Derren Brown vs psi

In this otherwise-exceptional Svengali video (at the 50:00 mark), the highly-skilled illusionist and brilliant skeptic Derren Brown explains why clairvoyance doesn't exist. "Of course it doesn't," he asserts. His reasoning/evidence? The participants from the audience (who never claimed to have had any clairvoyant experiences and did not previously demonstrate clairvoyance under experimental conditions) lo and behold failed to exhibit any clairvoyance on stage. Those people (on stage), under those circumstances, were unable to show any clairvoyance. That's it. That's Derren's argument against the possibility (or at least for the extreme unlikelihood) of clairvoyance.

Unfortunately, he is very ignorant of the psi literature. I strongly encourage Derren to read the following (among others that should be included at some point):

-- Cardena, E. (2018). The experimental evidence for parapsychological phenomena: A review. American Psychologist, volume 73, issue, 5, p 663-677. (official journal of the APA)

-- Storm et al (2010). A meta-analysis with nothing to hide: Reply to Hyman (2010), Psychological Bulletin, Volume 136, Issue 4, Jul 2010, pages 491-494. (This paper is on their prior work in the area of Ganzfeld and Ray Hyman's objections to it, which isn't what Derren was talking about, but I thought I'd share it since he also touches on ways to fake/simulate the appearance of telepathy)


-- Hodgson, R. (1892) A record of Observations of Certain Phenomena of Trance, Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, volume 8, pages 1-167;


-- Hodgson, R. (1898) A Further Record of Observations of Certain Phenomena of Trance, Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, volume 13, pages 284-582


-- Braude's 2003 book "Immortal Remains" (here) and Sudduth's 2016 book "A Philosophical Critique of Empirical Arguments for Postmortem Survival" (here). Both books are surprisingly skeptical, with Braude claiming that the survival hypothesis just barely beats the best alternative and Sudduth claiming that the best alternative is at least equally plausible. Sudduth is ultimately unconvinced by the evidence, but he and Braude both agree that the best alternative explanation of the relevant data is a (non-afterlife) paranormal interpretation (psi functioning among living people that mimics the appearance of an afterlife). In other words, the best and strongest cases that survivalists offer as evidence for an afterlife cannot be explained away with stereotypical mundane physicalist scenarios. Instead, if one wants to remain a skeptic of the afterlife, then one must conclude that these cases involve psychic functioning among living people. Braude and Sudduth's summaries of the cases are fair, accurate, and clear.
Here's the gist: The most Derren has demonstrated is that these particular individuals, under these particular circumstances, did not produce any psi effects. This is no more impressive than demonstrating that particular football players, under very particular circumstances, cannot score touchdowns. The latter merely states the obvious, whereas the former poses a serious challenge to the reality of psi effects only if we grant (ahead of time) certain assumptions about when and why psi effects occur, assumptions that are not consistent with reports from the general population and (since those reports don't prove anything) also with many the methodologically-sound studies that Derren has never refuted or even mentioned.

To further elaborate on the football example, Braude (2014) has offered a helpful conceptual analysis on whether we should categorize psi effects as universally-distributed capacities (like the capacity to breathe) or instead as abilities or skills. These aren't word games; how we conceptualize psi effects influences our expectations on when these effects should be observed and when their absence should be taken as proof of their non-existence. But not every man can produce an erection on the spot in front of hundreds or thousands of people (many porn stars can't even do that!), not every baseball player can score a homerun in every play, and (to connect abilities/skills with capacities:) not every swimmer can hold their breath for the same length of time in every race. None of this counts as evidence against the existence of the capacity/ability/skill in question. Again, the only way for Derren to reasonably interpret his failure to demonstrate clairvoyance as proof against the existence of clairvoyance is if we grant (ahead of time) certain assumptions about its natural history and about when/why it occurs, but these assumptions betray reports from the general public as well as sound data to the contrary. See Braude's 2014 book "Crimes of Reason" for in-depth discussions on these and related issues.

I genuinely respect and appreciate his work, but Derren really dropped the ball here. While one can find experts on both sides of the debate, it seems that Derren rarely (if ever) interviews actual experts who disagree with him (rather than buffoons like "medium" Joe Power, who is a fraud in my own opinion).