Phil Parker On Wikipedia trying top get SMILE added

[c31]

Phil Parker has appeared on the Wikipedia talk page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:The_Lightning_Process#Recent_research_and_page_edits trying to get the SMILE trial added to the Lightening Process page. He is using the username Researchpsyc.

It should be noted that any reference to medical research must meet WP:MEDRS standards. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Identifying_reliable_sources_(medicine)

 

[Hip]

I like this comment on the Lightning Process talk page:

@Researchpsyc: Do you deny that you previously taught a course on alternative healing which taught the use of Tarot cards for medical diagnosis? The website https://web.archive.org/web/20070615014926/http://www.healinghawk.com/prospectushealing.htm might be old but is accurate. C7762 (talk) 10:49, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

 

[GreyOwl]

"If a client comes to you feeling they have been cursed, you may need additional information about their past lives in order to help them and this is where the use of tarot/medicine cards is beneficial."

Also dowsing.

 

[Wonko]

Also dowsing.

Nothing wrong with dowsing, hokum, but an entertaining way to spend 3 minutes, if you're six.

This doesn't mean I think "research" should be undertaken with the aim of replacing millions worth of medical imaging equipment by a small child, 2 biro outers (other plastic tubes may be available) and 1/3 of a metal coathanger

 

[c31]

on the Wikipedia talk page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:The_Lightning_Process#Recent_research_and_page_edits Parker is now trying to weasel his way out of the faith healing course he led describing it as

"exploration of other philosophies and perspectives, including how on earth the Shaolin monks manage to do what they do- stuff which I personally find fascinating"

when it clearly states it is a practical faith healing course.

 

[Wonko]

on the Wikipedia talk page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:The_Lightning_Process#Recent_research_and_page_edits Parker is now trying to weasel his way out of the faith healing course he led describing it as

"exploration of other philosophies and perspectives, including how on earth the Shaolin monks manage to do what they do- stuff which I personally find fascinating"

when it clearly states it is a practical faith healing course.

It's possible Shaolin monks practised, a bit, a bit more than, say, an LP practitioner does. I'm pretty confident, whilst not ever having been a Shaolin monk, that they don't each pay £2k and do LP in order to do what they did.

As I've said before, it's possible that someone involved in the LP publicity machine is making it up as they go along. (Okay that's not what I said before, but apparently I am not allowed to call people morons, especially when they are. Rules and whatnot.)

 

[AndyPR]

"exploration of other philosophies and perspectives, including how on earth the Shaolin monks manage to do what they do- stuff which I personally find fascinating"

What an idiot (PP not c31). If he's referring to the amazing physical feats that the Shaolin monks are capable of, like @Wonko points out, they train hard and for a long time, to my knowledge typically starting as children - maybe that was the inspiration for inflicting LP on kids in SMILE.

 

[Sean]

WARNING: Not for the faint of heart.

A monk demonstrating the true relationship between mind and matter.

 

[Jonathan Edwards]

Nothing wrong with dowsing, hokum, but an entertaining way to spend 3 minutes, if you're six.

No disrespect but dowsing actually works. At least with good length copper rods. I have done it over sewer pipes with my eyes shut and it was totally reliable. (We did it in a hospital car park and checked the water by lifting the manhole covers in the flower beds once we had located them - in medical student days.) I assume it is something to do with electromagnetic induction. Not sure how hazel twigs work though. And I don't think it picks up Lyme disease very well.

 

[adreno]

Incredible that Crawley has no issues with associating herself with this rabble. I wish the guardian would write about that.

 

[Esther12]

No disrespect but dowsing actually works. At least with good length copper rods. I have done it over sewer pipes with my eyes shut and it was totally reliable. (We did it in a hospital car park and checked the water by lifting the manhole covers in the flower beds once we had located them - in medical student days.) I assume it is something to do with electromagnetic induction. Not sure how hazel twigs work though. And I don't think it picks up Lyme disease very well.

David Marks from Journal of Helath Psycholoigy would disagree... he used it as an example of debumnked paranormal claims: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v320/n6058/abs/320119a0.html?foxtrotcallback=true

Was their drinking involved in this medical students' experiment?

 

[Jonathan Edwards]

David Marks from Journal of Helath Psycholoigy would disagree... he used it as an example of debumnked paranormal claims: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v320/n6058/abs/320119a0.html?foxtrotcallback=true

Was their drinking involved in this medical students' experiment?

No, no drinking. My co-student Jerry Marsden (not of the Pacemakers) had heard that it did in fact work but that to get reliable results you needed 50cm copper rods with 10cm right angle bend bases that would rotate freely in sheaths held in the vertical fist. He bought some copper and fashioned the rods and we went round to the Radcliffe Infirmary after we had finished in clinic. I think Jerry had already been amazed to find it worked but he got me to try. I walked around with the rods swinging freely forwards in parallel. You have to get the angle just right so that they lie forward but will swing at the slightest sideways force. For about fifty yards nothing happened and then suddenly they both went sharp left. On inspection we found manholes with water filled pipes on either side of where I had walked. We did it half a dozen more times or so and it was totally reliable. Having proved the point the copper then got used for gardening purposes. You should try it. It is quite a party trick.

 

[Esther12]

No, no drinking. My co-student Jerry Marsden (not of the Pacemakers) had heard that it did in fact work but that to get reliable results you needed 50cm copper rods with 10cm right angle bend bases that would rotate freely in sheaths held in the vertical fist. He bought some copper and fashioned the rods and we went round to the Radcliffe Infirmary after we had finished in clinic. I think Jerry had already been amazed to find it worked but he got me to try. I walked around with the rods swinging freely forwards in parallel. You have to get the angle just right so that they lie forward but will swing at the slightest sideways force. For about fifty yards nothing happened and then suddenly they both went sharp left. On inspection we found manholes with water filled pipes on either side of where I had walked. We did it half a dozen more times or so and it was totally reliable. Having proved the point the copper then got used for gardening purposes. You should try it. It is quite a party trick.

I'm more than a little suspicious.... guess we'd need to know how many water pipes were around when they didn't cross!

It sounds like the sort of thing which, if there was really something there, would be an amazing breakthrough that would lead on to further knowledge. As it is, it looks like the research into dowsing never seems to come to anything.

Luckily, I already have easy access to water, and have no need to find sewer pipes.

 

[Jonathan Edwards]

I'm more than a little suspicious.... guess we'd need to know how many water pipes were around when they didn't cross!

It sounds like the sort of thing which, if there was really something there, would be an amazing breakthrough that would lead on to further knowledge.

My memory is that the view was that it only worked if the water was so close that you could find it by looking for manholes anyway. So although the surveyor profession acknowledged it worked they found it pretty useless so nobody cared.

 

[user9876]

My memory is that the view was that it only worked if the water was so close that you could find it by looking for manholes anyway. So although the surveyor profession acknowledged it worked they found it pretty useless so nobody cared.

Did you try different metals with different levels of conductivity?

 

[Esther12]

My memory is that the view was that it only worked if the water was so close that you could find it by looking for manholes anyway. So although the surveyor profession acknowledged it worked they found it pretty useless so nobody cared.

Surely if the water was sending out something which moved copper rods like that it would be pretty interesting in itself. It doesn't sound right (not that all scientific discoveries will...), and it seems that blinded studies lead to results that are no better than chance. I reckon your student experiment was poorly designed, and would have likely been improved with a few drinks.

 

[Wonko]

Okay, if it makes everybody happy I'll consider changing "hokum" to "not useful"

When I was 6 or 7 I tried dowsing and found it was not useful

Although what I would have done with an underground water source I don't know (and I've just remembered - it was the summer of 1976, when all the mains water in our area got turned off, due to a heatwave/drought, which may explain why i was mucking about with bits of metal in plastic tubes.)

So I would have been 7 or 8, not 6 or 7 - not that it matters lol

 

[Jonathan Edwards]

Surely if the water was sending out something which moved copper rods like that it would be pretty interesting in itself. It doesn't sound right (not that all scientific discoveries will...), and it seems that blinded studies lead to results that are no better than chance. I reckon your student experiment was poorly designed, and would have likely been improved with a few drinks.

I assumed that the effect can perfectly well be explained by an anisotropy in the ambient magnetic field (the one that makes compass needles jump to north) caused by the flow of water, which contains charged particles. Movement of a conducting structure like copper through the distorted magnetic field would be expected to set up very slight forces. Clearly the copper rods are not little magnets like the needle in a compass but the swinging force was obviously absolutely tiny because if we dipped the rods more than a degree or so the effect was lost, presumably because the moment required would have been too much. I am pretty sure the effect is school level physics - which is why nobody thinks it is a big deal.

When I started out on this I was quite sure that we would find nothing, except that Jerry was an even greater sceptic than I and I had learned that he was usually right when he claimed something. He was also a wizard at making things to high specifications having never done it before. The free swinging of the rods and the angle precision was very impressive.

 

[Jonathan Edwards]

Although what I would have done with an underground water source I don't know (and I've just remembered - it was the summer of 1976, when all the mains water in our area got turned off, due to a heatwave/drought, which may explain why i was mucking about with bits of metal in plastic tubes.)

So I would have been 7 or 8, not 6 or 7 - not that it matters lol

1976 might have been a bad year. I made my observations in 1973 or 1974.

But I worry about using plastic tubes. The set up I had used metal tubes, maybe brass. What seemed crucial was that you had to set the rods up so nearly horizontal that keeping them steady was about as difficult as balancing a billiard cue vertically on your finger. But once one had the hang of it they stayed straight until going over a pipe when they either both moved to one side or crossed in a purposeful manner.

 

[Esther12]

I assumed that the effect can perfectly well be explained by an anisotropy in the ambient magnetic field (the one that makes compass needles jump to north) caused by the flow of water, which contains charged particles. Movement of a conducting structure like copper through the distorted magnetic field would be expected to set up very slight forces. Clearly the copper rods are not little magnets like the needle in a compass but the swinging force was obviously absolutely tiny because if we dipped the rods more than a degree or so the effect was lost, presumably because the moment required would have been too much. I am pretty sure the effect is school level physics - which is why nobody thinks it is a big deal.

For water flowing through pipes to do this still seems like something that would be of interest.

I don't really know anything about dowsing, but this site argues it is largely a result of people misinterpreting chance changes in the rods, or else unconciously altering the rods like a ouija board if they know where the water is: http://wtamu.edu/~cbaird/sq/2015/04/15/how-does-water-dowsing-work/

They claim:

Various controlled scientific studies over the last hundred years have repeatedly found that water dowsing does not work. For instance, 30 "expert" dowsers were invited to Kassel, Germany in 1990 to have their abilities tested in a study organized by James Randi. Pipes carrying flowing water were buried underground at known locations and the dowsers were tested as to their ability to determine if water was flowing through the pipes. All failed to do better than random guessing.

I did see one study tried to find the 'best' dowsers, narrowed it down to 50 to test, and then of these 50, 5 were found to have useful skills... but a statistician responded by arguing that this is what you'd expect by chance.

I'd be surprised if there was anything to it.