Talk:Gustav Geley

Recent edits

yes - this revision doesn't suppress any skeptical information, but merely provides the whole story: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gustav_Geley&diff=636011686&oldid=636011604

In doing so, it offers a complete overview.

It seems to me that skeptics should, if they want to really "debunk" paranormal claims, allow the arguments for those claims to be expressed in full. That is more scientific than a mere one sided, dismissive approach.71.202.210.124 (talk) 19:55, 30 November 2014 (UTC)

You have not read Wikipedia policy on fringe theories WP:Fringe. Wikipedia does not give equal weight to fringe psychical views. You are citing psychical journals they are not considered reliable and you have copied junks and junks of material from various books, you can do this within reason but not loads and loads to clog up the article and especially not loads of material copied from other articles. But more importantly you are Steigmann/Blastikus a perm banned user from Wikipedia. And you said here months in your own words you wouldn't be coming back:

• Blastikus (talk · contribs)
• 67.188.88.161 (talk · contribs) (on this IP you said you would not be continuing to edit Wikipedia and you admitted to being the perm banned user Blastikus (Steigmann), amongst other IPS). [1]
• 98.210.147.182 (talk · contribs) (You were arguing on Dean Radin's talk-page)
• 198.189.184.243 (talk · contribs) (you were topic-banned on this university IP)
• Pottinger's cats (talk · contribs) (Another of your users which you confessed to owning on 67.118)
• Your other confirmed sock puppets

You have used Wikiversity here Steigmann Sources where you have complained about Wikipedia parapsychology pages and attacking various editors, and on your wikiversity page you have posted libel about me. Please don't deny being this person most of the sources you just put onto the Geley article were copied straight from your own Wikiversity page! Your writing style and referencing is also exactly the same. How do you respond to all of this? Do you want to be banned again? You are honestly wasting your time my friend. Goblin Face (talk) 20:27, 30 November 2014 (UTC)

This was an experiment in showing how if you allow the full spectrum of sources to be represented (notice no skeptical sources are suppressed), then these claims you go around "debunking" can resist your debunking attempts. A debate with your friend here goes into further detail about this: https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=10152575813503218&id=295503008217

I did not expect my revisions to survive the crusade that you are engaging in here.

I have zero interest in libeling you, and actually I appreciate much of your knowledge in this - my only concern is that you are using wikipedia fringe guidelines as an excuse to wage war on a subject you personally despise (and I have found occasional misrepresentations in your edits, misrepresentation is a tradition going way back to earlier rationalist critics who also wanted to wage war on this). If you allowed the full spectrum of sources to be used, and primary sources to refute secondary sources, then your crusade would be more untenable, however, actual science might be accomplished in this area.71.202.210.124 (talk) 21:17, 30 November 2014 (UTC)

The fringe material you add will just be reverted because it is not in line with Wikipedia policy, you have been told this many times but the bannings do not seem to get through to you. Please go to the Wikipedia administrator board if you want this confirmed, this is not my opinion or just me picking on you. On Wikiversity you can add anything you want it seems, they do not have that fringe policy over there and they have no problem with your edits. I have no interest in debating this topic with you because Wikipedia is not a forum for this - but note that I have nothing against you or your edits on other websites, just don't bring it over here because it causes trouble as seen by the countless disputes you have gotten into on here. But one thing I will say though it that the Society for Psychical Research are bringing out their own encyclopedia in opposition to Wikipedia. Get involved with that. They believe in all kinds of paranormal stuff despite many of the early investigators exposing fraud. They will write all their articles in favor of paranormal POV and most of the critical or skeptical stuff will be ignored. It seems my username is regularly attacked on various paranormal blogs forums or facebook by paranormal believers, and you think my edits are biased. As explained at WP:ABIAS, Wikipedia is a mainstream encyclopedia that heavily sides with mainstream science. If you want Wikipedia editors to be writing articles supportive of the paranormal then you need to create your own Wikipedia. You are in the wrong place. Goblin Face (talk) 21:41, 30 November 2014 (UTC)

I have nothing against you either, its just that it appears that sometimes you modify antagonist sources to make them appear more antagonist then they are. Given wikipedia policy, my only request is that you accurately cite antagonist sources. On the Facebook debate I linked to, there is some evidence supporting my grievances. I could privately contact you with examples - hopefully you could fix them, and then improve wikipedia's integrity, and dissuade a source of attack on its coverage of this. This action would only be of interest to and beneficial to yourself and this project. For instance, on the Geley page, the claim of fraud that I challenged states that Lambert discovered fraud but that Osty concealed it, whereas the original source (which I challenged) states that Osty told the information to Lambert, and wanted to further publicize the discovery, but thatJean Meyer and others prevented this. There are other examples in these negative edits where it is made to appear that things were more fraudulent then they actually were. If you fix this and other such examples I would be willing to redact any and all attacks I have made against you - I merely request that all literature is cited correctly.

I have a great deal of respect for much of what you have put up here. I also have nothing against censoring critical material but I believe that by allowing for the full spectrum of material to be shared, a case can be made in some cases that supersedes the objections. Much of this skeptical material adds much of value - for instance - David Marks' book offers a major assault on Uri Geller that makes it difficult to support him, but he is tendentious on the Ganzfeld experiment, and his issues with this have been addressed in other literature. You are correct about early investigations exposing fraud but in some cases the presumption of fraud can be challenged - in some cases it is not exposure at all as shown by Anita Gregory with the Vinton and Pzibriam attacks on the Schneiders (you have added extra critical material on Willi Schneider regarding a "faked cloth phantom" that if true, is commendable for you to have brought to attention, though there is direct positive opposite evidence like this that is of such weight as to inspire skepticism of the attacks). Some of these "exposures" are merely strategies for political materialism as shown here. I could offer you in private correspondence a point by point rebuttal to your DD Home article - some material on the FB debate opens up the possibility that this could happen. Etc.

You will notice that in my edits I censored no critical material (many proponents do this, but I am interested in objectivity, rather than "believer" vs "skeptic" idiocy). In SPR pages, I would make sure that critical material is put in as well, though in some cases it can be refuted. You seem to have your mind made up that this is not the case, I would be interested in debating you over the coming months off this site provided that there is no acrimonious exchange - the wikiversity material is just a nucleus of material I have subsequently acquired. I have promised to redact some of my attacks on you, and since our last exchange, I have redacted more misguided aspects of some of the previous perspectives on unrelated things I wrote.

I am blocked, not banned on wikipedia. However, you are correct that wikipedia is not supportive of my intent on it. I would be interested in exchanges elsewhere, though as I said, my intent with this was to show that the skeptical literature is not as comprehensive as its adherents suppose, and in some cases is deeply misguided.71.202.210.124 (talk) 23:51, 30 November 2014 (UTC)

The problem is that the apparent "rebuttals" from psychical researchers or proponents of the paranormal (if I can label them that) that you have cited are mostly from fringe-related paranormal books or psychic journals like the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) or Journal of Parapsychology; they are not considered reliable sources on Wikipedia for a number of reasons. It would be fair to cite maybe one or two of these "paranormal" books on these articles, nobody is objecting there, but not mass undue weight because the mainstream view on this topic is that these old mediums were fraudulent and there is a wealth of evidence from mainstream literature that supports this going back years from writers like John W. Truesdell, Stuart Cumberland, Harry Houdini, Joseph McCabe, Joseph Jastrow, John Mulholland (Beware Familiar Spirits) to more recent like Milbourne Christopher, Georgess McHargue, Ronald Pearsall (Table-Rappers), Joe Nickell or Massimo Polidoro.

The criticisms you have of these researchers above are published in the SPR journal but the SPR, it is not a mainstream scientific journal, or one that is deemed academically credible by the scientific community and a lot of stuff published in the journal that is credulous without any proper peer-review system and the journal even contradicts itself due to different authors with different motives and no corporate opinion. For example you get papers in the SPR journal claiming Eva C or Eusapia Palladino were blatant frauds (they were) - whilst others (spiritualists members of the SPR) denied it. Both James Alcock and Victor J. Stenger have described the journal in some cases as endorsing pseudoscience or having a religious agenda i.e. bias for the paranormal. There are already a lot of SPR journal cites on Wikipedia but they are slowly being removed, unless of course they can be backed up with a reliable secondary sources.

In response to the Gustav Geley suppression of fraudulent mediumship photographs, this was originally mentioned by Rudolf Lambert. Dr. Geley's Reports on the Medium Eva C. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research. Volume 37 (1954), pp. 380-386. But we have a reliable source that discusses this paper here [2] by scholar Sofie Lachapelle. The apparent rebuttal that you added was Mary Rose Barrington. Kluski and Geley: Further Case for the Defence. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research. Volume 60 (1994), pp. 104-106. Barrington is a well known spiritualist (Richard Wiseman has heavily criticized her ideas about Eusapia Palladino). But the main point is that there is no reliable third party references that discuss her paper and as it is a minority fringe viewpoint (and a strange viewpoint I may add), no equal weight is needed on it. As for correcting errors you believe Wikipedia editors have made, you will honestly need to do this yourself if you believe there is a problem. As you seem to have access to many different IPs - I am sure you could easily add or 'correct' stuff quietly from an account and remain undetected, lol. I believe you have already been doing this on other subjects. It is not my mission to follow you around or report you. Unfortunately many of these paranormal related articles have low-traffic. Good luck to whatever you are doing but I will not be further corresponding on this page as Wikipedia talk-pages are not to be used as forums and this has gotten off-topic. If I want to communicate with you, it will be off-this website in private. I may do this in the future regarding D. D. Home only, but not right now. I am not doing much more editing on this website. Cheers. Goblin Face (talk) 01:06, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

All right this is the last thing I'll post on here - asin many ways this was written for the purpose of getting your audience - I gave you the Facebook link, and from there you can private message me. I'll probably send an email on that issue to many people including yourself. The rebuttals were not limited to the Barrington item, but that is an aside. Some mainstream literature challenges the idea that these mediums were fraudulent - e.g. - the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography on Home, linked to in the Facebook debate, which references the skeptical literature in the bibliography. The New York times review of Oliver Lodge's "Raymond"is also in conflict with skeptic sources [3], Dingwall has been cited on wikipedia articles, he wrote of Leonard in opposition to the attacks (This is in his book "The Unknown, is it nearer", excerpted here [4] - and when reliable sources say something positive about a fringe proponent, I see no reason why they should not be included, we don't need to have character assassination pages. For instance, see the following, on p. 14, showing that Oliver Lodge wasn't the total pariah among his colleagues his critics make him out to be: [5]

As regards Eusapia Palladino, this is not as important as others to debate - proponents have always claimed that some of her phenomena were genuine (for an informed counter to the Wikipedia position, see the relevant chapter in Alan Gauld's "The Founders of Psychical Research") - Camille Flammarion did not expose a performance of her's as "fraudulent throughout" with Antionadi - the Antionadi exposure was contradicted by Armelin regarding the same Seance [6], and Flammarion wrote of other fraud by Eusapia in "Mysterious Psychic Forces", though his position was that much of Palladino's phenomena were genuine. Similarly d'Arsonval and his colleagues had mixed observations of Palladino - not totally negative observations - see this. Even Dingwall, who is cited as having totally negative views of Palladino, had mixed views - read his "The Unknown. Is it Nearer?" and his full commentary in very peculiar people - see also this academic article on him.

Wiseman's position was likewise controverted - looking at the primary sources is the only way to really understand this though. Many of these writers wrote of unconscious fraud and hysteria in connection with these mediums, so this is complicated terrain. There are other things - I could not find support for the statement as regards Theodore Lipps and Palladino in the cited American Review of Reviews article by Jastrow [7]. It does however exist in Schrenck-Notzing's book [8], though on the next page Schrenck-Notzing also wrote of magicians who supported Palladino - the wikipedia article claims that Howard Thurston, prior to encountering Palladino, was a convinced spiritualist, though this is not supported by the source given. Some of the sources are unreliable - the references for the secret life of Houdini are online - that book claims that Richet and Lombroso had sexual relations with Palladino - the sources that book gives do not support the claim - it a sensationalist text - you can independently verify this.

The statement as regards Dessoir and Moll does exist in Jastrow's commentary, however, Morselli's Psicologia e Spiritismo states in its annotated bibliography, Vol. 1, p. 163: "Dessoir Max, Sulla E. P., in " Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger „, ottobre 1903. Riferisce in una conferenza, su cinque sedute con la E. P. accusandola di ciarlataneria. Bormann Walter, in "Uebersinnliche Welt „, Berlino, ottobre 1903. Difende la E. P. contro le accuse del Dessoir, dimostrando che egli non ha saputo sperimentare, ne è riuscito a scoprire, tanto meno a dimostrare le frodi denunziate." (modified wikipedia formatting)

Morselli was actually a skeptic who was converted by Palladino - see this mainstream article on that. Maxwell's "Metapsychical Phenomena" contains the statement, on pp. 93-94, "I have frequently observed this phenomenon with Eusapia Paladino under satisfactory conditions of light and other tests. She has given me several unimpeachable examples of parakinetic levitation, and, I repeat, in full light. A detailed report will be found in the accounts of seances at l'Agnelas, published in 1896 in the Annales des Sciences Psychiques. (spacing) These accounts, however, give only the physiognomy of the regular seances. We sometimes improvised experiments in the afternoon with striking results ; and I remember having observed under these conditions a very interesting levitation. It was, I think, at about five o'clock in the afternoon; at all events it was broad daylight in the drawing-room at l'Agnelas. We were standing around the table; Eusapia took my hand and held it in her left, resting her hand on the right-hand corner of the table. The table was raised to the level of our foreheads; that is to say, the top of the table was raised to a height of about five feet from the floor. (spacing) Experiences like this are very convincing. It was utterly impossible for Eusapia, given the conditions of the experiment, to have lifted the table by normal means. One has but to consider, that she touched only the corner of the table to realise what a heavy weight she would have had to raise had she done so by muscular effort. Moreover, she had no hold whatsoever of the table. And, given the conditions under which the phenomenon occurred, she could not have had recourse to any of the means suggested by her critics, such as straps or hooks of some kind." And as regards Palladino, this mainstream article is especially important.

As regards Eva C she is an obvious fraud unless you read the primary sources, but this is not something that can be resolved on wikipedia. Simeon Edmunds gives a biased overview of Dingwall's position - see Eric Dingwall. The Hypothesis of Fraud. Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research. Volume 32 (1922), pp. 309-331 - in that article he stated - "...it may be thought that the case against the phenomena is so strong that the subject may be at once dismissed. Such a standpoint would in my opinion be entirely mistaken and would show clearly that its supporter had not the smallest appreciation of the difficulties..." - he also refuted the skeptic view that Juliette Bisson was a it is interesting to also read Albert von Schrenck-Notzing. Concerning The Possibility Of Deception In Sittings With Eva C. Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research. Volume 33 (1923), pp. 665-672. Charles Richet also and noted corroboration from Dingwall, writing, in "Thirty Years of Psychical Research": "The official reports of the séances lead to very distinct inferences; it seems that though the external conditions were unfavourable to success, some results were very clear and that it is impossible to refer the phenomena to fraud. Nevertheless, our learned colleagues of the SPR came to no conclusion. They admit that the only possible trickery is regurgitation. But what is meant by that? How can masses of mobile substance, organised as hands, faces and drawings be made to emerge from the oesophagus or the stomach? No physiologist would admit such power to contract those organs at will in this manner. How, when the medium's hands are tied and held could papers be unfolded, put away and made to pass, through a veil? The members of the SPR, when they fail to understand, say 'It is difficult to understand how this is produced.' Mr. Dingwall, who is an expert in legerdemain, having seen the ectoplasm emerge as a miniature hand, making signs before disappearing, says 'I attach no importance to this.' We may be permitted to remark that very great importance attaches to Mr. Dingwall's testimony."

and as regards the original Schrenck-Notzing researches, I cite in the revised edit page numbers of his book that conflict with hostile sources. As regards earlier controversies, both the attacks and counters were in the literature of psychical researchers that I cited. You probably "already know" the facts about this, but investigation of the original sources should at least inspire the attitude Dingwall discussed above.

I would really like you to improve the Eusapia article as you did the Home article, but in the Home article, there is an error - Simeon Edmunds is cited to claim that the SPR accordion is a duplicate. I bought the book, I don't have it on me, but I explicitly remember it claiming that the accordion is the one William Crookes had. Barry Wiley is cited to claim that Home never used full light, he stated that Home "virtually never" used full light, though again, this is contradicted by Dingwall [9]. Eric Dingwall, in Zetetic Scholar, 12/13, pp. 154-159, countered some of Trevor Hall's views of Home, and this is the best place to start. I do not have a positive view of Dingwall (but this is not for his skeptical attitude), going into that is beyond the scope of this, but it is noteworthy that there is some dissent from a person who skeptics rely on. As an aside, Wiley's book p. 35, states, "the prominent American illusionist Harry Kellar, while appearing in Calcutta in 1882, admitted he had been baffled by the mediumistic effects and levitation of the English medium William Eglinton[12]. Eglinton was exposed as a fraud several year later." But examination of thesource reveals misrepresentation in the wikipedia article. Footnote 12 - occurs on p. 207 of Wiley's book - from it we read that the source cited is: Harry Kellar, A Magician's Tour (Chicago: Donohue, Henneberry, 1891), pp. 168-172 - as cited, this does not demonstrate that the levitations were fraudulent tricks. On p. 173 of the text cited, it is revealed that though Kellar was able to reproduce other phenomena (though there is the statement that Kellar "makes no claim to performing the tricks by the same means Mr. Eglinton used"), he never was able to account for the Levitation, which, on p. 171, he describes the baffling nature of. See here for the source cited: [10]

I am not here to defend Eglinton aside from that, but attacks can be overbroad and misleading.

As to some of the critics like Alcock notable work in the mainstream literature has attacked them[11] - see also Palmer's dispute with him in the Zetetic Scholar and the famous late 1980s debate where he contributed the article "Parapsychology: Science of the Anomalous or Search for the soul"- he never adequately addressed the first attack I linked to. Jessica Utts is attacked in the article on her - but she - in a mainstream article and her rejoinder to critics[12][13], argued that there were severe problems with the position of her propnents that informed the mainstream view, and noted that while the NRC rejected parapsychology, the Office of Technology Assessment came to different conclusions. Recent literature in mainstream journals has challenged in detail some of the rationale for rejection that wikipedia promotes - see this.

On a related note, some of the attacks on parapsychologists make it look as if fraud was committed when it wasn't - for instance, the Stargate and remote viewing articles say - with the bolded part omitted - of the AIR report concludions: "remote viewers and project managers reported that remote viewing reports were changed to make them consistent with know background cues. While this was appropriate in that situation, it makes it impossible to interpret the role of the paranormal phenomena independently. Also, it raises some doubts about some well-publicized cases of dramatic hits, which, if taken at face value, could not easily be attributed to background cues. In at least some of these cases, there is reason to suspect, based on both subsequent investigations and the viewers' statement that reports had been "changed" by previous program managers, that substantially more background information was available than one might at first assume." - without my disputing this, notice the difference between that (with the bolded commentary) and what is written in the article. If there are any other examples of this you are aware of, my request is that you fix them.

As of now, the NSF is in opposition to parapsychology, so little can be done to change this - even though independent surveys and public opinion (even educated public opinion) are in opposition to that position - though the NSF position is the basis for wikipedia's attitude - the best parapsychologists can do is attempt to overcome the negative attitude of the NSF rather than Wikipedia. The article WP:ABIAS was useful in helping me realize that.

You are correct, this is not a forum, so I won't say much more - as I am not wanted here, there is little need in responding, as I won't be responding, though I hope you have read what has been given. I will just say, in closing, that the view parapsychology is a pseudoscience is not shared by all skeptical attackers. See for instance Chris French, who wrote of modern parapsychology - “what is the scientific status of parapsychology? Is it really a science or simply a pseudoscience posing as true science? How does it measure up against some of the most commonly presented indicators of pseudoscience? Marie-Catherine Mosseau (2003b) adopted an empirical approach in addressing this question. She compared the contents of a sample of mainstream journals, such as Molecular and Optical Physics and the British Journal of Psychology, with the contents of a sample of 'fringe' journals, such as the Journal of Parapsychology and the Journal of Scientific Exploration. Contrary to what the critics of parapsychology might have expected, the 'fringe' journals came out rather well from the comparison. For example, unlike many pseudosciences, parapsychology does not have a greater emphasis on confirmation in contrast to refutation. In fact, she found that 'almost half of the fringe articles report a negative outcome (disconfirmation). By contrast, no report of a negative result has been found in my sample of mainstream journals' (Mosseau, 2003b, p. 274). There was also little evidence of 'an unchanging body of belief' in parapsychology with 17% of the 'fringe' articles dealing with theory and proposing new hypotheses.

Was there evidence of an 'excessive reliance on anecdotal and testimonial evidence to substantiate claims' as seen in other pseudosciences? No. '43% of articles deal with empirical matters and almost one-fourth report laboratory experiments' (Mosseau, 2003b, p. 273). Was there an 'absence of self-correction'? No. Parapsychology seems to score higher on this criterion than mainstream sciences: '29% of the fringe journal articles ... discuss progress of research, problems encountered, epistemological issues. This kind of article is completely absent from the mainstream sample' (p. 275). What about connections to other fields of research? Mosseau (2003b) found that over a third of citations in fringe journals were of articles in mainstream science journals. In contrast, mainstream science articles overwhelmingly cited articles in the same field (90% of the time in the sample as a whole but 99% in the physics journals).

Similar results were found by Mosseau (2003b) with respect to a number of other commonly presented criteria of of pseudoscience. Parapsychology fell a little short of some of them but often appeared to do rather better than mainstream science on some others. It would therefore appear to be unjustified to classify parapsychology as a pseudoscience. The main point is that science, however we may define it, is not an established body of certain facts; it is a method for approaching the truth. Parapsychology, at its best, appears to adhere to scientific methodology and therefore there is little reason to dismiss it as a pseudoscience. It should be noted that this is probably a minority view among critics of parapsychology. It may appear to be slightly odd for us to be arguing that parapsychology is a legitimate science when it is clear from the other chapters in this book that we ourselves are far from convinced that paranormal forces even exist. However, in terms of the most commonly presented indicators of science and pseudoscience, this appears to us to be the correct verdict." (Christopher C. French and Anna Stone, Anomalistic Psychology: Exploring Paranormal Belief and Experience, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. pp. 254-255)Ben Steigmann (talk) 04:18, 1 December 2014 (UTC)