This is for EVERYONE whether or not you were on camera today:
Take a look at the data tables and also recall what happened during the plant experiment.
PUBLISH a blog post (as a comment to this post) regarding what you think happened for each experiment (recall that data as well as what happened with the plants) and decide - do you think biofeedback is something that can be scientifically relied on? Why? Why not? Be prepared to discuss this on camera (and for those not video editing, write about it in a lab report).
I think that in all of our experiments, we didn't spend enough time doing the experiment which may of skewed our results. For example, few people can considerably lower their heart rate in only 5 minutes of mediation.
ReplyDeleteI do think biofeedback can be scientifically relied on, not just because I'm Pagan and believe this concept to work, but because if we look at the data, all of our experiments showed that biofeedback was plausible, if not confirmed.
Good observation
DeleteThere was no real trend in the heart rate experiment and while there was a slight difference in the thermometer experiment that could be scientifically disproved as more heat transfer from a tighter grip or more muscle movements in the hand. I believe there is plausability to the plant experiment, but there are to many variables such as how deep the seeds were in the pots. More testing NEEDS to be done before we confirm or disprove these myths. As such I currently can't say whether or not these biofeedback myths can be scientifically relied on.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the post!
DeleteEver heard of Wim Hof?
ReplyDeleteLook him up. His story convinces me that biofeedback is, in fact, a valid scientific... thing, for lack of a better word.
Then again, we haven't trained to do this kind of thing for 30+ years, so our results probably were that of an amateur's, in that our data results stayed about the same. We may have easily been doing something wrong, so I'm taking our results with a grain of salt, or a chunk of halite.
For the plant stuff, we need to do it again. No good scientist just tests something once with no control and publishes it expecting not to draw criticism as heavy as being called an outright quackery. Plenty of undetected variables could have messed around with our results, so no good conclusion can be made, in my opinion.
Great job! I haven't heard of him but will certainly look him up! He might be someone to bring up in commentary on the video
DeleteI don't think any sort of scientific conclusion would be valid using the collected "data". there is proof that these things can sometimes be reliable, but as the case with me, I really have no idea if I'm doing it right. If someone has no idea how to consciously try to do any of these things, it might produce unreliable results.
ReplyDeleteSure! That makes sense. Thanks!
DeleteI think biofeedback can be relied on in certain situations, such as our "music heart rate test." We showed that it will not work as drastically for everyone but we did prove it worked as common sense would also tell us. The plant experiment actually did the opposite of our expected result, but we seemed to be consistently wrong. In conclusion, I think that biofeedback can be relied on for certain experiments, but I do not think that it should be the primary source of evidence in an experiment. Biofeedback is kinda like Wikipedia.
ReplyDeleteLove the wikipedia comparison!
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