Tricia Robertson
  • Welcome
    • Photo Gallery
  • Things You Can do When You're Dead
    • Listen to Interviews/TV Programmes
    • Articles
  • Tricia's Blog
  • Contact Tricia

Evidence

3/24/2014

16 Comments

 
I should really have a motto emblazoned somewhere…’I am all about the evidence’

Evidence can be had from various sources. Observations and consistent experiences can also be well justified as evidence along with repeatable experiments in a laboratory.

Many of you are aware of the three published peer reviewed papers on mediumship by myself and Prof Archie Roy. This study was carried out over a five year period. We have never claimed that these papers prove survival of human personality after death, but they do show that, without a shadow of doubt, that good mediums can access information that they could not possibly have gleaned by any method within our present understanding.

The critics always expound the idea that nothing can be proved in this field of interest unless a repeatable experiment can be performed.  They claim that professional observations, collection of data, personal testimonies, including group testimonies, and long lasting life changing experiences which have happened to recipients of “unexplained” events are not meaningful and do not count.  This is a ball park “get out” clause in their uninformed hypothesis that there is nothing in it.

The Mediumistic Information Analysis (M.I.A.) series of experiments carried out by Robertson and Roy were under the auspices of PRISM. (Psychical research involving selected mediums) It was a quantitative statistical analysis of statements made to recipients. The preliminary set of experiments set out to test the sceptical hypothesis that “All mediums’ statements are so general that they could apply to anyone.”  After two and a half years of experimenting throughout the U K and working with approx. 440 participants, the results showed that the odds against chance that this sceptical hypothesis was true were 10,000 million to one. These results were published in paper one.

Paper two described a hard protocol which would be applied to future experimentation. This covered situations in experimentation up to triple blind conditions.

The second series of experiments set out to test for the effects (if any) of psychological factors.  For example, would the participants who knew that they were the intended recipients of a message from the mediums tend to accept more statements as being correct just because they thought that they were the intended recipients. Would the non-recipients, or those who thought that they were non- recipients, tend to accept smaller numbers of the statements as being correct.

The hard protocol was adopted. This applied not only to the gathering of an audience but also the random seating arrangements, the locations and actions of the experimenters and the concealment of the mediums involved from the audience. The only contact that the mediums had with the audience was through a microphone, as they delivered the statements. The mediums could not hear any responses and could obviously not see the recipients, therefore eliminating body language responses. Moreover, in some of the tests no one in the hall knew, or thought that they knew, who the recipient was. The only person who knew the seat numbers chosen for any reading was Experimenter A, Professor Archie Roy, as he had chosen the seat numbering and picked the seat numbers foe intended recipients prior to the experiments before anyone sat on the chairs.  Experimenter B, Tricia Robertson, was with the mediums throughout their deliveries and did not know the seat numbering system used or which numbers had been chosen as intended recipients.

Seat allocation was done by a random allocation of available numbers to the audience who had been assembled in another room.  Tricia Robertson reduced the data after each experiment, during which time she did not know who the intended recipients were.  Only when the data had been reduced did Robertson and Roy meet to exchange information.  This was done by each experimenter duplicating their information and simultaneously exchanging the data therein. It is worthwhile restating that Roy did not know how the initial reduction of data had worked out and Robertson did not know who the intended recipients were at this time.

In case anyone is of a suspicious nature, the data sheets analysed by Robertson number approximately 180 for each experiment and each sheet is filled in by each participant in their own handwriting and for the most part with their own pens.

The experimenters know that there was no collusion, but even if people should try to falsify results in the future the enormity of the task would mean that everyone involved would have to be part of the falsification. I add this as this is the usual sceptical stance to say that the experimenters have made a mistake in their methodologies or been fraudulent.

As the experiments stand, the mediums cannot cheat as they do not see the audience or know which seat numbers have been chosen or consequently who the recipients are.

Experimenter A. cannot cheat as he has no control over who sits on what seat and he does not reduce the initial data.

Experimenter B cannot cheat as she does not know the seat numbering system or the numbers chosen to be recipients.  These numbers are chosen days before an experiment and sealed in an envelope.

Experimenter B gathers up all data sheets after an experimental session and locks them in a brief case. Experimenter A does not touch these sheets at all.

The results of this series were published in paper three and showed that results attained in the first phase experimentation is a repeatable experiment with the significance of these results matching the earlier work.

It also showed that even when recipients did not know that they were the intended recipients, the statements made under triple blind conditions to them by the mediums achieved a high degree of significance of ten to the minus six that the sceptical hypothesis was not true.  Many sciences would kill for experiments that would achieve this degree of significance.

Each ‘session’ lasted approx. four hours, and that is before the data has even been initially reduced.

            The above is a gross simplification of the time involved in this experimentation and all of the factors involved, but is gives you an idea.

The MIA experiments have to date had three published peer reviewed papers on this work in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research.

JSPR April 2001, JSPR June 2001, JSPR Jan 2004. 

If the hard protocol described, in the MIA series, is adhered to and any researcher follows the details of the experiment, this series of experiments is deemed repeatable and if done correctly we are confident that similar results would be achieved.   Everything of course hinges on the use of good mediums who are capable of undertaking this kind of work and, of course, unbiased experimenters.

Many scientists, including Dr Adrian Parker, have been persuaded that experiments which test for telepathy via the Ganzfield type of experiments have proved conclusively that telepathy (transference of information out with normally accepted means) exists.

Dr Rupert Sheldrake has conducted preliminary telephone telepathy experiments with, to date, small numbers of people, but already the statistics are proving to be significant.  Resulting from his rigorous experimentation with animals he has also had to conclude that there is strong evidence that there is a telepathic link between animals and their owners.  I have seen some of the experimental results and they are very impressive.  

Science is definitely beginning to marry itself into an understanding of the psychic element within man and animal kind.

For anyone of open mind to say that there has never been any reliable evidence of anything at all paranormal in the history of the world is simply ludicrous. They must have been fishing in the wrong pond.

Tricia Robertson

 

16 Comments
Alison
3/23/2014 10:39:09 pm

What a fantastic blog

Reply
Tricia
3/25/2014 01:07:47 am

Thank you. God only knows how I got into this.

Reply
Ciaran Dorris
4/1/2014 09:54:14 pm

Great to see you now have an online presence again, Tricia. And, well done to Alison for setting it up. Great stuff. According to the evidence.
Slainte.

Reply
Tricia
4/30/2014 01:24:09 am

And good to see you getting on with your own work too.!

Reply
Grahame link
4/29/2014 10:01:24 pm

Science, slowly but surely, is negating religious inculcated anti-paranormal prejudices we see all around us – it will take time. The Catholic Church took some 133 years to accept that Galileo’s scientific heliocentric observation of the solar system even when scientists could repeatedly prove the Church was wrong, the Church did not admit it was wrong until the rest of the world ridiculed the Church for its silly beliefs. We'll get there by hook or by crook, reinstalling the knowledge we once all had back in the day to the forefront of people's minds and with voices like Tricia's around it'll make the process a whole lot easier. Looking forward to reading more of Tricia's thoughts on this website soon!

Reply
Tricia
4/30/2014 01:29:39 am

The problem with the paranormal is that there are so many 'arms' to the whole thing. Survival alone has many ways of being looked at. As you know I only deal in evidence and in my second book I will be examining more avenues which, beyond any reasonable doubt must, show that survival is a fact. There really is no other reasonable explanation for the phenomena. You may hear the sound of me banging my head against a wall....

Reply
Mark Ireland link
4/30/2014 01:48:06 am

Tricia, Keep up the great work. There are so few scientists tackling this important area of inquiry, it makes your research that much more invaluable. And that you share your findings in a book written for the average person is extremely important. The paradigm shift may well start at the grass roots level, among lay-people and the resulting momentum created may well break the doors open in other areas, including academia.

Reply
Tricia
4/30/2014 02:41:07 am

I think that changes must come from grass root levels. The powers that be will pay no attention until large numbers demand it or the new ideas are so obvious that they will have no choice. hummmm...well there is still a flat Earth Society I believe!.

Reply
GUY LYON PLAYFAIR
4/30/2014 05:25:39 am

Good stuff, Tricia. As I would expect from you, facts, common sense and conclusions based on first hand experience. Just a couple of comments:

Rupert has done telephone telepathy tests with more than 'a small number of people' - several hundreds, if not thousands. See his web site for his latest (March 2014) paper in the ISLIS Journal.

On paradigm shifts, they are happening as it is generally realised that the so-called 'sceptics' are in fact fundamentalist materialists who are anything but sceptical about their own opinions, unlike true sceptics. Their attitude is entirely negative, so there is no point in engaging them in serious debate because they don't do serious debates. They remind me of the fire brigade in Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 whose job is not to put out fires, but to start them by burning books. The tide is turning and hopefully will eventually drown them.












Reply
Tricia
4/30/2014 07:06:56 pm

I do believe that the wind of change is blowing. Because of this the Anti-paranormal brigade are digging in their heels and upping their game to try to persuade the public that we are all deluded or untrustworthy. They are taking the offensive. We just have to hang in there and hopefully let the truth speak for itself.

Reply
Ronald Pearson link
5/2/2014 06:42:36 am

This reads as a highly commendable piece of truly scientific experimental research. If only established physics would open their minds this kind of study would be regarded as solid proof. Unfortunately physics is based now on several flawed theories that make hopelessly wrong predictions. To correct them they resort to ever greater absurdity. For example Michio-Kaku tells us, "You have to believe me when I tell you that not only do an infinite number of universes all exist in the same place but there are four different varieties of them". And then specifies that none can communicate with any other so no proof of their existence is posible. What is so daft is that this is precisely the definition of the paranormal! Yet you have proved at least one parallel universe can be accessed and this makes it a science taking it out of the paranormal box. Fact is nothing will be gained until the physicists and cosmologists wake up to the fact they are wrong. In fact my own theoretical work described on my website solves the major problems on which they are so badly stranded and shows how both our world and those of spirit could have been created by the ultimate reality. Unfortunately my efforts at enlightenment simply caused me to be branded MAVERICK with all journals told my work must not be published. I did mangage to get one peer-reviewed and published in the scientific journal Frontier Perspectives 1997 Spring/Summer edition under the title 'Consciouness as a Sub-Quantum Phenomenon pp 70-78.

Reply
Tricia
5/3/2014 03:27:25 am

Thank you Ron. I have been well aware of your work for many years. One day the truth will out. Let us all keep plugging. Incidentally there has been no real criticism of the work done by Robertson and Roy. Someone was griping about the way the statistics were set out, but quite frankly it would not matter how they were presented there was a large statistical difference in the acceptance levels of those intended as recipients even when they did not know that they were the intended recipients. Verbal responses, body language, visual clues were all removed from the experimentation...we didn't know if it would work...but it did.

Reply
Linda
8/24/2014 11:49:59 pm

Tricia Robertson, this was an amazing piece of work. I have been going over the study, and I have to admit it takes quite a lot of concentration to keep the numbers straight. :)
From what I have read, experiment design 1 was the experiment in which the Robertson-Roy protocol was used (where all the parties were blind as you describe above), and the rest of the experiments were variations to test various factors, and were not completely blind. In the preliminary experiment, you reported the average fraction of statements accepted as correct as the outcome. I was wondering if you had that information for experiment design 1 - the average fraction of statements accepted as correct for the two groups (recipients and non-recipients)? It would be helpful to know the effect of anomalous information alone on the accuracy of the mediumship readings, so it would be helpful to know what the results showed in the experiment performed under blind conditions. It looks like there were 10 sessions done under blind conditions, according to the breakdown of the 44 points remaining at the bottom of tables 4 and 5.

Thank you.

Reply
Tricia
9/23/2014 09:07:09 pm

Hi Linda. All experiments were blind, except the last one, where we allowed the medium concerned to enter the audience room and give a face to face reading to a person of their choosing. Often a medium would do better with a blind set.? The face to face acted as a kind of control. Where we 'fooled" the participants and the statements made were "made up' by the researchers , not one person ever accepted more than the average level of 0.30. I thought that was interesting. As you say...the stats can be complicated to understand.

Reply
Kathie
9/4/2018 07:49:00 am

Hi Tricia, Could you please name the mediums that you feel are honest for readings. Thank you.

Reply
Tricia link
9/5/2018 01:58:28 am

Katie can you email me at p.robertson97@hotmail.com.

Reply

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Tricia Robertson

    One of Britain's foremost psychical researchers and author of Things You Can do When You're Dead,  Is all about the evidence.  She invites you to ask a question or start a dialogue with her.

    Archives

    March 2020
    September 2018
    July 2017
    April 2017
    September 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    March 2016
    November 2015
    October 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    September 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.