Scientific investigation of telepathy

Numerous scientific experiments seeking evidence of telepathy have been conducted over more than a century in the field of parapsychology. Telepathy, as with all parapsychological subjects, remains controversial.

History

Western scientific investigation of telepathy is generally recognized as having begun with the initial program or research of the Society for Psychical Research. The apex of their early investigations was the report published in 1886 as the two-volume work "Phantasms of the Living". It was with this work that the term "telepathy" was introduced, replacing the earlier term "thought transference". Although much of the initial investigations consisted largely of gathering anecdotal accounts with follow-up investigations, they also conducted experiments with some of those who claimed telepathic abilities.Fact|date=February 2007 However, their experimental protocols were far more lax than those used today.Fact|date=February 2007

In 1917, psychologist John E. Coover from Stanford University conducted a series of telepathy tests involving transmitting/guessing playing cards. His participants were able to guess the identity of cards with overall odds against chance of 160 to 1;Fact|date=February 2007 however, Coover did not consider the results to be significant enough to report this as a positive result. Fact|date=February 2007

The best-known early telepathy experiments were those of J. B. Rhine and his associates at Duke University, beginning in the 1927 using the distinctive "ESP Cards" of Karl Zener (see also Zener Cards). These involved more rigorous and systematic experimental protocols than those from the 19th century, used what were assumed to be 'average' participants rather than those who claimed exceptional ability, and used new developments in the field of statistics to evaluate results. Results of these and other experiments were published by Rhine in his popular book "Extra Sensory Perception", which popularized the term.

Another influential book about telepathy was "Mental Radio", published in 1930 by the Pulitzer prize-winning author Upton Sinclair (with foreword by Albert Einstein). In it Sinclair describes the apparent ability of his wife at times to reproduce sketches made by himself and others, even when separated by several miles. They note in their book that the results could also be described by the more general term clairvoyance, and they did some experiments whose results suggested that in fact no sender was necessary, and some drawings could be reproduced precognitively.Fact|date=February 2007

By the 1960s, many parapsychologists had become dissatisfied with the "forced-choice" experiments of J. B. Rhine, partly because of boredom on the part of test participants after many repetitions of monotonous card-guessing,Fact|date=February 2007 and partly because of the observed "decline effect" where the accuracy of card guessing would decrease over time for a given participant, which some parapsychologists attributed to this boredom.Fact|date=February 2007

Some parapsychologists turned to "free response" experimental formats where the target was not limited to a small finite predetermined set of responses (e.g., Zener cards), but rather could be any sort of picture, drawing, photograph, movie clip, piece of music etc.Fact|date=February 2007

Notable experiments

Zener card experiments

Dates run: 1930's

Experimental philosophy: A Zener Card deck is created, which consists of five cards each of five different symbols. The deck is shuffled, and the subject is asked to guess the identity of each card as it is drawn and viewed by a sender. In this experiment, telepathy is assumed to be weak, and only expected to give a small deviation towards correct answers.Fact|date=February 2007

Experimental design: J. B. Rhine, the experimenter, would sit across a table from the subject. He would shuffle the Zener Card deck, and draw cards one at a time. For each card, he would look at it and ask the psychic to guess its identity by reading his mind. A hit rate of significantly more or less than 20% was considered to be evidence of telepathy. Hit rates significantly below 20% were reguarded psi-missing, the phenomenon in which psi may cause missing due to the attitude of the experimenter or subject toward the situation or subject matter.http://www.parapsych.org/sheep_goat_effect.htm "The Sheep - Goat Effect" by Mario Varvoglis, Ph.D., from the website of the Parapsychological Association, retrieved December 27, 2006]

Results: Rhine's studies produced results which were significantly above or below chance in a statistical sense. "The Conscious Universe: The Scientific Truth of Psychic Phenomena" by Dean I. Radin Harper Edge, ISBN 0-06-251502-0] He noted, however, that this experiment couldn't adequately distinguish telepathy from clairvoyance. [cite book
author = Randi, James
year = 1995
title = An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural
publisher = St. Martin's Press
id = ISBN 0-312-15119-5]

Ganzfeld experiments

"(Main article: Ganzfeld)"

Dates run: 1974 to present

Experimental philosophy: The subject is placed in sensory deprivation, in hopes that this will make it easier to receive and notice incoming telepathic signals. In this experiment, telepathy is assumed to be weak, and only expected to give a small deviation towards correct answers.cite web
url = http://www.dina.kvl.dk/~abraham/psy1.html
title = Does Psi Exist?
author = Bem, Daryl J. and Honorton, Charles
year = 1994
publisher = Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 115, No. 1, 4-18
accessdate = 2006-06-23]

Experimental design: The receiver (a possible psychic, who is being tested) is placed in a soundproof room and sits reclining in a comfortable chair. The subject wears headphones which play continuous white noise or pink noise. Halves of ping pong balls are placed over their eyes, and a red light is shined onto the subject's face. These conditions are designed to cause the receiver to enter a state similar to being in a sensory deprivation chamber.

The sender is seated in another soundproof room, and is assigned one of four potential targets, randomly selected. Typically, these targets are pictures or video clips. The sender attempts to telepathically "send" information about the target to the receiver. The receiver is generally asked to speak throughout the sending process, and their voice is piped to the sender and experimenter. This is to assist the sender in determining if their method of "sending" information about the target is working, and adjust it if necessary. Breaks may be taken, and the sending process may be repeated multiple times.

Once the sending process is complete, the experimenter removes the receiver from isolation. The receiver is then shown the four potential targets, and asked to choose which one they believe the sender saw. In order to avoid potential confounding factors, the experimenter must remain ignorant of which target was chosen until the receiver makes their choice, and multiple sets of the pictures of videos should be used in order to avoid handling cues (evidence, such smudges on a picture, that the picture was handled by the sender).Fact|date=February 2007

A statistical analysis is performed to find out whether the subject scored significantly above or below chance.

Results: Many meta-analyses performed on multiple Ganzfeld experiments returned a hit rate of between 30% and 40%, which is significantly higher than the 25% expected by chance. [cite web
url = http://www.csicop.org/si/9603/claims.html
title = The Evidence for Psychic Functioning: Claims vs. Reality
author = Hyman, Ray
date= March/April, 1996
publisher = Skeptical Inquirer
accessdate = 2006-06-23]

Controversy

Ganzfeld experiments:

"Isolation" - Not all of the studies used soundproof rooms, so it is possible that when videos were playing, the experimenter (or even the receiver) could have heard it, and later given involuntary cues to the receiver during the selection process. [ cite web
url = http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2320/is_n2_v60/ai_18960809
title = Exploring possible sender-to-experimenter acoustic leakage in the PRL autoganzfeld experiments
author = Wiseman, R., Smith, M,. Kornrot, D.
date= June 1996
publisher = Journal of Parapsychology] However, ganzfeld studies which did use soundproof rooms had a number of "hits" similar to those which did not. (Radin 1997: 77-89)

"Handling cues" - Only 36% of the studies performed used duplicate images or videos, so handling cues on the images or degradation of the videos may have occurred during the sending process. [cite web
url = http://www.sciencenews.org/sn_arc99/7_31_99/fob4.htm
title = ESP findings send controversial message
author = Carpenter, S.
date= July 31, 1999
publisher = Science News
accessdate = 2006-06-23] However, the results of studies were not found to correspond to this flaw.

"Randomization" - When subjects are asked to choose from a variety of selections, there is an inherent bias to not choose the first selection they are shown. If the order in which are shown the selections is randomized each time, this bias will be averaged out. However, this was often not done in the Ganzfeld experiments. [cite journal
author = Hyman, Ray
year = 1985
title = The ganzfeld psi experiment: A critical appraisal
journal = Journal of Parapsychology
issue = 49
pages = 3–49 ] [cite journal
author = Honorton, C
year = 1985
title = Meta-analysis of psi ganzfeld research: A response to Hyman
journal = Journal of Parapsychology
issue = 49
pages = 51–91 ]

"The psi assumption" - The assumption that any statistical deviation from chance is evidence for telepathy is highly controversial, and often compared to the God of the gaps argument. Strictly speaking, a deviation from chance is only evidence that either this was a rare, statistically unlikely occurrence that happened by chance, or "something" was causing a deviation from chance. Flaws in the experimental design are a common cause of this, and so the assumption that it must be telepathy is fallacious. This does not rule out, however, that it could be telepathy. [cite web
url = http://skepdic.com/psiassumption.html
title = The Skeptic's Dictionary: Psi Assumption
author = Carroll, Robert Todd
year = 2005
accessdate = 2006-06-23]

Parapsychologists respond, however that while there are many potential theoretical explanations of psi, parapsychology as a science does not claim to understand what psi is, but

Instead, [parapsychologists] design experiments to test experiences that people have reported throughout history. If rigorous tests for what we have called [say] "telepathy" result in effects that look like, sound like, and feel like the [often more impressive [http://twm.co.nz/FAQpara2.htm#9.5 Parapsychology FAQ, Compiled by Dean Radin, PhD of UNLV's Cognitive Research Division "A helpful guide to parapsychology and the facts regarding that field", Retrieved December 26, 2006] ] experiences reported in real life, then call it what you will, but the experiments confirm that this common experience is not an illusion. (Radin 1997: 210)

"Psi" is the name for an unknown factor, not necessarily for a force or factor outside the current range of scientific knowledge.

The existence of telepathy is still a matter of extreme controversy, with many skeptics stating that evidence for it does not exist. A scientific methodology which always shows statistically significant evidence of telepathy has yet to be discovered. Skeptics argue that the lack of a definitive experiment whose reproducibility is near 100% (e.g. those which exist for magnetism) may indicate that there is no credible scientific evidence for the existence of telepathy. Skeptics also point to historical cases in which flaws have been discovered in the experimental design of parapsychological studies, and the occasional cases of fraud which have marred the field. [cite web
url = http://skepdic.com/esp.html
title = The Skeptic's Dictionary; ESP (extrasensory perception)
author = Carroll, Robert Todd
year = 2005
publisher = SkepDic.com
accessdate = 2006-09-13] ["Most academic psychologists do not yet accept the existence of psi..."cite web
url = http://www.dina.kvl.dk/~abraham/psy1.html
title = Does Psi Exist?
author = Bem, Daryl J. and Honorton, Charles
year = 1994
publisher = Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 115, No. 1, 4-18
accessdate = 2006-09-13] Those who believe that telepathy may exist say that very few experiments in psychology, biology, or medicine can be reproduced at will with consistent results. Parapsychologists such as Dean Radin argue that the extremely positive results from reputable studies, when analyzed using meta-analysis, provide strong evidence for telepathy that is almost impossible to account for using any other means "The Conscious Universe: The Scientific Truth of Psychic Phenomena" by Dean I. Radin Harper Edge, ISBN 0-06-251502-0] .

Fraud

"See Fraud section of parapsychology article"

There have been instances of fraud in the history of parapsychology research, such as the Soal-Goldney experiments of 1941-43.

ee also

*Parapsychology
*Paranormal
*Psi
*Extra-sensory perception
*Techlepathy

References

Further reading

*Harvard reference
Surname1=Alcock|Given1=James
Year=1981
Title=Parapsychology: Science or Magic? A Psychological Perspective
Publisher=Pergamon Press
ID=ISBN 0-08-025772-0

*Harvard reference
Surname1=Alcock|Given1=James E.
Year=1990
Title=Science and Supernature: A Critical Appraisal of Parapsychology
Publisher=Prometheus Books
ID=ISBN 0-87975-516-4

*Harvard reference
Surname1=Hansel|Given1=C. E. M.
Year=1966
Title=ESP: A Scientific Evaluation
Publisher=Charles Scribner's Sons
ID=ISBN 0684310503

*Harvard reference
Surname1=Hansel|Given1=C.E.M.
Year=1989
Title=The Search for Psychic Power: ESP & Parapsychology Revisited
Publisher=Prometheus Books
ID=ISBN 0-87975-533-4

*Harvard reference
Surname1=Hyman|Given1=Ray|Authorlink1=Ray Hyman
Year=1989
Title=The Elusive Quarry: A Scientific Appraisal of Psychical Research
Publisher=Prometheus Books
ID=ISBN 0-87975-504-0