PA Conference abstracts

Hmmm...Dr. Powell's abstract is the only one which looks remarkable. But her findings are astonishing and earth-shattering (if performed properly). And she's a doctor, right? So why are they being presented at a tiny fringe conference which won't get the attention of her colleagues, instead of being published where medical breakthroughs usually get published - one of the major medical journals, or at least one of the premier journals in her field (psychiatry?)? Admittedly, she'd have to have done a much better write-up to get it into a mainstream journal, but presumably she is capable of stepping up to the plate in that regard (if she is capable of performing the experiment properly). At the very least, the abstract should have been presented at a decent medical or neuroscience conference (again with the caveat that abstract would need to be properly written to get accepted). Parnia showed us that properly performed experiments and properly written abstracts get accepted at well-respected and highly attended medical conferences.

Linda
 
http://www.parapsych.org/uploaded_f..._convention_abstracts_of_presented_papers.pdf

The Dianne Powell thing looks alright actually. They were in the same room, but the two were blocked from sight, and the whole thing was recorded with HD, timestamped cameras, and microphones so any unconscious cueing would be picked up. I'm optimistic but still cautious nonetheless.

Looks really interesting... It would be fantastic if somebody had finally found a way to expose our ability to obtain information by unknown means, using Autistic children.
 
Yeah, I remember that other case. This is a way better smoking gun than anything else which has been offered. It should be presented in a way which gets it taken seriously (with apologies to the Parapsychological Association).

Linda
 
Hmmm...Dr. Powell's abstract is the only one which looks remarkable. But her findings are astonishing and earth-shattering (if performed properly). And she's a doctor, right? So why are they being presented at a tiny fringe conference which won't get the attention of her colleagues, instead of being published where medical breakthroughs usually get published - one of the major medical journals, or at least one of the premier journals in her field (psychiatry?)? Admittedly, she'd have to have done a much better write-up to get it into a mainstream journal, but presumably she is capable of stepping up to the plate in that regard (if she is capable of performing the experiment properly). At the very least, the abstract should have been presented at a decent medical or neuroscience conference (again with the caveat that abstract would need to be properly written to get accepted). Parnia showed us that properly performed experiments and properly written abstracts get accepted at well-respected and highly attended medical conferences.

Linda
You sound jealous.
 
http://www.parapsych.org/home.aspx
The Parapsychological Association is an international professional organization of scientists and scholars engaged in the study of psi (or 'psychic') experiences, such as telepathy, clairvoyance, psychokinesis, psychic healing, and precognition. The primary objective of the PA is to achieve a scientific understanding of these experiences.

First established in 1957, the PA has been an affiliated organization of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) since 1969. The PA is a non-profit, non-adjudicating organization that endorses no ideologies or beliefs other than the value of rigorous scientific and scholarly inquiry.

Looks like the appropriate organization to hold a conference on Psi functioning. It's where all the experts on this subject matter can be found. Seems like Dr Powell is one of those experts.
 
http://www.parapsych.org/home.aspx


Looks like the appropriate organization to hold a conference on Psi functioning. It's where all the experts on this subject matter can be found. Seems like Dr Powell is one of those experts.
Yes, and I appreciate how unlikely it would be that Powell's study could make it through the paradigm belief wall of mainstream medicine/society/culture. It's naive or disingenuous to believe she could so easily publish telepathy findings in a mainstream medical journal.
 
Yes, and I appreciate how unlikely it would be that Powell's study could make it through the paradigm belief wall of mainstream medicine/society/culture. It's naive or disingenuous to believe she could so easily publish telepathy findings in a mainstream medical journal.
I'm not sure where you're getting this from. Parnia presented his findings from the AWARE study at a medical conference just this last year. And mainstream medical journals publish well-done alt med studies (which is medicine's version of fringe science). The point is to present important findings in a venue which mainstream scientists use. Otherwise they won't hear of it, especially not the way they hear of other remarkable, but legitimate, research.

Linda
 
Parnia presented his findings from the AWARE study at a medical conference just this last year.

I understood that Parnia got less than 5 minutes on a video screen at breakfast... just a few minutes after breakfast began to be served at the conference hotel... sometime just after 7:00am if I recall correctly.

You know, you come down to breakfast, meet and greet colleagues, say your good mornings, chat about things... all the time something is playing on the video screens whilst your selecting your yogurt, and figuring out how to attract the attention of the hotel staff, because you've run out of milk on your table... Lol
 
I understood that Parnia got less than 5 minutes on a video screen at breakfast... just a few minutes after breakfast began to be served at the conference hotel... sometime just after 7:00am if I recall correctly.

You know, you come down to breakfast, meet and greet colleagues, say you're good mornings, chat about things... all the time something is playing on the video screens whilst your selecting your yogurt, and figuring out how to attract the attention of the hotel staff, because you've run out of milk on your table... Lol
I didn't realize that he actually got to do a video presentation. I thought he was stuck with just a poster presentation. Kewl.

Linda
 
Yes, and I appreciate how unlikely it would be that Powell's study could make it through the paradigm belief wall of mainstream medicine/society/culture. It's naive or disingenuous to believe she could so easily publish telepathy findings in a mainstream medical journal.
Not to mention the fact that it makes sense to present the work to the highly specialized group of scientists who work in this field of study, rather than to a general audience of MDs who are probably completely clueless about this area of investigation.
 
I'm not sure where you're getting this from. Parnia presented his findings from the AWARE study at a medical conference just this last year. And mainstream medical journals publish well-done alt med studies (which is medicine's version of fringe science). The point is to present important findings in a venue which mainstream scientists use. Otherwise they won't hear of it, especially not the way they hear of other remarkable, but legitimate, research.

Linda
Perhaps when you publish your earth-shattering self-study of OBEs in a medical journal, you can show us all how it's done.
 
Diane Powell on "The Closeminding of America":

Recently I was asked a simple, yet profound, question by Steven Frampton, a British radio host. He wanted to know why American scientists don’t believe in ESP. We talked about the fear of changing one’s view of reality, and how ESP research has been a death knell to scientists’ credibility. Shortly thereafter, he and his crew thanked me for my “courageous work” on ESP. I’m accustomed to hearing that my work takes courage, so I didn’t think much about it… that is until I read Arthur Koestler’s book for the first time, right after the interview.

The Roots of Coincidence: an Excursion into Parapsychology was published in 1972, a very optimistic time for parapsychology. It was reassuring to see that literally dozens of eminent scientists from last century thought similarly to myself… and I was surprised at some of the names on the list.

The book was also disturbing, because those from my generation, and younger, have never experienced the academic world described by Koestler… one in which ESP could be a respectable area of research. The book’s back cover boldly said, “those who today ridicule research into such phenomena as ESP, precognition, psychokinesis, telepathy and clairvoyance are in the same position as those who 50 years ago scoffed at Einstein’s physics. It is now accepted that modern physics has broken the “laws of nature” concerning space, time and matter; it (physics) deals with such “supernatural” concepts as negative mass, holes in space and time flowing backward. Then why, asks Koestler, should a similar breakthrough not be possible in matters of the mind?” That is exactly what I have wondered.

Psychic phenomena are still labeled “supernatural”, although they share many parallels with the laws of nature described in modern physics. In fact, as Koestler pointed out, the field of physics is much stranger than parapsychology. And physicists are not only encouraged to think outside the box… they can even talk about a box with a cat inside that is simultaneously alive and dead.

Physicists now have proof for many of their “weird” concepts, such as entanglement, or “spooky action at a distance.” And their mind-warping Standard Model continues to be supported by data, most recently by the discoveries of gravitational waves and the elusive Higgs boson. Meanwhile, parapsychological research has led to intriguing data, but it was declared a pseudoscience and thrown under the proverbial bus. Respected programs at Duke, Princeton, Stanford and elsewhere were dismantled. What happened? This will be a topic of discussion amongst those who know the answers at the 57th Annual Parapsychologial Association Conference, where I’ll be a panelist. The invitation arrived within hours of beginning to write this blog.

(...) Academic thinking used to be progressive, but that is obviously not the case anymore. Academicians not only discount the opinions of ordinary people about psi, they dismiss ideas that have been put forth not just by one, but dozens of geniuses, and ones from their own fields of study.

On the clinical side, psychiatry grew increasingly biological, with psychiatrists becoming just prescribers of medications, while other mental health professionals do the psychotherapy. Now most psychiatrists rarely get to know their patients to the depth possible in Freud’s time, or even mine, which means they miss out on stories that could challenge their view of human consciousness.

In 1988, a patient at Cambridge Hospital rocked my theoretical boat. Within minutes of first meeting, she told me detailed information… about me… from my past, present, and on into the future. Psychiatrists are taught that people who believe they can communicate telepathically are psychotic. Asking patients if they believe in telepathy is part of a screen for psychosis. According to my training this was not possible, yet here it was.

My intellectual curiosity was piqued, leading to research and my book, The ESP Enigma: A Scientific Case for Understanding Psychic Phenomena (2008). But less than two years after its publication, just having “ESP” in the title, along with “scientific understanding”, was enough for the state medical board to question my sanity.

As Professor Eysenck astutely noted, ”Scientists, especially when they leave the particular field in which they have specialized, are just as ordinary, pig-headed and unreasonable as anybody else, and their unusually high intelligence only makes their prejudices all the more dangerous.”


http://dianehennacypowell.com/closeminding-american-mind/
 
I thought the AWARE results were still undergoing peer review. Unless he released some preliminaries?

Oh yeah, and it looks like I have more reading to do judging by some of these abstracts.
 
100% and 60%?! Wow, Powell is surely putting hardcore number in all this. If there aren't subtle cues or anything like that, perhaps this is the experiment parapsychology so-long waited to enter the mainstream arena?
 
I thought the AWARE results were still undergoing peer review. Unless he released some preliminaries?

Oh yeah, and it looks like I have more reading to do judging by some of these abstracts.
Indeed the results are still undergoing peer review.
From the Horizon Research site;
However we will certainly link the release of the results with the Horizon website so that those who have waited patiently can access them on the day they are released through Horizon as well as the conventional media outlets
http://www.horizonresearch.org/main_page.php?cat_id=293

However there was a presentation in November 2013 and the abstract is available online;
http://www.abstractsonline.com/Plan...3&mKey={951E351E-429C-4B2E-84D0-8DA73B00DE45}
 
Last edited:
Back
Top