Do you have a link for that? That's very much different from how I understand the tests were undertaken, so I'd be very interested in reading about it.
Randi's the worst kind of enemy science can have, someone who violates every principle of scientific inquiry for the sake of his own dogma, while claiming to care about the integrity of science.
You're claiming that a professional magician is a bad scientist? He's an entertainer and not a trained scientist.
Here's a statement from Randi about the dog ESP:
“I over-stated my case for doubting the reality of dog ESP based on the small amount of data I obtained,” he wrote. “It was rash and improper of me to do so. I apologise sincerely.”[1]
Sounds like he's willing to revisit his initial claims. Has there been further evidence of dog esp that you're aware of?
As sincerely as when he said he'd replicated the experiment no doubt. And if he isn't capable of reproducing an experiment, what the frack was the prize supposedly for? I don't think he'd be capable of sincerity if he tried.
As for your other question, I saw a response Sheldrake posted about someone else's rebuttal stating that if the rebuttal's raw data were analysed the way his data was, it would have led to the same conclusion. That the attempt at replication looked at the first time the dog went to the window, rather than the average time it spent at the window. Don't have a link right now though.
Dog ESP is a pretty niche experiment though, I just brought it up because it's one of the more egregious lies Randi was caught in. If you're interested in psi data, there are much larger datasets with experiments into ganzfeld and skin conductivity precognition.
This came up in a group discussion of parapsychologists that I hang out with form time to time. Some of the top people in the world. I expect you could find it covered in the Journal of Parapsychology as a place to start looking.
There are many people doing experiments with independent replication. Both experiments that succeed and fail. We learn from both. Sadly people would rather dismiss such things as impossible dogma rather than learn new things on the leading edge of science.
Sadly, with that we can't know if it's actually something that occurred, an anecdote, or something conceived of to explain a failure or bias.
What does one do to qualify as one of the "top parapsychologists"? And how do you determine which bits are "the leading edge of science" and which are just bunk?
