Experimental bankomat studies

Suppose you go to a cash machine (a.k.a. hole in the wall, money machine), type in your PIN (note: I did not write “PIN number” as that angers some people), and successfully withdraw some money.  What happens if you forget to collect your money?

Eva hypothesised that the money would be sucked back into the machine.

I hypothesised there’d be some beeping, but the money would stay available for any passerby to nick.

(Note, parallel working hypotheses—see T. C. Chamberlin, 1890—this is real science.)

We ran an experiment with one (1) cash machine on one (1) occasion.  For security purposes I cannot reveal the bank, because the result probably severely p’ed off a techie somewhere.

Here’s what happened: the machine did not beep, but waited for a while before displaying an Out of Order message.  The money was not sucked in so we could grab it and run.

The lady in the queue behind us seemed unimpressed.

Empirical science works.

The psychological basis of unreason

Richard Dawkins’ foundation to fund psychology of reasoning research:

“We intend to sponsor research into the psychological basis of unreason. What is it about human psychology that predisposes people to find astrology more appealing than astronomy? At what age are young people most vulnerable to unreason? What are the correlations between religiosity and superstition on the one hand, and intelligence, educational level, type of education etc. on the other? Research of this kind would be supported in the form of grants to universities in America and Britain or wherever the best research can be done.”

Maybe he’s not so bad after all