armcie

Yeah. And they can do it without being aware. And it's a definite issue. Publication bias is one example, where only positive results are published, because negative results are boring. This can lead to 19 failures sitting in people's filing cabinets and the one fluke is accepted.

Or multiple analyses. If you come up with a result that has a 1 in 20 chance of being down to luck, then that's certainly worthy of more research. But if say you gave people acupuncture and asked them 20 different questions then by chance one of them would have a positive result. And if you just happened to forget to mention you asked 19 more questions no one would know.

Or if you're testing someone for psychic powers and you flip a coin 100 times and don't see any effect. So you decide to give them another 50 goes. Then another 50. Then another 50. And at that point you happen to register a statistically significant result so you stop there.

Or you're doing a similar psychic analysis and the testee wants to go to the toilet half way through. You know that if he goes to the toilet you will have to restart the test, but you've seen he's doing well this time so you say "just let us finish this run." And a few days later someone is doing poorly, so you don't mind letting them pop to the loo.

All these and more can result in more positive results getting published. There are many ways you can reduce these things (registering trials before testing and publishing negative results; adjusting for multiple regressions; deciding on a testing plan beforehand (and sticking to it)) and we are getting better at it - you may have heard that the placebo "effect" is decreasing in recent years, and designing trials to eliminate these conscious or unconscious biases is one of the reasons for this.

Balance... you can't balance rigorous scientific thought with an anecdote from a "human experiencer". The original series pushed nonsense like ancient aliens, ESP, Bigfoot, Nessy, Faith Healing and ghosts.

Programs such as this may seem harmless, but a well produced show, speaking authoritatively, and with a known celebrity face fronting it, make people believe. And if they believe in ghosts, despite the lack of scientific evidence, then they may start believing in homeopathy, or spine bending, or fricking black salve (NSFL.) And that shit causes real harm, damages lives and can lead to preventable deaths.

I understand being able to film amongst the animals is different to filming from a distance, but is there a difference between using your animatronic devices and a normal remote camera, or one disguised as a rock, say?

Another factor is so they can see who the obvious bot passes the wealth to and catch that account. While the wealth is sitting in the bot its not harming the economy. If they delay they may be able to take out the mule which carries the wealth from a larger number of bots, and in turn an even wider network of undiscovered bots when they trace the accounts interactions.

I'm not a lawyer, constitutional scholar or even an American, but this is the internet so I'll throw out an opinion.

How about arguing that by spending millions on letters you're interfering with other people's free speech rights because your voice is overwhelming theirs. You can say anything you want, but you can't artificially inflate your voice through spending money - your expense should be capped at x amount.

At the last general election in the UK a candidate was allowed to spend £8,700 plus £0.09 per voter (about £6,500). The political parties can also spend about £20 million nationwide (if they contest all the seats).