August 17, 2008

• Telepathy in a controlled experiment? My mind is fucking blown.

  Krippner, S. and Ullman, M. (1970). "Telepathy and Dreams: A controlled experiment with electroencephalogram-electro-oculogram monitoring." The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 151(6): 396-403.

  I'm not completely convinced; the study has not been well replicated. But those of us who have long been skeptical of psionic abilities have been asking for a controlled experiment, of a reasonably plausible phenomenon (this was better-than-chance telepathic transmission of information in a dream state, not at-will psychokinesis), supervised by trained medical professionals and studied with reliable statistical methods... and this study fits those requirements. Those of us who thought it impossible may have to eat some words if this finding does get replicated.

  Drs. Stanley Krippner and Montague Ullman are both respected psychological researchers, though with some particular interest in parapsychology that has created some hostility between them and more mainstream psychologists. (This could create some bias; however, it is not unreasonable, since it's quite typical for unusual hypotheses to be first demonstrated by the minority who believe them, rather than the majority who don't.) They are also both still alive and conducting research.

  A particularly damning lack of replication:
  Belvedere, E. and Foulkes, D. (1971). "Telepathy and dreams: A failure to replicate." Perceptual and Motor Skills 33: 783-789.
  They did the same thing, with the same "psychic," and got results lower than chance, but within experimental error of chance. Yet, no one could find anything wrong with the original experiment, nor any evidence that data had been fabricated.

  I'm still fairly sure that telepathy doesn't exist... but where I was about 99.9% sure, now it's more like 90% sure. Something about peer-reviewed, controlled scientific experiments has a way of destroying my confidence in a belief. (I wish more people were like that; don't you?)

  • 4:07 pm
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