[Physicist]

Now, think about this. It is possible that the researchers could have surreptitiously peeked, and there could have been subliminal cues with which the scorers could have subconsciously influenced the experimental subjects. Yes, true -- but is that same level of rigor applied to other experiments in the soft sciences? NO!!!

Oh, don't get me started. Forget experimental psychology; I'm highly critical of the lapses of experimental rigor in medical research, ostensibly a much harder science. I'm forever seeing the wildest conclusions confidently based upon the shakiest statistics. (Witness the power line/cancer farce, for example.)

I've only had a few minutes to read up on the "ganzfeld" experiments, but one thing struck me as odd. They have a judge look at four video clips--one of which is the target clip--and compare his impressions to the "receiver's" impressions. What perplexes me is that they refer to the three decoy clips as "controls". They are not controls; they are part of the same experiment. The probability of one of them being selected is not independent of the probability that the target gets selected. A true control would be to preselect one of the clips as the "target" clip and (unbeknownst to the other participants) NOT show anything to the "sender". I don't see where this has been performed.

As Prof. Max Gottlieb always said: "Vere iss your control? Vere iss your control?"

[Hypothesis: the "psychic"--actually, empathetic--link exists not between the "sender" and the "receiver", but between the man who selects the video clips, and the judge. Suggested control experiment: for a random sample of trials, switch the "receiver" impressions around between the trials, and see whether the effect goes away. Never reuse video clips, in any case.]

[dark_lord]

Yeah, the experiment has been performed in different ways. The basic technique is this. The subject is placed into isolation (ping pong ball cut in half, cotton ball placed into each half, one of each half placed over subjects eyes and then held down with blindfold so they can see nothing, white noise generator playing, laying in comfy reclining chair). Then the "sender" looks at a short video clip (best on a tape loop or other repeating sequence) and thinks about it for 1/2 hour. The "receiver" then verbalizes their impressions. At the end of the session, the "receiver" views 4 video clips. One of the clips is the one the "sender" was viewing. The "receiver" ranks the clips in order of best fit to what they "received".

If the experiment is done properly, random chance will dictate that the correct video clip is chosen only 25% of the time. But repeated experiments have in fact shown that the "correct" clip is chosen more often at a statistically significant rate. And then come the arguments over the experimental methodology. The better experiments are "double blind", which means that the person showing the 4 clips to the "receiver" does not themselves know which clip was shown to the "sender" -- and yes, those experiments do in fact show that the correct clip is chosen at a statistically significant rate better than chance.

The twist is -- unlike experiments with particles or inanimate objects, some "senders" and "receivers" do better than others, repeatedly. This would logically be expected, as people vary in all other skills as well. So other interesting results are also noticed. For example, some people test regularly at the random level -- no skill, just chance. But some people regularly test at a negative level -- consistently worse than chance! What psychological implications there are of this can be left to the shrinks. And some people test consistently better than chance. No one would be ordinarily surprised at this, as in basically every other kind of test applied to humans there is variation. But since psi is "voodoo" and no one wants to be associated with it (its not "respectable", unlike feminist deconstruction theories), not that many researchers care anymore.