Talk:Electronic voice phenomenon

I linked "pattern recognition machine", as that is what I think us monkeys are. We should have an article on it. human be in 23:37, 21 July 2007 (CDT)

Question
To what extent would 'interference from other electronic devices/picking up obscure radio stations' play a part in the process? Anna Livia (talk) 22:05, 15 August 2017 (UTC)
 * I think the "process" is essentially people's imaginations working hard to interpret noise (such as the hissing sound you hear when the microphone gain is increased, or random equipment handling noises) as voices speaking words. Although it's technically feasible that RF energy from a radio transmitter can "leak" into a digital (or analog) tape recorder, in practice, you would need to be standing directly underneath a high powered radio station's tower, or right next to a truck driver equipped with a high power outlaw CB radio while they are transmitting. In other words, it's possible, but rare. Leuders (talk) 00:47, 16 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Probably most people have come across the 'radio via your fillings' story; and there are likely to be a few cases where the recording device picks up #all# sound including 'the radio heard faintly through the open window' etc. 'Category of things whose significance to the topic "the reasonable RW user" can be seen as potentially relevant.'
 * And some of the radio hiss #is# the universe speaking to you. Anna Livia (talk) 10:40, 16 August 2017 (UTC)


 * I should add that most all modern 2-way radios use digital mode (i.e. transmitting voice data - 1's and 0's, rather than analog voice modulation). So even if your electronic device picked up a transmission made by (for example) a police vehicle sitting in your driveway, all you'd hear would be a short, loud burst of static, rather than a voice. Leuders (talk) 16:56, 16 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Re-purposing the Sherlock Holmes quote - eliminating the theoretically possible sources of contamination (other sound sources being picked up 'from whatever sources, analogue, digital, 'talk of persons in the distance being carried by the wind' etc).

And here is an article on listening to the universe. Anna Livia (talk) 18:04, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

Credibility of Rational Wiki
After a quick review of this article, I think it is safe to say that the included sarcasm does more harm to Rational Wiki than to EVP. Criticism of the subject is warranted, as there is a lot of nonsense said about the subject. But comments like "Sample woo" and "Pure woo, baby!" suggest the poor education of the editor.

If you are going to express skeptic view, do so with explanations as to why, else we might as well be reading Wikipedia. Tom Butler (talk) 22:43, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

Quote has nothing to do with EVP
The Benjamin Radford quote does not even mention EVP. He writes for the Skeptical Inquirer and has a vested interest in finding things wrong with the subject.

The information that follows about Alexander MacRae's work is simply wrong. The two reports in the SPR are about using a Faraday cage to rule out stray radio waves in his EVP experiment, and about listening panel tests to determine if listeners were hearing what he thought might be present even though they were not previously told what to expect. I partially participated in that study and can say that it was a well-designed double-blind study.

By the way, he flew from Scotland to California and rented the Faraday cage on his own dime. He has never made money with his EVP research. Your unfounded sarcasm is insulting to anyone who wants to understand the nature of frontier subjects! In effect, you drive serious researchers away.
 * This is probably an old comment, but I find it ever fascinating that people come here, apparently refusing to read the mission statement or gather any information whatsoever about RW's purpose, and then act shocked that we don't keep to a strict non-bias policy. Even more entertaining is that it's almost always people who believe in something absolutely ridiculous, such as pseudoscience, conspiracy theories, or outright TimeCube-esque nonsense.
 * It's also very telling that, to a man, they all at some point mention Wikipedia and how they believe it's nothing but lies and trolls, while they, unqualified purveyors of woo and reality-denial, are "serious researchers" or somesuch.2601:47:4100:3F10:241F:1289:1A85:19AA (talk) 03:02, 30 April 2020 (UTC)