Conference hydra::dejavu

    Speaking as a parapsychologist...

    I find this very interesting and would love to know more.  There are
    some common mistakes that people make in testing ESP, and I would love
    to know whether they were made here.  It is not that the occurance of
    these mistakes would prove that ESP were not taking place (an invalid
    inference frequently aggressively pushed by "skeptics"), but simply
    that they very much weaken the amount of *evidence* available that
    "real" ESP is happening -- i.e., something which cannot be explained by
    current scientific theories.

    The problem is that when the trainer displays the back of the card
    (s)he is almost certainly looking at the correct response.  Knowing the
    correct response can (and *does*) affect their body language in subtle
    ways -- which dolphins are quite capable of detecting.  Even when the
    dolphins call off the cards before they are lifted (this is a technique
    dubbed by Rhine in the old days of card testing in parapsychology, the
    "DT technique", which stands for "Down Through" the deck) it is
    important to know whether the trainer has any way of knowing at least
    something about the order of the deck, and it is also important to know
    whether the backs of the cards are absolutely clean (something not so
    easy to arrange), and that the shuffling is very thorough (again
    something not so easy to arrange, particularly when the experimenter
    must remain ignorant of the order).

    Back at the turn of the century there was a "talking horse" known as
    "Clever Hans".  He talked by spelling out words using an elaborate
    morse-code like system of hoof tapping.  He answered questions
    intelligently on a wide range of subjects, and amazed many scientists.
    It was later shown that he became completely "dumb" when no one was in
    sight (present but behind a screen), and that he "knew" things that
    witnesses knew rather than that the horse would be expected to know.
    Clever Hans was picking up subtle body cues from spectators.

    I would love to know if these researchers took this into account.
    Written transcripts of PBS documentaries are generally available for a
    modest fee, by the way.  Why don't you enquire of your station?

				    Topher

Not sure, but the following may be relevant to this topic:

Researchers in psychology, and, in fact, in any other field where
humans are involved in the experiment, whether as subjects or as
investigators, have found that single-blind experiments often yield
false positive results. A single-blind experiment is one where the
subject doesn't know what's being tested, but the investigator does. It
turns out that humans are phenomenally sensitive to non-verbal cues,
and enough information can be communicated from the investigator to the
subject to throw off the experiment. When the same experiments are
conducted under double-blind conditions, the interesting results often
disappear. In a double-blind experiment, neither the experimenter nor
the subject know what the test is.

In the account given in this topic:

> They found varying rates of
> success amoung the different handler/dolphin combinations, and even fairly
> consistant results from one test series to another between specific
> handler/dolphin pairs.

It sure sounds like specific handler/dolphin pairs are likely to have
developed their own non-verbal cue system. This would be a classic case
of single-blind experimental failure. When this experiment has been
conducted under a double-blind protocol, I'll get real interested.
Until then, I'm afraid it's a big ho-hum on the ESP front, and a round
of applause to the dolphins for a great show.

Well, well, notes collision. What an amazing coincidence :-).

Article 3871 of alt.paranet.ufo:
Newsgroups: alt.alien.visitors,alt.paranet.ufo
Path: nntpd.lkg.dec.com!nntpd2.cxo.dec.com!pa.dec.com!decwrl!netcomsv!netcom.com!thad
From: [email protected] (Thad Floryan)
Subject: Re: What do greys look alike?
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Followup-To: alt.alien.visitors
Organization: Personal account at Netcom Public Access UNIX
References: <[email protected]> <[email protected]>
Date: Tue, 25 Jan 1994 14:30:34 GMT
Lines: 131
Xref: nntpd.lkg.dec.com alt.alien.visitors:26603 alt.paranet.ufo:3871

In article <[email protected]>
[email protected] (Jeremy Konopka) writes:

| In article <[email protected]>
| [email protected] (Matthew Williams) writes:
| >>That is a good question.  Their physical appearance are more than 
| >>coincidence. Is product of thousands of years in the evolution process.
| 
| Try millions.
| 
| [...]
| >>                                             [email protected]
| >Dear Jose,
| >       what do you think about the dolphins. They have brains that are as
| >complex as ours. They used to have fingers (still do) but which developed
| >into fins. Their development took them back from what we would call a
| >perfect
| >humanoid development. Nowhere in Human development did we lose any of our
| >basic features such as fingers toes or arms. 
| 
| When were dolphins humanoid?  Cats, dogs, bats, squirrels all have 'fingers'
| but they're not humanoid.
| 
| [...]
| >I merely think that perhaps when the dolphins went back in the water, they
| >did so because their destiny was not based on a dominator society. We
| 
| Or there was an ecological niche that was not yet filled?
| [...]

Here's the scoop.  I found this in one of my daily newspapers recently
but you can also find the complete report in Science.

As printed in the San Francisco Chronicle, Friday, January 14, 1994, page A2:

``	            FOSSIL WHALE CALLED MISSING LINK

	Ancestor of modern marine mammals could walk on land or swim

	                   By David Perlman
	               Chronicle Science Writer

	[ 2 graphics showing the skeleton and the location in Pakistan are
	  not reproduced here.  Information source: Science, Journal of the
	  AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science) ]


	Fifty million years ago, where an ocean washed the shores of a
	drifting continent, a primitive race of walking whales moved from
	the land to the sea to open a new act on the evolutionary stage.

	Now scientists have found the first fossil skeleton of such a
	unique whale -- a swimming mammal whose four legs give evidence
	of the long-sought missing link between land animals and the
	whales, porpoises and river dolphins of today's marine world.

	The scientists discovered their fossil in the sediment of an
	ancient warm sea that covered what is now a remote part of
	Pakistan, halfway between Islamabad, the modern nation's capital,
	and the storied Khyber Pass, which marks the border with
	Afghanistan.

	CREATURE GIVEN A NAME

	Hans Thewissen, an anatomist at a small Ohio medical school who
	led the team that uncovered the nearly complete skeleton in 1992,
	has formally named the fossil creature Ambulocetus natans, which
	means "walking and swimming whale."  It is, he said, the ancestor
	of the entire order of marine mammals collectively called cetaceans,
	and his discovery is being reported today in the journal Science.

	"It's a very important missing link that's not missing anymore,"
	commented Philip Gingerich, a paleontologist at the University of
	Michigan who developed theories about the creature 10 years ago.

	Scientists have long known that the first land animals emerged
	from the oceans about 370 million years ago, when a few primitive
	fish-like creatures developed lungs and legs to become the ancestors
	of today's amphibians.  But the origins of marine mammals have
	remained more obscure.

	Although most four-legged animals have remained on land ever since
	they climbed ashore, a few returned to the sea millions of years
	ago -- perhaps to escape swift-running predators -- even while they
	retained their limbs, Thewissen said.

	FRUSTRATING DISCOVERIES

	The Dutch-born researcher, who has hunted fossils in Pakistan since
	1985, said in an interview that during earlier expeditions he had
	found frustrating scraps of jawbones, teeth, knee joints and skulls,
	but never enough skeletal remains to prove the 100-year-old theory
	that the earliest whales must have originated on land.

	The knee joints found in the sedimentary rocks of the ancient
	seabed showed clearly that the marine mammals could walk, and their
	fossil ear bones were clearly designed to hear both on land and
	underwater, Thewissen said.

	From the new find, he estimated that his walking whale must have
	been about the size of a sea lion, perhaps 10 feet long, and
	weighed between 600 and 700 pounds.  Its rear feet were huge, and
	its legs were fully developed, he said, while its front legs were
	short, stubby and joined close to its shoulders.  Its snout was
	long like a modern dolphin's, and its skull looked very much like
	those of other primitive whales, he said.

	CLUMSY GAIT ON LAND

	The nearly complete skeleton shows that the creature apparently
	walked on dry land with a clumsy humping gait, much like sea lions,
	while in the water it swam by undulating its back while swinging
	its huge webbed rear feet through the water.

	The fossil skeleton of the walking whale was found in Pakistan's
	Kala Chitta Hills, a low range rich in fossil snails, oyster shells
	and other marine organisms.  The region marks the remains of an
	ancient sea where many millions of years ago the Indian subcontinent
	began drifting north to crunch against the southern edge of the
	Asian land mass and thrust up the entire Himalayan mountain range
	as a result of the collision.

	Thewissen is a former research associate at Duke University and is
	now an assistant professor of anatomy at the Northeastern Ohio
	Universities College of Medicine.  His colleagues on his most
	recent fossil hunt were Taseer Hussein of Howard University and
	M. Arif of Pakistan's Geological Survey.  The expedition was
	financed by the National Geographic Society.
''

Thad Floryan [ [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] ]

Re:.All:

Getting the written transcript is a good idea, Topher, and I'm looking into it. 

The idea that the dolphins might be getting visual cues from their trainers
sounds plausible (after all, you have to wonder how much a bunch of cetacean
biologists know about conducting ESP tests, dolphins or no!). 

I find the idea that the dolphins might be reading their human trainers so well
as to provide the expected result with little or no overt solicitation on the
part of the trainers to be interesting in and of itself.

My wife and I raise Kuvasz (a Hungarian flock guarding dog), and have found them
to be extreamly adept at reading our moods and body language- far better, in
fact, then we are with each other!. I'm sure that dolphins are just as capable
at this sort of thing. 

I was wondering how one might construct a practical double blind experiment in
these circumstances, and what other kinds of tests or experiments that the
researchers could do to investigate this further...

Re: .4: Wow, Walking Whales! Intresting article...

Kevin

RE: .5 (Kevin)

>I was wondering how one might construct a practical double blind experiment in
>these circumstances, and what other kinds of tests or experiments that the
>researchers could do to investigate this further...

    The principles for testing are well developed in parapsychology.  I
    would be glad to consult with these biologists (Woods Hole is not that
    far from Boston).  Here is what I would do:

    1) I would make sure that the cards are as uniform, especially in
    weight and tecture as possible.

    2) Experiments would require two people.  One to prepare the targets
    and the other to conduct the actual test.  There should be no direct,
    and as little indirect, contact between the two from the time that the
    targets are prepared and the experiment is run.

    3) The target preparer should use a good source of random numbers to
    determine the order of the targets.  Ideally the target set should be
    "open", i.e., the number of each target should not be predetermined.

    4) The target preparer should place each target into a sealed,
    numbered, highly opaque envelope.

    5) The experimental superviser should record the number of the target
    envelope and the response before the envelope is opened.  No changes in
    the record should be made once the envelope is opened.  The contents of
    the envelope should be recorded as well, as a check.  The used targets
    should be placed in a pile in order for later double checking.

    6) The overall results should be determined by the proper statistical
    techniques.

    I'll worry about what else they should do when they have done the above
    test and established that there is an effect.

				    Topher

    I do hope they take up Topher's offer.  There are so many ways for 
    information to be transferred from the experimenter, especially when such 
    an intelligent animal is involved, that they would absolutely need the 
    benefit of someone experienced in psi protocols to really understand what 
    was being demonstrated.  The possibilities for inadvertently 'cheating' in 
    a card guessing test are so numerous that you couldn't possibly expect
    a non-specialist (non psych/parapsych specialist) to be able to consider 
    them all.  
    
|In fact, the trends seemed to indicate that the dolphins actually got better at
|predicting the cards, the more they did it. They appeared to recognize and 
|share in the excitement of the researchers at this behavior, and a few of
|the dolphins even performed some of the tasks sequentially in the exact order
|of the cards in the deck BEFORE the cards were picked up by the researchers.
    
    This is the reason why randomization of the targets is particularly 
    important in the next test.  It's surprising how predictable our 
    sequencing of targets can be under certain conditions if randomization 
    isn't introduced specifically.  Especially with very familiar 
    material, as is the case here.
    
    							kind regards,
    
    							todd

    Now *that's* an obscure title, Todd. :-)

Fascinating!

Thank's for sharing your insights. I remember reading a little about
double blind experiments in an entry level psychology class I'd taken long
ago, but haden't considered all the precautions that would be necessary in
a case like this.

I'm going to investigate this further by way of the documentary (is this
research continuing, who/what is involved, ect.) I'll post whatever I find out
to this note.

Kevin
 

    
    I sometimes wonder if we aren't the limiting factor in these tests ?
    My cats seem to be really psychic at times. For instance recently I'd
    received a video for cats which shows birds & squirrels and such with a 
    nice animal sounds soundtrack.Ok, I've shown this to my cats once
    before. But this weekend for yuks I went to look for this particular
    tape and one of my cats sits down in front of the TV as I was loading
    it into the VCR almost as if she knew it was her video !
    Hmmm....
    
    /todd 

Well, we could be the limiting factor.  In addition to Topher's suggestions
I would add another.  The human showing the cards should have no knowledge
of what the symbols are supposed to mean or the action they are supposed to
produce.  They will only be allowed to give one test before they are 
contaminated, but, if the dolphins are reading the cards or the testers mind,
they should do just as well.

80)

RE: .11

    'Fraid I don't see what that gains in the initial experiments.  As a
    variant later on to see if it makes a difference -- and thus to better
    understand the paranormal phenomenon involved -- yes, but not when
    we are simply attempting to figure out whether something which
    stretches current scientific boundaries is occuring at all.

					Topher

re: .12  Well, that is actaully the second blind in the double blind.  In a 
double blind experiment the person administering the test should not know
what the expected outcome is.  In this case I would set it up so that nobody
who knew what action was expected would be visible to  the dolphin. 

RE: .14

    Ah!  You missed that in my protocol, the experimenter does not get to
    see the target cards at all before the action, so whether or not the
    experimenter knows the association between the symbol and the
    indicating response is irrelevant.  The experiment is double blind
    because the experimenter has no (non-paranormal) way of knowing the
    target symbol, and thus no way of knowing the correct response.

    Your proposal is an interesting one.  It would change the test from
    a clairvoyance one (mine) to what parapsychologists call a General
    ESP (GESP) test because it allows any of the common ESP modalities,
    clairvoyance, telepathy or precognition, to operate.  It has several
    of problems -- in addition to the one you pointed out in which you
    "use up" people conducting the test -- which are rather subtle.
    Rigorous testing for ESP is really quite tricky, and it takes a lot
    of experience to avoid the pitfalls.

    First, care would have to be taken that there was no association
    between the symbols and their "meanings", i.e., the "correct" response
    for the dolphin.  Since there would be no reason to avoid such an
    association, it is likely that consciously or unconsciously it would
    be included.  That means that the "experimenter" would have some basis
    for guessing whether or not the dolphins response was appropriate and
    her/his body language might signal this to the dolphins.  This could
    be fixed by assigning new symbols to the actions using a good
    randomization procedure, but this would involve re-teaching all the
    dolphins the new symbols, which would not be an overnight process.

    Second, there might be "typical" responses of people to some or all of
    the symbols, even when the people are ignorant of the correct response,
    which would be reflected in their body language, and which the dolphins
    might learn.  I don't know any reasonable fix for this.

    Third, those same typical responses would mean that even without
    learning dolphins might tend to react, rightly or wrongly, to an
    "experimenter" seeing a particular symbol in a particular way.  This
    could cause either exceptionally high or exceptionally low scores.
    This is known as the stacking effect.  For example, say I pulled a
    number between 1 and 10 and asked a room full of Americans to guess
    what number I had.  Most Americans will, if asked to guess a number
    between 1 and 10, pick the number 7.  If I happen (1 chance in 10) to
    pick a 7, then I will get a hugh hit with apparent odds of thousands to
    one against.  That's the stacking effect.  Again, there is no effective
    fix which would be useful in this case.

    Fourth, a great deal of care would need to be taken to make sure that
    the human could see the symbol clearly but that there would be no even
    partial glimpse by the dolphin (the original experiment also suffered
    from this, but it seemed outweighed by the problem with experimenter
    body language).  This is made worse by non-human vision being relevant
    -- trying it out and noting that a human can't see anything would not
    be good enough.  A careful procedure for turning the cards over would
    need to be worked out so that there was no chance of a glimpse.  Also
    all reflecting surfaces would have to be avoided.  This would include
    eyeglasses, windows, metal trim, and wet surfaces such as concrete or
    skin.

    Good thinking though.  These problems are not obvious.

				    Topher

What if the test could be conducted through entirely mechanical means? This
would take the potential for human influence on the test "out of the picture". 

One way would be to display the symbols to the dolphins graphicly, using some
kind of computer. The dolphins could be trained to respond to the symbols
displayed by the computer, and the order of the symbols could be
programmed. The operator of the display could be situated out of the dolphins
sight, but could observe their behavior. The order of the presentation could be
known in advance to the operator.

I suspect, however, that even if you could get something like this to work,
that even if there was some clairvoyance involved originally, you'd be
eliminating the conditions that had allowed it to occur...

Kevin_who_is_hunting_down_the_transcript_for_the_documentary

    Yes, almost all modern parapsychology is done using computers.  This
    allows the computer, which is good at it, to manage all the fussy,
    mechanical details while the experimenters concentrate on the "human"
    aspects of the tests.

    In this case, though, I would stick -- at least initially -- with a
    design as similar as possible to what they have been doing.  Otherwise
    there is too much chance, as "Kevin_who_is_hunting_down_the-
    _transcript_for_the_documentary" says, that the psychological
    conditions under which the phenomenon occurred would be eliminated.

					Topher

    re: .18,
    	I think the point is, at least to my understanding, that anomalies 
    	are harder to reproduce	than non-anomalies, so you are buying more 
    	initially by getting a stable effect to study than by pointing out a 
    	large number of conditions that are not anomalous.  It's a
    	conservative and slightly pessimistic approach that seems well founded 
    	considering the usual nature of psi phenomena (?)
    
    						todd

    John C. Lilly:Has anyone read his books on dolphin research? I find 
    Dr. Lilly to be a very interesting man. I have read a couple of his
    books. He has produced at least five books on the subject of dolphins.
    Here is the list that I have:
    
    The Dolphin in History
    Man and Dolphin
    The Mind of the Dolphin
    Lilly on Dolphins
    Communication between Man and Dolphin
    
    Unfortunately, I haven't read any of these books so, I really can't
    give an educated opinion ;). Lilly did dolphin research about 30 years
    ago. 
    
    Regards,
    
    Michael
    
    

    I haven't read any of his dolphin books, I actually remember him
    mostly as one of the brave and somewhat flaky researchers who went from 
    doing 'straight' behavioral research to experimenting with mind-altering
    drugs and coming out with a very unusual view of the world.
    
    I read his 'Programming and Metaprogramming in the Human
    Biocomputer' in high school, and was fascinated by the kinds of things
    he observed in people given LSD in sensory deprivation tanks.  
    
    The description of an interview with him in Hooper and Teresi's
    "Three Pound Universe" makes him sound like he's a bit off the deep
    end much of the time, but hey that's what DEJAVU is all about.  :-)
    
    							kind regards,
    
    							todd

Another book by Dr. Lilly is _The_Center_of_the_Cyclone_.  In this 
book he further examines the use of LSD and the exploration of what he 
calls the "inner universe."  Although it's been fifteen or twenty years 
since I've read Lilly, I seem to recall that the conext for his LSD 
research was related to his research on communicating with dolphins. 

Lilly talks alot about the "core essence" of individuals... In a way, 
without using the word "soul," he tries to isolate, define, describe, 
and analyize what a soul is.  In some of his LSD/deprivation experiments 
he describes himself as being a single point of light, and he describes 
an interaction with other points of light that have consciousness and 
help to "guide" his soul.

Some of his work seems fairly scientific (in terms of methodologies), and 
other work seems more like pseudo-science. 

One noteworthy event in _The_Center_of_the_Cyclone_ was that after some
experimentation with LSD, he experiences a sense of "cosmic wholeness" and 
a belief in a higher consciousness (god).  Convinced of the existence of a 
spiritual plane, Lilly decides that his work with dolphins (which included 
vivisection and disection of dolphin brains), was unethical, morally wrong, 
and somthing that he could not continue or condone.  So, even at the cost 
of terminating many tens of jobs (50 or 60) he decided to refuse any more 
funding and closed his research lab. 

All in all, despite the controversial nature of LIlly's research, he gives 
food for thought.

Best regards, 

Tom Vallone (who mostly only reads, but occasionally writes)

    The "points of lights" sounds a lot like Barbara Brennan's core star.
    Look at picture 18-2 in "Light Emerging." She describes the  core star
    as our divine essence.

    
    		John Lilly was doing dolphin research at Mote Marine Labs
    	in Sarasota FLA about 8 years ago, I had an opportunity to do some
    	research with him at the time but after I met him, I was NOT
    	impressed with him at all. A lot of people said he was still inter-
    	ested in giving LSD to dolphins to research their reactions, which
    	I did not want to be involved in...
    
    	Sherry