This Just In!!! Ten Year Old News!

Have you ever tried to explain to anyone how the bad the media is at getting out the truth? Have you been met with glazed eyes and skeptical stares? Here is an interesting example of the media's lack of interest in the truth: I am writing a book and in the process, I needed to discover some facts about research into psychic abilities. My scant knowledge, like most people's went something like this: A lot of people believe that psychic abilities might be true, but it has never been proven. Some studies have been done, but their accuracy has always been in question. That's where I started. A quick check of the web showed promising studies here and there, but also a lot of criticism. Finally, my research directed me to a book whose main purpose was examining the scientific evidence of psychic research. I found the book at the library and checked it out. The title is: "The Conscious Universe: The Scientific Truth of Psychic Phenomena." By Dean Radin. http://www.amazon.com/Conscious-Universe-Scientific-Psychic-Phenomena/dp/0062515020 What did I find? Psychic abilities have been proven to exist as surely as any scientific phenomenon can be proven. Studies have been grouped together, meta analysis done and odds against chance have been established in some cases at a million billion to one. This means that any controversy you read about; any statements that psychic abilities do not exist are in direct contradiction to the scientific facts. The accumulation of evidence in pursuit of this single question spans over a century and literally hundreds of studies. All criticisms have been answered and the sheer volume of data leaves out any reasonable chance of failure. Once the data was accumulated and examined, instead of being dealt with piecemeal, the answer became very clear: Psychic abilities 1 Skepticism 0. All statements to the contrary are flat out wrong. As if that weren't enough, this information has been available for over ten years. What is truly remarkable about this is that this is really important information. It has an impact on every branch of science and in particular, physics. How come nobody knows about this? The answer lies in the way that traditional media address such issues. Parapsychological research is complicated and ordinary problems in testing are blown out of proportion by skeptics. To get to the truth requires sifting through a mountain of studies and meta-analysis; it requires examining the criticisms leveled against the studies and then seeing how this was dealt with in following studies. You have to know about the file drawer problem and follow the analysis of studies that were flawed to find out if the flaw affected the study. You have to deal with statistical terms such as confidence levels and odds against chance. The complexity of this issue is similar to other, more pressing issues, the difference being that parapsychological studies carry no political weight and traditional media has no financial interests at stake either way. It's a perfect example of the media simply blowing off an entire field of study because it's too much trouble to learn the truth, no matter how important it might be to society. It's turned into a cheap horse race with parapsychologists on one side and the skeptics on the other. Both sides give their opinions and the issue is presented as unsettled. So the next time you run into someone who has absolute faith in the media, spring this one on them. Have a bag of popcorn and watch the cognitive dissonance make their eyes roll back in their heads.