Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit (APRU) Invited Speaker Series
By Mark Williams
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Podcast Description
The Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit (APRU) at Goldsmiths, University of London (www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/?apru) is one of only a few academic research centres to examine weird science. From ghosts and telepathy to memory and perception, the APRU investigates ostensibly paranormal experiences, replying on psychology and physics to provide rational, plausible explanations for unusual phenomena. These are presentations from the APRU Invited Speaker Series.
| Name | Description | Released | Price | ||
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1 |
Dr Rupert Sheldrake: The Science Delusion: Freeing the Spirit of Enquiry | The science delusion is the belief that science already understands the nature of reality in principle, leaving only the details to be filled in. Modern science is based on ten fundamental assumptions that have hardened into dogmas. Rupert Sheldrake argues that when these dogmas are turned into questions, in the spirit of scientific scepticism, many new lines of scientific enquiry become possible. Questions include: “Is the mind confined to the brain?” and “Is the total amount of matter and energy always the same?” http://www.gold.ac.uk/apru/lectures and http://skeptic.org.uk/archive | 7 2 12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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2 |
Prof Amina Memon: Making the best use of video identification parades and meeting the needs of vulnerable witnesses | Eyewitness identification decisions from 1,039 real lineups conducted in England in 2009-10 were analyzed. Identification procedures have undergone dramatic change in the United Kingdom over recent years. Video lineups are now standard procedure, in which each lineup member is seen sequentially. The whole lineup is seen twice before the witness can make a decision, and the witness can request additional viewings of the lineup. Consistent with prior field studies using live parades, the suspect identification rate was 39%, the filler identification rate was 26%, and the lineup rejection rate was 35%. Repeated viewing was strongly associated with increased filler identification rates, suggesting that witnesses who requested additional viewings were more willing to guess. Factors associated with lineup outcomes such as the age difference between the suspect and the witness, the type of crime committed, and delay will be briefly discussed. Finally, Prof Memon present proposed changes to the guidance on the conduct of identification parades funded by an ESRC funded knowledge transfer grant. http://www.gold.ac.uk/apru/lectures and http://skeptic.org.uk/archive | 29 11 11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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3 |
Dr David Barrett: The Church of Scientology – a Scientific or an Esoteric Religion? | The Church of Scientology claims to be based on scientific principles but actually bears a considerable resemblance to esoteric, Hermetic and Gnostic religious movements. David Barrett will explore these similarities, while also examining Dianetics as a form of psychotherapy, and looking into why people join and stay in “cults”, touching on the myth of “brainwashing”. He will also look at the use of popular culture in new religions, and discuss assorted deceptions common to many esoteric religions, including the self-creation of the mythology of a guru – and just how big the Church of Scientology really is. This illustrated talk ranges from psychology to science fiction to superman, with just a hint of magick... http://www.gold.ac.uk/apru/lectures and http://skeptic.org.uk/archive | 18 10 11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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4 |
Dr David Clarke: The Angel of Mons and Other Wartime Legends | The Angels of Mons were once described by the eminent historian A.J.P. Taylor as “the greatest wartime mystery of the 20th century.” Two weeks after the outbreak of the First World War a force of 30,000 crack British troops became trapped and surrounded in the Belgian town of Mons by a massive German Army three times as strong. But at the very moment they expected to be annihilated the German attack was suddenly halted, allowing the British force to escape to fight another day. On the Home Front the escape of the British Expeditionary Force was proclaimed as “a miracle” by patriotic newspapers whose readers believed the Germans had been stopped not by armed force but by supernatural forces – angels and phantom bowmen led by the English patron saint, St George. During the remainder of the war soldiers and nurses came forward to claim they had personally witnessed the miracle at Mons. The legend captured the imagination of thousands across the world, brought hope to those who had lost loved ones on the Western Front and was resurrected again to inspire a new generation following the retreat from Dunkirk in 1940. But was the story fact or fiction? For his 2004 book The Angels of Mons, David set out to discover the truth using contemporary documents from the Great War along with original accounts left by soldiers and the Red Cross nurses. For this talk he will answer this question: did the legend have any basis in reality, or was it, as Radio 4 claim, “the first urban myth”? http://www.gold.ac.uk/apru/lectures and http://skeptic.org.uk/archive | 15 3 11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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5 |
Dr Paul Rogers: Paranormal Belief and the Misperception of Coincidental Events | Numerous studies have shown paranormal believers are prone to various cognitive deficits including a poorer understanding of probability, randomness and coincidence. The current talk discusses three recent studies which have explored paranormal believers’ tendency to misperceive coincidental events. Study 1 examines believer versus non-believer differences in the tendency to misperceive two co-occurring (‘conjunct’) events as being more likely than two singular (‘constituent’) events alone; the so-called ‘conjunction fallacy’. As expected, believers made more conjunction errors than non-believers for both paranormal and non-paranormal events. Study 2 extends this work by examining believer versus non-believer differences in conjunction biases given variation in the temporal relationship (co-occurring vs. disjointed) and level of surprise associated with the two constituent events. Surprisingly, believers’ tendency towards more conjunctive biases was unrelated to these factors. Finally, Study 3 examines the extent to which paranormal and non-paranormal causal attributions (to explain a predicted plane crash) are influenced by the implied context of the prediction and/or the vividness and size of the crash itself. All three factors impacted on believers’ attributions to some extent. Results of these three studies are discussed in relation to the ‘probability misunderstanding’ as well as the more general ‘cognitive deficits’ models of paranormal belief. http://www.gold.ac.uk/apru/lectures and http://skeptic.org.uk/archive | 1 1 11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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6 |
Dr Daniela Rudloff: Mental 'Short-Cuts' - The Good, the Bad and the Ugly | Can we trust our eyes? Why does a footballer’s performance usually drop right after they’ve been sold to a high-paying football club? What exactly is “anchoring”, and why are we doing it on dry land? Daniela Rudloff will answer these and other questions by giving an introduction to the everyday mental shortcuts and biases we often employ, arguing that even though they might be misleading, they are also necessary – and almost impossible to avoid. http://www.gold.ac.uk/apru/lectures and http://skeptic.org.uk/archive | 23 11 10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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7 |
Dr Simon Dein: A Messiah from the Dead: What Really Happens When Prophecy Fails | What really happens when a prophecy fails? In this talk I examine the response to disconfirmation of prophecy among the ultra Orthodox Lubavitch Hasidim. In 1994 the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Schneerson, died leaving no successor. For many years his followers had maintained that he was Moshiach – the Jewish Messiah – and would usher in the Redemption. After his death Lubavitch divided into two opposing groups. While some messianists hold that the Rebbe died but is to be resurrected as the messiah, others hold that he is still alive, but concealed. The anti-messianists maintain that the Rebbe could have been Moshiach if God had willed it, but they disagree vehemently that as such he could come back from the dead. I will present a social-psychological account of Lubavitcher messianism using ethnographic data obtained through twenty years of fieldwork in the UK and in the USA. I move beyond the typical emphasis on cognitive dissonance (Festinger) to examine the role of rhetoric, religious experience and ritual in maintaining counterintuitive convictions. http://www.gold.ac.uk/apru/lectures and http://skeptic.org.uk/archive | 16 11 10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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8 |
Deborah Hyde: Demons and nightmares: Why do People Believe in the Malign Supernatural? | Deborah’s talk is on the cultural and physiological aspects of the religious and superstitious experience and she’ll answer such questions as: When do the dead chew in their graves? Why do vampires strike in autumn? Why do ghosts live in electric clocks? http://www.gold.ac.uk/apru/lectures and http://skeptic.org.uk/archive | 26 10 10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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9 |
Dr Sam Parnia: Near Death Experiences During Cardiac Arrest | One of the subjects that has both captivated and eluded humankind throughout time is the mystery of what happens when we die. Although traditionally a subject for philosophical or theological debate, scientific progress has begun to shed light on both the physiological as well as cognitive processes such as near death experiences that take place during clinical death. Dr. Sam Parnia, author of What Happens When We Die, chronicles the history and development of the study of cardiac arrest as well as near death experiences. At the same time, he will introduce the novel method he and his colleagues have devised to study the phenomenon of consciousness and the human mind at the end of life, which they hope will finally enable science to resolve the mystery of near death experiences. http://www.gold.ac.uk/apru/lectures and http://skeptic.org.uk/archive | 23 3 10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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10 |
Prof. Richard Wiseman: “Heads I Win, Tails You Lose”: How Parapsychologists Nullify Null Results | This talk explores how parapsychologists often explain away evidence against the existence of psi, examining how null findings are ignored during exploratory research, how chance results obtained during attempted replication are attributed to non psi-conducive procedures, how post hoc data mining is used to identify pockets of significant data in meta-analyses that have yielded null results, and how the eventual decline of any alleged effects are viewed as an inherent property of psi. It is argued that understanding and preventing these problems are central to resolving debates about the existence of psychic ability. http://www.gold.ac.uk/apru/lectures and http://skeptic.org.uk/archive | 16 3 10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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11 |
Dr Mark Vernon: Happiness: The Failure of a New Science | The new sciences of happiness are generating lots of advice on how to keep smiling. The results are even being explored by policy wonks. So why does so much of it – work less, say thanks, keep fit – sound so trite? If it were that easy, wouldn’t we all be happy by now? The reason is that a central and tricky question is being glossed over: just what is happiness? Moreover, how you try to promote happiness depends entirely on what you take happiness to be – and there’s a wealth of choice in that. The sadness is that this has all been considered before, though there seems to be widespread ignorance of the fact. It was Jeremy Bentham who set up the greatest happiness principle and in the very next generation, his godson and prodigy, John Stuart Mill, who ditched it. What Bentham hadn’t grasped is that if you go for happiness head on, you won’t find it. Happiness is a byproduct of life, not an organising principle. From this follows a devastating critique of the so-called measures of happiness: they rest on assessing the pleasure people experience, but of course life is far more than an increase of pleasure. A rich life of necessity will also include pain, perhaps very great pain. It’s also clear that there are no objective measures of happiness, but only correlations: brain scans rest first on what people say, to which the scan is linked, and what people say depends greatly on what you ask them in the first place. This is why other economists interested in wellbeing say the measures of happiness used today are far too immature to be used in policy decisions. The new science of happiness is actually doing us a profound disservice. Therein lies its failure. http://www.gold.ac.uk/apru/lectures and http://skeptic.org.uk/archive | 24 11 09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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12 |
Prof. Chris French: Something Wicked This Way Comes: Causes and Interpretations of Sleep Paralysis | This presentation will describe the phenomenon of sleep paralysis, including numerous first-person accounts. In its most basic form, sleep paralysis simply involves being half-awake and half-asleep and realising that, for a short time, one cannot move. This experience is very common with around 40% of the population reporting that they have experienced it. Around one in twenty people report having experienced terrifying hallucinations during their episodes of sleep paralysis. The underlying psychophysiological causes of the fascinating phenomenon will be described, as will the different interpretations of the experience cross-culturally. http://www.gold.ac.uk/apru/lectures and http://skeptic.org.uk/archive | 10 11 09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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13 |
Dr Rupert Sheldrake: Morphic Resonance, Collective Memory and the Habits of Nature | According to the hypothesis of formative causation, all self-organizing systems, including crystals, plants and animals contain an inherent memory, given by a process called morphic resonance from previous similar systems. All human beings draw upon a collective human memory, and in turn contribute to it. Even individual memory depends on morphic resonance rather than on physical memory traces stored within the brain. This hypothesis is testable experimentally and implies that the so-called laws of nature are more like habits. http://www.gold.ac.uk/apru/lectures and http://skeptic.org.uk/archive | 20 1 09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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14 |
Dr Susan Blackmore: Is God a Dangerous Meme? | God is certainly a meme; an idea (or set of loosely related ideas) that is copied from person to person, and shows a fascinating variety of survival tricks. Not only does the God meme satisfy minds that were not evolved to accurately assess the origins of the universe or the likelihood of life after death, but wraps itself up in religious memeplexes that use threats and promises to ensure their own propagation. But is it dangerous? Taking a memetic perspective we can ask how religious memes manage to infect so many people and how this infection affects individuals, societies, or indeed the whole planet. http://www.gold.ac.uk/apru/lectures and http://skeptic.org.uk/archive | 7 10 08 | Free | View In iTunes |
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15 |
Dr Dorothy Rowe: Why is that important to you? | We all like to think that we have chosen our beliefs for sensible, logical reasons, be they reasons associated with science or with a special relationship with God. However, the reasons behind our beliefs have more to do with how we see ourselves than with science, reason or God. This is why we cling to certain beliefs even when they are shown to have no basis in fact. http://www.gold.ac.uk/apru/lectures and http://skeptic.org.uk/archive | 18 3 08 | Free | View In iTunes |
| Total: 15 Episodes |
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