Skepticism, Science & Pseudoscience

But a similar thing happened to me once. As part of an effort to get 20 hours of volunteering time, I took a 3 hour multiple choice test, over a thousand questions. "Have you ever felt your body was seperate from your mind?" and "Have you ever accidentally read anyone's thoughts?"

I answered yes to most of that stuff.

Later I would determine, after they asked me many other questions and hooked me up to wires and shit that seemed a lot like the research methods from Ghostbusters, that they were doing something regarding the thought processes of a "new" schizophrenic (someone, about the age of college entrance, that hasn't be On my way! fully schizoid yet).

It wasn't until the end of a few months of "working with me" that I noticed a copy of the initial test laying around in the office. It had clearly stated "When you were NOT on drugs...". Oh, shit. I totally misread that. The actual sentence was quite long with several dependent and independent clauses and I just kind of skipped through the whole "not" word.

So I answered the questions with "Oh, yeah, at that Dead show in Oakland I could totally read everyone's mind around me" in the back of my mind. Hell YES I'd uncontrollably astrally projected -- I owned a four foot bong, and astral projection is the whole point in owning a bong the size of a small child.

And no, I never 'fessed up. I figured statistics would take care of me, and I needed the five bucks an hour stipend for more weed.