Doing research for a story on ESP.
Evidence ranges from the modern & scientific...
quote:The Juilliard sample. There are several reports in the literature of a relationship between creativity or artistic ability and psi performance (Schmeidler, 1988). To explore this possibility in the ganzfeld setting, 10 male and 10 female undergraduates were recruited from the Juilliard School. Of these, 8 were music students, 10 were drama students, and 2 were dance students. Each served as the receiver in a single session in Study 104 or 105. As shown in Table 1, these students achieved a hit rate of 50% (p = .014), one of the five highest hit rates ever reported for a single sample in a ganzfeld study. The musicians were particularly successful: 6 of the 8 (75%) successfully identified their targets (p = .004; further details about this sample and their ganzfeld performance were reported in Schlitz & Honorton, 1992).
...to the convincingly circumstantial.
quote:A more successful experiment in telepathy was conducted in 1937 by Harold Sherman and Sir Hubert Wilkins, when Wilkins, an Australian explorer, was hired by the Russians to find a pilot who had disappeared in the Arctic. Sherman suggested to Wilkins that during his trip they should try to communicate by telepathy. Three days each week Wilkins sat down and reviewed the day's events; in New York, Sherman sat in near-darkness and wrote down anything that came into his head. Among other incidents, Sherman learned of a fire at a place called Aklavik before the news came by radio.
There have been some spectacular results under strictly controlled conditions. One of the most famous was reported in 1937 by Professor Riess of Hunter College, New York. On a number of evenings, Riess turned face-upward a series of cards from a newly shuffled pack on his desk, and his subject wrote down the cards that came to mind. Two packs of 25 cards were used each day. Gradually, the subject became more accurate; and on the last nine days of the experiment her score of successes was 17, 18, 19, 20, 20, 19, 20, 21 and 21 — so far above chance as to be astonishing, and by far the highest score ever recorded in a series of ESP experiments.
Even skeptical accounts admit there might be something to ESP.
quote:An amateur magician as a youth, Bem began ESP shows at the age of 17, a pastime he continues today as a professional mentalist and member of the Psychic Entertainers Association. In 1983, as a mentalist and top research psychologist, Bem was asked to evaluate Charles Honorton's laboratory in Princeton, New Jersey. According to Bem, at the time Honorton had just initiated a new series of ganzfeld studies (dubbed "autoganzfeld" because the targets were randomized by computer) that complied with stringent research protocols. Bem's visit to Honorton's laboratory left him convinced that results of the ganzfeld research deserved to be published in a mainstream journal. "I looked over the protocol, and was quited impressed," Bem recalled. "I had read Honorton's debate with Ray Hyman, and thought that the one talent I have is that I am able to reach the mainstream journals."
At that point, I interjected to ask what he had thought of psi research prior to arriving at Honorton's laboratory. "Before ganzfeld, I was a skeptic," he answered quickly and assertively.
As a note, the "ganzfeld" test involves sensory deprivation: putting ping-pong-ball-halves over the subject's eyes, shining a red light on that, and covering the ears with headphones broadcasting white noise.
The subject then catalogues sense impressions which may or may not be broadcast by a "sender" in another room. |
