Sunday, December 13, 2009

The "Ghost Radio" Web Site

Ever heard of EVP? It stands for "electronic voice phenomena". I'd never heard of it until today, when I happened to read a story on the JREF web site asking for comments on a Youtube video. This particular video (from a Brit based on his accent) claimed to show EVP. And what, pray tell, is EVP? Allegedly, it's the "voices" that radios make when they are not tuned to an actual signal. People are claiming that the radios are actually producing real, honest-to-God voices.
And like all things that anyone believes, there's even a web site for it. Except, in this case, it's not just a web site. Oh, no. For something of this vast, cosmological importance, we need an association. And not just any association. The American Association of Electronic Voice Phenomena.
On the very first page of their web site, they make the following claim:
People report experiences such as hauntings events or EVP, and these experiences can be verified and often replicated as objective events.

What?!?! Really!?!? You're out and out making the claim that "these experiences can be verified and often replicated as objective events"? Really?!?! So, tell me this: On what are you making these claims? What's your criteria? In what type of settings are you doing the experiments? What's your test group and what's your control group? How are you controlling for bias in the tests? You are performing multiple tests, aren't you? Not just one with a couple of your friends over for ... whatever? And why isn't this evidence openly available on your web site? Why isn't it presented so that outsiders (or disbelievers, such as myself) and check your claims?
Here's a test that I would want to try: Make a recording of what you believe to be EVP. Then I would want to play it back to 20 people (just for a start) and see if they hear anything. If so, what? If they all agree that they're hearing the exact, same thing, then we go to the next stage. Oh, and when you make the recording, I'd want to control for outside disturbances. I'd want the radio to (a) be tuned to nothing at all and (b) not scanning. Let's control for outside disturbances, shall we?
P.T. Barnum, even though he didn't actually say it, was still right.

No comments: