And a general apology for addressing pec and her accusations/assumptions and speculating. It’s just a bit hard not to view someone as a specimen and want to poke them to see what they are when they’ve totally dominated the comments section with lies and slander and are such tenacious believers in and promoters of CAM on a science-based medicine blog.

In the name of open discussion we have had an extremely high threshold for banning readers from commenting. We regret having to take this action, but we reserve the right to maintain the integrity and functionality of this blog.

Also note that any attempt to subvert this temporary banning will result in a permanent ban.

oh fifififif you are so brilliant. I am sure your understanding of algorithms, and everything else in the universe, is profound. I just know that everyone here is deeply impressed by your wisdom and understanding. I’m sure no one thinks you are an ugly evil brain-damaged pathetic insulting no-nothing.

What did I just say about ad hominem attacks and insults, pec? I’ll tell you. I said: Stop it. Now.

I don’t want to hear who started it. I no longer even care. Just stop it, and stop acting like a four year old child seeing how much she can get away with.

While I’m at it, I would point out that my admonitions to remain civil go for everyone else who has indulged in nastiness, not just pec, although only pec has recently reached such a consistent level of obnoxiousness as to warrant a stern ultimatum. I understand that pec makes it easy to sink to her level, but, please, please, please, do try to avoid the temptation.

“How Not to Test Mediums
Critiquing the Afterlife Experiments”

Ray Hyman

Abstract:

“Professor Gary Schwartz makes revolutionary claims that he has provided competent scientific evidence for survival of consciousness and–even more extraordinary–that mediums can actually communicate with the dead. He is badly mistaken. The research he presents is flawed, and in numerous ways. Probably no other extended program in psychical research deviates so much from accepted norms of scientific methodology as this one.”

Available at:

http://www.csicop.org/si/2003-01/medium.html

I am sorry, censors, I have never tried to insult anyone else on a blog in my entire life.

Shove it Fifi you are an ugly asshole. I don’t care if I get banned for this. You are sick and disgusting and evil and brainless.

It’s worth mentioning that while the internet is set up in quite a democratic manner it’s the way it’s not innately “free” or democratic for a number of reasons (access to technology being one, the other being that it can be easily controlled by changing structures and implementing various kinds of structures – which is why huge corporations throw so much money at the legal battles around controlling the internet and how people use it).

I had an extremely hard time posting, and that is the main reason there are so many short comments from me. I would be accused of something and try to reply only to have most of my replies blocked. So I posted a lot of short comments. It is extremely frustrating to be accused and not able to defend yourself.

Not a single comment of yours has been “blocked” by me. I check the spam filters periodically, and I have personally approved many of your comments. I’m sure our fearless leader Steve has done the same. Your comments are approved as soon as one of us gets around to moderating them. You are simply too impatient to wait for that to happen. Also, it wouldn’t surprise me if your recent flooding of the comments has led to the spam filter to view your behavior (flooding) in the comments as sufficiently spam-like that it doesn’t take much in addition in the content of your comments for it to flag them as spam.

You have convinced yourself that anyone who is open-minded about CAM has to be a self-deceiving, gullible idiot. Well you are wrong.

Well then prove it. Do the work that’s required to prove you are not self-deceived and gullible by critically evaluating studies and by approaching CAM skeptically and not accepting its claims at face value.

I for one don’t “hate” you pec. I actually feel pity for you since you’re so desperate about posting here, paranoid enough to think a spam filter (you know, an algorithm aka a mathematical equation!) is personally out to get you because you’re unable to grasp even rudimentary aspects of how algorithmic programs work (which kind of points to the fact that you lie about your education in an attempt at false authority), and you clearly feel lonely and victimized by life, the universe and everything from your family, to doctors to strangers on the internet. Since you’ve made this blog all about you all the time it seems only fair to discuss you and why you act so irrationally and so much like a troll. (I think it’s quite possible you’re not a professional troll but just a rather sad, lonely, old lady who life has passed by and who is looking for someone to blame for her misery. I suspect this is the most social interact and connection to others you get, which is why you’re so attached and need constant attention.)

I had an extremely hard time posting, and that is the main reason there are so many short comments from me. I would be accused of something and try to reply only to have most of my replies blocked. So I posted a lot of short comments. It is extremely frustrating to be accused and not able to defend yourself.

I think the main reason Dr. G is so annoyed with me now is that I am obviously right about some important things. No one could honestly say that experiment is a pile of trash — of course Dr. N tried (can’t post their names for some reason).

What you hate most about me is that I am logical and scientific, yet open-minded about CAM. You have convinced yourself that anyone who is open-minded about CAM has to be a self-deceiving, gullible idiot. Well you are wrong.

If you are reading his book, then do it. Don’t just take his word for it. Review his actual experiments and the methodology and then make up your mind regarding the validity of his claims, not now. Then come back armed with the relevant data to back up your claims.

You really have to stop flooding SBM comments threads with so many comments. It’s not fair to other commenters and gives the distinct impression that you’re trying to filibuster and in essence drown out those who disagree with you using a tsunami of verbiage in the form of multiple short comments. Please consolidate your observations into far fewer comments.

Don’t think that we bloggers at SBM haven’t noticed your behavior and that we don’t consider your behavior at present to be incredibly obnoxious and annoying. We do. We have tolerated it thus far because our dedication to free speech and letting anyone have their say has (so far) won out over the need to keep the discussion forums from degenerating into mindless free-for-alls. Behind the scenes, however, even the normally very mild-mannered Steve Novella is starting to become exasperated with your antics, and it takes a lot to annoy him–far more than it takes to annoy me. In fact, if the decision were up to me alone I wouldn’t hesistate to ban you for a month for flooding comment threads with your nonsense over the last few days and then, after the ban is ultimately lifted, put you on probation with a very low threshold for banning you again. It has nothing to do with “suppressing” your free speech and everything to do with keeping you from harming the community that has developed on this blog and destroying the value of the discussions here.

Certainly waking up this morning, perusing the blog, and finding “all pec all the time” (as Fifi put it) in the comments made me think even more that you are not contributing anything but irritation to our regular commenters (and us), not to mention that you’re dampening their enthusiasm for substantive discussion by hijacking discussions. Your casting aspersions on people’s honesty is also most definitely unjustified and unappreciated. Stop it. Now.

This is too frustrating. Qetzal you said I said something I did not. But I can’t answer!!!!

The interested reader (assuming there are any!) is invited to judge for themselves:

Novella, and Orac, deliberately left out most of the data we needed to see. And they did this because the results were not weak or ambiguous or doubtful. If the data had been weak, they would have displayed it proudly.

That is an unambiguous accusation that Novella and Orac of lied by omission.

Two paragraphs later from the same comment:

If Novella wanted to be honest and straightforward he would have posted the relevant data. Instead, he told us, untruthfully, that the results were a wash out.

Again, an unambiguous claim of deliberate dishonesty.

pec, you’re a liar, a punk, and a troll. P!ss off.

I am reading Gary Schwartz’s energy healing book right now. Harriet reviewed it and said nothing about the many experiments he did for over a decade. Nothing at all. But she went on and on about the one “skeptic” energy experiment that supposedly proved energy fields can’t be detected by healers. Only one study was enough for her. But Gary Schwartz has done many, as have other researchers. None of that counts. You try to poke little holes in any positive experiment, but a negative experiment, just one, disproves them all.

This study is not perfect — none ever are.

A researcher would have to be brain-dead to not think of something like that.