Debunk Paranormal

Here is a quote from a Paranormal Investigator about the Ganzfeld Effect and how it has no valid use in the field of Paranormal investigations. "How can one draw reliable and impartial conclusions in such circumstances? I do not believe one can. My own conclusion is based not just on reading these published papers but also on my personal experience over many years. I have carried out numerous experiments of many kinds and never found any convincing evidence for psi (Blackmore 1996). I tried my first ganzfeld experiment in 1978, when the procedure was new. Failing to get results myself I went to visit [Carl] Sargent's laboratory in Cambridge where some of the best ganzfeld results were then being obtained. Note that in Honorton's database nine of the twenty-eight experiments came from Sargent's lab. What I found there had a profound effect on my confidence in the whole field and in published claims of successful experiments. These experiments, which looked so beautifully designed in print, were in fact open to fraud or error in several ways, and indeed I detected several errors and failures to follow the protocol while I was there. I concluded that the published papers gave an unfair impression of the experiments and that the results could not be relied upon as evidence for psi. Eventually the experimenters and I all published our different views of the affair (Blackmore 1987; Harley and Matthews 1987; Sargent 1987). The main experimenter left the field altogether. I would not refer to this depressing incident again but for one fact. The Cambridge data are all there in the Bem and Honorton review but unacknowledged. Out of twenty-eight studies included, nine came from the Cambridge lab, more than any other single laboratory, and they had the second highest effect size after Honorton's own studies. Bem and Honorton do point out that one of the laboratories contributed nine of the studies but they do not say which one. Not a word of doubt is expressed, no references to my investigation are given, and no casual reader could guess there was such controversy over a third of the studies in the database. Of course the new autoganzfeld results appear even better. Perhaps errors from the past do not matter if there really is a repeatable experiment. The problem is that my personal experience conflicts with the successes I read about in the literature and I cannot ignore either side. I cannot ignore other people's work because science is a collective enterprise and publication is the main way of sharing our findings. On the other hand I cannot ignore my own findings—there would be no point in doing science, or investigating other people's work, if I did. The only honest reaction to the claims of psi in the ganzfeld is for me to say "I don't know but I doubt it."