise a set of experimental conditions under which

a. The subject or subjects in question will actually be able to do the extraordinary thing they claim to be able to do.

b. The subject or subjects will not be able to perform if they do not have the ability they claim to have.

c. The difference between successful and failed performance is clearly measurable.

In designing your test, think about any auxiliary assumptions the test requires that may be questionable. Are you assuming something to be true that if false might enable your experimental subjects to explain away a failure to perform under the conditions of the test? If you uncover any such assumptions, try to modify your design so that it avoids them. (Note: A solution to Exercise I is provided in the assigned reading.)

Sample Exercise 1. The ability to influence physical objects or events by thought alone is called telekinesis or psychokinesis. One extraordinary claim of people who say they have telekinetic power is an ability to influence the outcome of apparently random events. So, for example, by concentrating on a particular number a person trained in telekinetic manipulation might influence the throw of a pair of dice or the spin of a roulette wheel.

2. Graphologists claim to be able to discern a great deal about a person's character and personality simply by analyzing the person's handwriting. So, for example, if you don't care enough to dot your I's it shows that you tend to ignore details, and an illegible signature indicates a desire to escape notice. Similarly, claim many graphologists, people who print rather than write may be trying to conceal their personality from others.

3. Reflexology is the technique of applying pressure with the thumbs and fingers to specific areas of the feet as a means of alleviating various ailments. Reflexologists contend that the body and all its organs and glands are mapped" on the foot. For example, the big toe is said to represent the head, the little toe the eyes and ears, and the inner portion along the side of each foot the spine. Some reflexologists claim to be able to diagnose ailments by looking for painful spots on the foot. Throat and tonsil problems, for example, frequently result in pain on the bottom of the big toe whereas pain on the bottom of the other toes often indicates sinus problems.

4. Do you believe in reincarnation-in the notion that we have lived previous lives? Many people claim to recall details of past. lives under hypnosis, and in many cases it would seem they have no way of knowing these details without having actually experienced them. The most famous case of reincarnation is that of Bridey Murphy. In 1952, Virginia Tighe was hypnotized and, in that state, reported details of a previous life in Cork, Ireland, as Bridey Murphy. She spoke in a distinct Irish accent that she did not normally have and described her life in Cork in great detail. Many other people have reported similar experiences under hypnosis.

5. For years, mediums have claimed to be able to contact the spirits of the dead. Typically a medium will seat a number of people around a table in a dark room and instruct them to hold the hands of the people next to them, close their eyes, and concentrate. The medium then goes into some sort of trance and, if everything is right, the spirit of a dead friend or relative of one of the participants will speak though the medium and sometimes even answer questions asked of it.

6. Many people who claim to have the gift of psychic power say they are able to see auras--fields of light that surround human beings and possibly other living things. Presumably these auras are internally generated fields of psychic force. Moreover, these individuals claim that one's personality can be identified by the color and form of one's aura and that the colors of an aura will change with a person's mood. (Note: there are two extraordinary abilities involved here: the ability to detect an aura and the ability to give personality analyses based on the colors in it.)

7. Biorhythms supposedly consist of three cycles: physical, emotional, and intellectual. The cycles are 23, 28, and 33 days long, respectively, and all begin at the moment of birth. During positive phases (the first half of each cycle) energies are supposed to be high, and during negative phases energy is low. Critical days occur when one of the rhythms is changing from positive to negative or vice versa. Those days, say biorhythmists, contain our weakest and most vulnerable moments because the rhythms that guide our lives are unstable. The very worst are triple-critical days, when all three rhythms are changing from positive to negative or vice versa. In the first 58 years and 68 days of life there are 4006 single-critical days, 312 double-critical days, and 8 triple-critical days. Taken together, critical days make up about 20% of all the days of a life. Needless to say, a person should expect to perform poorly in aspects of life corresponding to the particular rhythm in flux on a critical day. On triple-critical days, biorhythmists will tell you, you should just stay in bed.

8. Some individuals claim they can leave their body at will and travel through space using only their "astral" or "'spiritual" body. This ability is often called astral projection. Some claim they can travel almost instantaneously to the far comers of the world; others claim even to visit other planets and planetary systems. All are able to report in detail on what they have experienced during their astral excursions. Some parapsychologists contend that astral projection is the first solid scientific evidence for the existence of the soul.

9. Everyone knows that Egyptian mummies have remained remarkably well preserved for thousands of years. The reason, claim some people, is that the mummies were entombed in pyramid-shaped structures, and in some way not yet understood, that shape focuses a mysterious form of energy on objects housed within it. Advocates of pyramid power claim, for example, that organic matter of just about any sort can be preserved if housed under something with the shape of a pyramid.

10. As long ago as the mid-1960s, researchers began reporting success in teaching primates to communicate using American Sign Language. Washoe, a chimpanzee, and Koko, a gorilla, were apparently able to learn and use many signs to form complete sentences and to reply to questions asked them by
researchers who themselves communicated with Koko and Washoe in sign language.

Exercises 11-15 involve actual anecdotal reports of the extraordinary. Assess each by answering the following questions:

a. What if any well-established principles does the report challenge?

b. Is the report explanation laden? If so, what is the implicit explanation?

c. Is there a plausible nonextraordinary explanation for the reported event?

d. What should our attitude be toward the report: skepticism, agnosticism, or tentative belief. Why?

11. Barney and Betty Hill were returning from a vacation in Canada when they reportedly saw a UFO. Barney then inexplicably turned their car left onto a side road, and that was all the Hills remembered until two hours later, when they found themselves 35 miles further down the road with no idea how they got there. The Hills began to have bad dreams and finally went to see a psychiatrist, Benjamin Simon, who used hypnotic regression to bring them back to the incident. Under hypnosis, the Hills said that extraterrestrials had impelled them to leave the car and walk to the spacecraft, where they were separated and given examinations. Betty said alien creatures stuck a needle in her navel and took skin and nail samples. Barney claimed they took a sample of his sperm.

12. A species of monkey that lives on several islands off the coast of Japan is often fed by humans. In 1953, a remarkable thing was reported. One member of the troop of monkeys on one island learned to wash the sand off sweet potatoes she was given by dunking them in the ocean. Other members of the troop quickly picked up the habit, and then the remarkable happened: once enough monkeys had learned to wash potatoes, suddenly all monkeys even on other islands hundreds of miles away knew how to do it. It would seem that when the idea reached a "'critical mass" - when it was known by a sufficient number of monkeys - it mysteriously spread to the species as a whole.

13. On a few rare occasions, living human beings appear to have mysteriously ignited and been largely consumed by fire. Though there are no well-documented, witnessed instances of spontaneous human combustion, in a number of case s the remains of a person strongly suggest it happened. Typically the body will be almost entirely destroyed by fire that begins in the torso, often leaving a limb or two intact; this contrasts markedly with most burn injuries, where the limbs are affected first. In spontaneous human combustion, the body is reduced to greasy ashes-even the bones. There is often no apparent source of flame and little damage to the victim's surroundings.

14. In 1975, George and Kathy Lutz purchased a house in Amityville, New York. The year before, six members of the previous owner's family were murdered in the house by another family member. Within hours of moving in, claim the Lutzes, horrible and astonishing things began to happen. Large statues moved about the house with no human assistance. Kathy Lutz levitated in her sleep. Green slime oozed from the walls. Mysterious voices were heard, sometimes saying, "Get out, get out." A large door was mysteriously ripped off its hinges. Hundreds of flies appeared seemingly from nowhere. After only 28 days, the Lutzes left their new home for good.

15. In March 1984, reporters were invited to the home of John and Joan Resch to witness evidence of a poltergeist-a noisy and rambunctious spirit. The reporters found broken glass, dented and overturned furniture, smashed picture frames, and a household in general disarray. The focus of all this activity seemed to be the Resch's 14-year-old adopted child, Tina. The destructive activity claimed the Resches, always occurred in close proximity to Tina. Objects would mysteriously fly through the air, furniture would overturn, and pictures hanging on the wall would fall to the floor, all with no apparent physical cause. Because Tina was a hyperactive and emotionally disturbed child who had been taken out of school, some parapsychologists hypothesized that the strange happenings were the result of telekinesis, not poltergeist activity.

16. Each of the anecdotal reports in Exercises 11-15 contains an assertion about the existence of something extraordinary:

a. Alien abductions

b. The instantaneous generation of ideas throughout a species

c. Spontaneous human combustion

d. Ghosts and hauntings

e. Poltergeists

f . Telekinesis

Although all these are quite unlikely, some seem more unlikely than others. Given what we have said about claims that challenge our current understanding of things, rate the relative likelihood of a through f, from most to least likely. Give your reasons for your ratings. Here you will want to consider the possibility of prosaic explanations for the reported events as well as the relative level of evidence for the principles each appears to call into question.

17. The following story appeared in 1992 in major newspapers across the country. Comment on the design of the experiment described, its results, the attitude of the experimenters toward their experimental subject, and the extraordinary ability they tested. What is your conclusion? Is the last sentence of the story accurate?

One reason my family likes going to Chinese restaurants is for the fortune
cookies. The fortunes get passed around, laughed at and commented on. Sometimes they are remarkably accurate, or at least that's our impression. I bet there are a lot of people who remember a fortune that was "right on." How is it they fit our personal situation so often when who gets which cookie is purely random?

Well, of course, the fortunes are written in such a general style that they can fit most anyone, but there is a more subtle effect: positive memory. With 'unusual events, we will always remember the remarkable coincidences and forget the times when nothing of note happened. This accounts for much of the "'strange behavior" reported at full moon, for much of the "success" of astrologers and for the persistence of belief in palm readers. Because people remember the "hits" and forget all the "misses," such pseudo-science practices tend to get more credence than they deserve.

This effect is particularly difficult for scientists to deal with. When we debunk astrology, there will always be someone in the room that tells of all the times the astrologer has "read" them exactly right. No matter how logically we argue that astrology can't and doesn't work, its hard to explain away positive, personal testimony. What we need are controlled experiments that can prove or disprove astrologers' claims.

Such experiments are hard to arrange because astrologers always say that the stars "impel," they don't "compel." In other words, astrologers don't generally make statements that are right or wrong, they make statements that are more or less likely to be true. It's hard to ""make or break" a likelihood.

Luckily, we found an astrologer who was willing to make a testable claim. He said that given four horoscopes, only one of which was produced from a person's correct birth date and time, he would be able to identify the correct chart solely from that person's physical appearance. A colleague, Philip Ianna, and I decided to take him up on his claim and run an experiment to see how well he could do.

We arranged to collect the birth dates and times from a number of students in a large astronomy class. In order to insure that there was no error or collusion, we only used students who could provide a copy of their birth certificate. In addition, the astrologer claimed his method would only work on white Anglo Saxons. Thus, no African Americans, Hispanics, American Indians, or Jews were chosen. While he never made it clear why his method would fail in these cases, we nonetheless selected from the student volunteers only those who fit his criteria.

We were convinced from the beginning that if there was to be any useful conclusion drawn from our experiment, we had to carry it out under conditions that would be fully agreeable to the astrologer. Further, we made the experiment as "'double blind" as we could. My colleague made all of the contacts with the astrologer, showed him the horoscopes, and was present for the meetings between the astrologer and the students. I on the other hand, made all of the contacts with the students. I was the one who selected the student population to be used. I was the one who arranged for the correct horoscope, and I was the only one who had the key to the correct birth dates.

After culling the students to fit the astrologer's criteria and adjusting for those who could not miss classes to meet the astrologer, we had exactly 28 students participating, split about evenly between men and women. We called in the students and had them meet, one by one, with the astrologer. He sat at a desk with the four horoscopes for that student in front of him. After looking at the students for a minute or two and hearing a few words from the student, he selected one of the horoscopes as the correct one. The letter (A through D) corresponding to that horoscope was placed on the list next to the number that represented the student.

This process was repeated for all 28 students, and then the astrologer's list was compared with the correct list that had been kept locked in my office. He got seven right-exactly the number that would have been predicted from pure chance. The astrologer could not explain why he had failed to do what he claimed to be able to do. Our conclusion was that his claims were bunk.

Based on what we can find out, the claims of astrology are all bunk but it is not often that science gets a chance to test them in so definite a way. (Note 2)