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DIA
DEFENSE
INTELLIGENCE
AGENCY
PROJECT STAR GATE
RESEARCH AND PEER REVIEW PLAN (U)
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JUNE 1994
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LIMDIS
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PROJECT STAR GATE
RESEARCH AND PEER REVIEW PLAN (U)
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This document was prepared by the
Technology Assessment and Support Activity
Office for Ground Forces
Directorate for Military Assessments
National Military Intelligence Production Center
Defense Intelligence Agency
Date of Publication
June 1994
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ONLY AS DIRECTED BY DIA/PAG
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OUTLINE
PAGE
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY.
1
1
I.
INTRODUCTION.
2
II.
PLAN OBJECTIVES.
3
III.
SIGNIFICANCE OF EFFORT
4
IV.
PLAN OVERVIEW.
5
V.
BASIC RESEARCH PLAN FOR ANOMALOUS COGNITION ...
7
7
VI.
BASIC RESEARCH PLAN FOR ANOMALOUS PERTURBATION.
15
VII. APPLIED RESEARCH PLAN FOR ANOMALOUS COGNITION ..
17
SG1B
IX.
POTENTIAL RESEARCH RETURN.
25
x.
PROJECT OVERSIGHT
25
XI.
DEVELOPMENT OF EVALUATION CRITERIA.
26
XII.
BUDGET AND RESOURCE REQUIREMENTS (FYs 95-99) ...
26
APPENDICES
A.
CONGRESSIONALLY-DIRECTED ACTION, DEFENSE
AUTHORIZATION CONFERENCE ..
A-1
B.
TERMINOLOGY AND DEFINITIONS.
B-1
c.
POTENTIAL RESEARCH SUPPORT FACILITIES.
C-1
D.
RESOURCE LITERATURE.
D-1
E.
CURRENT CONTRACTOR SCIENTIFIC OVERSIGHT
COMMITTEE MEMBERSHIP.
E-1
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F.
CURRENT CONTRACTOR INSTITUTIONAL
REVIEW BOARD.
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G.
ACADEMIC STUDIES REGARDING THE SCIENTIFIC
VALIDITY OF AMP.
G-1
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H.
AN ASSESSMENT OF THE ENHANCED HUMAN
PERFORMANCE PROGRAM.
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I.
IN-HOUSE STAFFING REQUIREMENTS.
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(U)
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY :
( S/NF / SG/LIMDIS)
In compliance with the Congressional
conferees' request (Appendix A), DIA proposes to develop a multi-
year research and development program, subject to rigorous
scientific and technical oversight, to demonstrate the scientific
validity of the STAR GATE program, and that results of military
and intelligence value can be obtained in a cost-effective manner
using anomalous mental phenomena (AMP) .
(S/NF / SG/LIMDIS)
This proposed program, if successfully
implemented, will:
- Identify the underlying mechanisms of AMP.
- Establish the limits of operational usefulness of
AMP .
- Determine the degree to which foreign activities in
AMP represents a threat to national security.
- Lead to the development of countermeasures to
neutralize this threat.
- Use research findings to improve operational
activities.
- Develop data fusion criteria to integrate AMP results
with other intelligence sources.
(S/NF/SG/LIMDIS) Due to the diversity of the STAR GATE
mission/objectives, both external resources and in-house
expertise are required. Since this Activity possesses no in-
house R&D capability, an absolute need for external R&D support
is required to meet Congressional concerns which are addressed in
this program plan .. A balance will be maintained between external
and in-house activities, and every effort will be made to
integrate and link these activities where appropriate. The
external aspect permits a wide range of expertise covering many
disciplines to be focused on this area; this also has the benefit
of ensuring peer group review and of facilitating a variety of
scientific interactions. In-house personnel with a wide-range of
expertise in this phenemenology will need to be retained to make
this proposed plan work.
(S/NF/SG/LIMDIS) In order to fulfill Congressional
Direction, the DIA proposes to convene a Scientific Evaluation
Panel (SEP) composed of representatives from each of the Service
Scientific Advisory Boards. The purpose of the SEP is to review
and validate the methodology outlined in the plan in order to
address the cost-effectiveness and performance criteria for the
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STAR GATE program's research and development objectives and to
propose recommendations as to which objectives should be pursued
and the program scope required to achieve those objectives. If
the SEP determines that objectives in the plan are viable and
executable, the General Defense Intelligence Program (GDIP)
Manager will complete this initiative with others for limited
available resources remaining in the program.
(U) The proposed ongoing R&D effort will be reviewed every
two years by the SEP to determine whether the STAR GATE program
can show results that are cost-effective and satisfy reasonable
performance criteria.
(C) An annual report will document the current
operational, technical and administrative status of the program.
I.
(U) INTRODUCTION:
(S/NF/SG/LIMDIS) This program plan was developed in
response to a Defense Authorization Conference, Congressionally
Directed Action (CDA) to prepare a long-term systematic and
comprehensive research and peer review plan in order to
investigate anomalous mental phenomena (AMP), and to apply
program research results to potential operational activities.
This plan also describes key in-house activities along with an
appropriately integrated basic and applied external research
support effort.
( S/NF/SG/LIMDIS)
Specifically, this program plan
represents DIA's view on how best to proceed with both in-house
activities and external research support for the period of FY95
through FY99. Research findings, both domestic and foreign, and
results from operational activities may lead to updates of this
plan in order to reflect improved phenomena understanding and to
pursue follow-on research and/or application directions.
(S/NF/SG/LIMDIS)
A underlying and fundamental premise
governing the implementation of this program plan is that a well-
integrated interdisciplinary approach is considered to be the
most appropriate strategy for conducting research in this diverse
field. Consequently, this plan includes a wide variety of
research topics which are based on recent findings from leading-
edge pursuits in other disciplines that are suspected of being
germane for STAR GATE. Other topics are derived from a review of
worldwide research, consultations with leading area experts, and
on insights gained from previous research and application
activities associated with the STAR GATE program.
(S/NF/SG/LIMDIS) This program plan also includes
recommended proposed FY funding which will allow for the STAR
GATE program to show results that are cost effective and will at
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the same time satisfy reasonable program performance criteria.
The implementation of this program plan will preclude the
reoccurrence of the yearly cyclical activity of project start-up,
limited progress, followed by anticipated project shut-down which
previously inhibited program activity.
(S/NF/SG/LIMDIS) In sum, the implementation of this
research and peer review plan will allow DIA to successfully
accomplish identified R&D activities which, in-turn, will enhance
the capability of STAR GATE personnel to engage in operational
activities and to assess the work done by potential adversaries,
thereby, reducing the risk potential for a technological
surprise.
(U)
Terminology and definitions are discussed at
Appendix B.
II.
(U)
PLAN OBJECTIVES:
(S/NF/SG/LIMDIS) The objective of this follow-on research
and peer review plan is to further develop phenomena
understanding and/or validation, in applications understanding,
and in operational feasibility evaluation. This continued work
will have a direct bearing on DIA's ability to both assess the
significance of foreign research and to perform a systematic
review of potential applications regarding this phenomena.
(S/NF/SG/LIMDIS) Accomplishment of the various activities
identified in this plan will further enhance threat assessment of
foreign achievements in this area, and will help achieve the
potential for U.S. military/intelligence applications on select
tasks as a supplement to HUMINT operations.
(U) It is anticipated that this plan will assist decision
makers in their review and consideration of future directions for
this field, and that this plan can begin formal implementation
starting in FY95.
(S/NF /SG/LIMDIS)
In compliance with the Congressional
conferees' request, DIA recommends that a period of six to nine
months be set aside at the beginning of this new program for the
purpose of identifying the most promising and cost-effective
experiments to be conducted under the program to meet the overall
research objectives outlined below. It is further suggested that
a series of small working groups consisting of scientific experts
from a variety of pertinent disciplines meet during this time
period to accomplish this end. Their suggestions will be
presented to the STAR GATE Scientific Oversight Committee for
final approval.
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III.
(U)
SIGNIFICANCE OF EFFORT:
(S/NF/SG/LIMDIS) STAR GATE is a dynamic approach for
pursuing the largely unexplored area of human consciousness and
subconsciousness interaction. Its scope is comprehensive; a wide
range of phenomenological issues are examined that include
psychological, physiological/neurophysiological, physics and
other leading-edge scientific areas. Although broad in scope,
STAR GATE is well grounded due to its solid independent
scientific review base. STAR GATE is based on a dynamic style in
all its endeavors, especially in its pursuit of on-going foreign
activities in this area.
(S/NF / SG/LIMDIS)
One of the tasks previously levied on DIA
by the FY91 Defense Authorization Act was to develop a long-range
comprehensive plan for investigating parapsychological phenomena.
This task was one of several objectives included in a new program
for this phenomenological area that identified DIA as executive
agent. Moreover the FY91 Defense Authorization Act authorized
for DIA a funding level of $2 million for DIA in order to
initiate this new program. As a result, a balanced and
integrated plan to include operations, foreign assessment, and
research and development was implemented . In addition, a new
DIA limited dissemination (LIMDIS) program, codeword STAR GATE,
was established in order to accomplish the objectives that were
set forth in this plan.
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SG1B
(S/NF /SG/LIMDIS)
The external research support conducted
under monies appropriated to date comes to a close in the
March/April 1994 time-frame. The impact of this is that if
research activities utilizing human subjects are interrupted, it
has generally been necessary to begin again instead of later
resuming activities from the point of termination. Consequently,
it is important for the STAR GATE program to remain stable.
Research involving human use differs considerably from that
involving physical systems. For example, data from human
subjects cannot be collected nor analyzed as rapidly, in that
additional empirical data is often required to reach analytical
conclusions. This type of data analysis utilizing human subjects
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can only be achieved with an in-place, uninterrupted, multi-year
research and development program. Therefore, should it be
decided to go forward with this program, it should be done in a
timely fashion.
(S/NF) The funding allocation for external research
received by STAR GATE in FY91 and continued through FY93
permitted several important research areas to be initiated and
continued. It is anticipated that results of this research will
assist in clarifying some of the possible future research
directions; consequently, not all long-range research
possibilities can identified in this plan. However, most all of
the major investigation areas can be addressed, and many of the
specifics can be identified with reasonable confidence.
Figure 1 presents an overview of overall research objectives for
both Anomalous Cognition (AC) and Anomalous Perturbation (AP)
which will be considered for inclusion in this program.
(S/NF) Previous basic research activities from FY91
through FY93 focused on the following; (1) validating findings
from previous magnetoencephalograph (MEG) research and initiating
new work with a variety of conditions and individuals; (2)
performing a variety of anomalous cognition (AC) experiments to
determine potential correlations (e.g., target type,
environmental factors) ; (3) developing various theoretical
constructs that might be testable and that could help explain the
phenomena; (4) examining effects of altered states on data
quality; (5) initiating review of and research into the
energetics area; and (6) examining various application
possibilities (e.g., communication, search) .
(U)
Results from previous basic and applied research
activity have been factored into this research and development
plan and provide the basis upon which further R&D efforts will be
built.
IV.
(U) PLAN_OVERVIEW:
A.
(U)
BASIC RESEARCH OBJECTIVES
(S/NF/SG/LIMDIS) The objective of basic research is to
understand the fundamental, underlying mechanisms for AMP. To
achieve this objective in an efficient way, basic research of the
detection mechanism should begin in a conservative direction.
That is, assume that a putative "sensorial" system exists for AMP
and that it most likely will behave similarly to those common
elements which are known through the five senses. This
conservative approach generalizes to understand the source of AMP
and its propagation mechanisms.
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I Anomalous Phenomena
(Merital)
Il Cognition
Ill Perturbation
1.0 Detector
2.0 Transmission
3.0 Source:
1.0 Micro
2.0 Macro
3.0 Mixed
1.1 Baale
1.1 Bula
Central Nervous System
NeuroNet Models
Informational (Entropy/Meaning)
Other Thermodynamic
21 Banka
Plezoelectrio Strain Gauge
Restive Strain Gauge
Metal (Bending)
Autonomio Responses
Veolor/Scalar Potential
Inter-specles Communications
Other Animals
2.2 Applied
Boundaries
Mechanical Systems (Balls/interferometera)
1.2 Applied
2.2 Applied
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Other Physiology (Skin)
Personality (Behavioral/SellReport-Q-8ort/MBTI)
Perceptual Models
External Nols Source
1.1 Bailo
Psychological Models (Motivation/Emotion)
Inverse (Search)
Atoms
Nuclei (Mossbauer Effect)
Photons
Cells (Algae, Blood)
Bacteria (Mutation-Salmonella)
Quantum Systems (Neutron/Photon Interference)
Response Type (Audio/Video/Left Hand)
Redundancy (Multiple Pass/Multiple Detectors)
Communication
Crystal Structure
Molecular Structure (IR Spectra of H2O)
Theory (Quantum Measurement/Zeno)
Random Number Generators (Electronic/Nuclear)
1.2 Applied
Magnetlo Domains
1.3 Mixed
Electrons
1
2.1 Applied
Laving Systems (Humans/Fish-Behaviorai)
Micromachines
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Figure 1 (U) Research Overview
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Selection (Direct/Correlational)
Environment-Physical (GMF)
Environment-Psychological (Set and Setting)
Environment-Physiological (Comfort)
Artificial
2.2 Mixed
Physical Characteriados (Size/Composition)
Type (Stallo/Dynamlo)
One-In-"n" (Foroed Cholos/Binary
Search)
2. Boala
Decision Augmentation Theory
Worm Holes (4-Dimensions)
Analysis
1.3 Mixed
Internal Nolse Source
Training (Macroscopic/Operant)
Session Protocols
1
Vector/Scalar Potential Propagation
Stochastlo Causality
Pendulums (Linear/Torsion/Blological)
Definitions
Human Sender
Inertial Systems
Demarcation (Coordinates/Beacon)

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B.
(U)
APPLIED RESEARCH OBJECTIVES
(S/NF/SG/LIMDIS) The objective of applied research is
to improve AMP functioning to its maximum possible limit. To
realize this objective, it is critical to define AMP output
measures that are consistent with either a laboratory setting
and/or an operational environment. The approach should also
reflect scientific conservatism. In investigating any single
variable (e.g., different training methodologies) all other
variables should remain as constant as possible (e.g., use the
same individuals and known good target systems) .
c. (U) FOREIGN ASSESSMENT SUPPORT OBJECTIVES
(S/NF) From a research perspective, the objective of
foreign assessment is to determine the degree to which claims
from foreign laboratories can be confirmed in a U.S. - based
setting. In science, replication is critical for understanding.
v.
(U) BASIC RESEARCH PLAN FOR ANOMALOUS COGNITION:
A. (U) BASIC APPROACH
(S/NF) The link of basic and applied research with
other applications investigations or with research activities is
shown on Figure 2. The top of the chart shows that for any
research or application task, certain conditions must be met
(e.g., a reliable calibrated individual is required; proper
scientific procedures need to be developed, etc.). Once these
basic foundations are laid, then basic/applied research can be
initiated with a reasonable expectation of success and with
assurance that results will not be ambiguous or fail scientific
scrutiny.
(S/NF)
This chart also illustrates the difference
between basic and applied research; applied research relates to
various methods for collecting, recording, improving and
analyzing data output, while basic research is aimed at phenomena
understanding. In this chart, the "detector" is the human
brain/mind, the "source" is the target or an aspect of the
target, and "transmission" refers to notions of how information
and/or energy are actually transmitted between source and
detector.
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(U) Figure 3 illustrates the interdisciplinary scope
that will be brought to bear on this research problem. Leading-
edge researchers in their various fields can provide clues, if
not make direct contributions, that will assist in phenomena and
applications understanding. Appendix C lists candidate research
support facilities that could be involved in this long-range
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Requirements for Specific Tasks/Applications
* Reliable/Calibrated receiver
* Appropriate Target
* Optimum Protocol for Data Collection.
* Optimum Data Assessment
* Integration of Results
Research
Basic
* Receiver Selection
* Source
* Receiver Training
* Transmission
*
Target Selection
. * Detector
*
Protocols
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* Integration
*
Analysis
*
Integration
* · Countermeasures
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Figure 2 (U) Research Objectives
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Xedical
General Relativity
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Anthropology
Quantiin Keasurewant.
Psychophysiology
Thermodynamics
ANOMALOUS
MENTAL
PHENOMENA
-Psychofimmunology
:Statistics/Signal Inalysis
-Cognitive Keruoscience
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Artificial Intelligence
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Figure 3 (U) Integration of Scientific Disciplines
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effort.
Appendix D outlines pertinent research literature
applicable to this field. Final selection will be based on how
well the activities if these institutions will fit into specific
time-lines and priorities to be established in FY95. Figure 4
lists milestones for the anomalous cognition basic research to be
conducted under this plan.
B.
(U) RESEARCH DETAILS
1.
(U)
Source.
(S/NF/SG/LIMDIS) Source research will address
those topics that show promise for understanding the
characteristics of the target or target area that may play a role
in anomalous cognition (AC) occurrence and data quality. Aspects
of the target that can be defined by conventional information
theory ( involving entropy/information content) will be explored
in-depth. A wide variety of targets with a wide range of
information content, dynamics, or other parameters will be
examined to explore this possible link. If not successful, other
approaches to investigate the targets' innate nature and its
possible link to phenomenon occurrence will be initiated.
Definitive data in this area would also have implications for
defining those targets which have the highest probability of
successful data acquisition in an operational setting, thus
establishing operational tasking parameters.
2. (U) Transmission.
(S/NF) The pursuit of possible transmission
mechanisms for AC phenomena is essentially the most significant
basic research task and also the most difficult to formulate.
this effort, a theoretical basis will be developed from
extensions of current theory in light of recent advanced physics
formulations. Some of these formulations permit unusual
"information flows" that may, in fact, have relevance for this
phenomenon. Testable models/constructs will be developed and
evaluated. A variety of other possible explanations involving
extensions of gravitation theory, quantum physics or other areas
will be constructed and tested where possible. Some of these
tests may require close cooperation of leading-edge researchers
using equipment in their facility.
(C/NF) Effort in this area will also focus on
integrating diverse aspects of the source, transmission, and
detector categories. For example, it will examine how
"targeting" occurs. Insight will be drawn from in-depth reviews
of various unusual physical effects identified by physical
sciences researches. These include distant particle coupling
(Bell's theorem), ideas from quantum gravity, possible
electrostatic/gravity interactions, unusual quantum physics,
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FRAME
ACTIVITY
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
SOURCE
RESEARCH
(TARGET)
Information/Entropy
Analysis
Various Target Attributes
(Size, Form, Content)
TRANSMISSION
RESEARCH
(MECHANISM)
Four-Dimensional Calculations
(Relativity Extensions)
Unconventional Waves
(Long-Range Tests)
(Laboratory)
Variables (Distance, Shielding, Energy)
Neuroscience (EEG, Memory, Etc. )
Environmental Factors
Other Physiology (Electrical, Infrared)
Implications from Medical/Animal Research
Physical Sciences (Physics, Statistics, Parallel Processing, Etc. )
Psychological Sciences
INTEGRATION
(Psychology, Anthropology, Cognitive, Mental,
Subliminal Perception, Etc. )
Medical (Genetics, Etc.)
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FIGURE 4 (U) BASIC RESEARCH MILESTONES - ANOMALOUS COGNITON
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observational theories, vacuum "energy" potential, and a variety
of other concepts.
(S/NF)
Perhaps the most promising exploratory
model of all is one based on little-understood aspects of the
fundamental equations for electromagnetic wave propagation
(Maxwell's equations) . These equations indicate that forms of
"wave propagation" could also exist that do not have the
conventional electric or magnetic field components (i.e., vector
and scalar waves). These waves would not be blocked by matter
and therefore could be leading candidates for AC propagation or
for certain aspects of AC phenomenon. Research papers
indicate that these
waves are considered a leading candidate for AC transmissions by
their researchers. Pilot study investigations in this area were
conducted by PAG-TA in FY92 with promising preliminary results.
Future research could couple with other DIA exploratory R&D
efforts in this area currently being explored.
SG1B
SG1B
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(S/NF /SG/LIMDIS)
Research on this topic will be
closely integrated with research involving the anomalous
phenomena (AP) aspect, since findings in the AP area would have
direct implications for phenomena transmission mechanisms in
general. Findings from the target (or target source) research
area would also provide insight into possible transmission
mechanisms. For example, different forms of the same target
(e.g., target size, 2D vs 3D, holographic representations) may
show patterns in the AC data that might provide clues regarding
phenomena mechanisms.
3.
(U)
Detector .
(U) The most important and promising aspect of
understanding the nature of the AC detection system in humans is
through modern advances of the neuroscience. Earlier
neurophysiological results obtained from magnetoencephalograph
(MEG) measurements begun in FY92 will be validated and expanded.
This earlier work indicated MEG correlations between visual
evoked responses areas of the brain may exist, and that remote
stimuli might also be detectable in MEG data. Some of the
specific investigations will examine a variety of near and far-
field situations, other sensory modes and different types of
individuals in order to search for potential variables. It might
be possible, with advanced MEG instrumentation, to actually
locate the exact brain areas involved in AC phenomena occurrence.
Future research in this area could couple with research currently
being explored at the National Laboratory.
(U) Other physical/psychophysical aspects of the
central nervous system (CNS) will also be explored to look for
possible correlates. This would include galvanic skin responses
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(GSR) or other parameters.
(U) Related to this overall area are several
investigations that relate to possible environmental interactions
with the brain that could affect AC data. This would include
possible geomagnetic or electromagnetic influences.
(S/NF)
A spin-off from findings in this basic
research area could be for unique communication applications.
MEG correlates might exist between remotely located people. If
so, the possibility of transmission of remote messages (via a
type of code) might be possible. Since AC phenomenon is not
degraded by distance or shielding, the potential of transmitting
basic "messages" to individuals in submarines would exist.
Preliminary exploration of this application by PAG-TA has yielded
promising results.
(S/NF)
Another potential spin-off benefit from
detector research in this program is that new insights into brain
memory or parallel processing might be achieved.
This could lead
to new directions in advanced computer developments involving
neural networks. For example, recent
indicates that
"wave-like" brain activity occurs in addition to usual neuronal
processes.
This wave-like phenomenon may have some link to the
"phase shift" observed in MEG data from the previous MEG project.
Further MEG work involving remote stimuli may help clarify such
issues.
SG1B
4. (U) Integration.
(U) The basic research activities will liberally
avail itself of the existing research communities that specialize
in neuroscience, physics and statistics and the broader
psychological/social sciences. Direct support with a variety of
university departments, national and international, will be
explored. PAG-TA contacts with such national laboratories as Los
Alamos, Lawrence Livermore, Oak Ridge, and have indicated an
interest on their part in supporting the research efforts.
Frequent conferences and data exchanges are anticipated. These
data exchanges will insure that a proper interdisciplinary
approach is maintained, and that findings from other disciplines
will be incorporated in this program where appropriate. This
peer group dialogue will greatly benefit research sponsored
through this plan, new ideas will be generated, and possibly
clues regarding phenomena operation will be easier to identify.
(U)
Some specific interdisciplinary examples that
will benefit this program are as follows:
- In 1990 The American Anthropological
Association (AAA) formed a new division, the Society for the
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Anthropology of Consciousness (SAC). This division has
established a technical journal to support interdisciplinary,
cross-cultural, experimental, and theoretical approaches to the
study of consciousness. This group may be able to contribute
this program by providing cross-cultural examples. These members
might also assist in the assessment of foreign data in this area.
- The psychophysiology of vision has already
contributed to the earlier program. This plan calls for a
collaborative effort with researcher in an attempt to understand
how the central nervous system process subliminal stimuli. This
should assist in understanding how MEG correlates occur.
- The relationship between mind and body is
currently discussed in the research literature as well as in the
popular press. Researcher at the California Institute for
Transpersonal Psychology (CITP) have been active in investigating
the role of mental attitudes and body chemistry. While there may
not be a direct link with AC, and exchange of techniques and
experimental designs would be helpful.
- The Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
contains at least one article of interest in each issue.
This
discipline is where most of the cognitive work with the
neuromagnetism is conducted. There is the possibility of joint
investigations with researchers performing MEG investigations at
the National Institutes of Health (NIH) .
- Stanford University has been conducting
research on internal mental imagery. The manipulation and
control of this imagery is extremely important in understanding
the source of internal noise during an AC session. A
collaborative effort with Stanford should lead to methods for
noise reduction.
- Neural networks are particularly good at
recognizing subtle patterns in complex data, and are being
applied in the subjective arena of decision making in business.
In order to improve AC analysis, the program will conduct a
collaborative effort with scientists who are active in neural
network research and with selected individuals who have had
success with interpreting highly subjective data.
- Statistics is the heart of AC research in
that most of the results are usually quoted in statistical terms.
Hypothesis testing has traditionally been the primary focus, but
there are other possible approaches that should be explored.
Statistics researchers at Harvard have already expressed interest
in contributing to the research effort.
- A major portion of the effort will be a
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search for a AC evoked response in the brain. Sophisticated
processing is required in that magnetic signals from the brain
can not be easily characterized by standard statistical
practices. Several research facilities can contribute.
- Classical statistical thermodynamics may be
the heart of understanding the nature of an AC source of
information. A physical property called entropy may be related
to what is sensed by AC. The program intends to collaborate with
a variety of university physics departments to calculate the
appropriate parameters.
(S/NF)
The specific experiments to be conducted in
these research domains will be defined during the first six to
nine months of the program utilizing the recommendations of the
working groups mentioned above subject to approval by the
Scientific Oversight Committee.
VI.
(U)
BASIC RESEARCH PLAN FOR ANOMALOUS PERTURBATION:
SG1B
(S/NF) Figure 5 illustrates the basic approach for
investigations "energetics", or anomalous perturbation (AP)
phenomenon. Intelligence reporting indicates that this aspect of
AMP
should receive
attention in this research plan to prevent technological
surprise. Thus, beginning in FY95, acceptance criteria will be
establish with which to judge the historical literature for
potential AP effects. Using those criteria, a detailed review of
the literature will begin in mid FY95 and considering the size of
that data base will continue through FY95. Knowledge gained from
this review may provide insights for the development of new AP
target systems or provide data so that particular experiments can
be replicated. Given the complexity of most AP experiments,
considerable time is needed to plan and conduct them properly.
If the results warrant, then application development may begin as
early as FY96; however the primary task of basic research of AP
is to attempt to validate its existence. Findings from foreign
research will be examined and factored into this activity as
appropriate.
(S/NF) The keys to investigating this area will be in
appropriate personnel selection and, very likely, in proper
selection of the AP test device. Thus, the initial phase of this
effort will involve identification and solicitation of
individuals known or claimed to have such talents. For example,
certain expert martial arts or yoga practitioners might do well
in such experiments due to their strong mental conditioning and
ability for intense mental focus. After locating such
individuals, various instruments, such as microcomputer devices,
sensitive electronic/sensor devices, or other unique or sensitive
equipment would be used as targets in AP experiments.
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ACTIVITY
TIME FRAME
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
DEVELOP
EVALUATION
CRITERIA
PERFORM
ANALYSIS
Historical Data Base
EXAMINE
Various Technical Targets
TARGET
Laboratory Setting
CONDUCT
Advanced Sensors
Complex Components
-
EXPERIMENTS
Far-Field Effects (Countermeasures)
PURSUE
APPLICATIONS
Solicit
Known
Talent
Screening/Training (Develop)
PERSONNEL
SELECTION
Figure 5 (U) Basic Research Milestones - Anomalous Perturbation
(To Include Biological Systems)
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(S/NF)
Some of the unique sensor candidates include
devices that are highly sensitive to very weak gravitational
effects (such as Mossbauer devices or atomic clocks). Perhaps
the most promising device is one that involves detection of an
unusual non-electromagnetic wave (A vector/scalar wave). If
experiments with such sensors are successful, then significant
understanding of AP or AC phenomenon would occur. Experiments
with such a device is a distinct near-term possibility;
consequently this will be given high priority in the early part
of this long-range program.
(S/NF) Should these pilot experiments prove successful,
then a near and distant experiments would be developed for a wide
variety of devices to evaluate application aspects. Potential
applications could include, for example, remote switching (in a
communication role) or possibly as a countermeasure to minimize
effectiveness of threat systems such as sensitive computer
components or sensors. Similarly, if these results are
successful, they would provide insight regarding potential
threats to U.S. systems or security.
(S/NF) The specific experiments to be conducted in these
research domains will be defined during the first six to nine
months of the program utilizing the recommendations of the
working groups mentioned above subject to approval by the
Scientific Oversight Committee.
VII.
(U) APPLIED RESEARCH PLAN FOR ANOMALOUS COGNITION:
(U) Figure 6 illustrates the overall plan for the applied
research portion for several main functional categories.
a. (U)
SELECTION
(C) The most promising potential for selecting
individuals is to identify ancillary activity that correlates
with AC ability. If such a procedure can be identified, then
receiver selection can be incorporated as part of other screening
tests (e.g., fighter pilot candidacy), and thus large populations
can be used. Among the items that will be examined are
physiology (e.g., responses of the brain to external stimuli) and
hypnotic susceptibility (i.e., an individuals predisposition for
being hypnotized). The results of this effort will be examined
continuously; however, a decision to end the investigation will
occur in mid FY96. Should the results at that time warrant, then
refining of the techniques will continue to the end of FY 1998.
The reason the initial research spans several years is that to
validate even one psychological finding requires long-term
testing of candidate individuals. Current statistical methods
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TIME FRAME
ACTIVITY
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
State Parameters
PERSONNEL
SELECTION
RESEARCH
(Hypnosis, Physiology, Etc. )
Psychology
(Self Report, Behavioral Measures, Etc. )
Solicit Known Talent
Empirical (Mass Screening)
PERSONNEL
TRAINING
RESEARCH
State Parameters (Altered States, Subliminal Threshold Measures, Etc. )
Empirical Evaluation
Practical Application Tests (Increasing Project Difficulty)
APPLICATION
EVALUATION
RESEARCH
Target Characteristics (Entropy, Size, Etc.)
Other Aspects (Target Function, Dynamics, Degree of
Importance, Etc.)
Operational Conditions (Targets, Feedback, Etc.)
PROTOCOL
DEVELOPMENT
Search/Location Projects
New Applications/Procedures
ANALYSIS
METHOD
DEVELOPMENT
Response Definition (Written, Drawn, Physiological Measures, Etc. )
Artificial Intelligence (Fuzzy Sets, Etc. )
Neural Network Analogies
Combination of Methods
DATA
INTEGRATION/
ASSIMILATION
DEVELOPMENT
Intelligence Data Fusion Methods
Training/Seminars
Advanced Training
Farious Customers
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require many AC sessions, and experience has shown that only a
few sessions can be conducted per week for any single individual.
(C) The previous program was able to estimate
that approximately one percent of the general population
possessed a high-quality, natural AC ability. Because the
empirical method (i.e., asking large groups to attempt AC) is
labor intensive and very inefficient, it is included in the
research plan only as an alternate approach.
b. (U) TRAINING
(S/NF) Training has been a major part of the
previous program; however, results of training approaches have
been difficult to evaluate and have not been examined
systematically. Systematic review of this issue was begun in FY
92. One of the methods that will be examined involves lowering
an individual's visual subliminal threshold (i.e., the level
below which an individual is not consciously aware of visual
material) . This could enhance the individual's sensitivity to AC
data. Other forms of altered states, such as dreaming and
hypnosis, will also be evaluated to see if such states can
enhance AC data quality.
(U)
Results on these issues should be available
at the close of FY95. If no progress has been observed and if
there have been no positive results from the basic research, the
task ends. However, should any of the variables examined appear
promising then the task will be continued.
(S/NF) It is anticipated that all laboratory
successes must be validated by simulating operational tasks.
These experiments involve identifying the specialty to be tested,
the acceptance criteria, and conducting sessions in which the
complete target systems are know. This three-year activity runs
concurrently with the other tasks but with a one-year offset to
allow for planning.
c.
(U) TARGET/APPLICATION SELECTION
(C) Based on earlier research, the most promising
approach to target selection appears to be a single physical
characteristic called entropy (i.e., a measure of inherent target
information). Beginning in FY95, two and one half years have
been allocated for the detailed study of this aspect of target
properties. Initially, little experimentation is required;
rather, a retrospective examination of previous target systems
should indicate if this approach is valid. Included in this
examination are detailed calculations of the information content
of natural target scenes.
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(S/NF)
Beginning in mid FY96, other potential
intrinsic target properties will be examined. For example, a
target may be more readily sensed by AC if the collection of
elements at the site (e.g., landmark, buildings, roads)
constitute a conceptually coherent unit as opposed to a collage
of unrelated items. Quantitative definition of targets will also
be developed that include non-physical target parameters such as
function, meaning, or relationships. These aspects are highly
important in most operational projects and need to be quantified.
(S/NF)
Part of this effort will involve
investigations that serve two purposes:
(1) add insight into
the phenomenon; and (2) help evaluate the feasibility of certain
potential applications. For example, long distance experiments
could be conducted to or from deep caves or submarines in deep
water to test communication potential and transmission theories.
Experiments could also be conducted to targets on board space
platforms to test distance and gravitational effects.
Experiments to or from magnetically shielded rooms or certain
earth locations (e.g., the magnetic pole) might indicate if
magnetic fields influence the phenomenon. Experiments to
opposite sides of the earth might also indicate if a mass or
gravity effect can be noted.
(S/NF/SG/LIMDIS) This area of investigation will
be integrated with a variety of applications in coordination with
findings/investigations pursued by the in-house effort. Figure 9
identifies the main application or operational areas. Along with
types of data desired. This activity will be integrated, where
possible, into in-house pursuits that will explore these areas in
a systematic fashion. Initial emphasis will be in
counternarcotics and counterterrorism areas.
(S/NF /SG/LIMDIS)
Specific types of applications
that will be explored in-depth include the search problem.
Search tasks are expected to remain as high priority operational
tasks (e.g., hostage location, lost equipment or system
location) . Search tasks are complicated by timing issues,
especially if the missing target is being moved frequently.
Related to this will be examination of predictive capability in
order to evaluate feasibility of detecting hostile plans and
intentions in advance. Pilot studies of other areas (e.g., code
breaking, medical diagnostics, low intensity conflict support)
will also be initiated.
(S/NF /SG/LIMDIS)
Another application area that
will be examined is "communications". Previous research
indicates that with proper protocols, basic or coded messages can
be sent and received via AC procedures. Redundant coding methods
can readily enhance probability of success, and new statistical
methods can also improve success rates. Communication
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applications may have significant value for search problems by
providing additional information on location of kidnapped or
hostage victims. Such techniques might also help in determining
hostage or POW state-of-health or other significant issues.
d. (U) PROTOCOLS
(U) Given the laboratory success of AC
experimentation, the protocol task can build upon a substantial
literature. Determining optimal, specialty-dependent protocols
only require extending current concepts. Several years are
required due to the statistical nature of analysis that is
required to determine the effects of environment, receiver,
target and feedback conditions. Several high-interest
application areas (such as search/location) will be examined in
detail. A variety of session procedures will be evaluated to
determine those that are beneficial to improving data quality.
(S/NF)
Protocol effectiveness may be measured by
quality, quantity, and/or usefulness of the AC information
elicited by its use. The requirements for protocols that are
designed for laboratory settings are considerably more
restrictive than those required for operational settings. For
example, providing limited information to a receiver while an
operational session is in progress (i.e., intermediate feedback)
might facilitate the acquisition of the desired data. This kind
of feedback is strictly prohibited, however, in most protocols
designed for laboratory experiments. Protocols may also vary
depending on nature of the data required. For example, for some
search projects, only general data may be adequate. For such
cases would not require development of highly specific details
and protocols the sessions would not be as complex.
(U) A detailed protocol will need to consider a
variety of potential session variables such as the individuals'
physical environment, mental state and attitude, and how the
target or task is designated (e.g., coordinates, abstract terms) .
Other data includes specifics of the session (monitor present or
not), type of feedback, type of response data (e.g., predictive) ,
and mode and method of response (e.g., drawings, verbal) .
(S/NF) Concurrently, the only known way to
resolve the above issues is to conduct a large number of trials
for a given individual with as many of the potential variables as
possible held constant. Standard statistical methods can then be
used to identify trends, patterns, and operational constraints.
e. (U) DATA ANALYSIS
(U) This area requires extensive review of
leading analysis tools, such as those required for describing
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imprecise concepts or data (i.e., artificial intelligence
techniques, fuzzy sets). This work will be combined with
findings from neural network analysis and research, or possibly
combinations of other emerging advanced analysis methods.
(S/NF) Various approaches that are anticipated to
directly benefit operational evaluations. One promising
technique involves procedures based on an adaptive (frequent data
base update) approach. This will permit an individual's
progression, and possibly time dependent data variables in an
individual's track record, to be identified.
(S/NF) In addition to the search for new analysis
methods, the current methods will also be reexamined. Laboratory
requirements differ from those for operational activities in that
the target can be controlled and well defined. For operational
activities, uncertainties in tasking may arise, especially if
operational requirements are changing or if some of the initial
"known" data are incorrect. Such uncertainties complicate later
analyses.
(S/NF)
Analysis methods will also be developed
that can make predictions on data quality for any given task.
This will require development of an extensive track record for
each individual based on both controlled and operational
projects.
(S/NF) These analysis methods will also address
certain practical issues. For example, a detailed, high-quality
example of AC data may have little value to an intelligence
analyst if that information was known from other sources.
Likewise, a poor example of AC data might provide a single
element as a tip-off for other assets, or provide the missing
piece in a complex analysis, and thus be quite valuable. The
intelligence utility of AC data may in some cases be only weakly
connected to the AC quality. Therefore a data fusion analysis
procedure is needed for AC-derived operational data. Methods
that permit appropriate data analysis from an accuracy and
utility viewpoint will be developed.
f.
(U)
INTEGRATION
(U) This activity would be an on-going review/
integration effort in order to identify patterns or clues useful
for understanding practical aspects of this phenomenological
area.
(S/NF)
Identifying approaches and procedures that
permit assimilation of AC data from operational support projects
into all-source intelligence analysis procedures will also be
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part of this support activity. Depending on results of applied
research findings and operational pursuits, a basic seminar/
1
training program for other applications-oriented elements might
be established. Such a training/seminar program would focus on
basic techniques and would augment possible operational training
activity that might become part of the in-house effort. This
would require several years to develop and establish.
SG1B
(S/NF) The specific experiments to be conducted
in these research domains will be defined during the first six to
nine months of the program utilizing the recommendations of the
working groups mentioned above subject to approval by the
Scientific Oversight Committee.
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IX.
(U)
POTENTIAL RESEARCH RETURN:
(S/NF/SG/LIMDIS) The research pursuits identified in the
overall research and peer review plan have the potential for
achieving highly significant results using AMP to address
problems of national security by pushing the phenomena to their
natural limits. This overall result can be achieved by
accomplishing the aforementioned program plan goals.
x.
(U)
PROGRAM OVERSIGHT
A.
(U)
PROJECT OVERSIGHT METHODOLOGY:
1.
(U)
PROGRAM MANAGEMENT /OVERSIGHT
(S/NF) DIA, as executive agent, proposes to
implement a management structure that fosters a proactive,
responsive, and creative environment for this activity.
Both
the external research and in-house activities will be centered in
the Technology Assessment and Support Activity under the
supervision of the Chief, Office for Ground Forces (DIA/PAG) .
2. (U) SCIENTIFIC OVERSIGHT
(S/NF)
Scientific oversight will be provided by the
SEP.
3.
(U)
CONTRACTOR OVERSIGHT
-
(U)
A contractor sponsored Scientific
Oversight Committee (SOC), consisting of scientists from the
following disciplines: physics, astronomy, statistics,
neuroscience, and psychology, will be tasked with the following:
--
(U) Reviewing and approving all
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experimental protocols prior to the collection of experimental
data.
-- (U) Reviewing all experimental final
reports as if they were submissions to technical scientific
journals.
(U) Proposing directions for further
research.
-- (U) Conducting un-announced drop-in
privileges to view experiments in progress.
b. (U) An contractor sponsored Human Use
Review Board will also be formed and charged with the
responsibility of assuring compliance with all U. S. and DoD
regulations with regard to the use of humans in experimentation
and assuring their safety. Members should represent the health,
legal, and spiritual professions IAW government guidelines.
XI. (U) DEVELOPMENT OF EVALUATION CRITERIA:
A.
(U) SCIENTIFIC VALIDITY
(S/NF) A thorough review of DoD's activities in AMP
was conducted in 1987 to evaluate the use of AMP for intelligence
gathering purposes. The overall findings of this evaluation were
that " ... the Project Review Group has determined to its
satisfaction that the work of the Enhanced Human Performance
Group is scientifically sound ... and is providing valuable insight
into the nature of an anomaly which have a significant impact on
the DoD." This research and development program will both draw
from and add to this extensive data base to further demonstrate
the scientific validity and practicality of AMP.
B. (U) PERFORMANCE
(S/NF) The ability of the STAR GATE program to produce
results that have an intelligence value can only be measured by
customer feedback evaluations. STAR GATE has developed feedback
mechanisms and procedures for customers that should result in a
method of quantifying this subjective feedback data so that
operational value added and cost-effectiveness can be measured.
XII. (U) BUDGET AND RESOURCE REQUIREMENTS (FYs 95-99) :
(S/NF/SG/LIMDIS) Due to the diversity of the STAR GATE
mission/objectives, both external resources and in-house
expertise are required. Since this Activity possesses no in-
house R&D capability, an absolute need for external R&D support
is required to meet Congressional concerns which are addressed in
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this program plan. A balance will be maintained between external
and in-house activities, and every effort will be made to
integrate and link these activities where appropriate. The
external aspect permits a wide range of expertise covering many
disciplines to be focused on this area; this also has the benefit
of ensuring peer group review and of facilitating a variety of
scientific interactions. In-house personnel with a wide-range of
expertise in this phenemenology will need to be retained to make
this proposed plan work.
(S/NF / SG/LIMDIS)
In order to fulfill Congressional
Direction, the DIA proposes to convene a Scientific Evaluation
Panel (SEP) composed of representatives from each of the Service
Scientific Advisory Boards. The purpose of the SEP is to review
and validate the methodology outlined in the plan in order to
address the cost-effectiveness and performance criteria for the
STAR GATE program's research and development objectives and to
propose recommendations as to which objectives should be pursued
and the program scope required to achieve those objectives.
If
the SEP determines that objectives in the plan are viable and
executable, the General Defense Intelligence Program (GDIP)
Manager will complete this initiative with others for limited
available resources remaining in the program.
(U) The proposed ongoing R&D effort will be reviewed every
two years by the SEP to determine whether the STAR GATE program
can show results that are cost-effective and satisfy reasonable
performance criteria.
(C)
An annual report will document the current operational,
technical and administrative status of the program.
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APPENDIX A
CONGRESSIONALLY-DIRECTED ACTION
DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION CONFERENCE
(S/NF)
REQUEST:
"The conferees are concerned that insufficient
funds have been spent on research and development to establish
the scientific basis for the STAR GATE program. The conferees
direct the Director of DIA to prepare a program plan and to
submit an appropriate budget request for a research effort, over
several years, to determine whether the STAR GATE program can
show results that are cost-effective and satisfy reasonable
performance criteria. This plan, and any research under this
program, should be subject to peer review by neutral scientific
experts. The Director of DIA is directed to prepare this
research and peer review plan within existing program funds."
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APPENDIX B
TERMINOLOGY AND DEFINITIONS
(U)
PHENOMENA TERMINOLOGY:
(U) This phenomenological area has had a variety of
descriptive terms over the years, such as paranormal,
parapsychological, or as psychical research. Foreign researchers
use other terms: "psychoenergetics" in the USSR; "extraordinary
human function" in the People's Republic of China (PRC). In
general, this field is concerned with a largely unexplored area
of human consciousness/subconsciousness interactions associated
with unusual or underdeveloped human capabilities.
(U) Recently, researchers have shown a preference for terms
that are neutral and that emphasizes the anomalous or enigmatic
nature of this phenomena. The term anomalous mental phenomena
(AMP) , is generally preferred.
1
(U)
This area has two aspects; information access and
energetics influence. Information access refers to a mental
ability to describe remote areas or to access concealed data that
are otherwise shielded from all known sensory channels. A recent
term for this ability is anomalous cognition (AC). This term
places emphasis on potential understanding that might be
available from advances in sensory/brain functioning research or
other related research. Older terms for this aspect have
included extra-sensory perception (ESP), remote viewing (RV), and
in some cases, precognition.
(U) The energetics aspect refers to the ability to
influence, via mental volition, physical or biological systems by
an as yet unknown physical mechanism. An example of physical
system influence would include affecting the output of sensors or
electronic devices; biological systems influence would include
affecting physiological parameters of an individual. A recent
descriptive term for this ability is anomalous perturbation (AP) .
Older terms for this phenomenon included psychokinesis (PK) or
telekinesis.
(U)
GENERAL DEFINITIONS:
(S/NF) For this program, basic research is defined to mean
any investigation or experiment for determining fundamental
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processes or for uncovering underlying parameters that are
involved in this phenomenon. Basic research is primarily
oriented toward understanding the physical, physiological
and
psychological mechanisms of anomalous mental phenomena (AMP) .
(S/NF) Applied research refers to any investigation
directed toward developing particular applications or for
improving data quality and reliability. For anomalous cognition
(AC) phenomenon, research is primarily directed toward improving
the output quality of AC data. This would include ways to
develop/improve utility of AC data for variety of potential
application. For example, examination of spatial and temporal
relationships of AC data could assist in developing a reliable
search capability useful for locating missing people or
equipment.
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APPENDIX C
POTENTIAL RESEARCH SUPPORT FACILITIES
ANOMALOUS MENTAL PHENOMENA
Science Applications International Corp.
Mind Science Foundation
Princeton Engineering Anomalies Laboratory
American Society for Psychical Research
St. John's University
Foundation for Research into the Nature
of Man
ARE/Atlantic University
University of Virginia
Psychophysical Research Laboratories
Edinburgh University
OTHER RELATED DISCIPLINES
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Psychology
Stanford University
Cornell University
Anthropology
University of California
University of Arizona
Berkeley, CA
Tucson, AZ
Menlo Park, CA
San Francisco, CA
Topeka, KS
Menlo Park, CA
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San Antonio, TX
Princeton Univ, NJ
New York, NY
Long Island, NY
Durham, NC
Virginia Beach, VA
Charlottesville,
VA
Edinburgh,
Scotland
Edinburgh,
Scotland
Stanford, CA
Ithaca, NY
.
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Psychophysiology
SRI International
Langly-Portor Neuropsychiatric Institute
Menninger Foundation
Psychoimmunology
California Institute for Transpersonal
Psychology
Cognitive Neuroscience
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Sandia National Laboratory
University of California
Los Alamos, NM
Albuquerque, NM
San Diego, CA
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Cognitive Psychology
Psychology Department, Princeton Univ
Psychology Department, City College of
New York
Princeton, NJ
New York, NY
Artificial Intelligence
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Stanford University
Cambridge, MA
Stanford, CA
Neural Networks
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Science Applications International Corp
Cambridge, MA
Los Altos, CA
Statistics/Signal Analysis
University of California
Harvard University
Davis, CA
Cambridge, MA
Thermodynamics
Rochester University
Physics Department, Stanford University
Rochester, NY
Stanford, CA
Quantum Measurement
International Business Machines,
Research Laboratories
College Park, MD
General Relativity
California Institute of Technology
University of Texas at Austin
Electromagnetic/Basic Research
Electronetics Corp
Battelle Corp
Institute for Advanced Study
Buffalo, NY
Columbus, OH
Austin, TX
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APPENDIX D
RESOURCE LITERATURE
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1.
A.R.E. Journal
2.
Abnormal hypnotic Phenomena
3.
American Anthropologist
4.
American Ethnologist
5.
American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis
6.
American Journal of Physiology
-
7.
American Journal of Sociology
8.
American Psychologist
9.
American Society for Psychical Research
10.
Annals of Eugenics
11.
Annals of Mathematical Statistics
12.
Annales de Sciences Psychiques
13.
Archivo di Psicologica Neurologia e Psychiatra
14.
Association for the Anthropological Study of Consciousness
Newsletter
15.
Behavioral and Brain Science
16.
Behavioral Science
17.
Bell System Technical Journal
18.
Biological Psychiatry
19.
Biological Review
20.
British Journal for the Philosophy of Science
21.
British Journal of Psychology
22.
Bulletin of the American Physical Research
23.
Bulletin of the Boston Society for Psychic Research
24.
Bulletin of the Los Angeles Neurological Societies
25.
Contributions to Asian Studies
26.
Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology
Endeavour
27.
28.
Ethnology
29.
Exceptional Human Experience
30.
Experientia
31.
Experimental Medicine and Surgery
32.
Fate
33.
Fields within Fields
34.
Foundations of Physics
35.
Hibbert Journal
36.
Human Biology
37.
International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis
38.
International Journal of Comparative Sociology
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39.
International Journal of Neuropsychiatry
40.
International Journal of Parapsychology
41.
International Journal of Psychoanalysis
42.
Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology
43.
Journal of Altered States of Consciousness
44.
Journal of Applied Physics
45.
Journal of Applied Psychology
46.
47.
Journal of Biophysical and Biochemical Cytology
48.
Journal of Cell Biology
49.
Journal of Communication
50.
Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology
51.
Journal of Consulting Psychology
52.
Journal of Existential Psychiatry
53.
Journal of Experimental Biology
54.
Journal of Experimental Psychology
55.
Journal of General Psychology
56.
Journal of Genetic Psychology
57.
Journal of Mind and Behavior
58.
Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases
Journal of Personality
59.
60.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
61.
Journal of Research in PSI Phenomena
62.
Journal of Scientific Exploration
63.
Journal of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis
64.
Journal of the London Mathematical Society
65.
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great
Britain and Ireland
66.
Metapsichica
67.
Mind-Brain Bulletin
68.
Motivation and Emotion
69.
Nature
70.
Naturwissenschaftliche Rundschau
71.
New Horizons
72.
New Scientist
73.
New Sense bulletin
74.
Newsletter of the Parapsychology Foundation
75.
Parapsychology Bulletin
76.
Parapsychology Abstracts International
77.
Parapsychology Review
78.
Perceptual and Motor Skills
79.
Philosophy of Science
-
81.
Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research
82.
Psychedelic Review
83.
Psychic
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Journal of Asian and African Studies
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Physiology and Behavior

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84.
Psychic Science
85.
Psychoanalytic Quarterly
86.
Psychoanalytic Review
87.
Psychological Bulletin
88.
Psychometrika
89.
Psychophysiology
90.
Physics Today
91.
Renti Teyigongneng (EFHB Research) [PRC]
92.
Revue Metapsychique
93.
Revue Philosophique
94.
Revue Philosophique de la France et de L'Etranger
95.
Revue Philosophique Applique
96.
Science
97.
Skeptical Inquirer
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98.
Social Studies of Science
99.
Subtle Energies
100.
The Humanistic Psychology Institute
101.
The Journal of Parapsychology
102.
The Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research
Theta
103.
104.
Tijdschrif voor Parapsychologie
105.
Tomorrow
106.
Voprosy Filosofi (Questions of Philosophy) [RUSSIA]
107.
Western Canadian Journal of Anthropology
108.
Zeitschrift fur die Gesamte Neurologie und Psychiatrie
109.
Zietschrift fur Parapsychologie und Grenzgebeite der
Psychologie
110.
Zietschrift fur Tierpsychologie
111.
Zietschrift fur Vergleichende Physiologie
112.
Zetetic Scholar
113.
Zhongguo Shebui Kexue (China Social Sciences) [PRC]
114.
Ziran Zazhi (Nature) [PRC]
.
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APPENDIX E
CURRENT CONTRACTOR SCIENTIFIC OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE MEMBERSHIP
Steven A. Hillyard
- Professor of Neurosciences, Department of Neurosciences,
University of California, San Diego.
- Author or coauthor of 118 technical neuroscience
publications.
- Eighty-two invited presentations at technical conferences.
- Ph. D. , Yale University, 1968 (Psychology) .
S. James Press
- Professor of Statistics, Department of Statistics, University
of California, Riverside.
- Author or coauthor of 132 statistics publications.
- Author of 12 books and/or monographs.
- Ph. D., Stanford University, 1964 (Statistics) .
Garrison Rapmund
- Responsible for facilitating transfer of Strategic
Defense Initiative technologies to health care industries.
- Major General, USA retired in 1986 as Assistant Surgeon
General (R&D) and Commander, Army Medical R & D Command.
- M.D., Columbia University, 1953 (Pediatrics) .
Melvin Schwartz
- Associate Director for High Energy and Nuclear Physics,
Brookhaven National Laboratory.
- Author or coauthor of 40 technical publications in high energy
physics, author of "Principles of Electrodynamics."
- Nobel Prize, Physics (1988).
- Ph.D., Columbia University, 1958 (Physics) .
Yervant Terzian
- Professor of Physical Sciences, Chairman of the Department of
Astronomy, Cornell University.
- Author/coauthor of numerous technical publications and books.
- Ph.D., Indiana University, 1965 (Astronomy) .
Phillip G. Zimbardo
- Professor of Psychology, Department of Psychology, Stanford
University.
- Author/coauthor of numerous experimental psychology
publications.
- Ph. D., Yale University, 1959 (Psychology) .
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APPENDIX E
CURRENT CONTRACTOR INSTITUTIONAL REVIEW BOARD MEMBERSHIP
Byron Wm. Brown, Jr., Ph.D.
- Biostatistics, Stanford University
Gary R. Fujimoto, M. D.
- Occupational Medicine, Palo Alto Medical Foundation
John Hanley, M. D.
- Neuropsychiatry, University of California, Los Angeles
Robert B. Livingston, M. D.
- Neuroscience, University of California, San Diego
Robin P. Michelson, M. D.
- Otolaryngology, University of California, San Francisco
Ronald Y. Nakasone, Ph.D.
- Buddhist Studies, Institute of Buddhist Studies, Berkeley, CA
Garrison Rapmund, M. D. (Chair)
- Air Force Science Advisory Board
Louis J. West, M. D.
- Neuropsychiatry, University of California, Los Angeles
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APPENDIX G
ACADEMIC STUDIES REGARDING THE SCIENTIFIC VALIDITY OF AMP
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Version 4.7
October 1, 1993
Does Psi Exist?
Replicable Evidence for an
Anomalous Process of Information Transfer
Daryl J. Bem and Charles Honorton
Most academic psychologists do not yet accept the existence of psi, anomalous processes of in-
formation or energy transfer (such as telepathy or other forms of extrasensory perception) that
are currently unexplained in terms of known physical or biological mechanisms. We believe
that the replication rates and effect sizes achieved by one particular experimental method, the
ganzfeld procedure, are now sufficient to warrant bringing this body of data to the attention of
the wider psychological community. Competing meta-analyses of the ganzfeld database are re-
viewed, 1 by R. Hyman (1985), a skeptical critic of psi research, and the other by C. Honorton
(1985), a parapsychologist and major contributor to the ganzfeld database. Next the results of
11 new ganzfeld studies that comply with guidelines jointly authored by R. Hyman and C.
Honorton (1986) are summarized. Finally, issues of replication and theoretical explanation are
discussed.
CPYRGHT
The term psi denotes anomalous processes of informa-
tion or energy transfer, processes such as telepathy or
other forms of extrasensory perception that are currently
unexplained in terms of known physical or biological
mechanisms. The term is purely descriptive: It neither
implies that such anomalous phenomena are paranormal
nor connotes anything about their underlying mecha-
niems.
Does psi exist? Most academic psychologists don't think
Bo. A survey of more than 1,100 college professors in the
United States found that 55% of natural scientists, 66% of
social scientists (excluding psychologists), and 77% of aca-
demics in the arts, humanities, and education believed
that ESP is either an established fact or a likely possibil-
ity. The comparable figure for psychologists was only 34%.
Moreover, an equal number of psychologists declared ESP
to be an impossibility, a view expressed by only 2% of all
other respondents (Wagner & Monnet, 1979).
Daryl J. Bem, Department of Psychology, Cornell University;
Charles Honorton, Department of Psychology, University of Ed-
inburgh, Edninburgh, Scotland.
Sadly, Charles Honorton died of a heart attack on November 4,
1992, 9 days before this article was accepted for publication. He
was 46. Parapsychology has lost one of its most valued contribu-
tors. I have lost a valued friend.
This collaboration had its origins in a 1983 visit I made to
Honorton's Psychophysical Research Laboratories (PRL) in
Princeton, New Jersey, as one of several outside consultants
brought in to examine the design and implementation of the ex-
perimental protocols.
Preparation of this article was supported, in part, by grants to
Charles Honorton from the American Society for Psychical Re-
search and the Parapsychology Foundation, both of New York
City. The work at PRL summarized in the second half of this ar-
ticle was supported by the James S. McDonnell Foundation of St.
Louis, Missouri, and by the John E. Fetzer Foundation of Kala-
mazoo, Michigan.
Helpful comments on drafts of this article were received from
Deborah Delanoy, Edwin May, Donald McCarthy, Robert Morris,
John Palmer, Robert Rosenthal, Lee Ross, Jessica Utts, Philip
Zimbardo, and two anonymous reviewers.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to
Daryl J. Bem, Department of Psychology, Uris Hall, Cornell
University, Ithaca, New York 14853. (Electronic mail may be
sent to d.bem@cornell.edu).
Psychologists are probably more skeptical about psi for
several reasons. First, we believe that extraordinary
claims require extraordinary proof. And although our col-
leagues from other disciplines would probably agree with
this dictum, we are more likely to be familiar with the
methodological and statistical requirements for sustaining
such claims, as well as with previous claims that failed ei-
ther to meet those requirements or to survive the test of
successful replication. Even for ordinary claims, our con-
ventional statistical criteria are conservative. The sacred
p = . 05 threshold is a constant reminder that it is far more
sinful to assert that an effect existe when it does not (the
Type I error) than to assert that an effect does not exist
when it does (the Type II error).
Second, most of us distinguish sharply between phe-
nomena whose explanations are merely obscure or contro-
versial (e.g., hypnosis) and phenomena such as psi that
would appear to fall outside our current explanatory
framework altogether. (Some would characterize this as
the difference between the unexplained and the inexplica-
ble.) In contrast, many laypersons treat all exotic psycho-
logical phenomena as epistemologically equivalent; many
even consider déjà vu to be a psychic phenomenon. The
blurring of this critical distinction is aided and abetted by
the mass media, "new age" books and mind-power courses,
and "psychic" entertainers who present both genuine hyp-
nosis and fake "mind reading" in the course of a single
performance. Accordingly, most laypersons would not
have to revise their conceptual model of reality as radi-
cally as we would to assimilate the existence of psi. For
us, pai is simply more extraordinary.
Finally, research in cognitive and social psychology has
sensitized us to the errors and biases that plague intuitive
attempts to draw valid inferences from the data of every-
day experience (Gilovich, 1991; Nisbett & Ross, 1980;
Tversky & Kahneman, 1971). This leads us to give virtu-
ally no probative weight to anecdotal or journalistic re-
ports of psi, the main source cited by our academic col-
leagues as evidence for their beliefs about psi (Wagner &
Monnet, 1979).
Ironically, however, psychologists are probably not more
familiar than others with recent experimental research on
psi. Like most psychological research, parapsychological
research is reported primarily in specialized journals; un-
like most psychological research, however, contemporary
parapsychological research is not usually reviewed or
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CPYRGHT
ANOMALOUS INFORMATION TRANSFER
2
summarized in psychology's textbooks, handbooks, or
mainstream journals. For example, only 1 of 64 introduc-
tory psychology textbooks recently surveyed even men-
tions the experimental procedure reviewed in this article,
a procedure that has been in widespread use since the
early 19708 (Roig, Icochea, & Cuzzucoli, 1991). Other sec-
ondary sources for nonspecialists are frequently inaccu-
rate in their descriptions of parapsychological research.
(For discussions of this problem, see Child, 1985; and
Palmer, Honorton, & Utts, 1989.)
This situation may be changing. Discussions of modern
pai research have recently appeared in a widely used in-
troductory textbook (Atkinson, Atkinson, Smith, & Bem,
1990, 1993), two mainstream psychology journals (Child,
1985; Rao & Palmer, 1987), and a scholarly but accessible
book for nonspecialists (Broughton, 1991). The purpose of
the present article is to supplement these broader treat-
ments with a more detailed, meta-analytic presentation of
evidence issuing from a single experimental method: the
ganzfeld procedure. We believe that the replication rates
and effect sizes achieved with this procedure are now suf-
ficient to warrant bringing this body of data to the atten-
tion of the wider psychological community.
The Ganzfeld Procedure
By the 1960s, a number of parapsychologists had be-
come dissatisfied with the familiar ESP testing methods
pioneered by J. B. Rhine at Duke University in the 19306.
In particular, they believed that the repetitive forced-
choice procedure in which a subject repeatedly attempts to
select the correct "target" symbol from a set of fixed alter-
natives failed to capture the circumstances that character-
ize reported instances of psi in everyday life.
Historically, psi has often been associated with medita-
tion, hypnosis, dreaming, and other naturally occurring or
deliberately induced altered states of consciousness. For
example, the view that psi phenomena can occur during
meditation is expressed in most classical texts on medita-
tive techniques; the belief that hypnosis is a psi-conducive
state dates all the way back to the days of early mes-
merism (Dingwall, 1968); and cross-cultural surveys indi-
cate that most reported "real-life" psi experiences are me-
diated through dreams (Green, 1960; Prasad & Stevenson,
1968; L. E. Rhine, 1962; Sannwald, 1959).
There are now reports of experimental evidence consis-
tent with these anecdotal observations. For example, sev-
eral laboratory investigators have reported that medita-
tion facilitates psi performance (Honorton, 1977). A meta-
analysis of 25 experiments on hypnosis and psi conducted
between 1945 and 1981 in 10 different laboratories sug-
gests that hypnotic induction may also facilitate psi per-
formance (Schechter, 1984). And dream-mediated psi was
reported in a series of experiments conducted at Mai-
monides Medical Center in New York and published be-
tween 1966 and 1972 (Child, 1985; Ullman, Krippner, &
Vaughan, 1973).
In the Maimonides dream studies, two subjects-a
"receiver" and a "sender"-spent the night in a sleep labo-
ratory. The receiver's brain waves and eye movements
were monitored as he or she slept in an isolated room.
When the receiver entered a period of REM sleep, the ex-
perimenter pressed a buzzer that signaled the sender-
under the supervision of a second experimenter-to begin
a sending period. The sender would then concentrate on a
randomly chosen picture (the "target") with the goal of in-
fluencing the content of the receiver's dream.
Toward the end of the REM period, the receiver was
awakened and asked to describe any dream just experi-
enced. This procedure was repeated throughout the night
with the same target. A transcription of the receiver's
dream reports was given to outside judges who blindly
rated the similarity of the night's dreams to several pic-
tures, including the target. In some studies, similarity rat-
ings were also obtained from the receivers themselves.
Across several variations of the procedure, dreams were
judged to be significantly more similar to the target pic-
tures than to the control pictures in the judging sets
(failures to replicate the Maimonides results were also re-
viewed by Child, 1985).
These several lines of evidence suggested a working
model of psi in which psi-mediated information is concep-
tualized as a weak signal that is normally masked by in-
ternal somatic and external sensory "noise." By reducing
ordinary sensory input, these diverse psi-conducive states
are presumed to raise the signal-to-noise ratio, thereby
enhancing a person's ability to detect the psi-mediated in-
formation (Honorton, 1969, 1977). To test the hypothesis
that a reduction of sensory input itself facilitates psi per-
formance, investigators turned to the ganzfeld procedure
(Braud, Wood, & Braud, 1975; Honorton & Harper, 1974;
Parker, 1975), a procedure originally introduced into ex-
perimental psychology during the 1930s to test proposi-
tions derived from Gestalt theory (Avant, 1965; Metzger,
1930).
Like the dream studies, the psi ganzfeld procedure has
most often been used to test for telepathic communication
between a sender and a receiver. The receiver is placed in
a reclining chair in an acoustically isolated room.
Translucent ping-pong ball halves are taped over the eyes
and headphones are placed over the ears; a red floodlight
directed toward the eyes produces an undifferentiated vi-
sual field and white noise played through the headphones
produces an analogous auditory field. It is this homoge-
neous perceptual environment that is called the Ganzfeld
("total field"). To reduce internal somatic "noise," the re-
ceiver typically also undergoes a series of progressive re- ,
laxation exercises at the beginning of the ganzfeld period.
The sender is sequestered in a separate acoustically iso-
lated room, and a visual stimulus (art print, photograph,
or brief videotaped sequence) is randomly selected from a
large pool of such stimuli to serve as the target for the
session. While the sender concentrates on the target, the
receiver provides a continuous verbal report of his or her
ongoing imagery and mentation, usually for about 30
minutes. At the completion of the ganzfeld period, the re-
ceiver is presented with several stimuli (usually four) and,
without knowing which stimulus was the target, is asked
to rate the degree to which each matches the imagery and
mentation experienced during the ganzfeld period. If the
receiver assigns the highest rating to the target stimulus,
it is scored as a "hit." Thus, if the experiment uses judging
sets containing four stimuli (the target and three decoys
or control stimuli), the hit rate expected by chance is .25.
The ratings can also be analyzed in other ways; for exam-
ple, they can be converted to ranks or standardized scores
within each set and analyzed parametrically across ses-
sions. And, as with the dream studies, the similarity rat-
ings can also be made by outside judges using transcripts
of the receiver's mentation report.
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CPYRGHT
3
Meta-Analyses of the Ganzfeld Database
In 1985 and 1986, the Journal of Parapsychology de-
voted two entire issues to a critical examination of the
ganzfeld database. The 1985 issue comprised two contri-
butions: (a) a meta-analysis and critique by Ray Hyman
(1985), a cognitive psychologist and skeptical critic of
parapsychological research, and (b) a competing meta-
analysis and rejoinder by Charles Honorton (1985), a
parapsychologist and major contributor to the ganzfeld
database. The 1986 issue contained four commentaries on
the Hyman-Honorton exchange, a joint communiqué by
Hyman and Honorton, and six additional commentaries
on the joint communique itself. We summarize the major
issues and conclusions here.
Replication Rates
Rates by study. Hyman's meta-analysis covered 42 psi
ganzfeld studies reported in 34 separate reports written
or published from 1974 through 1981. One of the first
problems he discovered in the database was multiple
analysis. As noted earlier, it is possible to calculate sev-
eral indexes of psi performance in a ganzfeld experiment
and, furthermore, to subject those indexes to several kinds
of statistical treatment. Many investigators reported mul-
tiple indexes or applied multiple statistical tests without
adjusting the criterion significance level for the number of
tests conducted. Worse, some may have "shopped" among
the alternatives until finding one that yielded a signifi-
cantly successful outcome. Honorton agreed that this was
a problem.
Accordingly, Honorton applied a uniform test on a
common index across all studies from which the pertinent
datum could be extracted, regardless of how the investiga-
tors had analyzed the data in the original reports. He se-
lected the proportion of hits as the common index because
it could be calculated for the largest subset of studies: 28
of the 42 studies. The hit rate is also a conservative index
because it discards most of the rating information; a sec-
ond place ranking-a "near miss"-receives no more
credit than a last place ranking. Honorton then calculated
the exact binomial probability and its associated z score
for each study.
Of the 28 studies, 23 (82%) had positive z scores (p =
4.6 x 10-4, exact binomial test with p = q = . 5). Twelve of
the studies (43%) had z scores that were independently
significant at the 5% level (p = 3.5 x 10-9, binomial test
with 28 studies, p = . 05, and q = . 95), and 7 of the studies
(25%) were independently significant at the 1% level (p =
9.8 x 10-9). The composite Stouffer z score across the 28
studies was 6.60 (p = 2.1 x 10-11).1 A more conservative
estimate of significance can be obtained by including 10
additional studies that also used the relevant judging pro-
cedure but did not report hit rates. If these studies are as-
signed a mean z score of zero, the Stouffer z across all 38
studies becomes 5.67 (p = 7.3 x 10-9).
Thus, whether one considers only the studies for which
the relevant information is available or includes a null es-
timate for the additional studies for which the information
is not available, the aggregate results cannot reasonably
1Stouffer's z is computed by dividing the sum of the z scores for
the individual studies by the square root of the number of studies
(Rosenthal, 1978).
be attributed to chance. And, by design, the cumulative
outcome reported here cannot be attributed to the infla-
tion of significance levels through multiple analysis.
Rates by laboratory. One objection to estimates such as
those just described is that studies from a common labora-
tory are not independent of one another (Parker, 1978).
Thus, it is possible for one or two investigators to be dis-
proportionately responsible for a high replication rate
whereas other, independent investigators are unable to
obtain the effect.
The ganzfeld database is vulnerable to this possibility.
The 28 studies providing hit rate information were con-
ducted by investigators in 10 different laboratories. One
laboratory contributed 9 of the studies, Honorton's own
laboratory contributed 5, 2 other laboratories contributed
3 each, 2 contributed 2 each, and the remaining 4 labora-
tories each contributed 1. Thus, half of the studies were
conducted by only 2 laboratories, 1 of them Honorton's
own.
Accordingly, Honorton calculated a separate Stouffer z
score for each laboratory. Significantly positive outcomes
were reported by 6 of the 10 laboratories, and the com-
bined z score across laboratories was 6.16 (p = 3.6 x
10-10). Even if all of the studies conducted by the 2 most
prolific laboratories are discarded from the analysis, the
Stouffer z across the 8 other laboratories remains signifi-
cant (z = 3.67, p = 1.2 x 10-4). Four of these studies are
significant at the 1% level (p = 9.2 x 10-6, binomial test
with 14 studies, p = . 01, and q = . 99), and each was con-
tributed by a different laboratory. Thus, even though the
total number of laboratories in this database is small,
most of them have reported significant studies, and the
significance of the overall effect does not depend on just
one or two of them.
Selective Reporting
In recent years, behavioral scientists have become in-
creasingly aware of the "file-drawer" problem: the likeli-
hood that successful studies are more likely to be pub-
lished than unsuccessful studies, which are more likely to
be consigned to the file drawers of their disappointed in-
vestigators (Bozarth & Roberts, 1972; Sterling, 1959).
Parapsychologists were among the first to become sensi-
tive to the problem, and, in 1975, the Parapsychological
Association Council adopted a policy opposing the selec-
tive reporting of positive outcomes. As a consequence,
negative findings have been routinely reported at the as-
sociation's meetings and in its affiliated publications for
almost two decades. As has already been shown, more
than half of the ganzfeld studies included in the meta-
analysis yielded outcomes whose significance falls short of
the conventional .05 level.
A variant of the selective reporting problem arises from
what Hyman (1985) has termed the "retrospective study."
An investigator conducts a small set of exploratory trials.
If they yield null results, they remain exploratory and
never become part of the official record; if they yield posi-
tive results, they are defined as a study after the fact and
are submitted for publication. In support of this possibil-
ity, Hyman noted that there are more significant studies
in the database with fewer than 20 trials than one would
expect under the assumption that, all other things being
equal, statistical power should increase with the square
root of the sample size. Although Honorton questioned the
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assumption that "all other things" are in fact equal across
the studies and disagreed with Hyman's particular statis-
tical analysis, he agreed that there is an apparent cluster-
ing of significant studies with fewer than 20 trials. (Of the
complete ganzfeld database of 42 studies, 8 involved fewer
than 20 trials, and 6 of those studies reported statistically
significant results.)
Because it is impossible, by definition, to know how
many unknown studies-exploratory or otherwise are
languishing in file drawers, the major tool for estimating
the seriousness of selective reporting problems has be-
come some variant of Rosenthal's file drawer statistic, an
estimate of how many unreported studies with z scores of
zero would be required to exactly cancel out the signifi-
cance of the known database (Rosenthal, 1979). For the 28
direct-hit ganzfeld studies alone, this estimate is 423 fugi-
tive studies, a ratio of unreported-to-reported studies of
approximately 15:1. When it is recalled that a single
ganzfeld session takes over an hour to conduct, it is not
surprising that despite his concern with the retrospec-
tive study problem-Hyman concurred with Honorton and
other participants in the published debate that selective
reporting problems cannot plausibly account for the over-
all statistical significance of the psi ganzfeld database
(Hyman & Honorton, 1986).2
Methodological Flaws
If the most frequent criticism of parapsychology is that
it has not produced a replicable psi effect, the second most
frequent criticism is that many, if not most, psi experi-
ments have inadequate controls and procedural safe-
guards. A frequent charge is that positive results emerge
primarily from initial, poorly controlled studies and then
vanish as better controls and safeguards are introduced.
Fortunately, meta-analysis provides a vehicle for empir-
ically evaluating the extent to which methodological flaws
may have contributed to artifactual positive outcomes
across a set of studies. First, ratings are assigned to each
study that index the degree to which particular method-
ological flaws are or are not present; these ratings are
then correlated with the studies' outcomes. Large positive
correlations constitute evidence that the observed effect
may be artifactual.
In psi research, the most fatal flaws are those that
might permit a subject to obtain the target information in
normal sensory fashion, either inadvertently or through
deliberate cheating. This is called the problem of sensory
leakage. Another potentially serious flaw is inadequate
randomization of target selection.
Sensory leakage. Because the ganzfeld is itself a percep-
tual isolation procedure, it goes a long way toward elimi-
nating potential sensory leakage during the ganzfeld por-
tion of the session. There are, however, potential channels
of sensory leakage after the ganzfeld period. For example,
if the experimenter who interacts with the receiver knows
the identity of the target, he or she could bias the re-
ceiver's similarity ratings in favor of correct identification.
Only one study in the database contained this flaw, a
study in which subjects actually performed slightly below
2A 1980 survey of parapsychologists uncovered only 19 com-
pleted but unreported ganzfeld studies. Seven of these had
achieved significantly positive results, a proportion (.37) very
similar to the proportion of independently significant studies in
the meta-analysis (.43) (Blackmore, 1980).
chance expectation. Second, if the stimulus set given to
the receiver for judging contains the actual physical target
handled by the sender during the sending period, there
might be cues (e.g., fingerprints, smudges, or temperature
differences) that could differentiate the target from the
decoys. Moreover, the process of transferring the stimulus
materials to the receiver's room itself opens up other po-
tential channels of sensory leakage. Although contempo-
rary ganzfeld studies have eliminated both of these possi-
bilities by using duplicate stimulus sets, some of the ear-
lier studies did not.
Independent analyses by Hyman and Honorton agreed
that there was no correlation between inadequacies of se-
curity against sensory leakage and study outcome. Honor-
ton further reported that if studies that failed to use du-
plicate stimulus sets were discarded from the analysis,
the remaining studies are still highly significant (Stouffer
z = 4.35, p .: 6.8 x 10-6)
Randomization. In many pai experiments, the issue of
target randomization is critical because systematic pat-
terns in inadequately randomized target sequences might
be detected by subjects during a session or might match
subjects' preexisting response biases. In a ganzfeld study,
however, randomization is a much less critical issue be-
cause only one target is selected during the session and
most subjects serve in only one session. The primary con-
cern is simply that all the stimuli within each judging set
be sampled uniformly over the course of the study. Simi-
lar considerations govern the second, randomization,
which takes place after the ganzfeld period and deter-,
mines the sequence in which the target and decoys are
presented to the receiver (or external judge) for judging.
Nevertheless, Hyman and Honorton disagreed over the
findings here. Hyman claimed there was a correlation be-
tween flaws of randomization and study outcome; Honor-
ton claimed there was not. The sources of this disagree-
ment were in conflicting definitions of flaw categories, in
the coding and assignment of flaw ratings to individual
studies, and in the subsequent statistical treatment of
those ratings.
Unfortunately, there have been no ratings of flaws by
independent raters who were unaware of the studies' out-
comes (Morris, 1991). Nevertheless, none of the contribu-
tors to the subsequent debate concurred with Hyman's
conclusion, whereas four nonparapsychologists-two
statisticians and two psychologists-explicitly concurred
with Honorton's conclusion (Harris & Rosenthal, 1988b;
Saunders, 1985; Utts, 1991a). For example, Harris and
Rosenthal (one of the pioneers in the use of meta-analysis
in psychology) used Hyman's own flaw ratings and failed
to find any significant relationships between flaws and
study outcomes in each of two separate analyses: "Our
analysis of the effects of flaws on study outcome lends no
support to the hypothesis that Ganzfeld research results
are a significant function of the set of flaw variables"
(1988b, p. 3; for a more recent exchange regarding Hy-
man's analysis, see Hyman, 1991; Utts, 1991a, 1991b).
Effect Size .
Some critics of parapsychology have argued that even if
current laboratory-produced psi effects turn out to be
replicable and nonartifactual, they are too small to be of
theoretical interest or practical importance. We do not be-
lieve this to be the case for the psi ganzfeld effect.
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In psi ganzfeld studies, the hit rate itself provides a
straightforward descriptive measure of effect size, but this
measure cannot be compared directly across studies be-
cause they do not all use a four-stimulus judging set and,
hence, do not all have a chance baseline of 25. The next
most obvious candidate, the difference in each study be-
tween the hit rate observed and the hit rate expected un-
der the null hypothesis, is also intuitively descriptive but
is not appropriate for statistical analysis because not all
differences between proportions that are equal are equally
detectable (e.g., the power to detect the difference between
.55 and .25 is different from the power to detect the differ-
ence between .50 and .20).
To provide a scale of equal detectability, Cohen (1988)
devised the effect size index h, which involves an arcsine
transformation on the proportions before calculation of
their difference. Cohen's h is quite general and can assess
the difference between any two proportions drawn from
independent samples or between a single proportion and
any specified hypothetical value. For the 28 studies exam-
ined in the meta-analyses, h was .28, with a 95% confi-
dence interval from .11 to .45.
But because values of h do not provide an intuitively
descriptive scale, Rosenthal and Rubin (1989; Rosenthal,
1991) have recently suggested a new index, z, which ap-
plies specifically to one-sample, multiple-choice data of
the kind obtained in ganzfeld experiments. In particular,
z expresses all hit rates as the proportion of hits that
would have been obtained if there had been only two
equally likely alternatives-essentially a coin flip. Thus, x
ranges from 0 to 1, with .5 expected under the null hy-
pothesis. The formula is
P(k - 1)
P(k -2) + 1
where P is the raw proportion of hits and k is the number
of alternative choices available. Because z has such a
straightforward intuitive interpretation, we use it (or its.
conversion back to an equivalent four-alternative hit rate)
throughout this article whenever it is applicable.
For the 28 studies examined in the meta-analyses, the
mean value of # was .62, with a 95% confidence interval
from .55 to .69. This corresponds to a four-alternative hit
rate of 35%, with a 95% confidence interval from 28% to
43%.
Cohen (1988, 1992) has also categorized effect sizes into
small, medium, and large, with medium denoting an effect
size that should be apparent to the naked eye of a careful
observer. For a statistic such as z, which indexes the de-
viation of a proportion from .5, Cohen considers .65 to be a
medium effect size: A statistically unaided observer
should be able to detect the bias of a coin that comes up
heads on 65% of the trials. Thus, at .62, the psi ganzfeld
effect size falls just short of Cohen's naked-eye criterion.
From the phenomenology of the ganzfeld experimenter,
the corresponding hit rate of 35% implies that he or she
will see a subject obtain a hit approximately every third
session rather than every fourth.
It is also instructive to compare the psi ganzfeld effect
with the results of a recent medical study that sought to
determine whether aspirin can prevent heart attacks
(Steering Committee of the Physicians' Health Study Re-
search Group, 1988). The study was discontinued after 6
years because it was already clear that the aspirin treat-
ment was effective (p < . 00001) and it was considered un-
ethical to keep the control group on placebo medication.
The study was widely publicized as a major medical
breakthrough. But despite its undisputed reality and
practical importance, the size of the aspirin effect is quite
small: Taking aspirin reduces the probability of suffering
a heart attack by only .008. The corresponding effect size
(h) is .068, about one third to one fourth the size of the psi
ganzfeld effect (Atkinson et al., 1993, p. 236; Utts, 1991b).
In sum, we believe that the psi ganzfeld effect is large
enough to be of both theoretical interest and potential
practical importance.
Experimental Correlates of the Psi Ganzfeld Effect
We showed earlier that the technique of correlating
variables with effect sizes across studies can help to as-
Bess whether methodological flaws might have produced
artifactual positive outcomes. The same technique can be
used more affirmatively to explore whether an effect
varies systematically with conceptually relevant varia-
tions in experimental procedure. The discovery of such
correlates can help to establish an effect as genuine, sug-
gest ways of increasing replication rates and effect sizes,
and enhance the chances of moving beyond the simple
demonstration of an effect to its explanation. This strat-
egy is only heuristic, however. Any correlates discovered
must be considered quite tentative, both because they
emerge from post hoc exploration and because they neces-
sarily involve comparisons across heterogeneous studies
that differ simultaneously on many interrelated variables,
known and unknown. Two such correlates emerged from
the meta-analyses of the pai ganzfeld effect.
Single- versus multiple-image targets. Although most of
the 28 studies in the meta-analysis used single pictures as
targets, 9 (conducted by three different investigators)
used View Master stereoscopic slide reels that presented
multiple images focused on a central theme. Studies using
the View Master reels produced significantly higher hit
rates than did studies using the single-image targets (50%
VB. 34%), t(26) = 2.22, p= . 035, two-tailed.
Sender-receiver pairing. In 17 of the 28 studies, partici-
pants were free to bring in friends to serve as senders. In
8 studies, only laboratory-assigned senders were used.
(Three studies used no sender.) Unfortunately, there is no
record of how many participants in the former studies ac-
tually brought in friends. Nevertheless, those 17 studies
(conducted by six different investigators) had significantly
higher hit rates than did the studies that used only labo-
ratory-assigned senders (44% vs. 26%), t(23) = 2.39, p =
.025, two-tailed.
The Joint Communique
After their published exchange in 1985, Hyman and
Honorton agreed to contribute a joint communiqué to the
subsequent discussion that was published in 1986. First
they set forth their areas of agreement and disagreement:
We agree that there is an overall significant effect in this
data base that cannot reasonably be explained by selective
reporting or multiple analysis. We continue to differ over
the degree to which the effect constitutes evidence for psi,
but we agree that the final verdict awaits the outcome of fu-
ture experiments conducted by a broader range of investiga-
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tors and according to more stringent standards. (Hyman &
Honorton, 1986, p. 351)
They then spelled out in detail the "more stringent
standards" they believed should govern future experi-
ments. These standards included strict security precau-
tions against sensory leakage, testing and documentation
of randomization methods for selecting targets and se-
quencing the judging set, statistical correction for multiple
analyses, advance specification of the status of the ex-
periment (e.g., pilot study or confirmatory experiment),
and full documentation in the published report of the ex-
perimental procedures and the status of statistical tests
(e.g., planned or post hoc).
The National Research Council Report
In 1988, the National Research Council (NRC) of the
National Academy of Sciences released a widely publi-
cized report commissioned by the U.S. Army that assessed
several controversial technologies for enhancing human
performance, including accelerated learning, neurolin-
guistic programming, mental practice, biofeedback, and
parapsychology (Druckman & Swets, 1988; summarized in
Swets & Bjork, 1990). The report's conclusion concerning
parapsychology was quite negative: The Committee finds
no scientific justification from research conducted over a
period of 130 years for the existence of parapsychological
phenomena" (Druckman & Swets, 1988, p. 22).
An extended refutation strongly protesting the commit-
tee's treatment of parapsychology has been published
elsewhere (Palmer et al., 1989). The pertinent point here
is simply that the NRC's evaluation of the ganzfeld stud-
ies does not reflect an additional, independent examina-
tion of the ganzfeld database but is based on the same
meta-analysis conducted by Hyman that we have dis-
cussed in this article.
Hyman chaired the NRC's Subcommittee on Parapsy-
chology, and, although he had concurred with Honorton 2
years earlier in their joint communiqué that "there is an
overall significant effect in this data base that cannot rea-
sonably be explained by selective reporting or multiple
analysis" (p. 351) and that "significant outcomes have
been produced by a number of different investigators" (p.
352), neither of these points is acknowledged in the com-
mittee's report.
The NRC also solicited a background report from Harris
and Rosenthal (1988a), which provided the committee
with a comparative methodological analysis of the five
controversial areas just listed. Harris and Rosenthal noted
that, of these areas, "only the Ganzfeld ESP studies [the
only psi studies they evaluated] regularly meet the basic
requirements of sound experimental design" (p. 53), and
they concluded that
it would be implausible to entertain the null given the com-
bined p from these 28 studies. Given the various problems
or flaws pointed out by Hyman and Honorton ... we might es-
timate the obtained accuracy rate to be about 1/3 ... when the
accuracy rate expected under the null is 1/4. (p. 51)3
3In a troubling development, the chair of the NRC Committee
phoned Rosenthal and asked him to delete the parapsychology
section of the paper (R. Rosenthal, personal communication,
September 15, 1992). Although Rosenthal refused to do so, that
section of the Harris-Rosenthal paper is nowhere cited in the
NRC report.
The Autoganzfeld Studies
In 1983, Honorton and his colleagues initiated a new
series of ganzfeld studies designed to avoid the method-
ological problems he and others had identified in earlier
studies (Honorton, 1979; Kennedy, 1979). These studies
complied with all of the detailed guidelines that he and
Hyman were to publish later in their joint communiqué.
The program continued until September, 1989, when a
loss of funding forced the laboratory to close. The major
innovations of the new studies were the computer control
of the experimental protocol-hence the name auto-
ganzfeld -- and the introduction of videotaped film clips as
target stimuli.
Method
The basic design of the autoganzfeld studies was the
same as that described earlier4: A receiver and sender
were sequestered in separate, acoustically-isolated cham-
bers. After a 14-minute period of progressive relaxation,
the receiver underwent ganzfeld stimulation while de-
scribing his or her thoughts and images aloud for 30 min-
utes. Meanwhile, the sender concentrated on a randomly
selected target. At the end of the ganzfeld period, the re-
ceiver was shown four stimuli and, without knowing
which of the four had been the target, rated each stimulus
for its similarity to his or her mentation during the
ganzfeld.
The targets consisted of 80 still pictures (static targets)
and 80 short video segments complete with soundtracks
(dynamic targets), all recorded on videocassette. The
static targets included art prints, photographs, and maga-
zine advertisements; the dynamic targets included ex-
cerpts of approximately 1-min duration from motion pic-
tures, TV shows, and cartoons. The 160 targets were ar-
ranged in judging sets of four static or four dynamic tar-
gets each, constructed to minimize similarities among
targets within a set.
Target selection and presentation. The VCR containing
the taped targets was interfaced, to the controlling com-
puter, which selected the target and controlled its re-
peated presentation to the sender during the ganzfeld pe-
riod, thus eliminating the need for a second experimenter
to accompany the sender. After the ganzfeld period, the
computer randomly sequenced the four-clip judging set
and presented it to the receiver on a TV monitor for judg-
ing. The receiver used a computer game paddle to make
his or her ratings on a 40-point scale that appeared on the
TV monitor after each clip was shown. The receiver was
permitted to see each clip and to change the ratings re-
peatedly until he or she was satisfied. The computer then
wrote these and other data from the session into a file on
a floppy disk. At that point, the sender moved to the re-
ceiver's chamber and revealed the identity of the target to
both the receiver and the experimenter. Note that the ex-
perimenter did not even know the identity of the four-clip
judging set until it was displayed to the receiver for judg-
ing.
"Because Honorton and his colleagues have complied with the
Hyman-Honorton specification that experimental reports be suf-
ficiently complete to permit others to reconstruct the investiga-
tor's procedures, readers who wish to know more detail than we
provide here are likely to find whatever they need in the archival
publication of these studies in the Journal of Parapsychology
(Honorton et al., 1990).
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Randomization. The random selection of the target and
sequencing of the judging set were controlled by a noise-
based random number generator interfaced to the com-
puter. Extensive testing confirmed that the generator was
providing a uniform distribution of values throughout the
full target range (1-160). Tests on the actual frequencies
observed during the experiments confirmed that targets
were, on average, selected uniformly from among the 4
clips within each target set and that the 4 judging se-
quences used were uniformly distributed across sessions.
Additional control features. The receiver's and sender's
rooms were sound-isolated, electrically shielded chambers
with single-door access that could be continuously moni-
tored by the experimenter. There was two-way intercom
communication between the experimenter and the re-
ceiver but only one-way communication into the sender's
room; thus, neither the experimenter nor the receiver
could monitor events inside the sender's room. The
archival record for each session includes an audiotape
containing the receiver's mentation during the ganzfeld
period and all verbal exchanges between the experimenter
and the receiver throughout the experiment.
The automated ganzfeld protocol has been examined by
several dozen parapsychologists and behavioral re-
searchers from other fields, including well-known critics
of parapsychology. Many have participated as subjects or
observers. All have expressed satisfaction with the han-
dling of security issues and controls.
Parapsychologists have often been urged to employ ma-
gicians as consultants to ensure that the experimental
protocols are not vulnerable either to inadvertent sensory
leakage or to deliberate cheating. Two "mentalista," magi-
cians who specialize in the simulation of pai, have exam-
ined the autoganzfeld system and protocol. Ford Kross, a
professional mentalist and officer of the mentalist's pro-
fessional organization, the Psychic Entertainers Associa-
tion, provided the following written statement "In my pro-
fessional capacity as a mentalist, I have reviewed Psy-
chophysical Research Laboratories' automated ganzfeld
system and found it to provide excellent security against <
deception by subjects" (personal communication, May,
1989).
Daryl J. Bem has also performed as a mentalist for
many years and is a member of the Psychic Entertainers
Association. As mentioned in the author note, this article
had its origins in a 1983 visit he made to Honorton's labo-
ratory, where he was asked to critically examine the re-
search protocol from the perspective of a mentalist, a re-
search psychologist, and a subject. Needless to say, this
article would not exist if he did not concur with Ford
Kross's assessment of the security procedures.
Experimental Studies5
Altogether, 100 men and 140 women participated as re-
ceivers in 354 sessions during the research program. The
participants ranged in age from 17 to 74 years (m = 37.8,
SD = 11.8), with a mean formal education of 15.6 years
(SD = 2.0). Eight separate experimenters, including Hon-
orton, conducted the studies.
1
5A recent review of the original computer files uncovered a
duplicate record in the autoganzfeld database. This has now been
eliminated, reducing by one the number of subjects and sessions.
As a result, some of the numbers presented in this article differ
slightly from those in Honorton et al. (1990).
The experimental program included three pilot and
eight formal studies. Five of the formal studies used
novice (first-time) participants who served as the receiver
in one session each. The remaining three formal studies
used experienced participants.
Pilot studies. Sample sizes were not preset in the three
pilot studies. Study 1 comprised 22 sessions and was con-
ducted during the initial development and testing of the
autoganzfeld system. Study 2 comprised 9 sessions testing
a procedure in which the experimenter, rather than the
receiver, served as the judge at the end of the session.
Study 3 comprised 35 sessions and served as practice for
participants who had completed the allotted number of
sessions in the ongoing formal studies but who wanted
additional ganzfeld experience. This study also included
several demonstration sessions when TV film crews were
present.
Novice Studies. Studies 101-104 were each designed to
test 50 participants who had had no prior ganzfeld experi-
ence; each participant served as the receiver in a single
ganzfeld session. Study 104 included 16 of 20 students re-
cruited from the Juilliard School in New York City to test
an artistically gifted sample. Study 105 was initiated to
accommodate the overflow of participants who had been
recruited for Study 104, including the four remaining Juil-
liard students. The sample size for this study was set to
25, but only 6 sessions had been completed when the labo-
ratory closed. For purposes of exposition, we divided the
56 sessions from Studies 104 and 105 into two parts:
Study 104/105(a) comprises the 36 non-Juilliard partici-
pants and Study 104/105(b) comprises the 20 Juilliard
students.
Study 201. This study was designed to retest the most
promising participants from the previous studies. The
number of trials was set to 20, but only 7 sessions with 3
participants had been completed when the laboratory
closed.
Study 301. This study was designed to compare static
and dynamic targets. The sample size was set to 50 ses-
sions. Twenty-five experienced participants each served
as the receiver in 2 sessions. Unknown to the participants,
the computer control program was modified to ensure that
they would each have 1 session with a static target and 1
session with a dynamic target.
Study 302. This study was designed to examine a dy-
namic target set that had yielded a particularly high hit
rate in the previous studies. The study involved experi-
enced participants who had had no prior experience with
this particular target set and who were unaware that only
one target set was being sampled. Each served as the re-
ceiver in a single session. The design called for the study
to continue until 15 sessions were completed with each of
the targets, but only 25 sessions had been completed
when the laboratory closed.
The 11 studies just described comprise all sessions con-
ducted during the 6.5 years of the program. There is no
"file drawer" of unreported sessions.
Results
Overall hit rate. As in the earlier meta-analysis, re-
ceivers' ratings were analyzed by tallying the proportion
of hits achieved and calculating the exact binomial proba-
bility for the observed number of hits compared with the
chance expectation of 25. As noted earlier, 240 partici-
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Table 1
Outcome by Study
Study/subject
N
N
%
Effect size
Study
description
N
subjects
trials
hits.
" hits
Z
1
Pilot
19
22
8
36.
.62
0.99
2
Pilot
4
9
3
33
.60
0.25
3
Pilot
24
35
10
29
... 55 . ..
.032
101.
Novice
50
.50
12
24
.47
-0.30
102
Novice
50
50.
18
36
.63
1.60
103
Novice
50
50
15
30
.55
.067
104/105(a)
Novice.
:36
36
12
33
.60
0.97
104/105(b)
Juilliard sample
20
20
10
50
.75
2.20
201
Experienced
3
7
3
43
.69
0.69
301
Experienced®
25
50
.15
30
.56
0.67
302
„Experienced
25
25
16
54ª
.78ª
· 3.04ª
Overall (Studies 1-301).
-240
329
106
32
.59
2.89
Note. All z scores are based on the exact binomial probability, with p - : 25 and q- . 75.
ªAdjusted for response bias. The hit rate actually observed was 64%.
pants contributed 854 sessions. For reasons discussed
later, Study 302 is analyzed separately, reducing the
number of sessions in the primary analysis to 329.
As Table 1 shows, there were 106 hits in the 329 ses-
sions, a hit rate of 32% (z = 2.89, p = . 002, one-tailed),
with a 95% confidence interval from 30% to 85%. This cor-
responds to an effect size (x) of .59, with a 95% confidence
interval from .53 to .64.
Table 1 also shows that when Studies 104 and 105 are
combined and re-divided into Studies 104/105(a) and
104/105(b), 9 of the 10 studies yield positive effect sizes,
with a mean effect size (x) of .61, t(9) = 4.44, p = . 0008
one-tailed. This effect size is equivalent to a four-alterna-
tive hit rate of 34%. Alternatively, if Studies 104 and 105
are retained as separate studies, 9 of the 10 studies again
yield positive effect sizes, with a mean effect size (#) of .62,
{(9) = 3.73, p = . 002, one-tailed. This effect size is
equivalent to a four-alternative hit rate of 35% and is
identical to that found across the 28 studies of the earlier
meta-analysis.6
Considered together, sessions with novice participants
(Studies 101-105) yielded a statistically significant hit
rate of 32.5% (p = . 009), which is not significantly differ-
ent from the 31.6% hit rate achieved by experienced par-
ticipants in Studies 201 and 301. And finally, each of the
6As noted above, the laboratory was forced to close before three
of the formal studies could be completed. If we assume that the
remaining trials in Studies 105 and 201 would have yielded only
chance results, this would reduce the overall z for the first 10
autoganzfeld studies from 2.89 to 2.76 (p = . 003). Thus, inclusion
of the two incomplete studies does not pose an optional stopping
problem. The third incomplete study, Study 302, is discussed
below.
eight experimenters also achieved a positive effect size,
with a mean # of .60, {(7) = 3.44;p .- . 005, one-tailed. . ..
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 fe-
male 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 iden-
tified their targets (p = . 004; further details about this
sample and their ganzfeld performance were reported in
Schlitz & Honorton, 1992).
Study size and effect size. There is a significant negative
correlation across the 10 studies listed in Table 1 between
the number of sessions included in a study and the study's"
effect size (r), r = -. 64, {(8) = 2.36,p <. 05, two-tailed. This
is reminiscent of Hyman's discovery that the smaller stud -.
ies in the original ganzfeld database were disproportion-
ately likely to report statistically significant results. He-
interpreted this finding as evidence for a bias against the
reporting of small studies that fail to achieve significant
results. A similar interpretation cannot be applied to the
autoganzfeld studies, however, because there are no unre-
ported sessions.
One reviewer of this article suggested that the negative
correlation might reflect a decline effect in which earlier ......
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Table 2
Study 302: Expected Hit Rate and Proportion of Sessions in which Each Video Clip was Ranked First when it was a Target and
when it was a Decoy
Video Clip
Relative
Frequency
as Target
Relative
Frequency of
First Place
Ranking
Expected
Hit Rate (%)
Ranked First Ranked First
when
when
Decoy
Target
Difference
Fisher's
Exact
P
Tidal Wave
.28
(7/25)
.24
6.72
.57
.(4/7)
.11
(2/18)
.46
.032
Snakes®
.12
:12
1.44
.67
(2/3)
.05
(1/22)
.62
.029
Sex Scene
.16
.08
1.28
.25
.05
(1/21)
.20
.300
(4/25)
(2/25)
(1/4)
Bugs Bunny
.44
.56
24.64
.82
(9/11)
.36
(5/14)
.46
.027
(11/25)
(14/25)
Overall
:34.08
... 58
.14
.44
sessions of a study are more successful than later ses-
sions. If there were such an effect, then studies with fewer
sessions would show larger effect sizes because they
would end before a decline could set in. To check this pos-
sibility, we computed point biserial correlations between
hits (1) or misses (0) and the session number within each
of the 10 studies. All of the correlations hovered around
zero; six were positive, four were negative, and the overall
mean was .01.
An inspection of Table 1 reveals that the negative corre-
lation derives primarily from the two studies with the
largest effect sizes: the 20 sessions with the Juilliard stu-
dents and the 7 sessions of Study 201, the study specifi-
cally designed to retest the most promising participants
from the previous studies. Accordingly, it seems likely
that the larger effect sizes of these two studies -- and
hence the significant negative correlation between the
number of sessions and the effect size-reflect genuine
performance differences between these two small, highly
selected samples and other autoganzfeld participants.
Study 302. All of the studies except Study 302 randomly
sampled from a pool of 160 static and dynamic targets.
Study 302 sampled from a single, dynamic target set that
had yielded a particularly high hit rate in the previous
studies. The four film clips in this set consisted of a scene
of a tidal wave from the movie Clash of the Titans, a high-
speed sex scene from A Clockwork Orange, a scene of
crawling snakes from a TV documentary, and a scene
from a Bugs Bunny cartoon.
The experimental design called for this study to con-
tinue until each of the clips had served as the target 15
times. Unfortunately, the premature termination of this
study at 25 sessions left an imbalance in the frequency
with which each clip had served as the target. This means
that the high hit rate observed (64%) could well be in-
flated by response biases.
As an illustration, water imagery is frequently reported
by receivers in ganzfeld sessions whereas sexual imagery
is rarely reported. (Some participants are probably reluc-
tant both to report sexual imagery and to give the highest
rating to the sex-related clip.) If a video clip containing
popular imagery (such as water) happens to appear as a
target more frequently than a clip containing unpopular
imagery (such as sex), a high hit rate might simply reflect
the coincidence of those frequencies of occurrence with
participants' response biases. And, as the second column
of Table 2 reveals, the tidal wave clip did in fact appear
more frequently as the target than did the sex clip. More
generally, the second and third columns of Table 2 show
that the frequency with which each film clip was ranked
first closely matches the frequency with which each ap-
peared as the target.
One can adjust for this problem by using the observed
frequencies in these two columns to compute the hit rate
expected if there were no pai effect. In particular, one can
multiply each proportion in the second column by the cor-
responding proportion in the third column-yielding the
joint probability that the clip was the target and that it
was ranked first-and then sum across the four clips. As
shown in the fourth column of Table 2, this computation
yields an overall expected hit rate of 34.08%. When the
observed hit rate of 64% is compared with this baseline,
the effect size (h) is .61. As shown in Table 1, this is
equivalent to a four-alternative hit rate of 54%, or a a
value of .78, and is statistically significant (z = 3.04, p =
.0012).
The psi effect can be seen even more clearly in the re-
maining columns of Table 2, which control for the differ-
ential popularity of the imagery in the clips by displaying
how frequently each was ranked first when it was the tar-
get compared with how frequently it was ranked first
when it was one of the control clips (decoys). As can be
seen, each of the four clips was selected as the target rel-
atively more frequently when it was the target than when
it was a decoy, a difference that is significant for three of
the four clips. On average, a clip was identified as the tar-
get 58% of the time when it was the target and only 14%
of the time when it was a decoy.
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Dynamic versus static targets. The success of Study 302
raises the question of whether dynamic targets are, in
general, more effective than static targets. This possibility
was also suggested by the earlier meta-analysis, which
revealed that studies using multiple-image targets (View
Master stereoscopic slide reels) obtained significantly
higher hit rates than did studies using single-image tar-
gets. By adding motion and sound, the video clips might
be thought of as high-tech versions of the View Master
reels.
The 10 autoganzfeld studies that randomly sampled
from both dynamic and static target pools yielded 164 ses-
sions with dynamic targets and 165 sessions with static
targets .. As predicted, sessions using dynamic targets
yielded significantly more hits than did sessions using
static targets (37% vs. 27%; Fisher's exact p < : 04).
Sender-receiver pairing. The earlier meta-analysis ro-
vealed that studies in which participants were free to
bring in friends to serve as senders produced significantly
higher hit rates than studies that used only laboratory-88-
signed senders. As noted, however, there is no record of
how many of the participants in the former studies actu-
ally did bring in friends. Whatever the case, sender-re-
ceiver pairing was not a significant correlate of pai per-
formance in the autoganzfeld studies: The 197 sessions in
which the sender and receiver were friends did not yield a
significantly higher proportion of hits than did the 132
sessions in which they were not (35% vs. 29%; Fisher's ex-
act p = 28).
Correlations between receiver characteristics and psi
performance. Most of the autoganzfeld participants were
strong believers in pai: On a 7-point scale, ranging from
strong disbelief in psi (1) to strong belief in psi (7), the
mean was 6.2 (SD = 1.03); only 2 participants rated their
belief in pei below the midpoint of the scale. In addition,
88% of the participants reported personal experiences
suggestive of psi, and 80% had some training in medita-
tion or other techniques involving internal focus of atten-
tion.
All of these appear to be important variables. The corre-
lation between belief in pei and psi performance is one of
the most consistent findings in the parapsychological lit-
erature (Palmer, 1978). And within the autoganzfeld stud-
ies, successful performance of novice (first-time) partici-
pants was significantly predicted by reported personal psi
experiences, involvement with meditation or other mental
disciplines, and high scores on the Feeling and Perception
factors of the Myers-Briggs Type Inventory (Honorton,
1992; Honorton & Schechter, 1987; Myers & McCaulley,
1985). This recipe for success has now been independently
replicated in another laboratory (Broughton, Kanthamani,
& Khilji, 1990).
The personality trait of extraversion is also associated
with better psi performance. A meta-analysis of 60 inde-
pendent studies with nearly 3,000 subjects revealed a
small but reliable positive correlation between extraver-
sion and psi performance, especially in studies that used
free-response methods of the kind used in the ganzfeld
experiments (Honorton, Ferrari, & Bem, 1992). Across 14
free-response studies conducted by four independent in-
vestigators, the correlation for 612 subjects was .20 (z =
4.82, p = 1.5 x 10-6). This correlation was replicated in
the autoganzfeld studies, in which extraversion scores
were available for 218 of the 240 subjects, r = . 18, t(216) =
2.67, p = . 004, one-tailed.
Finally, there is the strong psi performance of the Juil-
liard students, discussed earlier, which is consistent with
other studies in the parapsychological literature suggest-
ing a relationship between successful psi performance and
creativity or artistic ability.
Discussion
Earlier in this article we quoted from the abstract of the
Hyman-Honorton communique: "We agree that the final
verdict awaits the outcome of future experiments con-
ducted by a broader range of investigators and according
to more stringent standards" (p. 351). We believe that the
"stringent standards" requirement has been met by the
autoganzfeld studies. The results are statistically signifi-
cant and consistent with those in the earlier database.
The mean effect size is quite respectable in comparison
with other controversial research areas of human perfor-
mance (Harris & Rosenthal, 1988a). And there are reli-
able relationships between successful pei performance and
conceptually relevant experimental and subject variables,
relationships that also replicate previous findings. Hyman
(1991) has also commented on the autoganzfeld studies:
"Honorton's experiments have produced intriguing re-
sults. If ... independent laboratories can produce similar
results with the same relationships and with the same at-
tention to rigorous methodology, then parapsychology may
indeed have finally captured its elusive quarry" (p. 392):
Issues of Replication
As Hyman's comment implies, the autoganzfeld studies
by themselves cannot satisfy the requirement that repli-
cations be conducted by a "broader range of investigators."
Accordingly, we hope the findings reported here will be
sufficiently provocative to prompt others to try replicating
the pai ganzfeld effect.
We believe that it is essential, however, that future
studies comply with the methodological, statistical, and
reporting standards set forth in the joint communique and
achieved by the autoganzfeld studies. It is not necessary
for studies to be as automated or as heavily instrumented
as the autoganzfeld studies in order to satisfy the
methodological guidelines, but they are still likely to be
labor intensive and potentially expensive.7
Statistical Power and Replication
Would-be replicators also need to be reminded of the
power requirements for replicating small effects. Although
many academic psychologists do not believe in psi, many
apparently do believe in miracles when it comes to repli-
cation. Tversky and Kahneman (1971) posed the following
problem to their colleagues at meetings of the Mathemati-
cal Psychology Group and the American Psychological As-
sociation:
Suppose you have run an experiment on 20 subjects and
have obtained a significant result which confirms your the-
7As the closing of the autoganzfeld laboratory exemplifies, it is
also difficult to obtain funding for psi research. The traditional,
peer-refereed sources of funding familiar to psychologists have
almost never funded proposals for psi research. The widespread
skepticism of psychologists toward psi is almost certainly a con-
tributing factor.
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ory (z = 2.23, p <. 05, two-tailed). You now have cause to run
an additional group of 10 subjects. What do you think the
probability is that the results will be significant, by a one-
tailed test, separately for this group? (p. 105)
The median estimate was .85, with 9 out of 10 respon-
dents providing an estimate greater than .60. The correct
answer is approximately .48.
As Rosenthal (1990) has warned: "Given the levels of
statistical power at which we normally operate, we have
no right to expect the proportion of significant results that
we typically do expect, even if in nature there is a very
real and very important effect" (p. 16). In this regard, it is
again instructive to consider the medical study that found
a highly significant effect of aspirin on the incidence of
heart attacks. The study monitored more than 22,000
subjects. Had the investigators monitored 3,000 subjects,
they would have had less than an even chance of finding a
conventionally significant effect. Such is life with small ef-
fect sizes.
Given its larger effect size, the prospects for success-
fully replicating the psi ganzfeld effect are not quite Bo
daunting, but they are probably still grimmer than intu-
ition would suggest. If the true hit rate is in fact about
34% when 25% is expected by chance, then an experiment
with 30 trials (the mean for the 28 studies in the original
meta-analysis) has only about 1 chance in 6 of finding an
effect significant at the .05 level with a one-tailed test. A
50-trial experiment boosts that chance to about 1 in 3.
One must escalate to 100 trials in order to come close to
the break even point, at which one has a 50-50 chance of
finding a statistically significant effect (Utts, 1986).
(Recall that only 2 of the 11 autoganzfeld studies yielded
results that were individually significant at the conven-
tional .05 level.) Those who require that a psi effect be
statistically significant every time before they will seri-
ously entertain the possibility that an effect really exists
know not what they ask.
Significance Versus Effect Size
The preceding discussion is unduly pessimistic, how-
ever, because it perpetuates the tradition of worshipping
the significance level. Regular readers of this journal are
likely to be familiar with recent arguments imploring be-
havioral scientists to overcome their slavish dependence
on the significance level as the ultimate measure of virtue
and instead to focus more of their attention on effect sizes:
"Surely, God loves the .06 nearly as much as the .05"
(Rosnow & Rosenthal, 1989, p. 1277). Accordingly, we
suggest that achieving a respectable effect size with a
methodologically tight ganzfeld study would be a perfectly
welcome contribution to the replication effort, no matter
how untenurable the p level renders the investigator.
Career consequences aside, this suggestion may seem
quite counterintuitive. Again, Tversky and Kahneman
(1971) have provided an elegant demonstration. They
asked several of their colleagues to consider an investiga-
tor who runs 15 subjects and obtains a significant t value
of 2.46. Another investigator attempts to duplicate the
procedure with the same number of subjects and obtains a
result in the same direction but with a nonsignificant
value of t. Tversky and Kahneman then asked their col-
leagues to indicate the highest level of t in the replication
study they would describe as a failure to replicate. The
majority of their colleagues regarded t = 1.70 as a failure
to replicate. But if the data from two such studies (t = 2.46
and t = 1.70) were pooled, the t for the combined data
would be about 3.00 (assuming equal variances):
Thus, we are faced with a paradoxical state of affairs, in
which the same data that would increase our confidence in
the finding when viewed as part of the original study, shake
our confidence when viewed as an independent study.
(Tversky & Kahneman, 1971, p. 108)
Such is the iron grip of the arbitrary .05. Pooling the
data, of course, is what meta-analysis is all about. Ac-
cordingly, we suggest that two or more laboratories could
collaborate in a ganzfeld replication effort by conducting
independent studies and then pooling them in meta-ana-
lytic fashion, what one might call real-time meta-analy-
sis. (Each investigator could then claim the pooled p
level for his or her own curriculum vitae.)
Maximizing Effect Size
Rather than buying or borrowing larger sample sizes,
those who seek to replicate the psi ganzfeld effect might
find it more intellectually satisfying to attempt to maxi-
mize the effect size by attending to the variables associ-
ated with successful outcomes. Thus researchers who wish
to enhance the chances of successful replication should
use dynamic rather than static targets. Similarly we ad-
vise using participants with the characteristics we have
reported to be correlated with successful psi performance.
Random college sophomores enrolled in introductory psy-
chology do not constitute the optimal subject pool.
Finally, we urge ganzfeld researchers to read carefully
the detailed description of the warm social ambiance that
Honorton et al. (1990) sought to create in the autoganzfeld
laboratory. We believe that the social climate created in
psi experiments is a critical determinant of their success
or failure.
The Problem of "Other" Variables
This caveat about the social climate of the ganzfeld ex-
periment prompted one reviewer of this article to worry
that this provided "an escape clause" that weakens the
falsifiability of the psi hypothesis: "Until Bem and Hon-
orton can provide operational criteria for creating a
warm social ambiance, the failure of an experiment with
otherwise adequate power can always be dismissed as
due to a lack of warmth."
Alas, it is true; we devoutly wish it were otherwise.
But the operation of unknown variables in moderating
the success of replications is a fact of life in all of the sci-
ences. Consider, for example, an earlier article in this
journal by Spence (1964). He reviewed studies testing
the straightforward derivation from Hullian learning
theory that high-anxiety subjects should condition more
strongly than low-anxiety subjects. This hypothesis was
confirmed 94% of the time in Spence's own laboratory at
the University of Iowa but only 63% of the time in labo-
ratories at other universities. In fact, Kimble and his as-
sociates at Duke University and the University of North
Carolina obtained results in the opposite direction in two
of three experiments.
In searching for a post hoc explanation, Spence (1964)
noted that "a deliberate attempt was made in the Iowa
studies to provide conditions in the laboratory that might
elicit some degree of emotionality. Thus, the experi-
menter was instructed to be impersonal and quite formal
... and did not try to put [subjects] at ease or allay any
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expressed fears" (pp. 135-136). Moreover, he pointed out,
his subjects Bat in a dental chair whereas Kimble's sub-
jects sat in a secretarial chair. Spence even considered
"the possibility that cultural backgrounds of southern
and northern students may lead to a difference in the
manner in which they respond to the different items in
the [Manifest Anxiety] scale" (p. 136). If this was the
state of affairs in an area of research as well established
as classical conditioning, then the suggestion that the so-
cial climate of the pai laboratory might affect the out-
come of ganzfeld experiments in ways not yet completely
understood should not be dismissed as a devious attempt
to provide an escape clause in case of replication failure.
The best the original researchers can do is to communi-
cate as complete a knowledge of the experimental condi-
tions as possible in an attempt to anticipate some of the
relevant moderating variables. Ideally, this might include
direct training by the original researchers or videotapes of
actual sessions. Lacking these, however, the detailed de-
scription of the autoganzfeld procedures provided by Hon-
orton et al. (1990) comes as close as current knowledge
permits in providing for other researchers the
"operational criteria for creating a warm social ambiance."
Theoretical Considerations
Up to this point, we have confined our discussion to
strictly empirical matters. We are sympathetic to the view
that one should establish the existence of a phenomenon,
anomalous or not, before attempting to explain it. So sup-
pose for the moment that we have a genuine anomaly of
information transfer here. How can it be understood or
explained?
The Psychology of Psi
In attempting to understand psi, parapsychologists
have typically begun with the working assumption that,
whatever its underlying mechanisms, it should behave
like other, more familiar psychological phenomena. In
particular, they typically assume that target information
behaves like an external sensory stimulus that is encoded,
processed, and experienced in familiar information-pro-
cessing ways. Similarly, individual psi performances
should covary with experimental and subject variables in
psychologically sensible ways. These assumptions are em-
bodied in the model of psi that motivated the ganzfeld
studies in the first place.
The ganzfeld procedure. As noted in the introduction,
the ganzfeld procedure was designed to test a model in
which psi-mediated information is conceptualized as a
weak signal that is normally masked by internal somatic
and external sensory "noise." Accordingly, any technique
that raises the signal-to-noise ratio should enhance a per-
son's ability to detect psi-mediated information. This
noise-reduction model of psi organizes a large and diverse
body of experimental results, particularly those demon-
strating the psi-conducive properties of altered states of
consciousness such as meditation, hypnosis, dreaming,
and, of course, the ganzfeld itself (Rao & Palmer, 1987).
Alternative theories propose that the ganzfeld (and al-
tered states) may be psi-conducive because it lowers resis-
tance to accepting alien imagery, diminishes rational or
contextual constraints on the encoding or reporting of in-
formation, stimulates more divergent thinking, or even
just serves as a placebolike ritual that participants per-
ceive as being psi conducive (Stanford, 1987). At this
point, there are no data that would permit one to choose
among these alternatives, and the noise-reduction model
remains the most widely accepted.
The target. There are also a number of plausible hy-
potheses that attempt to account for the superiority of dy-
namic targets over static targets: Dynamic targets contain
more information, involve more sensory modalities, evoke
more of the receiver's internal schemata, are more lifelike,
have a narrative structure, are more emotionally evoca-
tive, and are "richer" in other, unspecified ways. Several
psi researchers have attempted to go beyond the simple
dynamic-static dichotomy to more refined or theory-based
definitions of a good target. Although these efforts have
involved examining both psychological and physical prop-
erties of targets, there is as yet not much progress to re-
port (Delanoy, 1990).
The receiver. Some of the subject characteristics asso-
ciated with good pai performance also appear to have psy-
chologically straightforward explanations. For example,
garden-variety motivational explanations seem sufficient
to account for the relatively consistent finding that those
who believe in psi perform significantly better than those
who do not. (Less straightforward, however, would be an
explanation for the frequent finding that nonbelievers ac-
tually perform significantly worse than chance
[Broughton, 1991, p. 109].)
The superior pai performance of creative or artistically
gifted individuals-like the Juilliard students-may re-
flect individual differences that parallel some of the hy-
pothesized effects of the ganzfeld mentioned earlier: Artis-
tically gifted individuals may be more receptive to alien
imagery, be better able to transcend rational or contextual
constraints on the encoding or reporting of information, or
be more divergent in their thinking. It has also been sug-
gested that both artistic and psi abilities might be rooted
in superior right-brain functioning.
The observed relationship between extraversion and
psi performance has been of theoretical interest for many
years. Eysenck (1966) reasoned that extraverts should
perform well in psi tasks because they are easily bored
and respond favorably to novel stimuli. In a setting such
as the ganzfeld, extraverts may become "stimulus
starved" and thus be highly sensitive to any stimulation,
including weak incoming psi information. In contrast, in-
troverts would be more inclined to entertain themselves
with their own thoughts and thus continue to mask psi in-
formation despite the diminished sensory input. Eysenck
also speculated that psi might be a primitive form of per-
ception antedating cortical developments in the course of
evolution, and, hence, cortical arousal might suppress psi
functioning. Because extraverts have a lower level of cor-
tical arousal than introverts, they should perform better
in psi taske (the evolutionary biology of pei has also been
discussed by Broughton, 1991, pp. 347-352).
But there are more mundane possibilities. Extraverts'
might perform better than introverts simply because they
are more relaxed and comfortable in the social setting of
the typical psi experiment (e.g., the "warm social am-
biance" of the autoganzfeld studies). This interpretation is
strengthened by the observation that introverts outper-
formed extraverts in a study in which subjects had no con-
tact with an experimenter but worked alone at home with
materials they received in the mail (Schmidt & Schlitz,
1989). To help decide among these interpretations,
ganzfeld experimenters have begun to use the extraver-
sion scale of the NEO Personality Inventory (Costa & Mc-
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13
Crae, 1992), which assesses six different facets of the ex-
traversion-introversion factor.
The sender. In contrast to this information about the re-
ceiver in psi experiments, virtually nothing is known
about the characteristics of a good sender or about the ef-
fects of the sender's relationship with the receiver. As has
been shown, the initial suggestion from the meta-analysis
of the original ganzfeld database that psi performance
might be enhanced when the sender and receiver are
friends was not replicated at a statistically significant
level in the autoganzfeld studies.
A number of parapsychologists have entertained the
more radical hypothesis that the sender may not even be a
necessary element in the psi process. In the terminology of
parapsychology, the sender-receiver procedure tests for
the existence of telepathy, anomalous communication be-
tween two individuals; however if the receiver is somehow
picking up the information from the target itself, it would
be termed clairvoyance, and the presence of the sender
would be irrelevant (except for possible psychological rea-
sons such as expectation effects).
At the time of his death, Honorton was planning a se-
ries of autoganzfeld studies that would systematically
compare sender and no-sender conditions while keeping
both the receiver and the experimenter blind to the condi-
tion of the ongoing session. In preparation, he conducted a
meta-analytic review of ganzfeld studies that used no
sender. He found 12 studies with a median of 33.5 ses-
sions, conducted by seven investigators. The overall effect
size (x) was .56, which corresponds to a four-alternative
hit rate of 29%. But this effect size does not reach statisti-
cal significance (Stouffer z = 1.31, p = . 095). So far, then,
there is no firm evidence for pai in the ganzfeld in the ab-
sence of a sender. (There are, however, nonganzfeld stud-
ies in the literature that do report significant evidence for
clairvoyance, including a classic card-guessing experiment
conducted by J. B. Rhine and Pratt [1954].)
The Physics of Psi
The psychological level of theorizing discussed earlier
does not, of course, address the conundrum that makes psi
phenomena anomalous in the first place: their presumed
incompatibility with our current conceptual model of
physical reality. Parapsychologists differ widely from one
another in their taste for theorizing at this level, but sev-
eral whose training lies in physics or engineering have
proposed physical (or biophysical) theories of psi phenom-
ena (an extensive review of theoretical parapsychology
was provided by Stokes, 1987). Only some of these theo-
ries would force a radical revision in our conception of
physical reality.
Those who follow contemporary debates in modern
physics, however, will be aware that several phenomena
predicted by quantum theory and confirmed by experi-
ment are themselves incompatible with our current con-
ceptual model of physical reality. Of these, it is the 1982
empirical confirmation of Bell's theorem that has created
the most excitement and controversy among philosophers
and the few physicists who are willing to speculate on
such matters (Cushing & McMullin, 1989; Herbert, 1987).
In brief, Bell's theorem states that any model of reality
that is compatible with quantum mechanics must be non-
local: It must allow for the possibility that the results of
observations at two arbitrarily distant locations can be
correlated in ways that are incompatible with any physi-
cally permissible causal mechanism.
Several possible models of reality that incorporate non-
locality have been proposed by both philosophers and
physicists. Some of these models clearly rule out psi-like
information transfer, others permit it, and some actually
require it. Thus, at a grander level of theorizing, some
parapsychologists believe that one of the more radical
models of reality compatible with both quantum mechan-
ics and psi will eventually come to be accepted. If and
when that occurs, psi phenomena would cease to be
anomalous.
But we have learned that all such talk provokes most of
our colleagues in psychology and in physics to roll their
eyes and gnash their teeth. So let's just leave it at that.
Skepticism Revisited
More generally, we have learned that our colleagues'
tolerance for any kind of theorizing about psi is strongly
determined by the degree to which they have been con-
vinced by the data that psi has been demonstrated. We
have further learned that their diverse reactions to the
data themselves are strongly determined by their a priori
beliefs about and attitudes toward a number of quite gen-
eral issues, some scientific, some not. In fact, several
statisticians believe that the traditional hypothesis test-
ing methods used in the behavioral sciences should be
abandoned in favor of Bayesian analyses, which take into
account a person's a priori beliefs about the phenomenon
under investigation (e.g., Bayarri & Berger, 1991; Daw-
son, 1991).
In the final analysis, however, we suspect that both
one's Bayesian a prioris and one's reactions to the data
are ultimately determined by whether one was more
severely punished in childhood for Type I or Type II er-
rors.
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Received September 28, 1992
Revision received March 10, 1993
Accepted March 14, 1993
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Statistical Science
1991, Vol. 6, No. 4, 363-403
Replication and Meta-Analysis in
Parapsychology
Jessica Utts
-
1
L.
-
1
Abstract. Parapsychology, the laboratory study of psychic phenomena,
has had its history interwoven with that of statistics. Many of the
controversies in parapsychology have focused on statistical issues, and
statistical models have played an integral role in the experimental
work. Recently, parapsychologists have been using meta-analysis as a
tool for synthesizing large bodies of work. This paper presents an
overview of the use of statistics in parapsychology and offers a summary
of the meta-analyses that have been conducted. It begins with some
anecdotal information about the involvement of statistics and statisti-
cians with the early history of parapsychology. Next, it is argued that
most nonstatisticians do not appreciate the connection between power
and "successful" replication of experimental effects. Returning to para-
psychology, a particular experimental regime is examined by summariz-
ing an extended debate over the interpretation of the results. A new set
of experiments designed to resolve the debate is then reviewed. Finally,
meta-analyses from several areas of parapsychology are summarized. It
is concluded that the overall evidence indicates that there is an anoma-
lous effect in need of an explanation.
Key words and phrases: Effect size, psychic research, statistical contro-
versies, randomness, vote-counting.
CPYRGHT
1. INTRODUCTION
In a June 1990 Gallup Poll, 49% of the 1236
respondents claimed to believe in extrasensory per-
ception (ESP), and one in four claimed to have had
a personal experience involving telepathy (Gallup
and Newport, 1991). Other surveys have shown
even higher percentages; the University of
Chicago's National Opinion Research Center re-
cently surveyed 1473 adults, of which 67% claimed
that they had experienced ESP (Greeley, 1987).
Public opinion is a poor arbiter of science, how-
ever, and experience is a poor substitute for the
scientific method. For more than a century, small
numbers of scientists have been conducting labora-
tory experiments to study phenomena such as
telepathy, clairvoyance and precognition, collec-
tively known as "psi" abilities. This paper will
examine some of that work, as well as some of the
statistical controversies it has generated.
Jessica Utts is Associate Professor, Division of
Statistics, University of California at Davis, 469
Kerr Hall, Davis, California 95616.
Parapsychology, as this field is called, has been a.
source of controversy throughout its history. Strong
beliefs tend to be resistant to change even in the
face of data, and many people, scientists included,
seem to have made up their minds on the question
without examining any empirical data at all. A
critic of parapsychology recently acknowledged that
"The level of the debate during the past 130 years
has been an embarrassment for anyone who would
like to believe that scholars and scientists adhere
to standards of rationality and fair play" (Hyman,
1985a, page 89). While much of the controversy has
focused on poor experimental design and potential
fraud, there have been attacks and defenses of the
statistical methods as well, sometimes calling into
question the very foundations of probability and
statistical inference.
Most of the criticisms have been leveled by psy-
chologists. For example, a 1988 report of the U.S.
National Academy of Sciences concluded that "The
committee finds no scientific justification from
research conducted over a period of 130 years for
the existence of parapsychological phenomena".
(Druckman and Swets, 1988, page 22). The chapter
on parapsychology was written by a subcommittee
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364
J. UTTS
chaired by a psychologist who had published a
similar conclusion prior to his appointment to the
committee (Hyman, 1985a, page 7). There were no
parapsychologists involved with the writing of the
report. Resulting accusations of bias (Palmer, Hon-
orton and Utts, 1989) led U.S. Senator Claiborne
Pell to request that the Congressional Office of
Technology Assessment (OTA) conduct an investi-
gation with a more balanced group .. A one-day
workshop was held on September 30, 1988, bring-
ing together parapsychologists, critics and experts
in some related fields (including the author of this
paper). The report concluded that parapsychology
needs "a fairer hearing across a broader spectrum
of the scientific community, so that emotionality
does not impede objective assessment of experimen-
tal results" (Office of Technology Assessment,
1989).
It is in the spirit of the OTA report that this
article is written. After Section 2, which offers an
anecdotal account of the role of statisticians and
statistics in parapsychology, the discussion turns to
the more general question of replication of experi-
mental results. Section 3 illustrates how. replica-
tion has been (mis)interpreted by scientists in many
fields. Returning to parapsychology in Section 4, a
particular experimental regime called the "ganz-
feld" is described, and an extended debate about
the interpretation of the experimental results is
discussed. Section 5 examines a meta-analysis of
recent ganzfeld experiments designed to resolve the
debate. Finally, Section 6 contains a brief account
of meta-analyses that have been conducted in other
areas of parapsychology, and conclusions are given
in Section 7.
·
2. STATISTICS AND PARAPSYCHOLOGY
Parapsychology had its beginnings in the investi-
gation of purported mediums and other anecdotal
claims in the late 19th century. The Society for
Psychical Research was founded in Britain in 1882,
and its American counterpart was founded in
Boston in 1884. While these organizations and their
members were primarily involved with investigat-
ing anecdotal material, a few of the early re-
searchers were already conducting "forced-choice"
experiments such as card-guessing. (Forced-choice
experiments are like multiple choice tests; on each
trial the subject must guess from a small, known
set of possibilities.) Notable among these was
Nobel Laureate Charles Richet, who is generally
credited with being the first to recognize that prob-
ability theory could be applied to card-guessing
experiments (Rhine, 1977, page 26; Richet, 1884).
F. Y. Edgeworth, partly in response to what he
dound to be inmoment analyses of these arneri.
ments, offered one of the earliest treatises on the
statistical evaluation of forced-choice experiments
in two articles published in the Proceedings of the
Society for Psychical Research (Edgeworth, 1885,
1886). Unfortunately, as noted by Mauskopf and **
McVaugh (1979) in their historical account of the -
period, Edgeworth's papers were "perhaps too diffi-
cult for their immediate audience" (page 105).
Edgeworth began his analysis by using Bayes'
theorem to derive the formula for the posterior
probability that chance was operating, given the
data. He then continued with an argument
"savouring more of Bernoulli than Bayes" in which
"it is consonant, I submit, to experience, to put 1/2
both for a and B," that is, for both the prior proba-
bility that chance alone was operating, and the
prior probability that "there should have been some
additional agency." He then reasoned (using a
Taylor series expansion of the posterior prob-
ability formula) that if there were a large prob-'
ability of observing the data given that some"
additional agency was at work, and a small objec-
tive probability of the data under chance, then the.
latter (binomial) probability "may be taken as a ..
rough measure of the sought a posteriori probabil-
ity in favour of mere chance" (page 195). Edge-
worth concluded his article by applying his method :.
to some data published previously in the same
journal. He found the probability against chance to
be 0.99996, which he said "may fairly be regarded
as physical certainty" (page 199). He concluded:
Such is the evidence which the calculus of
probabilities affords as to the existence of an
agency other than mere chance. The calculus is
silent as to the nature of that agency-whether
it is more likely to be vulgar illusion or ex-
traordinary law. That is a question to be
decided, not by formulae and figures, but by
general philosophy and common sense [page
199].
*
Both the statistical arguments and the experi-
mental controls in these early experiments were
somewhat loose. For example, Edgeworth treated-
as binomial an experiment in which one person" ??
chose a string of eight letters and another at-
tempted to guess the string. Since it has long been " .-
understood that people are poor random number (or
letter) generators, there is no statistical basis for
analyzing such an experiment. Nonetheless, Edge-
worth and his contemporaries set the stage for the
use of controlled experiments with statistical evalu-
ation in laboratory parapsychology. An interesting
historical account of Edgeworth's involvement and
the role telepathy experiments played in the early
history of randomization and experimental design
is provided by Hacking (1988).
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One of the first American researchers to
use statistical methods in parapsychology was
John Edgar Coover, who was the Thomas Welton
Stanford Psychical Research Fellow in the Psychol-
ogy Department at Stanford University from 1912
to 1937 (Dommeyer, 1975). In 1917, Coover pub-
lished a large volume summarizing his work
(Coover, 1917). Coover believed that his results
were consistent with chance, but others have ar-
gued that Coover's definition of significance was
too strict (Dommeyer, 1975). For example, in one
evaluation of his telepathy experiments, Coover
found a two-tailed p-value of 0.0062. He concluded,
"Since this value, then, lies within the field of
chance deviation, although the probability of its
occurrence by chance is fairly low, it cannot be
accepted as a decisive indication of some cause
beyond chance which operated in favor of success in
guessing" (Coover, 1917, page 82). On the next
page, he made it explicit that he would require a
p-value of 0.0000221 to declare that something
other than chance was operating.
It was during the summer of 1930, with the
card-guessing experiments of J. B. Rhine at Duke
University, that parapsychology began to take hold
as a laboratory science. Rhine's laboratory still
exists under the name of the Foundation for Re-
search on the Nature of Man, housed at the edge of
the Duke University campus.
It wasn't long after Rhine published his first
book, Extrasensory Perception in 1934, that the
attacks on his methodology began. Since his claims
were wholly based on statistical analyses of his
experiments, the statistical methods were closely
scrutinized by critics anxious to find a conventional
explanation for Rhine's positive results.
The most persistent critic was a psychologist
from McGill University named Chester Kellogg
(Mauskopf and McVaugh, 1979). Kellogg's main
argument was that Rhine was using the binomial
distribution (and normal approximation) on a se-
ries of trials that were not independent. The experi-
ments in question consisted of having a subject
guess the order of a deck of 25 cards, with five each
of five symbols, so technically Kellogg was correct.
By 1937, several mathematicians and statis-
ticians had come to Rhine's aid. Mauskopf and
McVaugh (1979) speculated that since statistics was
itself a young discipline, "a number of statisticians
were equally outraged by Kellogg, whose argu-
ments they saw as discrediting their profession"
(page 258). The major technical work, which ac-
knowledged that Kellogg's criticisms were accurate
but did little to change the significance of the
results, was conducted by Charles Stuart and
Joseph A. Greenwood and published in the first
and Greenwood, 1937). Stuart, who had been an
undergraduate in mathematics at Duke, was one of
Rhine's early subjects and continued to work with
him as a researcher until Stuart's death in 1947.
Greenwood was a Duke mathematician, who appar-
ently converted to a statistician at the urging of
Rhine.
Another prominent figure who was distressed
with Kellogg's attack was E. V. Huntington, a
mathematician at Harvard. After corresponding
with Rhine, Huntington decided that, rather than
further confuse the public with a technical reply to
Kellogg's arguments, a simple statement should be
made to the effect that the mathematical issues in
Rhine's work had been resolved. Huntington must
have successfully convinced his former student,
Burton Camp of Wesleyan, that this was a wise
approach. Camp was the 1937 President of IMS.
When the annual meetings were held in December
of 1937 (jointly with AMS and AAAS), Camp
released a statement to the press that read:
Dr. Rhine's investigations have two aspects:
experimental and statistical. On the exper-
imental side mathematicians, of course,
have nothing to say. On the statistical side,
however, recent mathematical work has
established the fact that, assuming that the
experiments have been properly performed,
the statistical analysis is essentially valid. If
the Rhine investigation is to be fairly attacked,
it must be on other than mathematical grounds
[Camp, 1937].
One statistician who did emerge as a critic was
William Feller. In a talk at the Duke Mathemati-
cal Seminar on April 24, 1940, Feller raised three
criticisms to Rhine's work (Feller, 1940). They had
been raised before by others (and continue to be
raised even today). The first was that inadequate
shuffling of the cards resulted in additional infor-
mation from one series to the next. The second was
what is now known as the "file-drawer effect,"
namely, that if one combines the results of pub-
lished studies only, there is sure to be a bias in
favor of successful studies. The third was that the
results were enhanced by the use of optional stop-
ping, that is, by not specifying the number of trials
in advance. All three of these criticisms were ad-
dressed in a rejoinder by Greenwood and Stuart
(1940), but Feller was never convinced. Even in its
third edition published in 1968, his book An Intro-
duction to Probability Theory and Its Applications
still contains his conclusion about Greenwood and
Stuart: "Both their arithmetic and their experi-
ments have a distinct tinge of the supernatural"
(Feller, 1968, page 407). In his discussion of Feller's
nulna "T believe
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Feller was confused ... he seemed to have decided
the opposition was wrong and that was that."
Several statisticians have contributed to the
literature in parapsychology to greater or lesser
degrees. T. N. E. Greville developed applicable
statistical methods for many of the experiments in
parapsychology and was Statistical Editor of the
Journal of Parapsychology (with J. A. Greenwood)
from its start in 1937 through Volume 31 in 1967;
Fisher (1924, 1929) addressed some specific prob-
lems in card-guessing experiments; Wilks (1965a, b)
described various statistical methods for parapsy-
chology; Lindley (1957) presented a Bayesian anal-
ysis of some parapsychology data; and Diaconis
(1978) pointed out some problems with certain ex-
periments and presented a method for analyzing
experiments when feedback is given.
Occasionally, attacks on parapsychology have
taken the form of attacks on statistical inference in
general, at least as it is applied to real data.
Spencer-Brown (1957) attempted to show that true
randomness is impossible, at least in finite se-
quences, and that this could be the explanation for
the results in parapsychology. That argument re-
emerged in a recent debate on the role of random-
ness in parapsychology, initiated by psychologist J.
Barnard Gilmore (Gilmore, 1989, 1990; Utts, 1989;
Palmer, 1989, 1990). Gilmore stated that "The ag-
nostic statistician, advising on research in psi,
should take account of the possible inappropriate-
ness of classical inferential statistics" (1989, page
338). In his second paper, Gilmore reviewed several
non-psi studies showing purportedly random sys-
tems that do not behave as they should under
randomness (e.g., Iversen, Longcor, Mosteller,
Gilbert and Youtz, 1971; Spencer-Brown, 1957).
Gilmore concluded that "Anomalous data ...
should not be found nearly so often if classical
statistics offers a valid model of reality" (1990,
page 54), thus rejecting the use of classical statisti-
cal inference for real-world applications in general.
3. REPLICATION
Implicit and explicit in the literature on parapsy-
chology is the assumption that, in order to truly
establish itself, the field needs to find a repeat-
able experiment. For example, Diaconis (1978)
started the summary of his article in Science with
the words "In search of repeatable ESP experi-
ments, modern investigators ... " (page 131). On
October 28-29, 1983, the 32nd International Con-
ference of the Parapsychology Foundation was held
in San Antonio, Texas, to address "The Repeatabil-
ity Problem in Parapsychology." The Conference
Proceedings (Shapin and Coly, 1985) reflect the
diverse views among parapsychologists on the na-
ture of the problem. Honorton (1985a) and Rao
(1985), for example, both argued that strict replica-
tion is uncommon in most branches of science and
that parapsychology should not be singled out as
unique in this regard. Other authors expressed
disappointment in the lack of a single repeatable
experiment in parapsychology, with titles such
as "Unrepeatability: Parapsychology's Only Find-
ing" (Blackmore, 1985), and "Research Strategies
for Dealing with Unstable Phenomena" (Beloff,
1985).
It has never been clear, however, just exactly
what would constitute acceptable evidence of a re-
peatable experiment. In the early days of investiga-
tion, the major critics "insisted that it would be
sufficient for Rhine and Soal to convince them of
ESP if a parapsychologist could perform success-
fully a single 'fraud-proof' experiment" (Hyman,
1985a, page 71). However, as soon as well-designed
experiments showing statistical significance
emerged, the critics realized that a single experi-
ment could be statistically significant just by:"
chance. British psychologist C. E. M. Hansel quan-
tified the new expectation, that the experiment"
should be repeated a few times, as follows:
If a result is significant at the .01 level and
this result is not due to chance but to informa-
tion reaching the subject, it may be expected
that by making two further sets of trials the
antichance odds of one hundred to one will be
increased to around a million to one, thus en-
abling the effects of ESP-or whatever is re-
sponsible for the original result-to manifest"
itself to such an extent that there will be little
doubt that the result is not due to chance
[Hansel, 1980, page 298].
In other words, three consecutive experiments at
p ≤ 0.01 would convince Hansel that something
other than chance was at work.
This argument implies that if a particular experi-
ment produces a statistically significant result, but ....
subsequent replications fail to attain significance,
then the original result was probably due to chance,
or at least remains unconvincing. The problem with
this line of reasoning is that there is no consid-
eration given to sample size or power. Only an
experiment with extremely high power should
be expected to be "successful" three times in
succession.
It is perhaps a failure of the way statistics is
taught that many scientists do not understand the
importance of power in defining successful replica-
tion. To illustrate this point, psychologists Tversky
and Kahnemann (1982) distributed a questionnaire
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to their colleagues at a professional meeting, with
the question:
An investigator has reported a result that you
consider implausible. He ran 15 subjects, and
reported a significant value, t = 2.46. Another
investigator has attempted to duplicate his pro-
cedure, and he obtained a nonsignificant value
of t with the same number of subjects. The
direction was the same in both sets of data.
You are reviewing the literature. What is the
highest value of t in the second set of data that
you would describe as a failure to replicate?
[1982, page 28].
In reporting their results, Tversky and Kahne-
mann stated:
The majority of our respondents regarded t =
1.70 as a failure to replicate. If the data of two
such studies (t = 2.46 and t = 1.70) are pooled,
the value of t for the combined data is about
3.00 (assuming equal variances). Thus, we are
faced with a paradoxical state of affairs, in
which the same data that would increase our
confidence in the finding when viewed as part
of the original study, shake our confidence
when viewed as an independent study [1982,
page 28].
At a recent presentation to the History and Phi-
losophy of Science Seminar at the University of
California at Davis, I asked the following question.
Two scientists, Professors . A and B, each. have a.
theory they would like to demonstrate. Each plans
to run a fixed number of Bernoulli trials and then
test Ho: p = 0.25 versus H .: p > 0.25. Professor A
has access to large numbers of students each
semester to use as subjects. In his first experiment,
he runs 100 subjects, and there are 33 successes
(p = 0.04, one-tailed). Knowing the importance of
replication, Professor A runs an additional 100 sub-
jects as a second experiment. He finds 36 successes
(p = 0.009, one-tailed).
Professor B only teaches small classes. Each
quarter, she runs an experiment on her students to
test her theory. She carries out ten studies this
way, with the results in Table 1.
I asked the audience by a show of hands to
indicate whether or not they felt the scientists had
successfully demonstrated their theories. Professor
A's theory received overwhelming support, with
approximately 20 votes, while Professor B's theory
received only one vote.
-
If you aggregate the results of the experiments
for each professor, you will notice that each con-
ducted 200 trials, and Professor B actually demon-
strated a higher level of success than Professor A,
with 71 as opposed to 69 successful trials. The
one-tailed p-values for the combined trials are
0.0017 for Professor A and 0.0006 for Professor B.
To address the question of replication more ex-
plicitly, I also posed the following scenario. In
December of 1987, it was decided to prematurely
terminate a study on the effects of aspirin in reduc-
ing heart attacks because the data were so convinc-
ing (see, e.g., Greenhouse and Greenhouse, 1988;
Rosenthal, 1990a). The physician-subjects had been
randomly assigned to take aspirin or a placebo.
There were 104 heart attacks among the 11,037
subjects in the aspirin group, and 189 heart attacks
among the 11,034 subjects in the placebo group
(chi-square = 25.01, p < 0.00001).
After showing the results of that study, I pre-
sented the audience with two hypothetical experi-
ments conducted to try to replicate the original
result, with outcomes in Table 2.
I asked the audience to indicate which one they
thought was a more successful replication. The au-
dience chose the second one, as would most journal
editors, because of the "significant p-value." In
fact, the first replication has almost exactly the
same proportion of heart attacks in the two groups
as the original study and is thus a very close repli-
cation of that result. The second replication has
TABLE 1
Attempted replciations for professor B
·n
Number of successes
One-tailed p-value
10
4
0.22
15
6
0.15
17
6
0.23
25
8
0.17
30
10
0.20
40
13
0.18
18
7
0.14
10
5
0.08
15
5
0.31
20
7
0.21
TABLE 2
. Hypothetical replications of the aspirin / heart
attack study
Replication # 1
Heart attack
Replication #2
Heart attack
Yes
No
Yes
No
Aspirin
Placebo
11
1156
20
2314
19
1090
48
2170
Chi-square
2.596, p = 0.11
13.206, p = 0.0003
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very different proportions, and in fact the relative
risk from the second study is not even contained in
a 95% confidence interval for relative risk from the.
original study. The magnitude of the effect has
been much more closely matched by the "nonsig-
nificant" replication.
Fortunately, psychologists are beginning to no-
tice that replication is not as straightforward as
they were originally led to believe. A special issue
of the Journal of Social Behavior and Personality
was entirely devoted to the question of replication
(Neuliep, 1990). In one of the articles, Rosenthal
cautioned his colleagues: "Given the levels of sta-
tistical power at which we normally operate, we
have no right to expect the proportion of significant
results that we typically do expect, even if in na-
ture there is a very real and very important effect"
(Rosenthal, 1990b, page 16).
Jacob Cohen, in his insightful article titled
"Things I Have Learned (So Far)," identified an-
other misconception common among social scien-
tists: "Despite widespread misconceptions to the
contrary, the rejection of a given null hypothesis
gives us.no basis for estimating the probability that
a replication of the research will again result in .
rejecting that null hypothesis" (Cohen, 1990, page
1307).
Cohen and Rosenthal both advocate the use of
effect sizes as opposed to significance levels when
defining the strength of an experimental effect. In
general, effect sizes measure the amount by which
the data deviate from the null hypothesis in terms
of standardized units. For instance, the effect size
for a two-sample t-test is usually defined to be the
difference in the two means, divided by the stan-
dard deviation for the control group. This measure
can be compared across studies without the depen-
dence on sample size inherent in significance lev-
els. (Of course there will still be variability in the
sample effect sizes, decreasing as a function of sam-
ple size.) Comparison of effect sizes across studies is
one of the major components of meta-analysis.
Similar arguments have recently been made in
the medical literature. For example, Gardner and
Altman (1986) stated that the use of p-values "to
define two alternative outcomes-significant and
not significant-is not helpful and encourages lazy
thinking" (page 746). They advocated the use of
confidence intervals instead.
As discussed in the next section, the arguments
used to conclude that parapsychology has failed to
demonstrate a replicable effect hinge on these mis-
conceptions of replication and failure to examine
power. A more appropriate analysis would compare
the effect sizes for similar experiments across ex-
perimenters and across time to see if there have
UTTS
been consistent effects of the same magnitude.
Rosenthal also advocates this view of replication:
The traditional view of replication focuses on .
significance level as the relevant summary
statistic of a study and evaluates the success of
a replication in a dichotomous fashion. The
newer, more useful view of replication focuses
on effect size as the more important summary
statistic of a study and evaluates the success of
a replication not in a dichotomous but in a
continuous fashion [Rosenthal, 1990b, page 28].
The dichotomous view of replication has been
used throughout the history of parapsychology, by
both parapsychologists and critics (Utts, 1988). For
example, the National Academy of Sciences report
critically evaluated "significant" experiments, but
entirely ignored "nonsignificant" experiments.
In the next three sections, we will examine some
of the results in parapsychology using the broader,
more appropriate definition of replication. In doing
so, we will show that the results are far more
interesting than the critics would have us believe.
4. THE GANZFELD DEBATE IN
PARAPSYCHOLOGY
An extensive debate took place in the mid-1980s
between a parapsychologist and critic, questioning
whether or not a particular body of parapsychologi-
cal data had demonstrated psi abilities. The experi-
ments in question were all conducted using the
ganzfeld setting (described below). Several authors
were invited to write commentaries on the debate.
As a result, this data base has been more thor-
oughly analyzed by both critics and proponents
than any other and provides a good source for
studying replication in parapsychology.
The debate concluded with a detailed series of
recommendations for further experiments, and left
open the question of whether or not psi abilities
had been demonstrated. A new series of experi-
ments that followed the recommendations were
conducted over the next few years. The results of
the new experiments will be presented in Section 5.
4.1 Free-Response Experiments
Recent experiments in parapsychology tend to
use more complex target material than the cards
and dice used in the early investigations, partially ".
to alleviate boredom on the part of the subjects and
.
partially because they are thought to "more nearly
resemble the conditions of spontaneous psi ;occur-
rences" (Burdick and Kelly, 1977, page 109). These
experiments fall under the general heading of .
"free-response" experiments, because the subject is
asked to give a verbal or written description of the.
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target, rather than being forced to make a choice
from a small discrete set of possibilities. Various
types of target material have been used, including
pictures, short segments of movies on video tapes,
actual locations and small objects.
Despite the more complex target material, the
statistical methods used to analyze these experi-
ments are similar to those for forced-choice experi-
ments. A typical experiment proceeds as follows.
Before conducting any trials, a large pool of poten-
tial targets is assembled, usually in packets of four.
Similarity of targets within a packet is kept to a
minimum, for reasons made clear below. At the
start of an experimental session, after the subject is
sequestered in an isolated room, a target is selected
at random from the pool. A sender is placed in
another room with the target. The subject is asked
to provide a verbal or written description of what
he or she thinks is in the target, knowing only that
it is a photograph, an object, etc.
After the subject's description has been recorded
and secured against the potential for later alter-
ation, a judge (who may or may not be the subject)
is given a copy of the subject's description and the
four possible targets that were in the packet with
the correct target. A properly conducted experi-
ment either uses video tapes or has two identical
sets of target material and uses the duplicate set
for this part of the process, to ensure that clues
such as fingerprints don't give away the answer.
Based on the subject's description, and of course on
a blind basis, the judge is asked to either rank the
four choices from most to least likely to have been
the target, or to select the one from the four that
seems to best match the subject's description. If
ranks are used, the statistical analysis proceeds by
summing the ranks over a series of trials and
comparing the sum to what would be expected by
chance. If the selection method is used, a "direct
hit" occurs if the correct target is chosen, and the
number of direct hits over a series of trials is
compared to the number expected in a binomial
experiment with p = 0.25.
Note that the subjects' responses cannot be con-
sidered to be "random" in any sense, so probability
assessments are based on the random selection of
the target and decoys. In a correctly designed ex-
periment, the probability of a direct hit by chance
is 0.25 on each trial, regardless of the response, and
the trials are independent. These and other issues
related to analyzing free-response experiments are
discussed by Utts (1991).
4.2 The Psi Ganzfeld Experiments
The ganzfeld procedure is a particular kind of
free-response experiment utilizing a perceptual
isolation technique originally developed by Gestalt
psychologists for other purposes. Evidence from
spontaneous case studies and experimental work
had led parapsychologists to a model proposing that
psychic functioning may be masked by sensory in-
put and by inattention to internal states (Honorton,
1977). The ganzfeld procedure was specifically de-
signed to test whether or not reduction of external
"noise" would enhance psi performance.
In these experiments, the subject is placed in a
comfortable reclining chair in an acoustically
shielded room. To create a mild form of sensory
deprivation, the subject wears headphones through
which white noise is played, and stares into a
constant field of red light. This is achieved by
taping halved translucent ping-pong balls over the
eyes and then illuminating the room with red light.
In the psi ganzfeld experiments, the subject speaks
into a microphone and attempts to describe the
target material being observed by the sender in a
distant room.
At the 1982 Annual Meeting of the Parapsycho-
logical Association, a debate took place over the
degree to which the results of the psi ganzfeld
experiments constituted evidence of psi abilities.
Psychologist and critic Ray Hyman and parapsy-
chologist Charles Honorton each analyzed the re-
sults of all known psi ganzfeld experiments to date,
and they reached strikingly different conclusions
(Honorton, 1985b; Hyman, 1985b). The debate con-
tinued with the publication of their arguments in
separate articles in the March 1985 issue of the
Journal of Parapsychology. Finally, in the Decem-
ber 1986 issue of the Journal of Parapsychology,
Hyman and Honorton (1986) wrote a joint article
in which they highlighted their agreements and
disagreements and outlined detailed criteria for
future experiments. That same issue contained
commentaries on the debate by 10 other authors.
The data base analyzed by Hyman and Honorton
(1986) consisted of results taken from 34 reports
written by a total of 47 authors. Honorton counted
42 separate experiments described in the reports, of
which 28 reported enough information to determine
the number of direct hits achieved. Twenty three of
the studies (55%) were classified by Honorton as
having achieved statistical significance at 0.05.
4.3 The Vote-Counting Debate
Vote-counting is the term commonly used for the
technique of drawing inferences about an experi-
mental effect by counting the number of significant
versus nonsignificant studies of the effect. Hedges
and Olkin (1985) give a detailed analysis of the
inadequacy of this method, showing that it is more
and more likely to make the wrong decision as the
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J. UTTS
number of studies increases. While Hyman ac-
knowledged that "vote-counting raises many prob-
lems" (Hyman, 1985b, page 8), he nonetheless spent
half of his critique of the ganzfeld studies showing
why Honorton's count of 55% was wrong.
Hyman's first complaint was that several of the
studies contained multiple conditions, each of which
should be considered as a separate study. Using
this definition he counted 80 studies (thus further
reducing the sample sizes of the individual studies),
of which 25 (31%) were "successful." Honorton's
response to this was to invite readers to examine
the studies and decide for themselves if the varying
conditions constituted separate experiments.
Hyman next postulated that there was selection
bias, so that significant studies were more likely to
be reported. He raised some important issues about
how pilot studies may be terminated and not re-
ported if they don't show significant results, or may
at least be subject to optional stopping, allowing
the experimenter to determine the number of tri-
als. He also presented a chi-square analysis that
"suggests a tendency to report studies with a small
sample only if they have significant results"
(Hyman, 1985b, page 14), but I have questioned his
analysis elsewhere (Utts, 1986, page 397).
Honorton refuted Hyman's argument with four
rejoinders (Honorton, 1985b, page 66). In addition
to reinterpreting Hyman's chi-square analysis,
Honorton pointed out that the Parapsychological
Association has an official policy encouraging the
publication of nonsignificant results in its journals
and proceedings, that a large number of reported
ganzfeld studies did not achieve statistical signifi-
cance and that there would have to be 15 studies in
the "file-drawer" for every one reported to cancel
out the observed significant results.
The remainder of Hyman's vote-counting analy-
sis consisted of showing that the effective error rate
for each study was actually much higher than the
nominal 5%. For example, each study could have
been analyzed using the direct hit measure, the
sum of ranks measure or one of two other measures
used for free-response analyses. Hyman carried out
a simulation study that showed the true error rate
would be 0.22 if "significance" was defined by re-
quiring at least one of these four measures to
achieve the 0.05 level. He suggested several other
ways in which multiple testing could occur and
concluded that the effective error rate in each ex-
periment was not the nominal 0.05, but rather was
probably close to the 31% he had determined to be
the actual success rate in his vote-count.
Honorton acknowledged that there was a multi-
ple testing problem, but he had a two-fold response.
First, he applied a Bonferroni correction and found
that the number of significant studies (using his
definition of a study) only dropped from 55% to
45%. Next, he proposed that a uniform index of
success be applied to all studies. He used the num -..
ber of direct hits, since it was by far the most:
commonly reported measure and was the measure
used in the first published psi ganzfeld study. He :
then conducted a detailed analysis of the 28 studies ..
reporting direct hits and found that 43% were sig-
nificant at 0.05 on that measure alone. Further, he ,
showed that significant effects were reported by six -:
of the 10 independent investigators and thus were .
not due to just one or two investigators or laborato-
ries. He also noted that success rates were very
similar for reports published in refereed journals
and those published in unrefereed monographs and-
abstracts.
While Hyman's arguments identified issues such
as selective reporting and optional stopping that
should be considered in any meta-analysis, the de-
pendence of significance levels on sample size makes
the vote-counting technique almost useless for as-
sessing the magnitude of the effect. Consider, for
example, the 24 studies where the direct hit meas -..
ure was reported and the chance probability of a
direct hit was 0.25, the most common type of study ..
in the data base. (There were four direct hit studies
with other chance probabilities and 14 that did not
report direct hits.) Of the 24 studies, 13 (54%) were .
"nonsignificant" at a = 0.05, one-tailed. But if the
367 trials in these "failed replications" are com-
bined, there are 106 direct hits, z = 1.66, and p =
0.0485, one tailed. This is reminiscent of the
dilemma of Professor B in Section 3.
Power is typically very low for.these studies. The
median sample size for the studies reporting direct
hits was 28. If there is a real effect and it increases
the success probability from the chance 0.25 to
an actual 0.33 (a value whose rationale will be
made clear below), the power for a study with 28
trials is only 0.181 (Utts, 1986). It should be no
surprise that there is a "repeatability" problem in
parapsychology.
4.4 Flaw Analysis and Future Recommendations
The second half of Hyman's paper consisted of a
"Meta-Analysis of Flaws and Successful Outcomes" +
(1985b, page 30), designed to explore whether or
not various measures of success were related to .
specific flaws in the experiments. While many crit-
ics have argued that the results in parapsychology
can be explained by experimental flaws, Hyman's
analysis was the first to attempt to quantify the
relationship between flaws and significant results .. **
Hyman identified 12 potential flaws in the
ganzfeld experiments, such as inadequate random-,
. ...
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ization, multiple tests used without adjusting the
significance level (thus inflating the significance
level from the nominal 5%) and failure to use a
duplicate set of targets for the judging process (thus
allowing possible clues such as fingerprints). Using
cluster and factor analyses, the 12 binary flaw
variables were combined into three new variables,
which Hyman named General Security, Statistics
and Controls.
Several analyses were then conducted. The one
reported with the most detail is a factor analysis
utilizing 17 variables for each of 36 studies. Four
factors emerged from the analysis. From these,
Hyman concluded that security had increased over
the years, that the significance level tended to be
inflated the most for the most complex studies and
that both effect size and level of significance were
correlated with the existence of flaws.
Following his factor analysis, Hyman picked the
three flaws that seemed to be most highly corre-
lated with success, which were inadequate atten-
tion to both randomization and documentation and
the potential for ordinary communication between
the sender and receiver. A regression equation was
then computed using each of the three flaws as
dummy variables, and the effect size for the experi-
ment as the dependent variable. From this equa-
tion, Hyman concluded that a study without these
three flaws would be predicted to have a hit rate of
27%. He concluded that this is "well within the
statistical neighborhood of the 25% chance rate"
(1985b, page 37), and thus "the ganzfeld psi data
base, despite initial impressions, is inadequate ei-
ther to support the contention of a repeatable study
or to demonstrate the reality of psi" (page 38).
Honorton discounted both Hyman's flaw classifi-
cation and his analysis. He did not deny that flaws
existed, but he objected that Hyman's analysis was
faulty and impossible to interpret. Honorton asked
psychometrician David Saunders to write an Ap-
pendix to his article, evaluating Hyman's analysis.
Saunders first criticized Hyman's use of a factor
analysis with 17 variables (many of which were
dichotomous) and only 36 cases and concluded that
"the entire analysis is meaningless" (Saunders,
1985, page 87). He then noted that Hyman's choice
of the three flaws to include in his regression anal-
ysis constituted a clear case of multiple analysis,
since there were 84 possible sets of three that could
have been selected (out of nine potential flaws), and
Hyman chose the set most highly correlated with
effect size. Again, Saunders concluded that "any
interpretation drawn from [the regression analysis]
must be regarded as meaningless" (1985, page 88).
Hyman's results were also contradicted by Harris
and Rosenthal (1988b) in an analysis requested by
Hyman in his capacity as Chair of the National
Academy of Sciences' Subcommittee on Parapsy-
chology. Using Hyman's flaw classifications and a
multivariate analysis, Harris and Rosenthal con-
cluded that "Our analysis of the effects of flaws on
study outcome lends no support to the hypothesis
that ganzfeld research results are a significant
function of the set of flaw variables" (1988b,
page 3).
Hyman and Honorton were in the process of
preparing papers for a second round of debate when
they were invited to lunch together at the 1986
Meeting of the Parapsychological Association. They
discovered that they were in general agreement on
several major issues, and they decided to coauthor
a "Joint Communique" (Hyman and Honorton,
1986). It is clear from their paper that they both
thought it was more important to set the stage for
future experimentation than to continue the techni-
cal arguments over the current data base. In the
abstract to their paper, they wrote:
We agree that there is an overall significant
effect in this data base that cannot reasonably
be explained by selective reporting or multiple
analysis. We continue to differ over the degree
to which the effect constitutes evidence for psi,
but we agree that the final verdict awaits the
outcome of future experiments conducted by a
broader range of investigators and according to
more stringent standards [page 351].
The paper then outlined what these standards
should be. They included controls against any kind
of sensory leakage, thorough testing and documen-
tation of randomization methods used, better re-
porting of judging and feedback protocols, control
for multiple analyses and advance specification of
number of trials and type of experiment. Indeed,
any area of research could benefit from such a
careful list of procedural recommendations.
4.5 Rosenthal's Meta-Analysis
The same issue of the Journal of Parapsychology
in which the Joint Communiqué appeared also car-
ried commentaries on the debate by 10 separate
authors. In his commentary, psychologist Robert
Rosenthal, one of the pioneers of meta-analysis in
psychology, summarized the aspects of Hyman's
and Honorton's work that would typically be in-
cluded in a meta-analysis (Rosenthal, 1986). It is
worth reviewing Rosenthal's results so that they
can be used as a basis of comparison for the more
recent psi ganzfeld studies reported in Section 5.
Rosenthal, like Hyman and Honorton, focused
only on the 28 studies for which direct hits were
known. He chose to use an effect size measure
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called Cohen's h, which is the difference between
the arcsin transformed proportions of direct hits
that were observed and expected:
h = 2(arcsin Vp - arcsin Vp).
One advantage of this measure over the difference
in raw proportions is that it can be used to compare
experiments with different chance hit rates.
If the observed and expected numbers of hits
were identical, the effect size would be zero. Of the
28 studies, 23 (82%) had effect sizes greater than
zero, with a median effect size of 0.32 and a mean
of 0.28. These correspond to direct hit rates of 0.40
and 0.38 respectively, when 0.25 is expected by
chance. A 95% confidence interval for the true
effect size is from 0.11 to 0.45, corresponding to
direct hit rates of from 0.30 to 0.46 when chance is
0.25.
A common technique in meta-analysis is to calcu-
late a "combined z," found by summing the indi-
vidual z scores and dividing by the square root of
the number of studies. The result should have a
standard normal distribution if each z score has a
standard normal distribution. For the ganzfeld
studies, Rosenthal reported a combined z of 6.60
with a p-value of 3.37 x 10-11. He also reiterated
Honorton's file-drawer assessment by calculating
that there would have to be 423 studies unreported
to negate the significant effect in the 28 direct hit
studies.
Finally, Rosenthal acknowledged that, because of
the flaws in the data base and the potential for at
least a small file-drawer effect, the true average
effect size was probably closer to 0.18 than 0.28. He
concluded, "Thus, when the accuracy rate expected
under the null is 1/4, we might estimate the ob-
tained accuracy rate to be about 1/3" (1986, page
333). This is the value used for the earlier power
calculation.
It is worth mentioning that Rosenthal was com-
missioned by the National Academy of Sciences to
prepare a background paper to accompany its 1988
report on parapsychology. That paper (Harris and
Rosenthal, 1988a) contained much of the same
analysis as his commentary summarized above.
Ironically, the discussion of the ganzfeld work in
the National Academy Report focused on Hyman's
1985 analysis, but never mentioned the work it had
commissioned Rosenthal to perform, which contra-
dicted the final conclusion in the report.
5. A META-ANALYSIS OF RECENT GANZFELD
EXPERIMENTS
After the initial exchange with Hyman at
the 1982 Parapsychological Association Meeting,
Honorton and his colleagues developed an auto-
mated ganzfeld experiment that was designed to_
eliminate the methodological flaws identified by ...
Hyman. The execution and reporting of the experi-
ments followed the detailed guidelines agreed upon .
by Hyman and Honorton.
Using this "autoganzfeld" experiment, 11 experi->
mental series were conducted by eight experi-
menters between February 1983 and September.
1989, when the equipment had to be dismantled
due to lack of funding. In this section, the results ...
of these experiments are summarized and com-
pared to the earlier ganzfeld studies. Much of the,
information is derived from Honorton et al. (1990).
5.1 The Automated Ganzfeld Procedure
Like earlier ganzfeld studies, the "autoganzfeld"
experiments require four participants. The first is
the Receiver (R), who attempts to identify the tar-,
get material being observed by the Sender (S). The:
Experimenter (E) prepares R for the task, elicits
the response from R and supervises R's judging of ...
the response against the four potential targets. ,
(Judging is double blind; E does not know which is,.
the correct target.) The fourth participant is the lab
assistant (LA) whose only task is to instruct the
computer to randomly select the target. No one
involved in the experiment knows the identity of ...
the target.
Both R and S are sequestered in sound-isolated, ..
electrically shielded rooms. R is prepared as in
earlier ganzfeld studies, with white noise and a
field of red light. In a nonadjacent room, S watches
the target material on a television and can hear R's
target description ("mentation") as it is being.
given. The mentation is also tape recorded.
The judging process takes place immediately af-
ter the 30-minute sending period. On a TV monitor
in the isolated room, R views the four choices from
the target pack that contains the actual target. R is
asked to rate each one according to how closely it
matches the ganzfeld mentation. The ratings are.
converted to ranks and, if the correct target is
ranked first, a direct hit is scored. The entire proc-
ess is automatically recorded by the computer. The
computer then displays the correct choice to R as
feedback:
There were 160 preselected targets, used with
replacement, in 10 of the 11 series. They were
arranged in packets of four, and the decoys for a
given target were always the remaining three in
the same set. Thus, even if a particular target in a
set were consistently favored by Rs, the probability
of a direct hit under the null hypothesis would
remain at 1/4. Popular targets should be no more
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likely to be selected by the computer's random
number generator than any of the others in the set.
The selection of the target by the computer is the
only source of randomness in these experiments.
This is an important point, and one that is often
misunderstood. (See Utts, 1991, for elucidation.)
Eighty of the targets were "dynamic," consisting
of scenes from movies, documentaries and cartoons;
80 were ."static," consisting of photographs, art
prints and advertisements. The four targets within
each set were all of the same type. Earlier studies
indicated that dynamic targets were more likely to
produce successful results, and one of the goals of
the new experiments was to test that theory.
The randomization procedure used to select the
target and the order of presentation for judging was
thoroughly tested before and during the experi-
ments. A detailed description is given by Honorton
et al. (1990, pages 118-120).
Three of the 11 series were pilot series, five were
formal series with novice receivers, and three were
formal series with experienced receivers. The last
series with experienced receivers was the only one
that did not use the 160 targets. Instead, it used
only one set of four dynamic targets in which one
target had previously received several first place
ranks and one had never received a first place
rank. The receivers, none of whom had had prior
exposure to that target pack, were not aware that
only one target pack was being used. They each
contributed one session only to the series. This will
be called the "special series" in what follows.
Except for two of the pilot series, numbers of
trials were planned in advance for each series.
Unfortunately, three of the formal series were not
yet completed when the funding ran out, including
the special series, and one pilot study with advance
planning was terminated early when the experi-
menter relocated. There were no unreported trials
during the 6-year period under review, so there was
no "file drawer."
Overall, there were 183 Rs who contributed only
one trial and 58 who contributed more than one, for
a total of 241 participants and 355 trials. Only 23
Rs had previously participated in ganzfeld experi-
ments, and 194 Rs (81%) had never participated in
any parapsychological research.
5.2 Results
While acknowledging that no probabilistic con-
clusions can be drawn from qualitative data, Hon-
orton et al. (1990) included several examples of
session excerpts that Rs identified as providing the
basis for their target rating. To give a flavor for the
dream-like quality of the mentation and the amount
of information that can be lost by only assigning a
rank, the first example is reproduced here. The
target was a painting by Salvador Dali called
"Christ Crucified." The correct target received a
first place rank. The part of the mentation R used
to make this assessment read:
... I think of guides, like spirit guides, leading
me and I come into a court with a king. It's
quiet .... It's like heaven. The king is some-
thing like Jesus. Woman. Now I'm just sort of
summersaulting through heaven . . ..
Brooding .... Aztecs, the Sun. God .... High
priest ... . Fear .... Graves. Woman.
Prayer ... . Funeral . . . . Dark.
Death . ... Souls .... Ten Commandments.
Moses.
. . . [Honorton et al., 1990].
Over all 11 series, there were 122 direct hits in
the 355 trials, for a hit rate of 34.4% (exact bino-
mial p-value = 0.00005) when 25% were expected
by chance. Cohen's h is 0.20, and a 95% confidence
interval for the overall hit rate is from 0.30 to 0.39.
This calculation assumes, of course, that the proba-
bility of a direct hit is constant and independent
across trials, an assumption that may be question-
able except under the null hypothesis of no psi
abilities.
Honorton et al. (1990) also calculated effect sizes
for each of the 11 series and each of the eight
experimenters. All but one of the series (the first
novice series) had positive effect sizes, as did all of.
the experimenters.
The special series with experienced Rs had an
exceptionally high effect size with h = 0.81, corre-
sponding to 16 direct hits out of 25 trials (64%), but
the remaining series and the experimenters had
relatively homogeneous effect sizes given the
amount of variability expected by chance. If the
special series is removed, the overall hit rate is
32.1%, h = 0.16. Thus, the positive effects are not
due to just one series or one experimenter.
Of the 218 trials contributed by novices, 71 were
direct hits (32.5%, h = 0.17), compared with 51
hits in the 137 trials by those with prior ganzfeld
experience (37%, h = 0.26). The hit rates and effect
sizes were 31% (h = 0.14) for the combined pilot
series, 32.5% (h = 0.17) for the combined formal
novice series, and 41.5% (h = 0.35) for the com-
bined experienced series. The last figure drops to
31.6% if the outlier series is removed. Finally,
without the outlier series the hit rate for the com-
bined series where all of the planned trials were
completed was 31.2% (h = 0.14), while it was 35%
(h = 0.22) for the combined series that were termi-
nated early. Thus, optional stopping cannot
account for the positive effect.
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There were two interesting comparisons that had
been suggested by earlier work and were pre-
planned in these experiments. The first was to
compare results for trials with dynamic targets
with those for static targets. In the 190 dynamic
target sessions there were 77 direct hits (40%, h =
0.32) and for the static targets there were 45 hits
in 165 trials (27%, h = 0.05), thus indicating
that dynamic targets produced far more successful
results.
The second comparison of interest was whether
or not the sender was a friend of the receiver. This
was a choice the receiver could make. If he or she
did not bring a friend, a lab member acted as
sender. There were 211 trials with friends 'as
senders (some of whom were also lab-staff), result-
ing in 76 direct hits (36%, h = 0.24). Four trials
used no sender. The remaining 140 trials used
nonfriend lab staff as senders and resulted in 46
direct hits (33%, h = 0:18). Thus, trials with friends
as senders were slightly more successful than those
without.
Consonant with the definition of replication based
on consistent effect sizes, it is informative to com-
pare the autoganzfeld experiments with the direct
hit studies in the previous data base. The overall
success rates are extremely similar. The overall:
direct hit rate was 34.4% for the autoganzfeld stud-
ies and was 38% for the comparable direct hit
studies in the earlier meta-analysis. Rosenthal's
(1986) adjustment for flaws had placed a more con-
servative estimate at 33%, very close to the
observed 34.4% in the new studies.
One limitation of this work is that the auto-
ganzfeld studies, while conducted by eight experi-
menters, all used the same equipment in the same
laboratory. Unfortunately, the level of fund-
ing available in parapsychology and the cost in
time and equipment to conduct proper experiments
make it difficult to amass large amounts of data
across laboratories. Another autoganzfeld labora-
tory is currently being constructed at the Univer-
sity of Edinburgh in Scotland, so interlaboratory
comparisons may be possible in the near future.
Based on the effect size observed to date, large
samples are needed to achieve reasonable power. If
there is a constant effect across all trials, resulting
in 33% direct hits when 25% are expected by chance,
to achieve a one-tailed significance level of 0.05
with 95% probability would require 345 sessions.
We end this section by returning to the aspirin
and heart attack example in Section 3 and expand-
ing a comparison noted by Atkinson, Atkinson,
Smith and Bem (1990, page 237). Computing the
equivalent of Cohen's h for comparing obser-
ved heart attack rates in the aspirin and placebo
groups results in h = 0.068. Thus, the effect size:
observed in the ganzfeld data base is triple the"
much publicized effect of aspirin on heart attacks: :
.6.,OTHER META-ANALYSES IN
PARAPSYCHOLOGY
Four additional meta-analyses have been con:
ducted in various areas of parapsychology since the
original ganzfeld meta-analyses were reported."
Three of the four analyses focused on evidence of
psi abilities, while the fourth examined the rela"
tionship between extroversion and psychic func."
tioning. In this section, each of the four analyses
will be briefly summarized.
There are only a handful of English-language"".
journals and proceedings in parapsychology, so
retrieval of the relevant studies in each of the
four cases was simple to accomplish by searching
those "sources in detail and by searching other
bibliographic data bases for keywords.
Each analysis included an overall summary, an-
analysis of the quality of the studies versus the size
of the effect and a "file-drawer" analysis to deter-
mine the possible number of unreported studies.
Three of the four also contained comparisons across"
various conditions:
6.1 Forced-Choice Precognition Experiments
Honorton and Ferrari (1989) analyzed forced-
choice experiments conducted from 1935 to 1987, in >
which the target material was randomly selected
after the subject had attempted to predict what it "
would be. The time delay in selecting the target
ranged from under a second to one year. Target:
material included items as diverse as ESP cards
and automated random number generators. Two:
investigators, S. G. Soal and Walter J. Levy, were?
not included because some of their work has been ?.
suspected to be fraudulent.
Overall Results. There were 309 studies re -.
ported by 62 senior authors, including more than ;..
50,000 subjects and nearly two million individual .
trials. Honorton and Ferrari used z/Vn as the
measure of effect size (ES) for each study, where ni
was the number of Bernoulli trials in the study .? !
They reported a mean ES of 0.020, and a mean *..
z-score of 0.65 over all studies. They also reported a"
combined z of 11.41, p = 6.3 x 10-25. Some 30% ::.
(92) of the studies were statistically significant. ať :
a = 0.05. The mean ES per investigator was 0.033 ;. .
and the significant results were not due to just a :4."
few investigators.
Quality. Eight dichotomous quality measures ;
were assigned to each study, resulting in possible",".
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scores from zero for the lowest quality, to eight for
the highest. They included features such as ade-
quate randomization, preplanned analysis and au-
tomated recording of the results. The correlation
between study quality and effect size was 0.081,
indicating a slight tendency for higher quality
studies to be more successful, contrary to claims by
critics that the opposite would be true. There was
a clear relationship between quality and year of
publication, presumably because over the years
experimenters in parapsychology have responded
to suggestions from critics for improving their
methodology.
File Drawer. Following Rosenthal (1984), the
authors calculated the "fail-safe N" indicating the
number of unreported studies that would have to be
sitting in file drawers in order to negate the signifi-
cant effect. They found N = 14,268, or a ratio of 46
unreported studies for each one reported. They also
followed a suggestion by Dawes, Landman and
Williams (1984) and computed the mean z for all
studies with z > 1.65. If such studies were a ran-
dom sample from the upper 5% tail of a N(0, 1)
distribution, the mean z would be 2.06. In this case
it was 3.61. They concluded that selective reporting
could not explain these results.
Comparisons. Four variables were identified
that appeared to have a systematic relationship to
study outcome. The first was that the 25 studies
using subjects selected on the basis of good past
performance were more successful than the 223
using unselected subjects, with mean effect sizes of
0.051 and 0.008, respectively. Second, the 97 stud-
ies testing subjects individually were more success-
ful than the 105 studies that used group testing;
mean effect sizes were 0.021 and 0.004, respec-
tively. Timing of feedback was the third moderat-
ing variable, but information was only available for
104 studies. The 15 studies that never told the
subjects what the targets were had a mean effect
size of -0.001. Feedback after each trial produced
the best results, the mean ES for the 47 studies
was 0.035. Feedback after each set of trials re-
sulted in mean ES of 0.023 (21 studies), while
delayed feedback (also 21 studies) yielded a mean
ES of only 0.009. There is a clear ordering; as the
gap between time of feedback and time of the
actual guesses decreased, effect sizes increased.
The fourth variable was the time interval be-
tween the subject's guess and the actual target
selection, available for 144 studies. The best results
were for the 31 studies that generated targets less
than a second after the guess (mean ES = 0.045),
while the worst were for the seven studies that
delayed target selection by at least a month (mean
ES = 0.001). The mean effect sizes showed a clear
trend, decreasing in order as the time interval
increased from minutes to hours to days to weeks to
months.
6.2 Attempts to Influence Random Physical
Systems
Radin and Nelson (1989) examined studies de-
signed to test the hypothesis that "The statistical
output of an electronic RNG [random number gen-
erator] is correlated with observer intention in ac-
cordance with prespecified instructions" (page
1502). These experiments typically involve RNGs
based on radioactive decay, electronic noise or pseu-
dorandom number sequences seeded with true ran-
dom sources. Usually the subject is instructed to
try to influence the results of a string of binary
trials by mental intention alone. A typical protocol
would ask a subject to press a button (thus starting
the collection of a fixed-length sequence of bits),
and then try to influence the random source to
produce more zeroes or more ones. A run might
consist of three successive button presses, one each
in which the desired result was more zeroes or
more ones, and one as a control with no conscious
intention. A z score would then be computed for
each button press.
The 832 studies in the analysis were conducted
from 1959 to 1987 and included 235 "control" stud-
ies, in which the output of the RNGs were recorded
but there was no conscious intention involved.
These were usually conducted before and during
the experimental series, as tests of the RNGs.
Results. The effect size measure used was again
z/Vn, where z was positive if more bits of the
specified type were achieved. The mean effect size
for control studies was not significantly different
from zero (-1.0 x 10-5). The mean effect size
for the experimental studies was also very small,
3.2 x 10-4, but it was significantly higher than the
mean ES for the control studies (z = 4.1).
Quality. Sixteen quality measures were defined
and assigned to each study, under the four general
categories of procedures, statistics, data and the
RNG device. A score of 16 reflected the highest
quality. The authors regressed mean effect size on
mean quality for each investigator and found a
slope of 2.5 x 10-5 with standard error of 3.2 x
10-5, indicating little relationship between quality
and outcome. They also calculated a weighted mean
effect size, using quality scores as weights, and
found that it was very similar to the unweighted
mean ES. They concluded that "differences
in methodological quality are not significant
predictors of effect size" (page 1507).
File Drawer. Radin and Nelson used several
methods for estimating the number of unreported
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studies (pages 1508-1510). Their estimates ranged
from 200 to 1000 based on models assuming
that all significant studies were reported. They
calculated the fail-safe N to be 54,000.
6.3 Attempts to Influence Dice
Radin and Ferrari (1991) examined 148 studies,
published from 1935 to 1987, designed to test
whether or not consciousness can influence the
results of tossing dice. They also found 31 "con-
trol" studies in which no conscious intention was
involved.
Results. The effect size measure used was
z/ Vn, where z was based on the number of throws
in which the die landed with the desired face (or
faces) up, in n throws. The weighted mean ES for
the experimental studies was 0.0122 with a stan-
dard error of 0.00062; for the control studies the
mean and standard error were 0.00093 and 0.00255,
respectively. Weights for each study were de-
termined by quality, giving more weight to high-
quality studies. Combined z scores for the exper-
imental and control studies were reported by Radin
and Ferrari to be 18.2 and 0.18, respectively.
Quality. Eleven dichotomous quality measures
were assigned, ranging from automated recording
to whether or not control studies were interspersed
with the experimental studies. The final quality
score for each study combined these with informa-
tion on method of tossing the dice, and with source
of subject (defined below). A regression of quality
score versus effect size resulted in a slope of - 0.002,
with a standard error of 0.0011. However, when
effect sizes were weighted by sample size, there was
a significant relationship between quality and ef-
fect size, leading Radin and Ferrari to conclude
that higher quality studies produced lower weighted
effect sizes.
File Drawer. Radin and Ferrari calculated
Rosenthal's fail-safe. N for this analysis to be
17,974. Using the assumption that all significant
studies were reported, they estimated the number
of unreported studies to be 1152. As a final assess-
ment, they compared studies published before and
after 1975, when the Journal of Parapsychology
adopted an official policy of publishing nonsigni-
ficant results. They concluded, based on that an-
alysis, that more nonsignificant studies were
published after 1975, and thus "We must consi-
der the overall (1935-1987) data base as suspect
with respect to the filedrawer problem."
Comparisons. Radin and Ferrari noted that
there was bias in both the experimental and control
studies across die face. Six was the face most likely
to come up, consistent with the observation that it
has the least mass. Therefore, they examined re-
sults for the subset of 69 studies in which targets
were evenly balanced among the six faces. They
still found a significant effect, with mean and stan-
dard error for effect size of 8.6 x 10-3 and 1.1 x
10-3, respectively. The combined z was 7.617 for
these studies.
They also compared effect sizes across types of
subjects used in the studies, categorizing them as
unselected, experimenter and other subjects, exper-
imenter as sole subject, and specially selected sub-
jects, Like Honorton and Ferrari (1989), they found
the highest mean ES for studies with selected
subjects; it was approximately 0.02, more than twice
that for unselected subjects.
6.4 Extroversion and ESP Performance
Honorton, Ferrari and Bem. (1991) conducted a
meta-analysis to examine the relationship between
scores on tests of extroversion and scores on
psi-related tasks. They found 60 studies by 17
investigators, conducted from 1945 to 1983.
Results. The effect size measure used for this
analysis was the correlation between each subject's
extroversion score and ESP score. A variety of.
measures had been used for both scores across stud-
ies, so various correlation coefficients were used ...
Nonetheless, a stem and leaf diagram of the corre-
lations showed an approximate bell shape with
mean and standard deviation of 0.19 and 0.26,
respectively, and with an additional outlier at r =.
0.91. Honorton et al. reported that when weighted
by degrees of freedom, the weighted mean r was
0.14, with a 95% confidence interval covering 0.10
to 0.19.
Forced-Choice versus Free-Response Re-
sults. Because forced-choice and free-response tests .
differ qualitatively, Honorton et al. chose to exam-
ine their relationship to extroversion separately.
They found that for free-response studies there was
a significant correlation between extroversion and.
ESP scores, with mean r = 0.20 and z = 4.46. Fur-
ther, this effect was homogeneous across both
investigators and extroversion scales.
For forced-choice studies, there was a significant
correlation between ESP and extroversion, but only
for those studies that reported the ESP results
to the subjects before measuring extroversion. ">
Honorton et al. speculated that the relationship
was an artifact, in which extroversion scores
were temporarily inflated as a result of positive
feedback on ESP performance.
Confirmation with New Data Following the .
extroversion/ESP meta-analysis, Honorton et al.
attempted to confirm the relationship using
the autoganzfeld data base. Extroversion scores !
based on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator were ,
available for 221 of the 241 subjects who had
participated in autoganzfeld studies.
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377
The correlation between extroversion scores and
ganzfeld rating scores was r = 0.18, with a 95%
confidence interval from 0.05 to 0.30. This is con-
sistent with the mean correlation of r = 0.20 for
free-response experiments, determined from the
meta-analysis. These correlations indicate that :ex-
troverted subjects can produce higher scores in
free-response ESP tests.
7. CONCLUSIONS
Parapsychologists often make a distinction be-
tween "proof-oriented research" and "process-
oriented research." The former is typically con-
ducted to test the hypothesis that psi abilities exist,
while the latter is designed to answer questions
about how psychic functioning works. Proof-
oriented research has dominated the literature
in parapsychology. Unfortunately, many of the
studies used small samples and would thus be
nonsignificant even if a moderate-sized effect
exists.
The recent focus on meta-analysis in parapsy-
chology has revealed that there are small but
consistently nonzero effects across studies, experi-
menters and laboratories. The sizes of the effects in
forced-choice studies appear to be comparable to
those reported in some medical studies that had
been heralded as breakthroughs. (See Section 5;
also Honorton and Ferrari, 1989, page 301.) Free-
response studies show effect sizes of far greater
magnitude.
A promising direction for future process-oriented
research is to examine the causes of individual
differences in psychic functioning. The ESP/ex-
troversion meta-analysis is a step in that direction.
In keeping with the idea of individual differ-
ences, Bayes and empirical Bayes methods would
appear to make more sense than the classical infer-
ence methods commonly used, since they would
allow individual abilities and beliefs to be modeled.
Jeffreys (1990) reported a Bayesian analysis of some
of the RNG experiments and showed that conclu-
sions were closely tied to prior beliefs even though
hundreds of thousands of trials were available.
It may be that the nonzero effects observed in the
meta-analyses can be explained by something other
than ESP, such as shortcomings in our understand-
ing of randomness and independence. Nonetheless,
there is an anomaly that needs an explanation. As
I have argued elsewhere (Utts, 1987), research in
parapsychology should receive more support from
the scientific community. If ESP does not exist,
there is little to be lost by erring in the direction of
further research, which may in fact uncover other
anomalies. If ESP does exist, there is much to be
much to be gained by discovering how to enhance
and apply these abilities to important world
problems.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank Deborah Delanoy, Charles
Honorton, Wesley Johnson, Scott Plous and an
anonymous reviewer for their helpful comments on
an earlier draft of this paper, and Robert Rosenthal
and Charles Honorton for discussions that helped
clarify details.
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Comment
M. J. Bayarri and James Berger
1. INTRODUCTION
There are many fascinating issues discussed in
this paper. Several concern parapsychology itself
and the interpretation of statistical methodology
therein. We are not experts in parapsychology, and
so have only one comment concerning such mat-
ters: In Section 3 we briefly discuss the need to
switch from P-values to Bayes factors in discussing
evidence concerning parapsychology.
A more general issue raised in the paper is that
of replication. It is quite illuminating to consider
the issue of replication from a Bayesian perspec-
tive, and this is done in Section 2 of our discussion.
2. REPLICATION
Many insightful observations concerning replica-
tion are given in the article, and these spurred us
to determine if they could be quantified within
Bayesian reasoning. Quantification requires clear
delineation of the possible purposes of replication,
and at least two are obvious. The first is simple
reduction of random error, achieved by obtaining
more observations from the replication. The second
purpose is to search for possible bias in the original
experiment: We use "bias" in a loose sense here, to
refer to any of the huge number of ways in which
the effects being measured by the experiment can
differ from the actual effects of interest. Thus a
clinical trial without a placebo can suffer a placebo
"bias"; a survey can suffer a "bias" due to the
sampling frame being unrepresentative of the
actual population; and possible sources of bias
in parapsychological experiments have been
extensively discussed.
Replication to Reduce Random Error
If the sole goal of replication of an experiment is
to reduce random error, matters are very straight-
forward. Reviewing the Bayesian way of studying
this issue is, however, useful and will be done
through the following simple example.
M. J. Bayarri is Titular Professor, Department of
Statistics and Operations Research, University of
Valencia, Avenida Dr. Moliner 50, 46100 Burjassot,
Valencia, Spain. James Berger is the Richard M.
Brumfield Distinguished Professor of Statistics,
EXAMPLE 1. Consider the example from Tversky
and Kahnemann (1982), in which an experiment
results in a standardized test statistic of z1 = 2.46.
(We will assume normality to keep computations
trivial.) The question is: What is the highest value
of z2 in a second set of data that would be consid-
ered a failure to replicate? Two possible precise
versions of this question are: Question 1: What is
the probability of observing z2 for which the null
hypothesis would be rejected in the replicated ex-
periment? Question 2: What value of z2 would
leave one's overall opinion about the null hypothe-
sis unchanged?
Consider the simple case where Z1 ~ N(z1 |0, 1).
and (independently) Z2 ~ N(z2|0, 1), where 6 is
the mean and 1 is the standard deviation of the
normal distribution. Note that we are considering
the case in which no experimental bias is suspected
and so the means for each experiment are assumed
to be the same.
Suppose that it is desired to test Ho: 0 5 0 versus
H1: 0 > 0, and suppose that initial prior opinion
about @ can be described by the noninformative
prior x(0) = 1. We consider the one-sided testing
problem with a constant prior in this section, be-
cause it is known that then the posterior probabil-
ity of Ho, to be denoted by P(Ho |data), equals the
P-value, allowing us to avoid complications arising
from differences between Bayesian and classical
answers.
After observing z1 = 2.46, the posterior distribu-
tion of 0 is
₸(0|z1) = N(042.46,1).
Question 1 then has the answer (using predictive
Bayesian reasoning)
P(rejecting at level a ( z1)
.00
8
=
e-1/2(2-0)=(01zł) de dz2
Ca
- 00
1
V2x
=1- $ ( Ca-2.46)
where + is the standard normal cdf and ca is the
(one-sided) critical value corresponding to the level,
a, of the test. For instance, if a = 0.05, then this
probability equals 0.7178, demonstrating that there
is a quite substantial probability that the second
experiment will fail to reject. If a is chosen to be
the observed significance level from the first exper-
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second experiment will reject is just 1/2. This is
nothing but a statement of the well-known martin-
gale property of Bayesianism, that what you "ex-
pect" to see in the future is just what you know
today. In a sense, therefore, question 1 is exposed
as being uninteresting.
Question 2 more properly focuses on the fact that
the stated goal of replication here is simply to
reduce uncertainty in stated conclusions. The an ...
swer to the question follows immediately from not-
ing that the posterior from the combined data
(z1, 22) is
*(01=10.2)=N(0)(z2+2)/2, 1/V2),
so that
P(Ho|data) = +(-(21 + 22)/V2).
Setting this equal to P(Ho| z1) and solving for z2
yields 22 = (V2 - 1)z1 = 1.02. Any value of z2
greater than this will increase the total evidence
against H., while any value smaller than 1.02 will
decrease the evidence.
Replication to Detect Bias
The aspirin example dramatically raises the is-
sue of bias detection as a motive for replication.
Professor Utts observes that replication 1 gives
results that are fully compatible with those of the
original study, which could be interpreted as sug-
gesting that there is no bias in the original study,
while replication 2 would raise serious concerns of
bias. We became very interested in the implicit
suggestion that replication 2 would thus lead to
less overall evidence against the null hypothesis
than would replication 1, even though in isolation
replication 2 was much more "significant" than
was replication 1. In attempting to see if this is so,
we considered the Bayesian approach to study of
bias within the framework of the aspirin example.
EXAMPLE 2. For simplicity in the aspiring exam-
ple, we reduce consideration to
0 =: true difference in heart attack rates between
aspirin and placebo populations multiplied by
1000;
Y = difference in observed heart attack rates be-
tween aspirin and placebo groups in original
study multiplied by 1000;
X; = difference in observed heart attack rates be-
tween aspirin and placebo groups in Replica-
tion i multiplied by 1000.
We assume that the replication studies are ex-
tremely well designed and implemented, so that
J. UTTS
one is very confident that the, X, have mean e.
Using normal approximations for convenience, the
data can be summarized as
X1 ~ N(x1|0,4.82), X2 ~ N(x2|0,3.63)
with actual observations xi = 7.704 and x2 =
13.07.
Consider now the bias issue. We assume that the :
original experiment is somewhat suspect in this.
regard, and we will model bias by defining the .-
mean of Y to be
7 = 0 + 8,
where 6 is the unknown bias. Then the data in the
original experiment can be summarized by
Y ~ N(y | 7, 1.54),
with the actual observation being y = 7.707.
Bayesian analysis requires specification of a prior
distribution, «(8), for the suspected amount of bias.
Of particular interest then are the posterior distri-,
bution of B, assuming replication i has been"
performed, given by
«(Bly, x;)
T(B)exp
2(1.542 + 02) B-(y-x1)2
1
where o2 is the variance (4.82 or 3.63) from repli-
cation i; and the posterior probability of Ho, given
by
P(Holy, x;)
8
- 00
1.54 vo2 + 1.542
(y - 8)
1:54
-
0 Vo2 + 1.542
Xi
T(B| y, x;) de.
Recall that our goal here was to see if Bayesian
analysis can reproduce the intuition that the origi- .
nal experiment could be trusted if replication 1 had .*
been done, while it could not be trusted (in spite of -.
its much larger sample size) had replication 2 been:
performed. Establishing this requires finding av-
prior distribution ₸(8) for which w(6| y, x1) has
little effect on P(Holy, x1), but T(B| y, x2) has a
large effect on P(Ho| y, x2). To achieve the first
objective, «(6) must be tightly concentrated near
zero. To achieve the second, T(8) must be such that
large | y - x2 |, which suggests presence of a large. .
bias, can result in a substantial shift of posterior
mass for ß away from zero.
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A sensible candidate for the prior density "(6)
is the Cauchy (0, V) density
*v(B) =
₹V[1+(0/V)2]
1
Flat-tailed densities, such as this, are well known
to have the property that when discordant data is
observed (e.g., when (| y - x2 | is large), substan-
tial mass shifts away from the prior center towards
the likelihood center. It is easy to see that a normal
prior for & can not have the desired behavior.
Our first surprise in consideration of these priors
was how small V needed to be chosen in order for
P(Holy, x1) to be unaffected by the. bias. For
instance, even with V = 1.54/100 (recall that 1.54
was the standard deviation of Y from the original
experiment), computation yields P(Holy, x1) =
4.3 x 10-5, compared with the P-value (and poste-
rior probability from the original experiment as-
suming no bias) of 2.8 x 10-7. There is a clear
lesson here; even very small suspicions of bias can
drastically alter a small P-value. Note that replica-
tion 1 is very consistent with the presence of no
bias, and so the posterior distribution for the bias
remains tightly concentrated near zero; for in-
stance, the mean of the posterior for @ is then
7.2 × 10-6, and the standard deviation is 0.25.
When we turned attention to replication 2, we
found that it did not seriously change the prior
perceptions of bias. Examination quickly revealed
the reason; even the maximum likelihood estimate
of the bias is no more than 1.4 standard deviations
from zero, which is not enough to change strong
prior beliefs. We, therefore, considered a third
experiment, defined in Table 1. Transforming to
approximate normality, as before, yields
X3 ~ N(x3|0, 3.48),
with x3 = 22.72 being the actual observation. The
maximum likelihood estimate of bias is now 3.95
standard deviations from zero, so there is potential
for a substantial change in opinion about the bias.
Sure enough, computation when V = 1.54/100
yields that Elf| y, x3] = - 4.9 with (posterior)
standard deviation equal to 6.62, which is a dra-
matic shift from prior opinion (that 8 is Cauchy (0,
TABLE 1
Frequency of heart attacks in replication 3
Yes
No
Aspirin
Placebo
5
2309
54
2116
1.54/100)). The effect of this is to essentially ignore
the original experiment in overall assessments of
evidence. For instance, P(Ho|y, x3) = 3.81 x
10-11, which is very close to P(Ho| x3) = 3.29 x
10-11. Note that, if ß were set equal to zero, the
overall posterior probability of Ho (and P-value)
would be 2.62 x 10-13.
Thus Bayesian reasoning can reproduce the intu-
ition that replication which indicates bias can cast
considerable doubt on the original experiment,
while replication which provides no evidence of
bias leaves evidence from the original experiment
intact. Such behavior seems only obtainable, how-
ever, with flat-tailed priors for bias (such as the
Cauchy) that are very concentrated (in comparison
with the experimental standard deviation) near
zero.
3. P-VALUES OR BAYES FACTORS?
Parapsychology experiments usually consider
testing of H .: No parapsychological effect exists.
Such null hypotheses are often realistically repre-
sented as point nulls (see Berger and Delampady,
1987, for the reason that care must be taken in
such representation), in which case it is known that
there is a large difference between P-values and
posterior probabilities (see Berger and Delampady,
1987, for review). The article by Jefferys (1990)
dramatically illustrates this, showing that a very
small P-value can actually correspond to evidence
for Ho when considered from a Bayesian perspec-
tive. (This is very related to the famous "Jeffreys"
paradox.) The argument in favor of the Bayesian
approach here is very strong, since it can be shown
that the conflict holds for virtually any sensible
prior distribution; a Bayesian answer can be wrong
if the prior information turns out to be inaccurate,
but a Bayesian answer that holds for all sensible
priors is unassailable.
Since P-values simply cannot be viewed as mean-
ingful in these situations, we found it of interest to
reconsider the example in Section 5 from a Bayes
factor perspective. We considered only analysis of
the overall totals, that is, x = 122 successes out of
n = 355 trials. Assuming a simple Bernoulli trial
model with success probability 0, the goal is to test
Ho:0 = 1/4 versus H1:0 # 1/4.
To determine the Bayes factor here, one must
specify g(6), the conditional prior density on H1.
Consider choosing g to be uniform and symmetric,
that is,
G, (0) = {2r
1
-
otherwise.
0,
for -
1
4
rsost
+r,
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Crudely, r could be considered to be the maximum
change in success probability that one would expect
given that ESP exists. Also, these distributions are
the "extreme points" over the class of symmetric
unimodal conditional densities, so answers that hold
over this class are also representative of answers'
over a much larger class. Note that here r'≤ 0.25
(because 0 ≤ 0 =1); for the given data the 0 > 0.5
are essentially irrelevant, but if it were deemed-
important to take them into account one could use"
the more sophisticated binomial analysis in Berger
and Delampady (1987) ..
For g,, the Bayes factor of H1 to Ho, which is to
be interpreted as the relative odds for the hypothe-
ses provided by the data, is given by
B(r) =
(1/(2r)) |2; 0122 (1 - 0)355-122 de
(1/4)122(1 - 1/4)355 - 122
1
27
m
(63.13)
r - . 0937
.0252
+ +
-(r+ .0937)
.0252
This is graphed in Figure 1.
:The P-value for this problem was 0.00005, indi-
cating overwhelming evidence against H, from a
classical perspective. In contrast to the situation
studied by Jefferys (1990), the Bayes factor here
does not completely reverse the conclusion, show-
ing that there are very reasonable values of r for
which the evidence against Ho is moderately
strong, for example 100/1 or 200/1. Of course, this
evidence is probably not of sufficient strength to
overcome strong prior opinions against Ho (one
J. UIT'S
200
150-
100-
0.15
0.25
FIG. 1. The Bayes factor of H1 to Ho as a function of r, the
maximum change in success probability that is expected given
that ESP.exists, for the ganzfeld experiment.
obtains final posterior odds by multiplying prior
odds by the Bayes factor). To properly assess
strength of evidence, we feel that such Bayes factor
computations should become standard in parapsy **
chology.
As mentioned by Professor Utts, Bayesian meth-"
ods have additional potential in situations such as
this, by allowing unrealistic models of iid trials to*
be replaced by hierarchical models reflecting differ-
ing abilities among subjects.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
M. J. Bayarri's research was supported in part;
by the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science
under DGICYT Grant BE91-038, while visiting
Purdue University. James Berger's research was
supported by. NSF Grant DMS-89-23071.
Comment
Ree Dawson
This paper offers readers interested in statistical
science multiple views of the controversial history
of parapsychology and how statistics has con-
tributed to its development. It first provides an
Ree Dawson is Senior Statistician, New England
Biomedical Research Foundation, and Statistical
Consultant, RFE/RL Research Institute. Her mail-
ing address is 177 Morrison Avenue, Somerville,
Massachusetts 02144.
account of how both design and inferential aspects
of statistics have been pivotal issues in evaluating!
the outcomes of experiments that study psi abili -:
ties. It then emphasizes how the idea of science as;
replication has been key in this field in which
results have not been conclusive or consistent and .
thus meta-analysis has been at the heart of the
literature in parapsychology. The author not only
reviews past debate on how to interpret repeated
psi studies, but also provides very detailed informa-
tion on the Honorton-Hyman argument, a nice
illustration of the challenges of resolving such de-
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bate. This debate is also a good example of how
statistical criticism can be part of the scientific
process and lead to better experiments and, in gen-
eral, better science.
The remainder of the paper addresses technical
issues of meta-analysis, drawing upon recent re-
search in parapsychology for an in-depth applica-
tion. Through a series of examples, the author
presents a convincing argument that power issues
cannot be overlooked in successive replications and
that comparison of effect sizes provides a richer
alternative to the dichotomous measure inherent in
the use of p-values. This is particularly relevant
when the potential effect size is small and re-
sources are limited, as seems to be the case for psi
studies.
The concluding section briefly mentions Bayesian
techniques. As noted by the author, Bayes (or em-
pirical Bayes) methodology seems to make sense for
research in parapsychology. This discussion exam-
ines possible Bayesian approaches to meta-analysis
in this field.
BAYES MODELS FOR PARAPSYCHOLOGY
The notion of repeatability maps well into the
Bayesian set-up in which experiments, viewed as a
random sample from some superpopulation of ex-
periments, are assumed to be exchangeable. When
subjects can also be viewed as an approximately
random sample from some population, it is appro-
priate to pool them across experiments. Otherwise,
analyses that partially pool information according
to experimental heterogeneity need to be consid-
ered. Empirical and hierarchical Bayes methods
offer a flexible modeling framework for such analy-
ses, relying on empirical or subjective sources to
determine the degree of pooling. These richer meth-
ods can be particularly useful to meta-analysis of
experiments in parapsychology conducted under
potentially diverse conditions.
For the recent ganzfeld series, assuming them
to be independent binomially distributed as dis-
cussed in Section 5, the data can be summed
(pooled) across series to estimate a common hit
rate. Honorton et al. (1990) assessed the homogene-
ity of effects across the 11 series using a chi-square
test that compares individual effect sizes to
the weighted mean effect. The chi-square statistic
x20 = 16.25, not statistically significant (p =
0.093), largely reflects the contribution of the last
"special" series (contributes 9.2 units to the x2.
value), and to a lesser extent the novice series with
a negative effect (contributes 2.5 units). The outlier
series can be dropped from the analysis to provide a
more conservative estimate of the presence of psi
effects for this data (this result is reported in Sec-
tion 5). For the remaining 10 series, the chi-square
value x2 = 7.01 strongly favors homogeneity, al-
though more than one-third of its value is due to
the novice series (number 4 in Table 1). This pat-
tern points to the potential usefulness of a richer
model to accommodate series that may be distinct
from the others. For the earlier ganzfeld data ana-
lyzed by Honorton (1985b), the appeal of a Bayes or
other model that recognizes the heterogeneity
across studies is clear cut: x23 = 56.6, p = 0.0001,
where only those studies with common chance hit
rate have been included (see Table 2).
Historic reliance on voting-count approaches to
determine the presence of psi effects makes it natu-
ral to consider Bayes models that focus on the
ensemble of experimental effects from parapsycho-
logical studies, rather than individual estimates.
Recent work in parapsychology that compares ef-
fect sizes across studies, rather than estimating
separate study effects, reinforces the need to exam-
ine this type of model. Louis (1984) develops Bayes
and empirical Bayes methods for problems that
consider the ensemble of parameter values to be
the primary goal, for example, multiple compar-
isons. For the simple compound normal model,
Y: ~ N(01, 1), 6; ~ N(p, 72), the standard Bayes
estimates (posterior means)
6; = = + D(Y: - ") and D = ;
+2
1+72
where the 6; represent experimental effects of in-
terest, are modified approximately to
01 = H + VD(Y -M)
when an ensemble loss function is assumed. The
new estimates adjust the shrinkage factor D so
that their sample mean and variance match the
posterior expectation and variance of the 0's. Simi-
lar results are obtained when the model is gener-
-TABLE 1
Recent ganzfeld series
Series type
N Trials
Hit rate
Y.
Pilot
22
0.36
-0.58
0.44
Pilot
9
0.33
-0.71
0.71
Pilot
36
0.28
-0.94
0.37
Novice
50
0.24
-1.15
0.33
Novice
50
0.36
-0.58
0.30
Novice
50
0.30
-0.85
0.31
Novice
50
0.36
-0.58
0.30
Novice
6
0.67
0.71
0.87
Experienced
7
0.43
-0.28
0.76
Experienced
50
0.30
-0.85
0.31
Experienced
25
0.64
0.58
0.42
Overall
355
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N Trials
Hit rate
Y
32
0.44
-0.24
0.36
7
0.86
1.82
1.09
30
0.43
-0.28
0:37
30
0.23
-1.21
0.43
20
0.10
-2.20
0.75
10
0.90
2.20
$ 1.05.
10
0.40
-0.41
0.65
28
0.29
-0.90
0.42
10
0.40
-0.41
0.65
20
0.35
-0.62
0.47
26
0.31
-0.80
- 0.42
20
0.45
-0.20
0.45
20
0.45
-0.20
0.45
30
0.53
0.12
0.37
36
0.33
-0.71
0.35
32
0.28
-0.94
0.39
40
0.28
-0.94
0.35
26
0.46
-0.16
0.39
20
0.60
0.41
0.46
100
0.41
-0.36
0.20
40
0.33
-0.71
0.34
27
0:41
-0.36
0.39
60
0.45
-0.20
0.26
722
.38
alized to the case of unequal variances, Y; ~
N(01, 2).
For the above model, the fraction of 0/ above (or
below) a cut point C is a consistent estimate of the
fraction of 01 > C (or 0; < C). Thus, the use of
ensemble, rather than component-wise, loss can
help detect when individual effects are above
a specified threshold by chance. For the meta-
analysis of ganzfeld experiments, the observed bi-
nomial proportions transformed on the logit (or
arcsin) scale can be modeled in this framework ..
Letting di and m; denote the number of direct hits
and misses respectively for the ith experiment, and
pi as the corresponding population proportion of
direct hits, the Y; are the observed logits
Y: = log(di /m;)
and o2, estimated by maximum likelihood as
1/d; + 1/m;, is the variance of Y; conditional on
0; = logit(pi). The threshold logit (0.25) = 1.10 can
be used to identify the number of experiments for
which the proportion of direct hits exceeds that
expected by chance.
Table 1 shows Y; and o; for the 11 ganzfeld
series. All but one of the series are well above the
threshold; Y, marginally falls below -1.10. Any
shrinkage toward a common hit rate will lead to an
estimate, 0; or 61, above the threshold. The use of
ensemble loss (with its consistency property) pro-
vides more convincing support that all 8; > -1.10,
although posterior estimates of uncertainty are
needed to fully calibrate this. For the earlier
ganzfeld data in Table 2, ensemble loss can simi -?
larly be used to determine the number of studies
with 0, < - 1.10 and specifically whether the nega-
tive effects of studies 4 and. 24 (Y, = - 1.21
and Y24 =- 1.33) occurred as a result of chance ;
fluctuation. ..
Features of the ganzfeld data in Section 5, such
as the outlier series, suggest that further elabora -.
tion of the basic Bayesian set-up may be necessary
for some meta-analyses in parapsychology. Hierar-
chical models provide a natural framework to spec-
ify these. elaborations and explore how results
change with the prior specification. This type of
sensitivity analysis can expose whether conclusions
are closely tied to prior beliefs, as observed by
Jeffreys for RNG data (see Section 7). Quantifying
the influence of model components deemed to be
more subjective or less certain is important to broad ..
acceptance of results as evidence of psi performance .
(or lack thereof).
Consider the initial model commonly used for
Bayesian analysis of discrete data:
Yıl Pi, Mi ~ B(Pi, Mi),
0; ~ N(H, 72), 61= logit(pi),
with noninformative priors assumed for u and ,2
(e.g., log , locally uniform). The distinctiveness of
the last "special" series and, in general, the differ-
ent types of series (pilot versus formal, novice ver-
sus experienced) raises the question of whether the
experimental effects follow a normal distribution.
Weighted normal plots (Ryan and Dempster, 1984)
can be used to graphically diagnose the adequacy of
second-stage normality (see Dempster, Selwyn and
Weeks, 1983, for examples with binary response
and normal superpopulation).
Alternatively, if nonnormality is suspected, the
model can be revised to include some sort of heavy-
tailed prior to accommodate possibly outlying se-
ries or studies. West (1985) incorporates additional
scale parameters, one for each component of the
model (experiment), that flexibly adapt to a typi-
cal 0; and discount their influence on posterior
estimates, thus avoiding under- or over-shrinkage
due to such 0 ;. For example, the second stage
can specify the prior as a scale mixture of normals:
0,- N(u,T2YT1),
kyi ~ xử,
UT - 2 - x 2 .
This approach for the prior is similar to others for
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0.21
-1.33
0.35
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TABLE 2
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maximum likelihood estimation that modify the
sampling error distribution to yield estimates that
are "robust" against outlying observations.
Like its maximum likelihood counterparts, in ad-
dition to the robust effect estimates 0;", the Bayes
model provides (posterior) scale estimates y ;*. These
can be interpreted as the weight given to the data
for each 6, in the analysis and are useful to diag-
nosing which model components (series or studies)
are unusual and how they influence the shrinkage.
When more complex groupings among the 6; are
suspected, for example, bimodal distribution of
studies from different sites or experimenters, other
mixture specifications can be used to further relax
the shrinkage toward a common value.
For the 11 ganzfeld series, the last "outlier"
series, quite distinct from the others (hit rate =
0.64), is moderately precise (N = 25). Omitting it
from the analysis causes the overall hit rate to drop
from 0.344 to 0.321. The scale mixture model is a
compromise between these two values (on the logit
scale), discounting the influence of series 11 on the
estimated posterior common hit rate used for
shrinkage. The scale factor 711, an indication of
how separate 611 is from the other parameters, also
causes 611 to be shrunk less toward the common hit
rate than other, more homogeneous 01, giving more
weight to individual information for that series (see
West, 1985). The heterogeneity of the earlier
ganzfeld data is more pronounced, and studies are
taken from a variety of sources over time. For these
data, the vi can be used to explore atypical studies
(e.g., study 6, with hit rate = 0.90, contributes more
than 25% to the x23 value for homogeneity) and
groupings among effects, as well as protect the
analysis from misspecification of second-stage
normality.
Variation among ganzfeld series or studies and
the degree to which pooling or shrinking is appro-
priate can be investigated further by considering a
range of priors for ,2. If the marginal likelihood of
,2 dominates the prior specification, then results
should not vary as the prior for ,2 is varied. Other-
wise, it is important to identify the degree to which
subjective information about interexperimental
variability influences the conclusions. This sen-
sitivity analysis is a Bayesian enrichment of
the simpler test of homogeneity directed toward
determining whether or not complete pooling is
appropriate.
To assess how well heterogeneity among his-
torical control groups is determined by the data.
Dempster, Selwyn and Weeks (1983) propose three
priors for +2 in the logistic-normal model. The prior
distributions range from strongly favoring individ-
ual estimates, p(+2)dr cc +-1, to the uniform refer-
ence prior p(+2) dr & 7-2, flat on the log T scale, to
strongly favoring complete pooling, p(+2) dr oc T-3
(the latter forcing complete pooling for the com-
pound normal model; see Morris, 1983). For their
two examples, the results (estimates of linear treat-
ment effects) are largely insensitive to variation in
the prior distribution, but the number of studies in
each example was large (70 and 19 studies avail-
able for pooling). For the 11 ganzfeld series, 72 may
be less well determined by the data. The posterior
estimate of ,2 and its sensitivity to p(+2)dr will
also depend on whether individual scale parame-
ters are incorporated into the model. Discounting
the influence of the last series will both shift the
marginal likelihood toward smaller values of ,2
and concentrate it more in that region.
The issue of objective assessment of experiment
results is one that extends well beyond the field of
parapsychology, and this paper provides insight into
issues surrounding the analysis and interpretation
of small effects from related studies. Bayes meth-
ods can contribute to such meta-analyses in two
ways. They permit experimental and subjective evi-
dence to be formally combined to determine the
presence or absence of effects that are not clear cut
or controversial (e.g., psi abilities). They can also
help uncover sources and degree of uncertainty in
the scientific conclusions.
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Comment
Persi Diaconis
In my experience, parapsychologists use statis-
tics extremely carefully. The plethora of widely
significant p-values in the many thousands of pub-
lished parapsychological studies must give us pause
-
for thought. Either something spooky is going on,
or it is possible for a field to exist on error and
artifact for over 100 years. The present paper offers
a useful review by an expert and a glimpse at some
tantalizing new studies.
My reaction is that the studies are crucially
flawed. Since my reasons are somewhat unusual, I.
will try to spell them out.
I have found it impossible to usefully judge what
actually went on in a parapsychology trial from
their published record. Time after time, skeptics
have gone to watch trials and found subtle and
not-so-subtle errors. Since the field has so far failed
to produce a replicable phenomena, it seems to
me that any trial that asks us to take its find-
ings seriously should include full participation by
qualified skeptics. Without a magician and/or
knowledgeable psychologist skilled at running ex-
periments with human subjects, I don't think a
serious effort is being made.
I recognize that this is an unorthodox set of
requirements. In fact, one cannot judge what
"really goes on" in studies in most areas, and it is
Persi Diaconis is Professor of Mathematics at Har-
vard University, Science Center, 1 Oxford Street,
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138.
impossible to demand wide replicability in others.".
Finally, defining "qualified skeptic" is difficult. In ;
defense, most areas have many easily replicable, ...
experiments and many"have their findings ex -;
plained and connected by unifying theories. It sim-":
ply seems clear that when making claims at such
extraordinary variance with our daily experience," :
claims that have been made and washed away so
often in the past, such extraordinary measures are."
mandatory before one has the right to ask outsiders
to spend their time in review. The papers cited in
Section 5 do not actively involve qualified skeptics,
and I do not feel they have earned the right to our
serious attention.
The points I have made above are not new. Many
appear in the present article. This does not dimin- .
ish their utility nor applicability to the most recent
studies.
Parapsychology is worth serious study. First,
there may be something there, and I marvel at the ,
patience and drive of people like Jessica Utts and
Ray Hyman. Second, if it is wrong, it offers a truly
alarming massive case study of how statistics can
mislead and be misused. Third, it offers marvelous.
combinatorial and inferential problems. Chung,
Diaconis, Graham and Mallows (1981), Diaconis
and Graham (1981) and Samaniego and Utts
(1983) offer examples not cited in the text. Finally,
our budding statistics students are fascinated by its.
claims; the present paper gives a responsible
overview providing background for a spectacular
classroom presentation.
Comment: Parapsychology - On the Margins
of Science?
Joel B. Greenhouse
Professor Utts reviews and synthesizes a large
body of experimental literature as well as the scien-
tific controversy involved in the attempt to estab-
CFIRE! Greenhouse is Associate Professor of Statis-
tics, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Penn-
sylvania 15213-3890.
lish the existence of paranormal phenomena. The
organization and clarity of her presentation are
noteworthy. Although I do not believe that this
paper will necessarily change anyone's views re-
garding the existence of paranormal phenomena, it
does raise very interesting questions about the pro-
cess by which new ideas are either accepted or
rejected by the scientific community. As students of
science, we believe that scientific discovery
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advances methodically and objectively through the
accumulation of knowledge (or the rejection of false
knowledge) derived from the implementation of the
scientific method. But, as we will see, there is more
to the acceptance of new scientific discoveries than
the systematic accumulation and evaluation of
facts. The recognition that there is a social process
involved with the acceptance or rejection of scien-
tific knowledge has been the subject of study of
sociologists for some time. The scientific commu-
nity's rejection of the existence of paranormal phe-
nomena is an excellent case study of this process
(Allison, 1979; Collins and Pinch, 1979).
Implicit in Professor Utts' presentation and
paramount to the acceptance of parapsychology as
a legitimate science are the description and docu-
mentation of the professionalization of the field of
parapsychology. It is true that many researchers in
the field have university appointments; there are
organized professional societies for the advance-
ment of parapsychology; there are journals with
rigorous standards for published research; the field
has received funding from federal agencies; and
parapsychology has received recognition from other
professional societies, such as the IMS and the
American Association for the Advancement of Sci-
ence (Collins and Pinch, 1979). Nevertheless, most
readers of Statistical Science would agree that
parapsychology is not accepted as part of orthodox
science and is considered by most of the scientific
community to be on the margins of science, at best
(Allison, 1979; Collins and Pinch, 1979). Why is
this the case? Professor Utts believes that it is
because people have not examined the data. She
states that "Strong beliefs tend to be resistant to
change even in the face of data, and many people,
scientists included, seem to have made up their
minds on the question without examining any em-
pirical data at all."
The history of science is replete with examples of
resistance by the established scientific community
to new discoveries. A challenging problem for sci-
ence is to understand the process by which a new
theory or discovery becomes accepted by the com-
munity of scientists and, likewise, to characterize
the nature of the resistance to new ideas. Barber
(1961) suggests that there are many different
sources of resistance to scientific discovery. In 1900,
for example, Karl Pearson met resistance to his use
of statistics in applications to biological problems,
illustrating a source of resistance due to the use of
a particular methodology. The Royal Society in-
formed Pearson that future papers submitted to the
Society for publication must keep the mathematics
separate from the biological applications.
Another obvious source of resistance to new sci-
entific ideas, and the one referred to by Professor
Utts above, is the prevailing substantive beliefs
and theories held by scientists at any given time.
Barber offers the opposition to Copernicus and his
heliocentric theory and to Mendel's theory of ge-
netic inheritance as examples of how, because of
preconceived ideas, theories and values, scientists
are not as open-minded to new advances as one
might think they should be. It was R. A. Fisher
who said that each generation seems to have found
in Mendel's paper only what it expected to find and
ignored what did not conform to its own expecta-
tions (Fisher, 1936).
Pearson's response to the antimathematical prej-
udice expressed by the Royal Society was to estab-
lish with Galton's support a new journal,
Biometrika, to encourage the use of mathematics in
biology. Galton (1901) wrote an article for the first
issue of the journal, explaining the need for this
new voice of "mutual encouragement and support"
for mathematics in biology and saying that "a new
science cannot depend on a welcome from the fol-
lowers of the older ones, and [therefore] ... it is
advisable to establish a special Journal for Biome-
try." Lavoisier understood the role of preconceived
beliefs as a source of resistance when he wrote in
1785,
I do not expect my ideas to be adopted all at
once. The human mind gets creased into a way
of seeing things: Those who have envisaged
nature according to a certain point of view
during much of their career, rise only with
difficulty to new ideas. (Barber, 1961.)
I suspect that this paper by Professor Utts syn-
thesizing the accumulation of research results sup-
porting the existence of paranormal phenomena
will continue to be received with skepticism by the
orthodox scientific community "even after examin-
ing the data." In part, this resistance is due to the
popular perception of the association between para-
psychology and the occult (Allison, 1979) and due
to the continued suspicion and documentation of
fraud in parapsychology (Diaconis, 1978). An addi-
tional and important source of resistance to the
evidence presented by Professor Utts, however, is
the lack of a model to explain the phenomena.
Psychic phenomena are unexplainable by any cur-
rent scientific theory and, furthermore, directly
contradict the laws of physics. Acceptance of psi
implies the rejection of a large body of accumulated
evidence explaining the physical and biological
world as we know it. Thus, even though the effect
size for a relationship between aspirin and the
prevention of heart attacks is three times smaller
than the effect size observed in the ganzfeld data
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base, it is the existence of a biological mechanism
to explain the effectiveness of aspirin that ac-
counts, in part, for acceptance of this relationship.
In evaluating the evidence in favor of the exis-
tence of paranormal phenomena, it is necessary to
consider alternative explanations or hypotheses for
the results and, as noted by Cornfield (1959), "If
important alternative hypotheses are compatible
with available evidence, then the question is unset-
tled, even if the evidence is experimental" (see
also Platt, 1964). Many of the experimental results
reported by Professor Utts need to be considered in
the context of explanations other than the exist-
ence of paranormal phenomena. Consider the
following examples:
(1) In the various psi experiments that Professor
Utts discusses, the null hypothesis is a simple
chance model. However, as noted by Diaconis (1978)
in a critique of parapsychological research, "In
complex, badly controlled experiments simple
chance models cannot be seriously considered as
tenable explanations: hence, rejection of such mod-
els is not of particular interest," Diaconis shows
that the underlying probabilistic model in many of
these experiments (even those that are well con-
trolled) is much more complicated than chance.
(2) The role that experimenter expectancy plays
in the reporting and interpreting of results cannot
be underestimated. Rosenthal (1966), based on a
meta-analysis of the effects of experimenters' ex-
pectancies on the results of their research, found
that experimenters tended to get the results they
expected to get. Clearly this is an important po-
tential confounder in parapsychological research.
Professor Utts comments on a debate between
Honorton and Hyman, parapsychologist and critic,
respectively, regarding evidence for psi abili-
ties, and, although not necessarily a result of ex-
perimenter expectancy, describes how " ... each
analyzed the results of all known psi ganzfeld
experiments to date, and reached strikingly differ-
ent conclusions."
(3) What is an acceptable response in these ex-
periments? What constitutes a direct hit? What if
the response is close, who decides whether or not
that constitutes a hit (see (2) above)? In an example
of a response of a Receiver in an automated ganzfeld
procedure, Professor Utts describes the "dream-like
quality of the mentation." Someone must evaluate
these stream-of-consciousness responses to deter-
mine what is a hit. An important methodological
question is: How sensitive are the results to differ-
ent definitions of a hit?
(4) In describing the results of different meta-
analyses, Professor Utts is careful to raise ques-
tions about the role of publication bias. Publication
bias or "the file-drawer problem" arises when only
statistically significant findings get published,
while statistically nonsignificant studies sit unre-
ported in investigators' file drawers. Typically,
Rosenthal's method (1979) is used to calculate the.
"fail-safe N," that is, the number of unreported
studies that would have to be sitting in file-drawers
in order to negate the significant effect. Iyengar.
and Greenhouse (1988) describe a modification of
Rosenthal's method, however, that gives a fail-safe
N that is often an order of magnitude smaller than
Rosenthal's method, suggesting that the sensitivity
of the results of meta-analyses of psi experiments to
unpublished negative studies ,is greater than is
currently believed.
Even if parapsychology is thought to be on the
margins of science by the scientific community,
parapsychologists should not be held to a different
standard of evidence to support their findings than
orthodox scientists, but like other scientists they
must be concerned with spurious effects and the.
effects of extraneous variables. The experimental
results summarized by Professor Utts appear to be
sensitive to the effect of alternative hypotheses like-
the ones described above. Sensitivity analyses, .
which question, for example, how large of an effect
due to experimenter expectancy there would have
to be to account for the effect sizes being reported
in the psi experiments, are not addressed here.
Again, the ability to account for and eliminate the"
role of alternative. hypotheses in explaining the
observed relationship between aspirin and the pre-
vention of heart attacks is another reason for the
acceptance of these results.
A major new technology discussed by Professor
Utts in synthesizing the experimental parapsychol-
ogy literature is meta-analysis. Until recently, the
quantitative review and synthesis of a research
literature, that is, meta-analysis, was considered by
many to be a questionable research tool (Wachter,
1988). Resistance by statisticians to meta-analysis
is interesting because, historically, many promi-
nent statisticians found the combining of informa-
tion from independent studies to be an important
and useful methodology (see, e.g., Fisher, 1932;
Cochran; 1954; Mosteller and Bush, 1954; Mantel
and Haenszel, 1959). Perhaps the more recent skep;
ticism about meta-analysis is because of its use as a
tool to advance discoveries that themselves were
the objects of resistance, such as the efficacy of
psychotherapy (Smith and Glass, 1977) and now
the existence of paranormal phenomena. It is an
interesting problem for the history of science to
explore why and when in the development of a *.
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of a discipline it turns to meta-analysis to answer
research questions or to resolve controversy (e.g.,
Greenhouse et al., 1990).
One argument for combining information from
different studies is that a more powerful result can
be obtained than from a single study. This objective
is implicit in the use of meta-analysis in parapsy-
chology and is the force behind Professor Utts'
paper. The issue is that by combining many small
studies consisting of small effects there is a gain in
power to find an overall statistically significant
effect. It is true that the meta-analyses reported by
Professor Utts find extremely small p-values, but
the estimate of the overall effect size is still small.
As noted earlier, because of the small magnitude of
the overall effect size, the possibility that other
extraneous variables might account for the rela-
tionship remains.
Professor Utts, however, also illustrates the use
of meta-analysis to investigate how studies differ
and to characterize the influence of difficult covari-
ates or moderating variables on the combined esti-
mate of effect size. For example, she compares the
mean effect size of studies where subjects were
selected on the basis of good past performance to
studies where the subjects were unselected, and she
compares the mean effect size of studies with feed-
back to studies without feedback. To me, this latter
use of meta-analysis highlights the more valuable
and important contribution of the methodology.
Specifically, the value of quantitative methods for
research synthesis is in assessing the potential ef-
fects of study characteristics and to quantify the
sources of heterogeneity in a research domain, that
is, to study systematically the effects of extraneous
variables. Tom Chalmers and his group at Harvard
have used meta-analysis in just this way not only
to advance the understanding of the effectiveness of
medical therapies but also to study the characteris-
tics of good research in medicine, in particular, the
randomized controlled clinical trial. (See Mosteller
and Chalmers, 1991, for a review of this work.)
Professor Utts should be congratulated for her
courage in contributing her time and statistical
expertise to a field struggling on the margins of
science, and for her skill in synthesizing a large
body of experimental literature. I have found her
paper to be quite stimulating, raising many inter-
esting issues about how science progresses or does
not progress.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work was supported in part by MHCRC
grant MH30915 and MH15758 from the National
Institute of Mental Health, and CA54852 from the
National Cancer Institute. I would like to acknowl-
edge stimulating discussions with Professors Larry
Hedges, Michael Meyer, Ingram Olkin, Teddy
Seidenfeld and Larry Wasserman, and thank them
for their patience and encouragement while prepar-
ing this discussion.
Comment
Ray Hyman
Utts concludes that "there is an anomaly that
needs explanation." She bases this conclusion on
the ganzfeld experiments and four meta-analyses of
parapsychological studies. She argues that both
Honorton and Rosenthal have successfully refuted
my critique of the ganzfeld experiments. The meta-
analyses apparently show effects that cannot be
explained away by unreported experiments nor
over-analysis of the data. Furthermore, effect size
does not correlate with the rated quality of the
experiment.
Ray Hyman is Professor of Psychology, University of
Oregon, Eugene, Oregon 97403.
Neither time nor space is available to respond in
detail to her argument. Instead, I will point to
some of my concerns. I will do so by focusing on
those parts of Utts' discussion that involve me.
Understandably, I disagree with her assertions that
both Honorton and Rosenthal successfully refuted
my criticisms of the ganzfeld experiments.
Her treatment of both the ganzfeld debate and
the National Research Council's report suggests
that Utts has relied on second-hand reports of the
data. Some of her statements are simply inaccu-
rate. Others suggest that she has not carefully read
what my critics and I have written. This remote-
ness from the actual experiments and details of the
arguments may partially account for her optimistic
assessment of the results. Her paper takes
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the reported data at face value and focuses on
the statistical interpretation of these data.
Both the statistical interpretation of the results
of an individual experiment and of the results of a
meta-analysis are based on a model of an ideal
world. In this ideal world, effect sizes have a
tractable and known distribution and the points in
the sample space are independent samples from a
coherent population. The appropriateness of any
statistical application in a given context is an em-
pirical matter. That is why such issues as the
adequacy of randomization, the non-independence
of experiments in a meta-analysis and the over-
analysis of data are central to the debate. The
optimistic conclusions from the meta-analyses as-
sume that the effect sizes are unbiased estimates
from independent experiments and have nicely
behaved distributional properties.
Before my detailed assessment of all the avail-
able ganzfeld experiments through 1981, I accepted
the assertions by parapsychologists that their
experiments were of high quality in terms of stat-
istical and experimental methodology. I was sur-
prised to find that the ganzfeld experiments,
widely heralded as the best exemplar of a suc-
cessful research program in parapsychology, were
characterized by obvious possibilities for sensory
leakage, inadequate randomization, over-analysis
and other departures from parapsychology's own
professed standards. One response was to argue
that I had exaggerated the number of flaws. But
even internal critics agreed that the rate of defects
in the ganzfeld data base was too high.
The other response, implicit in Utts' discussion of
the ganzfeld experiments and the meta-analyses,
was to admit the existence of the flaws but to deny
their importance. The parapsychologists doing the
meta-analysis would rate each experiment for qual-
ity on one or more attributes. Then, if the null
hypothesis of no correlation between effect size and
quality were upheld, the investigators concluded
that the results could not be attributed to defects in
methodology.
This retrospective sanctification using statistical
controls to compensate for inadequate experimental
controls has many problems. The quality ratings
are not blind. As the differences between myself
and Honorton reveal, such ratings are highly sub-
jective. Although I tried my best to restrict my
ratings to what I thought were objective and ea-
sily codeable indicators, my quality ratings pro-
vide a different picture than do those of Honorton.
Honorton, I am sure, believes he was just as
objective in assigning his ratings as I believe I was.
Another problem is the number of different prop-
erties that are rated. Honorton's ratings of qual-
ity omitted many attributes that I included in
my ratings. Even in those cases where we used
the same indicators to make our assessments, we ..
differed because of our scaling. For example, on
adequacy of randomization I used a simple dicho -..
tomy. Either the experimenter clearly indicated ..
using an appropriate randomization procedure or .
he did not. Honorton converted this to a trichoto -.
mous scale. He distinguished between a clearly ..
inadequate procedure such as hand-shuffling and
failure to report how the randomization was done ...
He then assigned the lowest rating to failure to
describe the randomization. In, his scheme, clearly
inadequate randomization was, of higher quality
than failure to describe the procedure. Although we.
agreed on which experiments had adequate ran-
domization, inadequate randomization or inade-
quate documentation, the different ways these were
ordered produced important differences between us
in how randomization related to effect size. These
are just some of the reasons why the finding of no_
correlation between effect size and rated quality.
does not justify concluding that the observed flaws
had no effect.
I will now consider some of Utts' assertions and_
hope that I can go into more detail in anoth -...
er forum. Utts discusses the conclusions of the.
National Research Council's Committee on-
Techniques for the Enhancement of Human Per-
formance. I was chairperson of that committee's
subcommittee on paranormal phenomena. She
wrongly states that we restricted our evaluation
only to significant studies. I do not know how she
got such an impression since we based our analysis
on meta-analyses whenever these were available.
The two major inputs for the committee's evalua- .
tion were a lengthy evaluation of contemporary
parapsychology experiments by John Palmer and
an independent assessment of these experiments by
James Alcock. Our sponsors, the Army Research
Institute had commissioned the report from the
parapsychologist John Palmer. They specifically
asked our committee to provide a second opinion
from a non-parapsychological perspective. They
were most interested in the experiments on remote
viewing and random number generators. We de-
cided to add the ganzfeld experiments. Alcock was
instructed, in making his evaluation, to restrict "
himself to the same experiments in these categories
that Palmer had chosen. In this way, the experi-
ments we evaluated, which included both signifi-
cant and nonsignificant ones, were, in effect,
selected for us by a prominent parapsychologist.
Utts mistakenly asserts that my subcommittee
on parapsychology commissioned Harris and Rosen- 2.
thal to evaluate parapsychology experiments for
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us. Harris and Rosenthal were commissioned by
our evaluation subcommittee to write a paper on
evaluation issues, especially those related to exper-
imenter effects. On their own initiative, Harris and
Rosenthal surveyed a number of data bases to illus-
trate the application of methodological procedures
such as meta-analysis. As one illustration, they
included a meta-analysis of the subsample of
ganzfeld experiments used by Honorton in his
rebuttal to my critique.
Because Harris and Rosenthal did not them-
selves do a first-hand evaluation of the ganzfeld
experiments, and because they used Honorton's rat-
ings for their illustration, I did not refer to their
analysis when I wrote my draft for the chapter on
the paranormal. Rosenthal told me, in a letter, that
he had arbitrarily used Honorton's ratings rather
than mine because they were the most recent avail-
able. I assumed that Harris and Rosenthal were
using Honorton's sample and ratings to illustrate
meta-analytic procedures. I did not believe they
were making a substantive contribution to the
debate.
Only after the committee's complete report was
in the hands of the editors did someone become
concerned that Harris and Rosenthal had come to a
conclusion on the ganzfeld experiments different
from the committee. Apparently one or more com-
mittee members contacted Rosenthal and asked him
to explain why he and Harris were dissenting.
Because some committee members believed that
we should deal with this apparent discrepancy, I
contacted Rosenthal and pointed out if he had used
my ratings with the very same analysis he had
applied to Honorton's ratings, he would have
reached a conclusion opposite to what Harris and
he had asserted. I did this, not to suggest my
ratings were necessarily more trustworthy than
Honorton's, but to point out how fragile any conclu-
sions were based on this small and limited sample.
Indeed, the data were so lacking in robustness that
the difference between my rating and Honorton's
rating of one investigator (Sargent) on one at-
tribute (randomization) sufficed to reverse the con-
clusions Harris and Rosenthal made about the
correlation between quality and effect size.
-
Harris and Rosenthal responded by adding a foot-
note to their paper. In this footnote, they repor-
ted an analysis using my ratings rather than
Honorton's. This analysis, they concluded, still sup-
ported the null hypothesis of no correlation be-
tween quality and effect size. They used 6 of my 12
dichotomous ratings of flaws as predictors and the z
score and effect size as criterion variables in both
multiple regression and canonical correlation anal-
yses. They reported an "adjusted" canonical corre-
lation between criterion variables and flaws of
"only" 0.46. A true correlation of this magnitude
would be impressive given the nature and split of
the dichotomous variables. But, because it was not
statistically significant, Harris and Rosenthal con-
cluded that there was no relationship between
quality and effect size. A canonical correlation on
this sample of 28 nonindependent cases, of course,
has virtually no chance of being significant, even if
it were of much greater magnitude.
What this amounts to is that the alleged contra-
dictory conclusions of Harris and Rosenthal are
based on a meta-analysis that supports Honorton's
position when Honorton's ratings are used and
supports my position when my ratings are used.
Nothing substantive comes from this, and it is
redundant with what Honorton and I have already
published. Harris and Rosenthal's footnote adds
nothing because it supports the null hypothesis
with a statistical test that has no power against a
reasonably sized alternative. It is ironic that Utts,
after emphasizing the importance of considering
statistical power, places so much reliance on the
outcome of a powerless test.
(I should add that the recurrent charge that the
NRC committee completely ignored Harris and
Rosenthal's conclusions is not strictly correct. I
wrote a response to the Harris and Rosenthal paper
that was included in the same supplementary
volume that contains their commissioned paper.)
Utts' discussion of the ganzfeld debate, as I have
indicated, also shows unfamiliarity with details.
She cites my factor analysis and Saunders' critique
as if these somehow jeopardized the conclusions I
drew. Again, the matter is too complex to discuss
adequately in this forum. The "factor analysis" she
is talking about is discussed in a few pages of my
critique. I introduced it as a convenient way to
summarize my conclusions, none of which depended
on this analysis. I agree with what Saunders has to
say about the limitations of factor analysis in this
context. Unfortunately, Saunders bases his criti-
cism on wrong assumptions about what I did and
why I did it. His dismissal of the results as
"meaningless" is based on mistaken algebra. I in-
cluded as dummy variables five experimenters in
the factor analysis. Because an experimenter can
only appear on one variable, this necessarily forces
the average intercorrelation among the experi-
menter variables to be negative. Saunders falsely
asserts that this negative correlation must be -1.
If he were correct, this would make the results
meaningless. But he could be correct only if there
were just two investigators and that each one ac-
counted for 50% of the experiments. In my case, as
I made sure to check ahead of time, the use of five
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experimenters, each of whom contributed only a
few studies to the data base, produced a mildly
negative intercorrelation of -0.147. To make sure
even that small correlation did not distort the re-
sults, I did the factor analysis with and without the
dummy variables. The same factors were obtained
in both cases ..
However, I do not wish to defend this factor
analysis. None of my conclusions depend on it. I
would agree with any editor who insisted that I
omit it from the paper on the grounds of redun-
dancy. I am discussing it here as another example
that suggests that Utts is not familiar with some
relevant details in literature she discusses.
CONCLUSIONS
Utts may be correct. There may indeed be an
anomaly in the parapsychological findings. Anoma-
lies may also exist in non-parapsychological do-
mains. The question is when is an anomaly worth
taking seriously. The anomaly that Utts has in
mind, if it exists, can be described only as a depar-
ture from a generalized statistical model. From the
evidence she presents, we might conclude that we
are dealing with a variety of different anomalies
instead of one coherent phenomenon. Clearly, the
reported effect sizes for the experiments with ran-
dom number generators are orders of magnitude
lower than those for the ganzfeld experiments. Even
within the same experimental domain, the effect
sizes do not come from the same population. The
effects sizes obtained by Jahn are much smaller
than those obtained by Schmidt with similar ex-
periments. on random number generators. In
the ganzfeld .experiments, experimenters differ
significantly in the effect sizes each obtains.
This problem of what effect sizes are and what
they are measuring points to a problem for para-
psychologists. In other fields of science such as
astronomy, an "anomaly" is a very precisely speci-
fied departure from a well-established substantive
theory. When Leverrier discovered Neptune by
studying the perturbations in the orbit of Uranus,
he was able to characterize the anomaly as a very
precise departure of a specific kind from the orbit
expected on the basis of Newtonian mechanics. He
knew exactly what he had to account for.
The "anomaly" or "anomalies" that Utts talks
about are different. We do not know what it is that,'
we are asked to account for other than something
that sometimes produces nonchance departures
from a statistical model, whose appropriateness is
itself open to question.
The case rests on a handful of meta-analyses that.
suggest effect sizes different from zero and uncorre-
lated with some non-blindly determined indices of.
quality. For a variety of reasons, these retrospec-
tive attempts to find evidence for paranormal phe-
nomena are problematical. At best, they should
provide the basis for parapsychologists designing
prospective studies in which they can specify, in
advance, the complete sample space and the critical
region. When they get to the point where they can
specify this along with some boundary conditions
and make some reasonable predictions, then they
will have demonstrated something worthy of our
attention.
In this context, I agree with Utts that Honorton's®
recent. report of his automated ganzfeld experi-
ments is a step in the right direction. He used the
ganzfeld meta-analyses and the criticisms of the.
existing data base to design better experiments and.,
make some predictions. Although he and Utts be-
lieve that the findings of meaningful effect sizes in
the dynamic targets and a lack of a nonzero effect
size in the static targets are somehow consistent.
with previous ganzfeld results, I disagree. I believe.
the static targets are closer in spirit to the original
data base. But this is a minor criticism.
Honorton's experiments have produced intrigu-
ing results. If, as Utts suggests, independent labo-
ratories can produce similar results with the same
relationships and with the same attention to rigor-
ous methodology, then parapsychology may indeed.
have finally captured its elusive quarry. Of course,
on several previous occasions in its century-plus
history, parapsychology has felt it was on the
threshold of a breakthrough. The breakthrough
never materialized. We will have to patiently wait.
to see if the current situation is any different.
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Comment
Robert L. Morris
Experimental sciences by their nature have found
it relatively easy to deal with simple closed sys-
tems. When they come to study more complex, open
systems, however, they have more difficulty in gen-
erating testable models, must rely more on multi-
variate approaches, have more diversity from
experiment to experiment (and thus more difficulty
in constructing replication attempts), have more
noise in the data, and more difficulty in construct-
ing a linkage between concept and measurement.
Data gatherers and other researchers are more
likely to be part of the system themselves. Exam-
ples include ecology, economics, social psychology
and parapsychology. Parapsychology can be re-
garded as the study of apparent new means of
communication, or transfer of influence, between
organism and environment. Any observer attempt-
ing to decide whether or not such psychic communi-
cation has taken place is one of several elements in
a complex open system composed of an indefinite
number of interactive features. The system can be
modeled, as has been done elsewhere (e.g., Morris,
1986) such as to organise our understanding of how
observers can be misled by themselves, or by delib-
erate frauds. Parapsychologists designing experi-
mental studies must take extreme care to ensure
that the elements in the experimental system do
not interact in unanticipated ways to produce arti-
fact or encourage fraudulent procedures. When re-
searchers follow up the findings of others, they
must ensure that the new experimental system
sufficiently resembles the earlier one, regarding its
important components and their potential interac-
tions. Specifying sufficient resemblance is more dif-
ficult in complex and open systems, and in areas of
research using novel methodologies.
As a result, parapsychology and other such areas
may well profit from the application of modern
meta-analysis, and meta-analytic methods may in
turn profit from being given a good stiff workout by
controversial data bases, as suggested by Jessica
Utts in her article. Parapsychology would appear to
gain from meta-analytic techniques, in at least
three important areas.
First, in assessing the question of replication
rate, the new focus on effect size and confidence
Robert L. Morris occupies the Koestler Chair of
Parapsychology in the Department of Psychology at
the IIninersity of Edinburgh. 7 George Square, Ed-
intervals rather than arbitrarily chosen signifi-
cance levels seems to indicate much greater consis-
tency in the findings than has previously been
claimed.
Second, when one codes the individual studies for
flaws and relates flaw abundance with effect size,
there appears to be little correlation for all but one
data base. This contradicts the frequent assertion
that parapsychological results disappear when
methodology is tightened. Additional evidence on
this point is the series of studies by Honorton and
associates using an automated ganzfeld procedure,
apparently better conducted than any of the previ-
ous research, which nevertheless obtained an effect
size very similar to that of the earlier more diverse
data base.
Third, meta-analysis allows researchers to look
at moderator variables, to build a clearer picture of
the conditions that appear to produce the strongest
effects. Research in any real scientific discipline
must be cumulative, with later researchers build-
ing on the work of those who preceded them. If our
earlier successes and failures have meaning, they
should help us obtain increasingly . consistent,
clearer results. If psychic ability exists and is suffi-
ciently stable that it can be manifest in controlled
experimental studies, then moderator variables
should be present in groups of studies that would
indicate conditions most favourable and least
favourable to the production of large effect sizes.
From the analyses presented by Utts, for instance,
it seems evident that group studies tend to produce
poor results and, however convenient it may be to
conduct them, future researchers should apparently
focus much more on individual testing. When doing
ganzfeld studies, it appears best to work with dy-
namic rather than static target material and with
experienced participants rather than novices. If
such results are valid, then future researchers who
wish to get strong results now have a better idea of
what procedures to select to increase the likelihood
of so doing, what elements in the experimental
system seem most relevant. The proportion of stud-
ies obtaining positive results should therefore
increase.
However, the situation may be more complex
than the somewhat ideal version painted above. As
noted earlier, meta-analysis may learn from para-
psychology as well as vice versa. Parapsychological
data may well give meta-analytic techniques a good
workout and will certainly pose some challenges.
None of the cited meta-analyses, as described above,
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evaluator. Certainly none of them cited any corre-
lation values between evaluators, and the correla-
tions between judges of research quality in other
social sciences tend to be "at best around .50,"
according to Hunter and Schmidt (1990, page 497).
Although Honorton and Hyman reported a rela-
tively high correlation of 0.77 between themselves,
they were each doing their own study and their
flaw analyses did reach somewhat different conclu-
sions, as noted by Utts. Other than Hyman, the
evaluators cited by Utts tend to be positively ori-
ented toward parapsychology; roughly speaking, all
evaluators doing flaw analyses found what they
might hope to find, with the exception of the PK
dice data base. Were evaluators blind as to study
outcome when coding flaws? No comment is made
on this aspect. The above studies need to be repli-
cated, with multiple (and blind) evaluators and
reported indices of evaluator agreement. Ideally,
evaluator attitude should be assessed and taken
into account as well. A study with all hostile evalu-
ators may report very high evaluator correlations,
yet be a less valid study than one that employs a
range of evaluators and reports lower correlations
among evaluators.
But what constitutes a replication of a meta-
analysis? As with experimental replications, it may
be important to distinguish between exact and con-
ceptual replications. In the former, a replicator
would attempt to match all salient features of the
initial analysis, from the selection of reports to the
coding of features to the statistical tests employed,
such as to verify that the stated original protocol
had been followed faithfully and that a simi-
lar outcome results. For conceptual replication,
replicators would take the stated outcome of the
meta-analysis and attempt their own independent
analysis, with their own initial report selection
criteria, coding criteria and strategy for statistical
testing, to see if similar conclusions resulted. Con-
ceptual replication allows more room for bias and
resultant debate when findings differ, but when
results are similar they can be assumed to have
more legitimacy. Given the strong and surpris-
ing (for many) conclusions reached in the meta-
analysis reported by Utts, it is quite likely
that others with strong views on parapsychology
will attempt to replicate, hoping for clear confirma-
tion or disconfirmation. The diversity of methods
they are likely to employ and the resultant debates
should provide a good opportunity for airing the
many conceptual problems still present in meta-
analysis. If results differ on moderator variables,
there can come to be empirical resolution of the
differences as further results unfold. With regard
to flaw analysis, such analyses have already fo-
onced attention in ganzfeld research on the abun-
dance of existing faults and how to avoid them. If.
results are as strong under well-controlled con-
ditions as under sloppy ones, then additional
research such as that done by Honorton and associ-
ates under tight conditions should continue to pro-
duce positive results.
In addition to the replication issue, there are
some other problems that need to be addressed. So
far, the assessment of moderator variables has been
univariate, whereas a multivariate approach would
seem more likely to produce a clearer picture. Mod-
erator variables may covary, with each other or
with flaws. For instance, in the dice data higher
effect sizes were found for flawed studies and for
studies with selected subjects. Did studies using
special subjects use weaker procedures?
Given the importance attached to effect size and
incorporating estimates of effect size in designing
studies for power, we must be careful not to assume
that effect size is independent of number of trials or
subjects unless we have empirical reason to do so .-
Effect size may decrease with larger N if experi"
menters are stressed or bored towards the end of a
long study or if there are too many trials to be"
conducted within a short period of time and sub
jects are given less time to absorb their instructions"
or to complete their tasks. On one occasion there is
presentation of an estimated "true average effect-
size," (0.18 rather than 0.28) without also present -*
ing an estimate of effect size dispersal. Future-
investigators should have some sense of how the-
likelihood that they will obtain a hit rate of 1/3
(where 1/4 is expected) will vary in accordance'
with conditions.
There are a few additional quibbles with particu-
lar points. In Utts' example experiment with Pro-
fessor A versus Professor B, sex of professor is a
possible confounding variable. When Honorton
omitted studies that did not report direct hits as a
measure, he may have biased his sample. Were
there studies omitted that could have reported di-
rect hits but declined to do so, conceivably because
they looked at that measure, saw no results and
dropped it? This objection is only with regard to the
initial meta-analysis and is not relevant for the-
later series of studies which all used direct hits. In
Honorton's meta-analysis of forced-choice precogni""
tion experiments, the comparison variables of feed-
back delay and time interval to target selection
appear to be confounded. Studies delaying target
selection cannot provide trial by trial feedback, for
instance. Also, I am unsure about using an approxi-
mation to Cohen's h for assessing the effect size for
the aspirin study. There would appear to be a very*
striking effect, with the aspirin condition heart
attack rate only 55% that of the rate for the placebo
condition How was the evnerted nronortinn of
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misses estimated; perhaps Cohen's h greatly un-
derestimates effect size when very low probability
events (less than 1 in 50 for heart attack in the
placebo condition and less than 1 in a 100 for
aspirin) are involved. I'm not a statistician and
thus don't know if there is a relevant literature on
this point.
The above objections should not detract from the
overall value of the Utts survey. The findings she
reports will need to be replicated; but even as is,
they provide a challenge to some of the cherished
arguments of counteradvocates, yet also challenge
serious researchers to use these findings effectively
as guidelines for future studies.
Comment
Frederick Mosteller
Dr. Utts's discussion stimulates me to offer some
comments that bear on her topic but do not, in the
main, fall into an agree-disagree mode. My refer-
ences refer to her bibliography.
Let me recommend J. Edgar Coover's work to
statisticians who would like to read about a pretty
sequence of experiments developed and executed
well before Fisher's book on experimental design
appeared. Most of the standard kinds of ESP exper-
iments (though not the ganzfeld) are carried out
and reported in this 1917 book. Coover even began
looking into the amount of information contained
in cues such as whispers. He also worked at expos-
ing mediums. I found the book most impressive. As
Utts says in her article, the question of significance
level was a puzzling one, and one we still cannot
solve even though some fields seem to have stan-
dardized on 0.05.
When Feller's comments on Stuart and Green-
wood's sampling experiments came out in the first
edition of his book, I was surprised. Feller devotes
a problem to the results of generating 25 symbols
from the set a, b, c, d and e (page 45, first edition)
using random numbers with 0 and 1 corresponding
to a, 2 and 3 to b, etc. He asks the student to find
out how often the 25 produce 5 of each symbol. He
asks the student to check the results using random
number tables. The answer seems to be about 1
chance in 500. In a footnote Feller then says "They
[random numbers] are occasionally extraordinarily
obliging: c.f. J. A. Greenwood and E. E. Stuart,
Review of Dr. Feller's Critique, Journal of Para-
Frederick Mosteller is Roger I. Lee Professor of
Mathematical Statistics, Emeritus, at Harvard Uni-
versity and Director of the Technology Assessment
Group in the Harvard School of Public Health. His
mailing address is Department of Statistics, Har-
vard University, Science Center, 1 Oxford Street,
Cambridge Massachusette 09128
psychology, vol. 4 (1940), pp. 298-319, in particular
p. 306." The 25 symbols of 5 kinds, 5 of each,
correspond to the cards in a parapsychology deck.
The point of page 306 is that Greenwood and-
Stuart on that page claim to have generated two
random orders of such a deck using Tippett's table
of random numbers. Apparently Feller thought that
it would have taken them a long time to do it. If
one assumes that Feller's way of generating a ran-
dom shuffle -is required, then it would indeed be
unreasonable to suppose that the experiments could
be carried out quickly. I wondered then whether
Feller thought this was the only way to produce a
random order to such a deck of cards. If you happen
to know how to shuffle a deck efficiently using
random numbers, it is hard to believe that others
do not know. I decided to test it out and so I ..
proposed to a class of 90 people in mathematical
statistics that we find a way of using random num-
bers to shuffle a deck of cards. Although they were
familiar with random numbers, they could not come
up with a way of doing it, nor did anyone after class
come in with a workable idea though several stu-
dents made proposals. I concluded that inventing
such a shuffling technique was a hard problem and
that maybe Feller just did not know how at the
time of writing the footnote. My face-to-face at-
tempts to verify this failed because his response
was evasive. I also recall Feller speaking at a
scientific meeting where someone had complained
about mistakes in published papers. He said essen-
tially that we won't have any literature if mistakes
are disallowed and further claimed that he always
had mistakes in his own papers, hard as he tried to
avoid them. It was fun to hear him speak.
Although I find Utts's discussion of replication
engaging as a problem in human perception, I do
always feel that people should not be expected to
carry out difficult mathematical exercises in their
head, off the cuff, without computers, textbooks or
advisors. The kind of problem treated requires
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after a careful analysis is completed, there can be
vigorous reasonable arguments about the appropri-
ateness of the formulation and its analysis. These
investigations leave me reinforced with the belief
that people cannot do hard mathematical problems
in their heads, rather than with an attitude toward
or against ESP investigations.
When I first became aware of the work of Rhine
and others, the concept seemed to me to be very
important and I asked a psychologist friend why
more psychologists didn't study this field. He re-
sponded that there were too many ways to do these
experiments in a poorly controlled manner. At the
time, I had just discovered that when viewed with
light coming from a certain angle, I could read the
Rejoinder
Jessica Utts
I would like to thank this distinguished group of
discussants for their thought-provoking contribu-
tions. They have raised many interesting and di-
verse issues. Certain points, such as Professor
Mosteller's enlightening account of Feller's posi-
tion, require no further comment. Other points in-
dicate the need for clarification and elaboration of
my original material. Issues raised by" Professors
Diaconis and Hyman and subsequent conversations
with Robert Rosenthal and Charles Honorton have
led me to consider the topic of "Satisfying the
Skeptics.". Since the conclusion in my- paper was
not that psychic phenomena have been proved, but
rather that there is an anomalous effect that needs
to be explained, comments by several of the discus-
sants led me to address the question ""Should Psi
Research be Ignored by the Scientific Community?"
Finally, each of the discussants addressed repli-
cation and modeling issues. The last part of my
rejoinder comments on some of these ideas and
discusses them in the context of parapsychology.
CLARIFICATION AND ELABORATION
Since my paper was a survey of hundreds of
experiments and many published reports, I could
obviously not provide all of the details to accom-
pany this overview. However, there were details
lacking in my paper that have led to legitimate
questions and misunderstandings from several of
the discussants. In this section, I address specific
points raised by Professors Diaconis, Greenhouse,
backs of the cards of my parapsychology deck. as
clearly as the faces. While preparing these remarks
in 1991, I found a note on page 305 of volume 1 of
The Journal of Parapsychology (1937) indicating"
that imperfections in the cards precluded their use
in unscreened situations, but that improvements
were on the way. Thus I sympathize with Utts's :
conclusion that much is to be gained by studying
how to carry out such work well. If there is no ESP, .
then we want to be able to carry out null experi-
ments and get no effect, otherwise we cannot put-
much belief in work on small effects in non-ESP
situations. If there is ESP, that is exciting. How-
ever, thus far it does not look as if it will replace "
the telephone.
Hyman and Morris, by either clarifying my origi-
nal statements or by adding more information from"
the original reports.
Points Raised by Diaconis
Diaconis raised the point that qualified skeptics;
and magicians should be active participants in .-
parapsychology experiments. I will discuss this
general concept in the next section, but elaborate
here on,the steps that were taken in this regard for
the autoganzfeld experiments described in Section
5 of my. paper. As reported by Honorton et al. ;
(1990):
Two experts on the simulation of psi ability
have examined the autoganzfeld system and
protocol. Ford Kross has been a professional
mentalist [a magician who simulates psychic
abilities] for over 20 years. .. Mr. Kross has
provided us with the following statement: "In
my professional capacity as a mentalist, I have
reviewed Psychophysical Research Laborato-
ries' automated ganzfeld system and found it to
provide excellent security against deception by
subjects." We have received similar comments
from Daryl Bem, Professor of Psychology at
Cornell University. Professor Bem is well
known for his research in social and personal-
ity psychology. He is also a member of the
Psychic Entertainers Association and has per -.
formed for many years as a mentalist. He vis-
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ited PRL for several days and was a subject in
Series 101" [pages 134-135].
Honorton has also informed me (personal communi-
cation, July 25, 1991) that several self-proclaimed
skeptics have visited his laboratory and received
demonstrations of the autoganzfeld procedure and
that no one expressed any concern with the secu-
rity arrangements.
This may not completely satisfy Professor Diaco-
nis' objections, but it does indicate a serious effort
on the part of the researchers to involve such peo-
ple. Further, the original publication of the re-
search in Section 5 followed the reporting criteria
established by Hyman and Honorton (1986), thus
providing much more detail for the reader than the
earlier published records to which Professor
Diaconis alludes.
Points Raised by Greenhouse
Greenhouse enumerated four items that offer al-
ternative explanations for the observed anomalous
effects. Three of these (items 2-4) will be addressed
in this section by elaborating on the details pro-
vided in my paper. His item 1 will be addressed in
a later section.
Item 2 on his list questioned the role of experi-
menter expectancy effects as a potential confounder
in parapsychological research. While the expecta-
tions of the experimenter may influence the report-
ing of results, the ganzfeld experiments (as well as
other psi experiments) are conducted in such a way
that experimenter expectancy cannot account for
the results themselves. Rosenthal, who Greenhouse
cites as the expert in this area, addressed this in
his background paper for the National Research
Council (Harris and Rosenthal, 1988a) and con-
cluded that the ganzfeld studies were adequately
controlled in this regard. He also visited the auto-
ganzfeld laboratory and was given a demonstration
of that procedure.
Greenhouse's item 3, the question of what consti-
tutes a direct hit, was addressed in my paper but
perhaps needs elaboration. Although free-response
experiments do generate substantial amounts of
subjective data, the statistical analysis requires
that the results for each trial be condensed into a
single measure of whether or not a direct hit was
achieved. This is done by presenting four choices to
a judge (who of course does not know the correct
answer) and asking the judge to decide which of the
four best matches the subject's response. If the
judge picks the target, a direct hit has occurred.
It is true that different judges may differ on their
opinions of whether or not there has been a direct
hit on any given trial, but in all cases the statisti-
cal question is the same. Under the null hypothe-
sis, since the target is randomly selected from the
four possibilities presented, the probability of a
direct hit is 0.25 regardless of who does the judg-
ing. Thus, the observed anomalous effects cannot
be explained by assuming there was an over-
optimistic judge.
If Professor Greenhouse is suggesting that the
source of judging may be a moderating variable
that determines the magnitude of the demonstrated
anomalous effect, I agree. The parapsychologists
have considered this issue in the context of whether
or not subjects should serve as judges for their own
sessions, with differing opinions in different labora-
tories. This is an example of an area that has been
suggested for further research.
Finally, Greenhouse raised the question of the
accuracy of the file-drawer estimates used in the
reported meta-analyses. I agree that it is instruc-
tive to examine the file-drawer estimate using more
than one model. As an example, consider the 39
studies from the direct hit and autoganzfeld data
bases. Rosenthal's fail-safe N estimates that there
would have to be 371 studies in the file-drawer to
account for the results. In contrast, the method
proposed by Iyengar and Greenhouse gives a file-
drawer estimate of 258 studies. Even this estimate
is unrealistically large for a discipline with as few
researchers as parapsychology. Given that the av-
erage number of trials per experiment is 30, this
would represent almost 8000 unreported trials, and
at least that many hours of work.
There are pros and cons to any method of esti-
mating the number of unreported studies, and the
actual practices of the discipline in question should
be taken into account. Recognizing publication bias
as an issue, the Parapsychological Association has
had an official policy since 1975 against the selec-
tive reporting of positive results. Of the original
ganzfeld studies reported in Section 4 of my paper,
less than half were significant, and it is a matter of
record that there are many nonsignificant studies
and "failed replications" published in all areas of
psi research. Further, the autoganzfeld database
reported in Section 5 has no file-drawer. Given the
publication practices and the size of the field, the
proposed file-drawer cannot account for the ob-
served effects.
Points Raised by Hyman
One of my goals in writing this paper was to
present a fair account of recent work and debate in
parapsychology. Thus, I was disturbed that Hy-
man, who has devoted much of his career to the
study of parapsychology, and who had first-hand
knowledge of the original published reports, be-
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lieved that some of my statements were inaccurate
and indicated that I had not carefully read the
reports. I will address some of his specific objec-
tions and show that, except where noted, the accu-
racy of my original statements can be verified by
further elaboration and clarification, with due apol-
ogy for whatever necessary details were lacking in
my original report.
Most of our points of disagreement concern
the National Academy of Sciences (National Re-
search Council) report Enhancing Human Per-
formance (Druckman and Swets, 1988). This
report evaluated several controversial areas, in-
cluding parapsychology. Professor Hyman chaired
the Parapsychology Subcommittee. Several back-
ground papers were commissioned to accompany
this report, available from the "Publication on
Demand . Program" of the National Academy
Press. One of the papers was written by Harris and
Rosenthal, and entitled "Human Performance
Research: An Overview."
Professor Hyman alleged that "Utts mistakenly
asserts that my subcommittee on parapsychology
commissioned Harris and Rosenthal to evaluate
parapsychology experiments for us.
[ cannot
find a statement in my paper that asserts that
Harris and Rosenthal were commissioned by the
subcommittee, nor can I find a statement that
asserts that they were asked to evaluate parapsy-
chology experiments. Nonetheless, I believe our
substantive disagreement results from the fact
that the work by Harris and Rosenthal was writ-
ten in: two parts, both of which I referenced in
my paper. They were written several months
apart, but published together, and each had
its own history.
The first part (Harris and Rosenthal, 1988a) is
the one to which I referred with the words
"Rosenthal was commissioned by the National
Academy of Sciences to prepare a background
paper to accompany its 1988 report on parapsychol-
ogy". (p. 372). According to Rosenthal (personal
communication, July 23, 1991) he was asked to pre-
pare a background paper to address evaluation
issues and experimenter effects to accompany the
report in five specific areas of research, including
parapsychology.
The second part was a "Postscript" to the com-
missioned paper (Harris and Rosenthal, 1988b), and
this is the one to which I referred on page 371 as
"requested by Hyman in his capacity as Chair of
the National Academy of Sciences' Subcommittee
on Parapsychology." (It is probably this wording
that led Professor Hyman to his erroneous allega-
tion.) The postscript began with the words "We
have been asked to respond to a letter from Ray
Hyman, chair of the subcommittee on parapsychol-
ogy, in which he raises questions about the pres-
ence and consequence of methodological flaws in
the ganzfeld studies .... "
In reference to this postscript, I stand corrected
on a technical point, because Hyman himself did
not request the response to his own letter. As noted ',
by Palmer, Honorton and Utts (1989), the postscript .
was added because:
At one stage of the process, John Swets, Chair
of the Committee, actually phoned Rosenthal
and asked him to withdraw the parapsychology
section of his [commissioned] paper. When
Rosenthal declined, Swets and Druckman then
requested that Rosenthal respond to criticisms
that Hyman had included in a July 30, 1987
letter to Rosenthal [page 38].
A related issue on which I would like to elaborate
concerns the correlation between flaws and success
in the original ganzfeld data base. Hyman has
misunderstood both my position and that of Harris;
and Rosenthal. He believes that I implicitly denied
the importance of the flaws, so I will make my
position explicit. I do not think there is any evi -:.
dence that the experimental results were due to the .
identified flaws. The flaw analysis was clearly use-t
ful for delineating acceptable criteria for future ...
experiments. Several experiments were conducted.
using those criteria. The results were similar to the+
original experiments. I believe that this indicates
an anomaly in need of an explanation.
In discussing the paper and postscript by Harris
and Rosenthal, Hyman stated that "The alleged
contradictory conclusions [to the National Research .
Council report] of Harris and Rosenthal are based
on a. meta-analysis that supports Honorton's posi-
tion when Honorton's [flaw] ratings are used and
supports my position when my ratings are used."
He believes that Harris and Rosenthal (and I) failed
to see this point because the low power of the test
associated with their analysis was not taken into
account.
The analysis in question was based on a canoni-
cal correlation between flaw ratings and measures"
of successful outcome for the ganzfeld studies. The ..
canonical correlation was 0.46, a value Hyman finds
to be impressive. What he has failed to take into
account however, is that a canonical correlation
gives only the magnitude of the relationship, and
not the direction. A careful reading of Harris and
Rosenthal (1988b) reveals that their analysis actu-
ally contradicted the idea that the flaws could
account for the successful ganzfeld results, since
"Interestingly, three of the six flaw variables corre -;.
lated positively with the flaw canonical variable ..
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and with the outcome canonical variable but three
correlated negatively" (page 2, italics added).
Rosenthal (personal communication, July 23, 1991)
verified that this was indeed the point he was
trying to make. Readers who are interested in
drawing their own conclusions from first-hand
analyses can find Hyman's original flaw codings in
an Appendix to his paper (Hyman, 1985, pages
44-49).
Finally, in my paper, I stated that the parapsy-
chology chapter of the National Research Council
report critically evaluated statistically significant
experiments, but not those that were nonsignifi-
cant. Professor Hyman "does not know how [I] got
such an impression," so I will clarify by outlining
some of the material reviewed in that report. There
were surveys of three major areas of psi research:
remote viewing (a particular type of free-response
experiment), experiments with random number
generators, and the ganzfeld experiments. As an
example of where I got the impression that they
evaluated only significant studies, consider the sec-
tion on remote viewing. It began by referencing a
published list of 28 studies. Fifteen of these were
immediately discounted, since "only 13 ... were
published under refereed auspices" (Druckman and
Swets, 1988, page 179). Four more were then dis-
missed, since "Of the 13 scientifically reported
experiments, 9 are classified as successful" (page
179). The report continued by discussing these nine
experiments, never again mentioning any of the
remaining 19 studies. The other sections of the
report placed similar emphasis on significant stud-
ies. I did not think this was a valid statistical
method for surveying a large body of research.
Minor Point Raised by Morris
The final clarification I would like to offer con-
cerns the minor point raised by Professor Morris,
that "When Honorton omitted studies that did not
report direct hits as a measure, he may have biased
his sample." This possibility was explicitly ad-
dressed by Honorton (1985, page 59). He examined
what would happen if z-scores of zero were inserted
for the 10 studies for which the number of direct
hits was not measured, but could have been. He
found that even with this conservative scenario,
the combined z-score only dropped from 6.60 to
5.67.
SATISFYING THE SKEPTICS
Parapsychology is probably the only scientific
discipline for which there is an organization of
skeptics trying to discredit its work. The Commit-
tee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the
Paranormal (CSICOP) was established in 1976 by
philosopher Paul Kurtz and sociologist Marcello
Truzzi when "Kurtz became convinced that the
time was ripe for a more active crusade against
parapsychology and other pseudo-scientists" (Pinch
and Collins, 1984, page 527). Truzzi resigned from
the organization the next year (as did Professor
Diaconis) "because of what he saw as the growing
danger of the committee's excessive negative zeal
at the expense of responsible scholarship" (Collins
and Pinch, 1982, page 84). In an advertising
brochure for their publication The Skeptical In-
quirer, CSICOP made clear its belief that paranor-
mal phenomena are worthy of scientific attention
only to the extent that scientists can fight the
growing interest in them. Part of the text of the
brochure read: "Why the sudden explosion of inter-
est, even among some otherwise sensible people, in
all sorts of paranormal 'happenings' ?... Ten years
ago, scientists started to fight back. They set up an
organization-The Committee for the Scientific In-
vestigation of Claims of the Paranormal."
During the six years that I have been working
with parapsychologists, they have repeatedly ex-
pressed their frustration with the unwillingness of
the skeptics to specify what would constitute ac-
ceptable evidence, or even to delineate criteria for
an acceptable experiment. The Hyman and Honor-
ton Joint Communiqué was seen as the first major
step in that direction, especially since Hyman was
the Chair of the Parapsychology Subcommittee of
CSICOP.
Hyman and Honorton (1986) devoted eight pages
to "Recommendations for Future Psi Experiments,"
carefully outlining details for how the experiments
should be conducted and reported. Honorton and
his colleagues then conducted several hundred
trials using these specific criteria and found essen-
tially the same effect sizes as in earlier work for
both the overall effect and effects with moderator
variables taken into account. I would expect Profes-
sor Hyman to be very interested in the results of
these experiments he helped to create. While he did
acknowledge that they "have produced intriguing
results," it is both surprising and disappointing
that he spent only a scant two paragraphs at the
end of his discussion on these results.
Instead, Hyman seems to be proposing yet an-
other set of requirements to be satisfied before
parapsychology should be taken seriously. It is dif-
ficult to sort out what those requirements should be
from his account: "[They should] specify, in ad-
vance, the complete sample space and the critical
region. When they get to the point where they can
specify this along with some boundary conditions
and make some reasonable predictions, then they
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will have demonstrated something worthy of our .
attention."
Diaconis believes that psi experiments do not
deserve serious attention unless they actively in-
volve skeptics. Presumably, he is concerned with
subject or experimenter fraud, or with improperly
controlled experiments. There are numerous docu-
mented cases of fraud and trickery in purported
psychic phenomena. Some of these were observed
by Diaconis and reported in his article in Science ... "
Such cases have mainly been revealed when inves-
tigators attempted to verify the claims of individ-
ual psychic practitioners in quasi-experimental or
uncontrolled conditions. These instances have re-
ceived considerable attention, probably because the
claims are so sensational, the fraud is so easy to
detect by a skilled observer and they are an easy
target for skeptics looking for a way to discredit
psychic phenomena. As noted by Hansen (1990),
"Parapsychology has long been tainted by. the
fraudulent behavior of a few of those claiming psy-
chic abilities" (page 25).
Control against deception by subjects in the labo-
ratory has been discussed extensively in the para-
psychological literature (see, e.g., Morris, 1986, and
Hansen, 1990). Properly designed experiments
should preclude the possibility of. such fraud.
Hyman and Honorton (1986, page 355) explicitly
discussed precautions to be taken in the ganzfeld
experiments, all of which were followed in the auto-
ganzfeld experiments. Further the controlled labo-
ratory experiments discussed in my paper usually
used a large number of subjects, a situation that
minimizes the possibility that the results were due
to fraud on the part of a few subjects. As for the
possibility of experimenter fraud, it is of course an
issue in all areas of science. There have been a few
such instances in parapsychology, but since para-
psychologists tend to be aware of this possibility,
they were generally detected and exposed by insid-
ers in the field.
It is not clear whether or not Diaconis is suggest-
ing that a magician or "qualified skeptic" needs to
be present at all times during a laboratory experi-
ment. I believe that it would be more productive for
such consultation to occur during the design phase,
and during the implementation of some pilot ses-
sions. This is essentially what was done for the
autoganzfeld experiments, in which Professor Hy-
man, a skeptic as well as an accomplished magi-
cian, participated in the specification of design
criteria, and mentalists Bem and Kross observed
experimental sessions. Bem is also a well-respected
experimental psychologist. .
While I believe that the skeptics, particularly
some of the more knowledgeable members of
CSICOP, have served a useful role in helping to
improve experiments, their counter-advocacy stance.
is counterproductive. If they are truly interested
in resolving the question of whether or not psi
abilities exist, I would expect them to encourage
evaluation and experimentation by unbiased,".
skilled experimenters. Instead, they seem to be
trying to discourage such interest by providing a
moving target of requirements that must be satis. :
fied first.
SHOULD PSI RESEARCH BE IGNORED BY THE
SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY?
In the conclusion of my paper, I argued that the
scientific community should pay more attention to
the experimental results in parapsychology. I was
not suggesting that the accumulated evidence con-
stitutes proof of psi abilities, but rather that it
indicates that there is indeed an anomalous effect
that needs an explanation. Greenhouse noted that
my paper will not necessarily change anyone's view
about the existence of paranormal phenomena, an/
observation with which I agree. However, I hope it .
will change some views about the importance of
further investigation.
Mosteller and Diaconis both acknowledged that;
there are reasons for statisticians to be interested-
in studying the anomalous effects, regardless of
whether or not psi is real. As noted by Mosteller,:
"If there is no ESP, then we want to be able to
carry out null experiments and get no effect, other-
wise we cannot put much belief in work on small
effects in non-ESP situations."" Diaconis concluded
that "Parapsychology is worthy of serious study"
partly because "If it is wrong, it offers a truly
alarming massive case study of how statistics can
mislead and be misused."
Greenhouse noted several sociological reasons for
the resistance of the scientific community to accept-
ing parapsychological phenomena. One of these is
that they directly contradict the laws of physics.
However, this assertion is not uniformly accepted
by physicists (see, e.g., Oteri, 1975), and some of
the leading parapsychological researchers hold
Ph.D.s in physics.
Another reason cited by Greenhouse, and sup-
ported by Hyman, is that psychic phenomena are
currently unexplainable by a unified scientific the-
ory. But that is precisely the reason for more inten-
sive investigation. The history of science and
medicine is replete with examples where empirical
departures from expectation led to important find-
ings or theoretical models. For example, the causal
connection between cigarette smoking and lung
cancer was established only after years of statisti-
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cal studies, resulting from the observation by one
physician that his lung cancer patients who smoked
did not recover at the same rate as those who did
not. There are many medications in common use
for which there is still no medical explanation for
their observed therapeutic effectiveness, but that
does not prohibit their use.
There are also examples where a coherent theory
of a phenomenon was impossible because the re-
quisite background information was missing. For
instance, the current theory of endorphins as an
explanation for the success of acupuncture would
have been impossible before the discovery of endor-
phins in the 1970s.
Mosteller's observation that ESP will not replace
the telephone leads to the question of whether or
not psi abilities are of any use even if they do exist,
since the effects are relatively small. Again, a look
at history is instructive. For example, in 1938 For-
tune Magazine reported that "At present, few sci-
entists foresee any serious or practical use for
atomic energy.
Greenhouse implied that I think parapsychology
is not accepted by more of the scientific community
only because they have not examined the data, but
this misses the main point I was trying to make.
The point is that individual scientists are willing to
express an opinion without any reference to data.
The interesting sociological question is why they
are so resistant to examining the data. One of the
major reasons is undoubtedly the perception identi-
fied by Greenhouse that there is some connection
between parapsychology and the occult, or worse;
religious beliefs. Since religion is clearly not in the
realm of science, the very thought that parapsy-
chology might be a science leads to what psychol-
ogists call "cognitive dissonance." As noted by
Griffin (1988), "People feel unpleasantly aroused
when two cognitions are dissonant-when they con-
tradict one another" (page 33). Griffin continued by
observing that there are also external reasons for
scientists to discount the evidence, since "It is gen-
erally easier to be a skeptic in the face of novel
evidence; skeptics may be overly conservative, but
they are rarely held up to ridicule" (page 34).
In summary, while it may be safer and more
consonant with their beliefs for individual scien-
tists to ignore the observed anomalous effects, the
scientific community should be concerned with
finding an explanation. The explanations proposed
by Greenhouse and others are simply not tenable.
REPLICATION AND MODELING
Parapsychology is one of the few areas where a
point null hypothesis makes some sense. We can
specify what should happen if there is no such
thing as ESP by using simple binomial models,
either to find p-values or Bayes factors. As noted
by Mosteller, if there is no ESP, or other nonstatis-
tical explanation for an effect, we should be able to
carry out null experiments and get no effect. Other-
wise, we should be worried about using these sim-
ple models for other applications.
Greenhouse, in his first alternative explanation
for the results, questioned the use of these simple
models, but his criticisms do not seem relevant to
the experiments discussed in Section 5 of my paper.
The experiments to which he referred were either
poorly controlled, in which case no statistical anal-
ysis could be valid, or were specifically designed to
incorporate trial by trial feedback in such a way
that the analysis needed to account for the added
information. Models and analyses for such experi-
ments can be found in the references given at the
end of Diaconis' discussion.
For the remainder of this discussion, I will con-
fine myself to models appropriate for experiments
such as the autoganzfeld described in Section 5. It
is this scenario for which Bayarri and Berger com-
puted Bayes factors, and for which Dawson dis-
cussed possible Bayesian models.
If ESP does exist, it is undoubtedly a gross over-
simplification to use a simple non-null binomial
model for these experiments. In addition to poten-
tial differences in ability among subjects, there
were also observed differences due to dynamic ver-
sus static targets, whether or not the sender was a
friend, and how the receiver scored on measures of
extraversion. All of these differences were antici-
pated in advance and could be incorporated into
models as covariates.
It is nonetheless instructive to examine the Bayes
factor computed by Bayarri and Berger for the
simple non-null binomial model. First, the observed
anomalous effects would be less interesting if the
Bayes factor was small for reasonable values of r,
as it was for the random number generator experi-
ments analyzed by Jefferys (1990), most of which
purported to measure psychokinesis instead of ESP.
Second, the Bayes factor provides a rough measure
of the strength of the evidence against the null
hypothesis and is a much more sensible summary
than the p-value. The Bayes factors provided by
Bayarri and Berger are probably more conserva-
tive, in the sense of favoring the null hypothesis,
than those that would result from priors elicited
from parapsychologists, but are probably reason-
able for those who know nothing about past ob-
served effects. I expect tht most parapsychologists
would not opt for a prior symmetric around chance,
but would still choose one with some mass below
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J. UTTS
chance. The final reason it is instructive to exam-
ine these Bayes factors is that they provide a quan-
titative challenge to skeptics to be explicit about
their prior probabilities for the null and alternative
hypotheses.
Dawson discussed the use of more complex
Bayesian models for the analysis of the auto-
ganzfeld data. She proposed a hierarchical model
where the number of successes for each experiment
followed a binomial distribution with hit rate Pi,
and logit( pi) came from a normal distribution with
noninformative priors for the mean and variance.
She then expanded this model to include heavier
tails by allowing an additional scale parameter for
each experiment. Her rationale for this expanded
model was that there were clear outlier series in
the data.
The hierarchical model proposed by Dawson is a
reasonable place to start given only that there were
several experiments trying to measure the same
effect, conducted by different investigators. In the
autoganzfeld database, the model could be ex-
panded to incorporate the additional information
available. Each experiment contained some ses-
sions with static targets and some with dynamic
targets, some sessions in which the sender and
receiver were friends and others in which they
were not and some information about the extraver-
sion score of the receiver. All of this information
could be included by defining the individual session
as the unit of analysis, and including a vector of
covariates for each session. It would then make
sense to construct a logistic regression model with
a component for each experiment, following the
model proposed by Dawson, and a term XB to
include the covariates. A prior distribution for ₿
could include information from earlier ganzfeld
studies. The advantage of using a Bayesian ap-
proach over a simple logistic regression is that
information could be continually updated. Some of
the recent work in Bayesian design could then be
incorporated so that future trials make use of the
best conditions.
Several of the discussants addressed the concept
of replication. I agree with Mosteller's implication
that it was unwise for the audience in my seminar
to respond to my replication questions so quickly,
and that was precisely my point. Most nonstatisti-
cians do not seem to understand the complexity
of the replication question. Parenthetically, when
I posed the same scenario to an audience of statis-
ticians, very few were willing to offer a quick
opinion.
Bayarri and Berger provided an insightful dis-
cussion of the purpose of replication, offering quan-
titative answers to questions that were implicit in
my discussion. Their analyses suggest some alter-
natives to power analysis that might be considered
when designing a new study to try to replicate a
questionable result.
Morris addressed the question of what con-
stitutes a replication of a meta-analysis. He
distinguished between exact and conceptual repli-
cations. Using his distinction, the autoganzfeld
meta-analysis could be viewed as a conceptual
replication of the earlier ganzfeld meta-analysis.
He noted that when such a conceptual replication
offers results similar to those of the original
meta-analysis, it lends legitimacy to the original
results, as was the case with the autoganzfeld
meta-analysis.
Greenhouse and Morris both noted the value of
meta-analysis as a method of comparing different
conditions, and I endorse that view. Conditions
found to produce different effects in one meta-
analysis could be explicitly studied in a conceptual
replication. One of the intriguing results of the
autoganzfeld experiments was that they supported
the distinction between effect sizes for dynamic
versus static targets found in the earlier ganzfeld
work, and they supported the relationship between'
ESP and extraversion found in the meta-analysis
by Honorton, Ferrari and Bem (1990),
Most modern parapsychologists, as indicated by
Morris, recognize that demonstrating the validity."
of their preliminary findings will depend on identi-
fying and utilizing "moderator variables" in future
studies. The use of such variables will require more
complicated statistical models than the simple bi-
nomial models used in the past. Further, models
are needed for combining results from several dif-
ferent experiments, that don't oversimplify at the
expense of lost information.
In conclusion, the anomalous effect that persists
throughout the work reviewed in my paper will be
better understood only after further experimenta-
tion that takes into account the complexity of the
system. More realistic, and thus more complex,
models will be needed to analyze the results of
those experiments. This presents a challenge that I
hope will be welcomed by the statistics community.
ADDITIONAL REFERENCES
ALLISON, P. (1979). Experimental parapsychology as a rejected
science. The Sociological Review Monograph 27 271-291.
BARBER, B. (1961). Resistance by scientists to scientific discov-
ery. Science 134 596-602.
BERGER, J. O. and DELAMPADY, M. (1987). Testing precise hy-
potheses (with discussion). Statist. Sci. 2 317-352.
CHUNG, F. R. K., DIACONIS, P., GRAHAM, R. L. and MALLOWS,
C. L. (1981). On the permanents of compliments of the
direct sum of identity matrices. Adv. Appl. Math. 2 121-137.
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403
COCHRAN, W. G. (1954). The combination of estimates from
different experiments. Biometrics 10 101-129.
COLLINS, H. and PINCH, T. (1979). The construction of the para-
normal: Nothing unscientific is happening. The Sociological
Review Monograph 27 237-270.
COLLINS, H. M. and PINCH, T. J. (1982). Frames of Meaning: The
Social Construction of Extraordinary Science. Routledge &
Kegan Paul, London.
CORNFIELD, J. (1959). Principles of research. American Journal
of Mental Deficiency 64 240-252.
DEMPSTER, A. P., SELWYN, M. R. and WEEKS, B. J. (1983).
Combining historical and randomized controls for assessing
trends in proportions. J. Amer. Statist. Assoc. 78 221-227.
DIACONIS, P. and GRAHAM, R. L. (1981). The analysis of sequen-
tial experiments with feedback to subjects. Ann. Statist. 9
236-244.
FISHER, R. A. (1932). Statistical Methods for Research Workers,
4th ed. Oliver and Boyd, London.
FISHER, R. A. (1935). Has Mendel's work been rediscovered?
Ann. of Sci. 1 116-137.
GALTON, F. (1901-2). Biometry. Biometrika 1 7-10.
GREENHOUSE, J., FROMM, D., IYENGAR, S., DEW, M. A., HOLLAND,
A. and KASs, R. (1990). Case study: The effects of rehabili-
tation therapy for aphasia. In The Future of Meta-Analysis
(K. W. Wachter and M. L. Straf, eds.) 31-32. Russell Sage
Foundation, New York.
GRIFFIN, D. (1988). Intuitive judgment and the evaluation of
evidence. In Enhancing Human Performance: Issues, Theo-
ries and Techniques Background Papers-Part I. National
Academy Press, Washington, D.C.
HANSEN, G. (1990). Deception by subjects in psi research. Jour-
nal of the American Society for Psychical Research 84 25-80.
HUNTER, J. and SCHMIDT, F. (1990). Methods of Meta-Analysis.
Sage, London.
IYENGAR, S. and GREENHOUSE, J. (1988). Selection models and
the file drawer problem (with discussion). Statist. Sci. 3
109-135.
LOUIS, T. A. (1984). Estimating an ensemble of parameters
using Bayes and empirical Bayes methods. J. Amer. Statist.
Assoc. 79 393-398.
MANTEL, N. and HAENSZEL, W. (1959). Statistical aspects of the
analysis of data from retrospective studies of disease. Jour-
nal of the National Cancer Institute 22 719-748.
MORRIS, C. (1983). Parametric empirical Bayes inference: The-
ory and applications (rejoinder) J. Amer. Statist. Assoc. 78
47-65.
MORRIS, R. L. (1986). What psi is not: The necessity for experi-
ments. In Foundations of Parapsychology (H. L. Edge, R. L.
Morris, J. H. Rush and J. Palmer, eds.) 70-110. Routledge
& Kegan Paul, London.
MOSTELLER, F. and BUSH R. R. (1954). Selected quantitative
techniques. In Handbook of Social Psychology (G. Lindzey,
ed.) 1 289-334. Addison-Wesley, Cambridge, Mass.
MOSTELLER, F. and CHALMERS, T. (1991). Progress and problems
in meta-analysis. Statist. Sci. To appear.
OTERI, L., ed. (1975). Quantum Physics and Parapsychology.
Parapsychology Foundation, New York.
PINCH, T. J. and COLLINS, H. M. (1984). Private science and
public knowledge: The Committee for the Scientific Investi-
gation of Claims of the Paranormal and its use of the
literature. Social Studies of Science 14 521-546.
PLATT, J. R. (1964). Strong inference. Science 146 347-353.
ROSENTHAL, R. (1966). Experimenter Effects in Behavioral Re-
search. Appleton-Century-Crofts, New York.
ROSENTHAL, R. (1979). The "file drawer problem" and tolerance
for null results. Psychological Bulletin 86 638-641.
RYAN, L. M. and DEMPSTER, A. P. (1984). Weighted normal
plots. Technical Report 394Z, Dana-Farber Cancer Inst.,
Boston, Mass.
SAMANIEGO, F. J. and UTTS, J. (1983). Evaluating performance
in continuous experiments with feedback to subjects. Psy-
chometrika 48 195-209.
SMITH, M. and GLASS, G. (1977). Meta-analysis of psychotherapy
outcome studies. American Psychologist 32 752-760.
WACHTER, K. (1988). Disturbed by meta-analysis? Science 241
1407-1408.
WEST, M. (1985). Generalized linear models: Scale parameters,
outlier accommodation and prior distributions. In Bayesian
Statistics 2 (J. M. Bernardo, M. H. DeGroot, D. V. Lindley,
and A. F. M. Smith, eds.) 531-558. North-Holland Amster-
dam.
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APPENDIX H
AN ASSESSMENT OF THE ENHANCED HUMAN PERFORMANCE PROJECT
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PROJECT REVIEW GROUP
14 APRIL, 1987
At the request of MG Philip K. Russell, MC, Commander, United States Army Medical
Research and Development Command, the following individuals met at the Pentagon on 6
March 1987 to assess the work of the Enhanced Human Performance Project:
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Ms. Amoretta Hoeber, TRW
Dr. Jack Vorona, DIA
Dr. Michael A. Wartell, Humboldt State University
Dr. Nick .Yaru, Consultant (Chairman)
Dr. Chris Zarafonetis, Biomedical R&D, Inc.
Others in attendance at this meeting included:
BG Richard T. Travis, MC, Deputy Commander, USAMRDC
Col. Philip Sobocinski, MSC, Special Assistant for Biotechnology
Col. Peter J. McNelis, MSC, Project Manager/COR
Mrs. Jean Smith, Principal Assistant Responsible for Contracting
Dr. Edwin C. May, SRI, Principal Investigator
In preparation for this meeting, copies of all Project reports for Fiscal Year 1986 along
with the Scientific Oversight Committee's comments regarding these reports and the contrac-
tor's responses to the comments were forwarded to each of the above-mentioned individuals
for their review.
The Project Review Group was asked, via correspondence (MG Russell, 12 January
1987; Col. McNelis, 12 February 1987) and by BG Travis in his welcoming remarks at the
meeting, to address the following questions concerning the Project:
1.
Is the science underlying this research effort essentially sound?
2.
Does the evidence to date support the existence of an anomaly?
3.
What is the potential value of this effort to the DOD?
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AN ASSESSMENT OF THE EFFORT TO DATE
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Is the research focus and level of effort appropriate?
The agenda for the meeting is attached as Enclosure 1. Following a presentation of the
Project's historical antecedents, the questions listed above provided the structure for a discus-
sion of: FY 1986 research tasks and results, the overall plan underlying the FY 1986, effort
and possible modifications of the plan for follow-on work.
The Review Group's responses to the preceding questions and their recommendations for
the Project will be presented in turn. It should be noted that there was unanimity among the
members of the Review Group with regard to these responses.
1.
Is the science sound?
The individual experiments conducted during Fiscal Year 1986 appear to be
scientifically sound. The primary contractor's response to comments of the
Scientific Oversight Committee (SOC) leads this Review Group to conclude
that the scientific quality of the effort is under continual qualified scrutiny,
and immediate adjustments are made by the researchers to insure that that
quality continues. Additionally, appropriate community-wide symposia such
as the Theory and Proof of Principle conferences projected for FY 1987 will
enhance that quality.
2.
Is there an anomaly?
The results of experiments conducted by this Project during FY 1986, as well
as other reports of previous operational related research, lead this Review
Group to conclude that a natural anomaly exists, which we will refer to as
Remote Viewing.
3.
Is it worthwhile?
The Review Group believes that progress is being made in understanding this
anomaly and that continuation of the effort is not only warranted, but entirely
appropriate and strongly recommended.
Should Remote Viewing be predictably reproducible and its mechanisms,
parameters and physiological correlates understood, there would be a number
of significant applications for the DoD. Current user agencies have reported
utilizing the present technology with positive results.
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Is the direction and emphasis appropriate?
The Review Group believes that the probability of success in demonstrating
and explaining a phenomenon known as Remote Action is less than the
probability of success for the Remote Viewing phenomenon. Rather than
continuing to explore both phenomena at equal levels of effort, it is
recommended that the results of this year's (FY87) effort be critically
reviewed and those areas that demonstrate the most promise be exploited and
those that do not be terminated. The focus then would be less diffuse and
more vertical as the more productive pathways are emphasized.
This should not be considered an economy measure, however, since the
vertical effort should be assured of adequate resources to accomplish its more
definitive tasks.
The Review Group also recommends that the Project should clarify its use of
the terms: global/conceptual replication (i.e., other labs evidence the
phenomena without following the same protocol), exact/technical replication
(i.e., phenomena evidenced in other labs following the same protocol with
other subjects and other targets), and reproducibility (i.e., phenomena
evidenced by the same subjects over time utilizing the same randomly ordered
target set). With this in mind, it is recommended that an effort be made to
enhance the reproducibility of the phenomena by identifying and utilizing
especially talented individuals. It is believed that this pool of talented
subjects would also aid in isolating neurophysiological correlates and
mechanisms.
It is also recommended that one or two other secure labs be identified to
carry out exact/technical replication of the most promising experiments
conducted by the primary contractor.
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Overall, the current breadth of experiments selected to demonstrate and
explicate the phenomena is appropriate, as is the present level of effort
assigned to each of these experiments.
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In summary, the Project Review Group has determined to its satisfaction that the work
of the Enhanced Human Performance Project is scientifically sound, appropriately managed
and monitored, and is providing valuable insight into the nature of an anomaly which could
have a significant impact on the DoD.
Dr. Nick Yam
Dr. Nick Yaru, Chairman
Project Review Group
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APPENDIX I
IN-HOUSE STAFFING REQUIREMENTS
(S/NF / SG/LIMDIS)
An analysis of the PAG-TA functions
necessary to support the achievement of the long-range goals
indicate four major functional areas which must be supported.
Within each functional area, personnel requirements can be
identified. A complicating factor, however, is the fact that
some of the functional areas (such as remote viewing (RV),
Intelligence Analysis, and ADP support) are highly specialized
and require full-time dedicated personnel.
1. (S/NF/SG/LIMDIS) RV Activities: RV activities can be
grouped into the following major areas:
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Participate in R & D activities with the
external R&D contractor
b.
Viewer Training (both in-house and with
the external R&D contractor)
c. Operational Activities
(S/NF/SG/LIMDIS) It is difficult to project personnel
requirements for this functional area, primarily because the
projected level of operational activity is currently unknown.
Based on the past level of operational tasking, it is anticipated
that up to six personnel could be required. Five of the people
would be involved in operational activities as well as
participating in support of the R&D activities to be conducted by
the external Contractor. One additional person would be
designated to participate in operational and research support
activities on a part-time basis but would devote most of his time
to developing a training program and conducting training of new
personnel and identification/selection of potential viewers. Due
to the specialized nature of RV, this person needs to be a
qualified viewer and not merely an administrative person. It
should also be kept in mind that it takes approximately one year
to train a viewer to operational status.
2. (U) Foreign Intelligence Assessment:
Support of this
functional area may be grouped into the following activities:
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Data source identification/collection
b.
Construction of Foreign Activities
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c.
Analysis
d.
Production of finished intelligence
assessments
(U) To adequately meet the requirements of this
functional area, two full-time personnel will be required: a
Senior Intelligence Officer (SIO) and an Intelligence Technician
(IT). In order to maintain strict protocol requirements, these
personnel should not function as operational viewers.
(U) The IT would identify potential sources of data,
collect the data, support the construction of the Intelligence
database and input the required data, and assist in the
preparation of intelligence assessments. The SIO should be an
all-source Scientific and Technical Intelligence analyst and
would be responsible for the identification of collection
requirements, the analysis of intelligence data, and the
production of finished intelligence assessments on a world-wide
basis.
3.
(S/NF) ADP Support:
Over the period of time covered
by this Plan, the ADP support activities of PAG-TA are
anticipated to rise dramatically, requiring one full-time person
to function as an ADP system administrator. Several factors
justify this position:
a.
(S/NF) PAG-TA is currently in the process
of upgrading its ADP system to include the acquisition of a Unix-
based SUN workstation which will not only serve as the main
system element, but will also be used to construct the
Intelligence and the R&D databases, serve as the communications
link to the external Contractor, and support the operation of
special PAG-TA research equipment. Specific areas requiring
specialized technical attention include:
(1)
Operating system(s)
(2)
Potential LAN(s) administration
(3)
Database construction/maintenance
(4)
Language compiler (s)
(5)
Peripherals
(6)
Equipment interfaces
(7)
Data communications
(8)
System modifications/upgrades
(9)
Development of special purpose
software to support the PAG-TA mission
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b.
(C) PAG-TA is located some distance from
the main Agency computer support facilities. Should the PAG-TA
system experience problems or failures, the system would be down
until someone from the main facility could travel to the PAG-TA
location to effect repairs, resulting in a loss of productivity
during the wait period. Also, any system modification/upgrades
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would have to depend on the schedule of qualified personnel,
again resulting in loss of productivity. Therefore; it is
essential that a person will the necessary computer science
skills be physically located at the PAG-TA facility.
4. (S/NF/SG/LIMDIS) Branch Administration:
Tasks in this
functional area may be grouped as follows:
a.
Word Processing
(1)
Electronic Filing
(2)
Management Support
(3)
Security Administration
(4)
Report Generation/Document Preparation
(5)
RV Tasking
(6)
Generation of RV Target Pools
b. Project/Contract Management
c. Collection Management
d. Ft. Meade Interface/Facilities
5. (S/NF/SG/LIMDIS)
Tasks in this area will require three
to four personnel -- a Branch Chief, a person functioning as an
Assistant Branch Chief (probably the SIO), a Secretary and,
possibly, a Collection Manager (unless this can be done on an "as
required" basis by other Branch personnel). The Branch Chief and
SIO should have experience in project/contract management,
primarily to deal with external research/support contracts, as
well as the ability to interface with the academic community and
professional organizations engaged in parapsychological
activities in addition to overall management skills associated
with managing a Branch-size organization.
(C) Based on this evaluation, a total of 11-12
personnel could be required to effectively achieve PAG-TA goals.
No attempt has been made to identify the personnel as either
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military or civilian. This represents an increase of 1-2
personnel over the current authorization. However; it may be
more desirable to keep the manning level at current strength (10
authorized/7 assigned) and adjust the existing skill mix at PAG-
TA to more effectively meet anticipated programmatic demands
through personnel transfers/reassignments.
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