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I experimented with StripGenerator, a free program that lets you create simple comics online, and voila - a new comic book superhero is born! 

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One of the more frequently discussed topics on this blog is the famous near-death experience reported by Pam Reynolds. Gallons of ink and megabytes of pixels have been spilled arguing over the details of her experience, especially its “veridical” (or verifiable) aspects. Although Pam Reynolds passed away in 2010, the debate continues. The current issue of the Journal of Near-Death Studies (Volume 30, Number 1, Fall 2011), put out by IANDS, is devoted in its entirety to the Pam Reynolds case–and specifically to the question “Could Pam Reynolds Hear?”

The issue takes the form of a debate. First there is a foreword by noted NDE researcher Janice Holden. Next, Gerald M. Woerlee, an anesthesiologist and afterlife skeptic, argues that Reynolds could have overheard conversation, music, and other noises in the operating room in an entirely non-paranormal way. A brief response from anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff, best known for developing a model of quantum consciousness with Roger Penrose, follows. Then there is a much longer, more detailed, and more aggressive response from Chris Carter, author of Science and the Near-Death Experience and the forthcoming Science and the Afterlife Experience. 

(As evidence that intellectual disputes sometimes get personal, shortly after the Journal issue came out, Woerlee published a very hostile one-star Amazon review of Carter’s earlier book Science and Psychic Phenomena. He begins by writing that he “purchased this book with my usual open mind,” which struck me as funny given his intransigent opposition to all paranormal claims and to anything that smacks of religion or spirituality. His review has generated 44 comments so far.) 

Anyway, after the articles by Hameroff and Carter, Woerlee delivers his rejoinder. As a matter of courtesy, he is given the last word in the issue, but as Janice Holden notes, the debate continues online with a riposte by Chris Carter (PDF) on a Dutch website devoted to NDE’s.

It would be fruitless to attempt to synopsize all of these points and counterpoints in a blog post. For those who are interested, I recommend buying the issue. It costs $16 plus postage. Think of it as a donation to IANDS, a worthwhile organization in its own right. Incidentally, if you have any trouble checking out (as I did), you may be able to get the shopping cart to work by clicking the onscreen refresh button near the shopping cart logo (not your browser’s refresh button).  

Though I won’t try to summarize all the points, I’ll give you the flavor of the exchange by focusing on one specific detail: the earplugs that were inserted in Pam’s ears, and whether or not they made it impossible for her to hear the sounds she later reported. One of the biggest questions surrounding these earplugs has always been the rate and volume of clicks that were played in alternate ears in order to provoke a response from Pam’s brainstem. Some people have argued that the clicks were loud enough to drown out any other noise; others have argued that the clicks, while certainly audible, were not prohibitively loud.

On this topic Woerlee draws draws first blood. (In quotations from the Journal, all citations of sources have been omitted.) On pages 7—9 he writes:

But could Reynolds have heard or perceived any sounds above the 100-decibel clicking sounds applied to her ears through the molded earphones?

This question brings us to a discussion of the parameters of these 100-decibel clicking sounds applied at a rate of 11.3 clicks per second. Indeed, 100 decibels is very loud, equivalent to an orchestra at its loudest. I have even heard of one person who listened to music through earphones at an intensity of 100 decibels. He heard absolutely nothing of what happened around him or what was said to him. Many people do just as this man: They imagine these clicking sounds are similar to loud 100-decibel music.… But is this reasonable or true?…

The duration of the BAEPs [Brainstem Auditory Evoked Potentials] induced by these clicking sounds is clearly indicated [in a technical article by the surgical team]: they last no more than 12 milliseconds.

What this all means is that at a rate of 11.3 clicks per second, a total time equal to 11.3 x 100 = 11,300 µsec = 11.3 milliseconds per second was occupied by these clicking sounds. This means that for each second, only 11.3/1000 = 0.0113 second, or a little more than one 100th of each second was occupied by these clicking sounds.…

[Taking into account the brainstem’s processing time] these clicking sounds occupied at most only 12.46% of her hearing and brainstem processing capacity. This duration left her with more than sufficient time and neural capacity to perceive other sounds.…

The clicking sounds were administered to only one ear, with a masking sound in the opposing ear. Such a masking sound consists of white noise.… The masking noise consisted of continuous white sound in the other earplug at a level of 40 decibels.

Normal human speech at a distance of one to two meters has a loudness level of 60—70 decibels, and people typically listen to music at levels of 70—85 decibels. Consequently, neither the clicking sounds with the parameters described above nor the continuous white sound at a 40-decibel level preclude hearing with bone or air conduction.

This is very useful information, which goes a long way toward clarifying the terms of the debate. It seems clear that the clicks, though undoubtedly loud, were also of such incredibly brief duration that even 11 clicks per second did not take up more than a fraction of a second, leaving plenty of time for Pam Reynolds to receive auditory impressions.

In his extended reply, Carter quotes some 2007 remarks made by Michael Sabom, the original investigator of the Pam Reynolds case. Sabom wrote:

Stephen Cordova, Neuroscience Manager at the Barrow Neurological Institute, who was the intraoperative technologist responsible for inserting small molded speakers into Spetzler’s patients in the early 1990s when Reynolds’ surgery was performed, told me that after the speakers were molded into each external auditory canal, they were further affixed with “mounds of tape and gauze to seal securely the ear piece into the ear canal.” This “tape and gauze” would “cover the whole ear pinnae” making it extremely unlikely that Reynolds could have physically overheard operating room conversation one hour and twenty minutes after anesthesia had been induced. (p. 46)

Carter also notes, “In her testimony Reynolds neither mentioned hearing loud clicks nor struggling to hear through them.”

Finally, Carter quotes from Stephen Cordova himself. Cordova points out that as the “lead technologist back then” he is “most familiar with the technical parameters that were used,” adding that he was monitoring a case in the next operating room while a colleague monitored Pam Reynolds. He writes:

The auditory stimuli in the ipsi ear was a broad-based frequency spectrum click… We stimulated at a rate of 11.3/second with a pulse duration of 100 µs. The contralateral ear was masked with 40–60 decibel white noise. We used Hal-hen brand earpieces (probably size 5) to introduce the stimuli, which was generated by a Nicolet brand T-300 audio generator. We then used vi-drape sticky “glue” on the inner area of the pinnae of the ear, before sealing up the system with gauze and micropore tape.

I know how loud we played the music in those operating rooms… and I know the individual team members and how loud their voices are. I would be surprised if a repeated experiment with the exact parameters allowed a person to hear through the stimuli. Of course none of this information is a scientific argument for the fact that she did or did not hear: what is need[ed] is an experiment. (p. 47) 

Carter adds that Cordova has  “offered to reenact the clicking with test subjects, using the exact same parameters,” and invites Woerlee to participate. Carter says that “the proposed experiment is the only way to definitively settle the issue of whether or not Reynolds could have heard conversation and music via normal channels.”

In his rejoinder, Woerlee does not make reference to the invitation. Personally I’m doubtful that even this experiment, if conducted, would settle things. We can never reproduce exactly how close-fitting Pam Reynolds’ earplugs might have been, or the exact volume level of conversation and other noise during the long-ago surgical procedure. It could always be argued that one of Reynolds’ earplugs had slipped out a little or wasn’t as well fitted as it might have been, or that the conversation and music were a little louder than people recall, etc.

Naturally, the Journal debate deals with much more than just the clicking and masking sounds in Pam’s ears. There is the whole question of whether a person who has been anesthetized would be able to consciously hear anything at all, even if the signals reached her brain. As Woerlee concedes his rejoinder, “Chris Carter was correct when he stated that the BAER is a measure of only the response of the brainstem to the auditory stimuli applied to the ears. Conscious perception occurs only when these stimuli register in the cortical regions of the brain concerned with secondary processes of hearing.” (p. 57) He argues that Pam could have been conscious during parts of the procedure, that such anesthetic awareness is rare but well-documented, and that some cases of anesthetic awareness have qualities similar to Pam’s NDE. Carter’s argument is that anesthetic awareness often involves pain, panic, and other negative qualities absent from Pam’s experience, that few cases of anesthetic awareness have visual components (as Pam's did), and that an experienced team of physicians closely monitoring Pam’s neurological activity and other vital signs are unlikely to have allowed her to regain consciousness even intermittently.

I found the whole discussion very interesting, and I suggest that those with a serious interest in NDEs invest a couple of sawbucks in this issue of JNDS. Just don’t expect a definitive resolution.

Regardless of what Pam Reynolds could or could not hear, it’s safe to say that we, at least, have not heard the last of this controversy.

Some problems with mediumship in the heyday of Spiritualism

Recently we've been discussing the possibility that the heyday of Spiritualism constituted a "mania," in which normally sober observers found their judgment impaired by what Alan Greenspan would call "irrational enthusiasm." While the very best research from that period was well-designed and difficult to refute, there are undeniably problems with other claims, reports, and observations. What follows is a grab-bag of items in no particular order - things I've noticed in my reading over the years. I also offer a brief counterpoint whenever it seems appropriate. 

Inconsistencies. 

Spirit communicators offered conflicting statements on important subjects, most notably reincarnation. In the early years, there was little mention of reincarnation. After Madame Blavatsky popularized the idea of reincarnation through her Theosophy movement, mediums started talking about it a lot more. It's hard to resist the conclusion that the content of the mediums' messages, at least in this case, was influenced by what the sitters expected to hear.

Counterpoint: The greater part of the commuications was largely consistent, and this general consistency is found in more modern communications and in other afterlife evidence, such as near-death experiences and deathbed visions. Robert Crookall documented these consistencies in several books in the 1960s. 

Failed predictions. 

Spirit communicators made failed predictions, which were generally overly optimistic in nature. For instance, they predicted an era of universal peace and harmony following the First World War. Even during the buildup to the WWII they insisted there would not be another global conflict. They also predicted that the truth of Spiritualism would be universally acknowledged within 100 years and would be part of mainstream science.

Some of the people who analyzed the so-called "cross correspondences" became obsessed with the strange notion that a one of their number was destined to bear a son who would become a new messiah. This child was being "designed" by spirit entities to be a superior being, one who would lead the human race to a new era of peace. Though a child was born, he did not fulfill these expectations, though he did grow up to be a notably spiritual man who eventually became a Benedictine monk. The story is told here. 

Spirit controls.  

The spirit "controls" (i.e., spirit guides) exhibited many oddities, could not convincingly confirm their earthly existence, and often exhibited cartoonish or stereotyped behavior. More discussion here. 

Dogmatism and credulity.  

Some investigators seemed to become overly enthusiastic about their findings and exhibited dogmatism and credulity. James Hyslop, an early convert to belief in spirit communication and life after death, insisted that the case was proved beyond any doubt–clearly an overstatement. Arthur Conan Doyle was taken in by a number of fake mediums, notably the Davenport Brothers; he was fooled by obviously fake photographs taken by children in the "Cottingley fairies" case; and in one notable instance he insisted that Harry Houdini, the escape artist and famed debunker, must be a medium himself because only by dematerializing could he perform his escapes!

Bad science.  

Some of the claims made by paranormal investigators of the time clash with our modern understanding of science. For instance, in his book Thirty Years Among the Dead (PDF), psychiatrist Carl Wickland tells how his wife's mediumship helped cure mentally ill patients by freeing them from obsessing spirits. But with everything we now know about the chemical basis for much of mental illness, how plausible is the spirit-obsession hypothesis?

It was not unusual for alleged spirit communicators themselves to provide incorrect scientific statements. Many of these involved "the ether"–the invisible substance then widely believed to pervade the universe and to serve as a transmission medium for electromagnetic waves. Today the ether has been generally discredited, although there are occasional attempts to bring it back in a modified form. Other inaccurate scientific statements are found in The Spirits' Book, a collection of spirit communications compiled by Allan Kardec. (Example, passage 46: "Do not the tissues of the human body and of animals contain the germs of a multitude of parasites, that only await for their development the occurrence of the putrid fermentation necessary to their life?" This appears to be an endorsement of spontaneous generation, a popular view of the time, but discredited today.) It's hard to trust "the spirits" if they don't know basic scientific facts.

Counterpoint: Science writer Norman Friedman believes that channeled information attributed to Seth, and found in the works of Jane Roberts, sheds valuable light on quantum mechanics.

Bad history.  

Other channeled information included what appears to be clearly incorrect historical data. Edgar Cayce, for instance, made claims about the origins of the Bible and the circumstances and time periods in which it was written that would not be endorsed by any accredited biblical scholars today. His statements seem to be in line with what would be expected from someone with a layman's knowledge of the subject.

Counterpoint: Stephan A. Schwartz's work with psychics at archaeological digs has resulted in some impressive finds. Schwartz's work is meticulously recounted in his books, notably The Alexandria Project. 

Spirit photography.  

Some investigators accepted spirit photographs whose fakery is embarrassingly obvious today. Others were not deterred by photos taken during séances that showed clear signs of fraud. A notable instance was the case of Eva C., who supposedly had the ability to manifest spirit faces out of ectoplasm. Photographs make it clear that the spirit faces were drawings clipped from the newspaper. In one photo it is even possible to see part of the newspaper's masthead showing through the paper. Nevertheless, the investigator researching Eva C. refused to believe the spirit faces had been faked, because he did not think there was any flaw in his security protocols. Even today, there are people who defend the mediumship of Helen Duncan, despite the embarrassingly phony “spirit guide” that shows up in photos taken while she was supposedly entranced.

Helen Duncan and her materialized "spirit guide." 

Fraud.  

A large number of physical and materialization mediums were exposed as frauds. A common tactic was to tackle the materialized “spirit” in the middle of the séance and hold on to it until the lights came up, at which point the struggling figure would be revealed as the medium in disguise. Even mediums who were caught in such deceptions retained some followers. Florence Cook was caught at least once, and arguably twice*, by such a method, yet her principal investigator, William Crookes, never admitted she was anything less than genuine.

(*In the one debatable instance, the “spirit” wriggled free before the lights could be turned on; accounts differ as to whether Florence, when found in her cabinet, was securely tied to her chair as she should have been, or was only loosely tied, the knots obviously having been undone.)

Counterpoint: Some physical mediums held up under scrutiny. Despite a known penchant for cheating when she could get away with it, Eusapia Palladino impressed highly experienced and skeptical investigators at the Naples sittings in 1908. D.D. Home was never caught in fraud, and performed in lighted rooms under close observation. 

Parochialism. 

Frequent messages from the spirit communicators indicated that Jesus Christ is effectively the leading light in the spirit world, a message that seems perhaps a bit too nicely calculated to appeal to the Judeo-Christian sensibilities of sitters and researchers.

Evolution.  

Messages about the nature of the afterlife and the ultimate purpose of existence seemed to borrow liberally from Emanuel Swedenborg's writings, with one significant alteration. In Swedenborg's system, there is no continuing evolution of the soul after death; the soul migrates to whatever sphere is most suitable and stays there for eternity. Most of the Spiritualist mediums, on the other hand, stated that souls inhabit a given sphere only temporarily and are constantly moving onward in accordance with a universal law of spiritual progress. This idea of spiritual evolution seems to have been inspired by the fashionableness of Darwinian evolution, giving a more modern and progressive spin to Swedenborg's ideas. But if the descriptions were influenced by cultural and social trends, do they reflect a higher reality or only the assumptions of the mediums and sitters?

Slate writing.  

Some researchers continued to accept the validity of so-called slate writing–messages written in chalk on slate tablets in the pitch dark séance room–even after slate writing had been exposed as fraudulent many times. Admittedly these researchers took elaborate pains to guard against fraud. Nevertheless, the long history of fakery in slate writing and the need to place the slate out of sight during part of the performance should be enough to cast doubt on these claims. 

Oddball claims. 

Spiritualism was characterized, in part, by fantastic stories that seem to have been taken seriously by at least some of its adherents. For instance, there was the often-told story of the sudden “apport" of Mrs. Guppy, a 300-pound medium who allegedly appeared out of nowhere during another medium's séance. The claim was that Mrs. Guppy had been dematerialized from her home many miles away and rematerialized on the séance table. Stories like this did not help the credibility of the Spiritualist movement with the general public, and led many to see Spiritualists as gullible and silly. The acceptance of such unlikely claims by some of Spiritualism's enthusiasts may give credence to the idea that a mania was at work - though, again, there is a core of serious research that resists easy debunking. 

 

 

Seance and sensibility

For a preliminary look at the possibility that reports of psychic phenomena can be influenced by emotional and psychological factors, I tracked down a paper co-authored by Richard Wiseman, Emma Greening, and Matthew Smith titled "Belief in the Paranormal and Suggestion in the Seance Room," published originally in the British Journal of Psychology, 94(3), 285-297. It is available online here (PDF). 

Before going on, I should say that I have certain reservations about using this paper, because one of the authors, Richard Wiseman, has a dubious reputation in the field of parapsychology. Consider how he is characterized on the website Skeptical Investigations (which, despite its name, is actually an anti-skeptical site): 

He has been at the centre of many controversies with researchers in parapsychology, and has often been accused of deliberately misrepresenting data.

In 1995, he replicated Rupert Sheldrake’s results with a dog that knows when its owner was coming home, and then claimed to have debunked the 'psychic pet' phenomenon....

He has been described by the President of the Parapsychology Association as motivated by "obvious self-interest", and by a desire "to support an a priori commitment to the notion that all positive psi results are spurious and all methods which seem to show the presence of psi are flawed".... In December 2000 he carried out what he described as the 'world’s biggest ESP experiment' which, like many of his activities, was widely publicised in the media. A skeptical observer of the experiment claimed that he had designed the experiment to fail and interfered with the procedure in such a way as to gain the non-significant result he expected. 

In September 2004 he took part in a classic CSICOP debunking excercise, claiming that a young Russian girl who had seemingly psychic powers of diagnosis had failed a test he and his fellow skeptics designed. In fact the girl scored at a level well above chance. Prof Brian Josephson, FRS, a Nobel Laureate in physics, investigated Wiseman's claims about this test and found them to be seriously misleading....

By the autumn of 2004, after a series of other very questionable claims, widely publicized in the media, many of his peers in the parapsychology research community concluded that his behaviour was not consistent with commonly-accepted standards of scientific integrity, and he was voted off the main research forum in parapsychology by a large majority. In addition, for similar reasons, some members of the Society for Psychical Resaerch called for him to be expelled for the Society. He resigned. Despite his strong skeptical beliefs, in 2004 he applied for the newly-established chair of Parapsychology in Lund, Sweden, which was endowed to promote research in this field. 

Obviously there are major controversies swirling around Wiseman. Nevertheless, I don't know of any other recent research that looks at the issue of suggestibility in the séance room. So with the caveat that Wiseman's conclusions may not be reliable, here's what he and his colleagues found.

The researchers put on a series of fake séances using an actor or, in a later series, Wiseman himself as the medium. The sessions were held in darkness, with various objects arranged on a table and glowing with luminous paint. During the course of the session, the medium would make suggestions to the sitters about the movement or lack of movement of these items. A hidden assistant would move some of the objects, using a long stick. The first series of experiments was videotaped using infrared photography.

The outcome of this initial series of tests was consistent with the idea that people in a dark séance room have a tendency to see things that didn't happen when these things are suggested to them by the medium. The most striking case involves the purported movement of a small table. Though the medium strongly suggested that the table was moving under the psychic influence of the group, the table actually remained stationary throughout the test. Nevertheless, 31% of participants later said that the table moved.

A second data point involves a small handbell, which also remained stationary throughout the test. In this case the medium told the group to focus their psychic powers on the handbell and make it move, but he did not suggest that their efforts had succeeded. In this case only 10% reported seeing the handbell move. This indicates that the medium's suggestion is an important factor in the way the session is remembered.

Moreover, people who expressed a prior belief in paranormal phenomena were significantly more likely to accept the medium's suggestions than those who expressed a prior disbelief.

The second series of tests yielded results that seem less conclusive. Still, there was a significant amount of misreporting. 11% said the stationary handbell moved. 10% said a stationary tambourine moved. 86% said that an actually moving slate remained stationary (the medium, Wiseman in this case, had strongly suggested that the slate wasn't responding to their psychic efforts, even though his assistant was in fact moving it). 9% said that a moving candlestick was actually stationary.

In addition to the above, many of the participants described feelings and sensations consistent with some kind of paranormal experience–the same kinds of feelings and sensations often reported by people who attended “genuine” séances. 

In Experiment One, 20% of participants indicated that they had experienced these phenomena, with a significantly greater percentage of Believers (30%) than Disbelievers (8%) reporting such experiences (Chi square=6.36, df=4, p=.04). In Experiment Two, 21% of participants reported such experiences. In addition, the relationship between participants’ prior belief in the paranormal and the reporting of such experiences was in the same direction as Experiment One, and approached significance (Chi square=8.78, df=4, p=.07). The Questionnaire also asked participants to describe their experiences. Many people reported the type of quite dramatic phenomena often associated with ‘genuine’ seances, including being in an unusual psychological state (e.g., ‘Feeling of depersonification and elation when the objects moved’); changes in temperature (e.g., ‘Cold shivers running through my body when I concentrated hard on moving the objects’); an energetic presence (e.g., ‘A strong sense of energy flowing through the circle which increased’), and unusual smells (e.g., ‘A smell of hot plastic, combination of sweet and acrid smell’). Thus, the fake seances caused participants to report many of the experiences described by those attending ‘genuine’ seances, suggesting that such effects are the result of psychological processes (e.g., psychosomatic experiences brought about by participants’ heightened expectations or strong beliefs), rather than being caused by paranormal, psychic or mediumistic mechanisms.

Wiseman et al. sum up: 

For over a century people have attended physical seances and reported witnessing seemingly inexplicable phenomena. Experiments conducted around the turn of the last century revealed that many of these accounts were unreliable. The experiments reported here have shown that modern day witnesses also produce inaccurate testimony of séance phenomena. In addition, these experiments represent the first attempt to systematically examine verbal suggestion within the context of the seance. They have demonstrated that such suggestions have the potential to cause sitters to incorrectly report that stationary objects were moving, and that moving objects were stationary. The studies have also produced strong evidence that within the context of a seance, Believers are significantly more susceptible to verbal suggestion than Disbelievers, but only when the suggestion is consistent with the existence of paranormal phenomena. Both experiments also revealed that during the fake seances many participants reported experiencing the type of unusual phenomena often associated with ‘genuine’ seances, including, for example, sudden changes in temperature, a sense of unusual energy and odd smells. Finally, results also showed that about a fifth of participants believed that the fake seance contained genuine paranormal phenomena, and that a significantly greater percentage of Believers than Disbelievers believed this to be the case. 

Again, I don't want to put too much emphasis on this report because I do have doubts about Wiseman's credibility. It is worth mentioning, though, that the paper lists some prior research efforts that purportedly came to the same conclusions regarding inaccurate reporting of séance phenomena and (separately) the heightened suggestibility of believers in the paranormal. One of these papers dates back to 1887 and was co-authored by famed psychic researcher Richard Hodgson, best known for his work with Leonora Piper. 

Hodgson and Davey (1887) held fake seances for unsuspecting sitters and asked them to write a description of the seance. They reported that many sitters omitted important events, recalled others in an incorrect order and often believed that they had witnessed genuine paranormal phenomena. In 1898, Lehmann (cited in Jahoda, 1969) conducted a similar experiment and again described how participants’ accounts of a fake séance were often wildly inaccurate. Besterman (1932) had sitters attend a mock seance and then answer questions relating to various phenomena that had occurred. Besterman reported that sitters had a tendency to underestimate the number of persons present in the seance room, failed to report major disturbances that took place (e.g., the experimenter leaving the seance room) and experienced the illusory movement of objects....

Haraldsson (1985) found a significant positive correlation between paranormal belief and the Gudjonsson Suggestibility Scale. Likewise, Dafinoiu (1995) reported a significant relationship between participants’ levels of paranormal belief and their scores on a suggestibility questionnaire, with people who believed in the paranormal exhibiting higher suggestibility scores than disbelievers....

Jones & Russell (1980) asked both Believers and Disbelievers to observe a staged demonstration of extra-sensory perception (ESP). In one condition the demonstration was successful (i.e., ESP appeared to occur) whilst in the other it was not. All participants were then asked to recall the demonstration. Believers who saw the unsuccessful demonstration distorted their memories of it and often stated that ESP had occurred. Disbelievers tended to correctly recall the demonstration, even if it appeared to support the existence of ESP.

If we can trust the Wiseman paper's summary of these various reports, it would seem likely that a fair amount of eyewitness testimony from séances in dark rooms is unreliable; that belief in the paranormal renders eyewitnesses more inclined to perceive these phenomena in response to the medium's suggestions; and that emotion and psychology play a large role in how séances are experienced and remembered.

In the Victorian era, when Spiritualism was all the rage, and may even have qualified as a kind of “mania,” these psychological and emotional factors could have been far more pronounced then they are in most people today. Perhaps this social atmosphere helps to explain the extraordinary prevalence of physical mediumistic phenomena in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, compared with their relative absence now.

Having said all this, I need to supply an important addendum. Some of the most convincing investigations of séances were not conducted in total darkness. For example, when Everard Feilding and his colleagues investigated Eusapia Palladino in Naples in 1908, they did so in conditions of dim but (reportedly) adequate light. They also took the precaution of examining the phenomena in detail whenever possible–for instance, crawling under a levitating table to ensure that all four legs were off the floor and that no part of Palladino's body was in contact with the table. These investigators were seasoned professionals who, among them, had exposed and debunked more than 100 physical mediums before encountering Palladino, whom they fully expected to debunk also. They hardly seem to have been carried away by irrational enthusiasm about mediumship, and given the lighting conditions and strenuous efforts to verify the phenomena, I don't think their results can be explained as hallucinations prompted by the power of suggestion (a possibility that the investigators themselves considered).

In short, the research done by Wiseman and his colleagues does seem relevant to a great deal of Victorian table-tipping and related physical mediumship when carried out in pitch darkness by excited amateurs or, in some cases, by overly credulous professionals. But I don't think it can disqualify the best and strongest cases from that era. It may, however, help to whittle down the number of good cases and to explain the extraordinary popularity of séances at that time. It may also explain why physical mediumship is so much rarer nowadays; perhaps people are simply not primed to accept it at face value as they once were.  

Of tulip bulbs and mediums

In the comments thread of my last post, the subject of speculative bubbles came up. Of course we are all too familiar with such bubbles nowadays–the dot-com bubble, the real-estate bubble, the derivatives bubble. But the phenomenon has been well known since at least 1841, when Charles Mackay published his famous book Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.

In his book, Mackay deals with “manias” of all kinds. The book is best known for its discussion of economic manias, such as the famous tulip mania in 17th-century Holland, in which the prices of tulip bulbs were bid up to extraordinary levels before crashing. But Mackay focuses most of his attention on social and intellectual crazes. He devotes a great deal of space to alchemy, and he is fascinated by the dueling epidemic–a bizarre historical episode in which people were inexplicably quick to challenge each other to duels and consequently died by the hundreds.

Another famous social mania (not discussed by Mackay as far as I recall) was the revivalist craze that swept through the United States in the early 19th century. Revivalist preachers would travel around the country, hosting public events in which people were exhorted to confess their sins and be born again. Entire towns would convert to the old-time religion in a veritable orgy of righteousness, banning liquor and gambling and vowing to stay on the strait and narrow ever after. Within a few weeks, they naturally had backslid to their old ways, the preacher having long since moved on to a new community. But while the preacher was there, and for a little while afterward, almost everyone in the town was caught up in a fervid atmosphere of religious extremism.

A more famous historical example, and one that is treated by Mackay, is the notorious witch burnings. Gripped by mass hysteria, whole communities would become fanatically convinced that witches were working mischief among them. The number of so-called witches who died at the hands of these mobs is unknown, but the phenomenon continued for decades, springing up first here, then there, unpredictably, and almost always with fatal results.

In thinking about all this, I couldn't help but recall the history of Spiritualism in America and England. Spiritualism originated just a few years after Mackay's book was published (its origin is usually dated to 1848, the year when the "rappings" of the Fox sisters were heard) and spread like wildfire. Before long, ordinary middle-class people were spending their evenings table-tipping or playing with planchettes. People made assiduous efforts to develop their talents at automatic writing or to become trance mediums. Spiritualist churches sprang up in abundance, and in at least one case, a vocal critic of the movement converted to it after falling into a trance and producing channeled information himself! There were celebrity spiritualists like Arthur Conan Doyle, and there were distinguished scientists who backed at least some of the claims of the movement–people like William Crookes, Oliver Lodge, and Alfred Russel Wallace. Spiritualism even found its way to the White House during the Civil War; Abraham Lincoln's wife, a devotee of the movement, invited mediums to perform séances, some of which her husband attended, though his attitude about the whole thing is unclear. The movement had its ups and downs, but remained vigorous and influential at least until the 1920s, when repeated debunkings by Harry Houdini and enterprising journalists soured the public on the alleged phenomena.

Much of this fits the descriptions of public manias in Mackie's book. You have a social innovation that catches on with extraordinary rapidity and draws in people who, under ordinary circumstances, would have nothing to do with it. Just as nonviolent types somehow got caught up in the mania for dueling, and prudent investors somehow were drawn into the world of tulip bulbs, just as heavy drinkers became teetotalers and loving husbands joined a mob to burn their wives at the stake, so it seems that many otherwise cautious and sensible folks became committed to Spiritualism. Was this due to the high quality of the evidence they were receiving, or was it due to the social atmosphere of the times?

The question is important, I think, because a tremendous amount of the evidence for life after death was gathered during this very period. Even today, anyone with a serious interest in the subject of mediumship has to make reference to famous mediums of roughly a hundred years ago–people like Leonora Piper and Gladys Osborne Leonard. The study of these mediums was more sustained and methodical than any such study before or since, and the results obtained are among the most impressive and often-cited in the field.

The usual skeptical objection to these studies is that they happened so long ago, they can't be taken seriously. My usual reply is that there's no reason to discard evidence simply because it happened to be collected sometime in the past, as long as it was collected by competent researchers following adequate protocols. And I still think that's true, as far as it goes. But what if the researchers' competence and protocols were compromised by a general atmosphere of mania–an atmosphere of irrational excitement and wild enthusiasm, which prompted people to overlook obvious flaws and jump to unjustified conclusions?

Remember that a society (or a segment of society) in the grip of a mania cannot function rationally. The businessman who ordinarily would not think of investing in any venture unless he thoroughly understood its methods, objectives, and prospects may throw all of his prudence out the window when gripped by a mania, and start tossing money at any dot-com stock or condo development in sight. He will invent reasons to excuse his own behavior and justify his own irrationality. No matter how many warning signs flash in front of him, he will ignore them and keep his gaze fixed firmly on the imaginary but irresistible prize on the horizon. He will not come to his senses until the whole investment scheme comes crashing down, and he and all of his like-minded colleagues have suffered huge losses. Then, perhaps, he will look back in bewilderment, shaking his head and wondering how he could have allowed himself to be so woefully deluded.

When we consider the effect that manias can have on even the most intelligent and worldly-wise individuals, we have to ask ourselves if the credentials, competence, and general honesty of the early Spiritualist investigators are as clear-cut as we might like to believe. I have no doubt that most of these people were intelligent, educated, knowledgeable, and well-meaning. But probably so was our deluded businessman. His intelligence and other qualities did not prevent him from being taken to the cleaners, because those qualities were short-circuited by mania. Could a similar short-circuit have been at work in the minds of the investigators whose research forms the bedrock of the scientific exploration of Spiritualism?

At least in some instances, there is reason to answer yes. William Crookes' controversial experiments with the medium Florence Cook are a case in point. When not performing for Crookes, Florence was caught cheating on more than one occasion. For a while, she partnered with another medium, quaintly named Rosina Showers, who turned out to be a complete fraud. It seems unlikely that Florence could have been genuine when she was working hand in glove with a con artist. The materialized entity that supposedly emanated from Florence Cook while she was in a trance sometimes bore a remarkable resemblance to Florence herself, although at other times it did not. The conditions of absolute darkness and the seclusion of the medium in a curtained-off cabinet made fraud a very real possibility. And yet Crookes, a distinguished physicist who was eventually knighted for his work in that field, seems to have been completely convinced of Florence Cook's authenticity. He wrote passionately on the subject, producing a rather feverish essay about his final moments with the dematerializing spirit guide, with whom he shared a secret kiss.

The whole episode is strange on many levels, but it seems less strange if we think of it in the context of the extraordinary popular delusions–the manias–that Charles Mackay writes about. Absent mania, under what circumstances would a normally sober physicist surrender his objectivity so completely? Notice that Crookes did not give up on Florence even after he learned that Rosina was a fraud, though surely he should have grasped that if the one girl was faking, then the other girl–performing at her side–could hardly have been the real deal. But he found some way to rationalize that problem out of existence, just as he rationalized the occasional physical similarity between Florence and the materialized spirit guide as reflecting the mysterious properties of Florence's own ectoplasm.

I'm not saying that all the investigative work done by scientific researchers during the heyday of Spiritualism was of this same low quality. But perhaps a great deal more of it falls into this category than we would like to believe. Perhaps it is a mistake to rely too much on the professional reputations of the investigators involved, or even on their personal reputations for probity and good sense. All these things can vanish like smoke in the grip of mania.

At the very least, it might be worthwhile to revisit the major investigative work undertaken during the Spiritualist years in an attempt to see how the researchers' unconscious biases, assumptions, and hopes, fueled by an atmosphere of credulity and enthusiasm, may have sabotaged their results. Was even a researcher as well respected as Richard Hodgson immune to the siren call of the Spiritualist mania? Perhaps he was. Perhaps not. It is often pointed out that Oliver Lodge, another distinguished physicist and afterlife investigator, developed an interest in the subject even before his son Raymond died in the First World War and allegedly began communicating through mediums. The implication is that Lodge could not have been swayed by emotion in his initial investigations because he had no close personal loss to cope with. But suppose he was swayed by something more general than personal grief. Suppose he was swayed by the turbulent atmosphere of an ongoing social craze that swept up both the educated and uneducated alike.

It's worth thinking about, especially when we consider that much of our data not only about mediumship but also about crisis apparitions, deathbed visions, and hauntings stems from this era. If a great deal of this material is merely the result of an "extraordinary popular delusion," the case for life after death will look very much weaker. 

Turning the tables

In an email, frequent commenter Roger Knights mentioned several areas in which psi has arguably been shown to be of pratical benefit (archaeology, police work, investment, finding oil deposits). Then he added: 

Another way to help prove psi would be to issue Anti-Randi Prizes to skeptics who could match the performance of Joe McMoneagle, who annually (roughly) is videoed by Japanese TV correctly guessing the location of people who've been sent to random spots around NYC. Or who could match the performance of other psychic guessers in different challenges, in venues under the control of a team containing representatives of both sides, plus a couple of neutrals acceptable to both sides.

That's kind of a neat idea, isn't it?

Could a mentalist match the performance of a medium tested by Gary Schwartz or Julie Beischel under tightly controlled conditions? According to Schwartz, mentalists have turned down the opportunity to be tested in his lab, and one of them explicitly said he could not perform his act if restricted by Schwartz's protocols. 

Could a skeptic, relying on general knowledge and lucky guesses, have the same success in guiding archaeological digs as Stephan A. Schwartz has had with his team of psychics? 

The TV show The Mentalist depicts a fake psychic who solves crimes. Could a real-life mentalist be as helpful to a police investigation as psychic Noreen Renier, who has assisted on many cases and has been endorsed by the nation's leading expert in homicide investigation, Vernon Geberth?

The possibilities are endless. This could be a way to turn the tables on skeptics who are always using Randi's challenge (even with all its problems) as their trump card. 

Splinter, meet log

Having been a little mean to the skeptics in my last post, I have something to confess in the sequel: Sometimes I'm one of them. On certain issues I'm as closed-minded as any skeptic, displaying exactly the same psychology and the same set of responses.

This became clear to me recently when, by coincidence, two different people happened to be in touch with me via e-mail, both trying to convince me that Barack Obama's 1961 birth certificate is, or could be, a fake. In both cases I dismissed the idea out of hand, and even when one correspondent sent me numerous links to videos and blog posts and begged me to look at the evidence with an open mind, I complied in only the most halfhearted way.

I did look at about half the videos, but I was more interested in the rebuttal videos displayed on the YouTube sidebar. I found that any seemingly plausible explanation of the alleged anomalies in the birth certificate was acceptable to me, even if the explanation did not address all the issues.

After an hour or so, I felt I'd given the issue more than a fair shake. In fact, I felt rather proud of myself for being so "open-minded."

Or at least I did, until the same correspondent pointed out that it would take far longer than an hour to properly analyze, or even understand, these complicated technical claims and counterclaims. He added, "I get the feeling you're not really too interested in this," which was true. I just don't think claims of a conspiracy involving Obama's birth certificate are credible, so I'm not interested in spending more than a token amount of time and energy learning about them, and I'm perfectly content to accept the first more-or-less satisfactory evidence that makes the whole issue go away.

And I can't even blame myself for feeling this way, because life is short, I have higher priorities, and I really do believe it's a waste of time and effort to look into every fringe conspiracy scenario.

But ... isn't this exactly what skeptics of the paranormal say to justify their own lack of interest in the details of paranormal cases?

Skeptics find the idea of the paranormal so unlikely that they don't want to waste much time on it. In fact, not only does it strike them as unlikely, but it's also personally distasteful to them, just as conspiracy theories are to me.

Like me, skeptics are not interested in delving deeply into the evidence because they've already concluded that nothing valuable will be obtained.

Like me, they seize on the first apparently acceptable "conventional" explanation for any anomalous findings, even if the explanation doesn't cover all the facts or has been questioned by knowledgeable people.

Like me, they regard the whole controversy as silly, childish, and irrational.

I'm not trying to beat myself up about this. I still think Obama's birth certificate is genuine, and I still think conspiracy theories are mostly stupid. (The main reason I find them stupid is that they are not disprovable; any evidence that casts doubt on the conspiracy is reinterpreted by the conspiracy theorists as part of the cover-up.) But I can't say, in all honesty, that there is some unbridgeable gulf between me and the paranormal skeptics, since I've already demonstrated that I'm perfectly capable of committing all the same errors and relying on all the same psychological defense mechanisms that I've ascribed (I think correctly) to them.

The only real difference between us lies in what we choose to take seriously, and what we choose to shrug off. Everybody has a different "boggle threshold," and what is plausible or at least possible to one person may seem absurd and unthinkable to someone else.

In fact, one of my correspondents unwittingly highlighted this very point. In an effort to show me how sensible and reasonable he is, he wrote: "You know me. I don't believe in mind reading ... I don't believe in ghosts ..."

Possibly not the ideal tack for him to take!

:-)

Too uncool for school

Via Facebook, Patrick Casanova directs my attention to this brief but excellent article by The Daily Grail's Greg Taylor, in which he summarizes the many factual errors in Martin Gardner's well-known article about Leonora Piper.

It's clear that Gardner knew little about the case and, either through ignorance or design, misreported many key details. Yet he continues to be cited as an expert whose debunking of Piper is definitive. 

Sometimes I think a major part of skepticism's appeal is that it enables the skeptic to take the opinions of so-called experts like Gardner at face value, without having to do any original research or original thinking, which would entail the risk of possibly having to differ with these same experts.

In other words, I think in many cases skepticism appeals to people who are reluctant to think for themselves, and who ground their self-image in the borrowed authority of relatively high-status figures like Gardner, Carl Sagan, and James Randi. By simply latching on to the stated opinions of these people and parroting them, the skeptic can cultivate the illusion that he is one of them, or at least is in their orbit.  

For a long time I wondered why so many skeptics would uncritically accept dubious theories like anthropogenic global warming. Eventually I came to realize that they accept these theories, even when the evidence is equivocal at best, because the theories are promulgated by experts -- and that the real motivation behind much of skepticism is to be accepted as one of the "in" crowd.  If one cannot be an expert oneself, the next best thing is to be a cheerleader for the experts and gain some measure of credibility, authority, and status via osmosis.     

This may account for the peculiar fan-boy quality that many skeptics exhibit toward figures like Randi, Sagan, and Gardner. As Greg Taylor notes, a contingent of these skeptics patrols the pages of Wikipedia to edit out any information that might cast their idols in a less than favorable light. They also descend on any pro-paranormal book listed on Amazon.com to inundate it with one-star reviews, repeating the standard skeptical talking points, even when it's obvious they have never looked at the book in question. And they gather at conventions, like Randi's "Amaz!ng Meetings," apparently for the sole purpose of congratulating each other on how smart they are. 

It also accounts, I think, for the blustery condescension and snarkiness that characterize too much skeptical output. Often it seems that the principal objective of the skeptic is to establish that he is cleverer than his adversaries, and his principal tactic is to assume an air of bored, wryly amused detachment, as if to say, "People as smart and knowledgeable as I can scarcely be bothered with all this nonsense." It's a pose, and not an especially convincing one. 

To me, the whole thing smells a little too much of high school. You know how in high school, there's the "in" crowd, and then there are the insecure poseurs who aren't cool enough for that crowd but who desperately attempt to score points as hangers-on? 

True skepticism requires the opposite approach -- a willingness to think for oneself and to disregard the experts if their expertise is found lacking. There are some skeptics who fit this description. Milbourne Christopher and Marcello Truzzi (both deceased) are two examples. There are others, naturally. 

But they do appear to be in the minority.

Book review: Debating Psychic Experience

Not long ago, the publisher of the new book Debating Psychic Experience kindly sent me a review copy. I found the book very interesting, but also so densely packed with arguments and counter-arguments that a brief review would not do it justice. For that reason, in this post I'm largely focusing on just one portion of the book: a lively and sometimes acrimonious exchange of views between Ray Hyman and Chris Carter. Even though I've narrowed the scope of this review, I still can't cover all the points made by each of these writers. What follows are only some of the highlights.

First, an overview. Debating Psychic Experience, published in 2010, is is a serious give-and-take between skeptics and parapsychologists (or those sympathetic to parapsychology) aimed at an academic audience. It is edited by Stanley Krippner and Harris L. Friedman. The contributors are Dean Radin, James E. Alcock, Ray Hyman, Christopher C. French, Michael Shermer, Chris Carter, Richard S. Wiseman, Stephan A. Schwartz, Damien Broderick, and Elizabeth Loftus. 

Ray Hyman contributed two essays to the book. The second one, titled "What's Wrong with Materialism?", is his rebuttal of Chris Carter's earlier chapter "Persistent Denial: A Century of Denying the Evidence" -- surely a title calculated to raise the hackles of any committed skeptic! 

Hyman's hackles are clearly up. He writes, 

Unfortunately, I have to conclude that Carter's chapter comes close to consisting of an ad hominem attack against critics of parapsychology. His emphasis is on the alleged worldview that compels the critics to go to any lengths -- including deliberate suppression of data. Indeed, there are, and there have been, vocal skeptics who have behaved in ways that might justify some of Carter's concerns. On the other hand it is a logical fallacy to dismiss a person's criticisms on the basis of their alleged motivations and mindsets. Worse, attributing motivations and worldviews to critics on the basis of flimsy gossip makes for misleading and irrelevant arguments.

He goes on to characterize Carter's essay as a "diatribe," and makes it clear that he feels personally maligned by it. 

Here I think Hyman, in his prickly defensiveness, simply misreads the entire thrust of Carter's argument. Carter is not saying that the skeptics of psi are wrong because they are materialists. He is saying that skeptics of psi are wrong because they have not come to grips with the evidence. Having made this point, he goes on (as a related, but separate, issue) to ponder the question of why intelligent, knowledgeable people would be resistant to the evidence. His hypothesis is that they find the evidence upsetting because it threatens their deeply held beliefs, which can be labeled "materialism."

And indeed, the publicly stated attitudes of some prominent skeptics, notably those associated with CSI (fomerly CSICOP), seem to substantiate this reading of the facts. CSI has been explicit in saying that any widespread acceptance of psi by the scientific community would undermine the foundations of science and threaten civilization with a descent into a new dark ages. In any case, Carter is not launching a crude ad hominem attack, as Hyman believes; he is merely trying to understand the motivations of people whose continuing obstinacy in regard to a growing body of evidence is, as Yul Brynner would say, "a puzzlement." 

Hyman also seems to misinterpret what Carter means by materialism. It is clear from the context that Carter is referring to the Newtonian worldview of a clockwork universe. It is this paradigm that, he says, has been exploded by developments in quantum physics and other fields. He is certainly correct; the Newtonian clockwork universe is passé. Yet, in objecting to the idea of psi, some critics often tacitly assume that the Newtonian world-picture remains intact. When they say that psi is impossible in terms of the laws of physics, they must mean Newtonian physics; they cannot mean quantum physics, since, as Carter points out, prominent quantum physicists have endorsed the possibility or even the reality of psi.

When Hyman argues for methodological naturalism (a term he does not use, but which is clearly meant), he is on reasonably firm ground; but when he conflates methodological naturalism with Newtonian physics, he has overreached. The two are by no means identical. Methodological naturalism is entirely consistent with quantum physics, the most thoroughly tested and empirically validated theory in the history of science. And when Hyman suggests that the only alternative to materialism is some "brand of supernaturalism," he is again overreaching; it is possible to reject Newtonianism without embracing the supernatural. Psi need not be supernatural, and few contemporary parapsychologists would say that it is. Psi is not consistent with Newtonian physics, but it may well be consistent with quantum physics; or to put it another way, psi may not be consistent with materialism, narrowly defined, but it may be consistent with naturalism, broadly defined.

In general, Hyman seems to adopt the weakest and most uncharitable reading of Carter's positions, possibly so he can mount a straw-man argument in response, or possibly because he simply cannot read criticism of his own position in a fair-minded way. Indeed, what struck me the most about Hyman's response to Carter's essay was how personally he took Carter's remarks. Even if he did feel personally slighted, it might have been a better debating strategy to conceal this reaction, which only makes him look petty and vain.

Perhaps the major point of contention between the two involves Hyman's work for a government committee that produced an official statement -- the National Research Council Report -- essentially denying any and all evidence for psi. The chairman of the committee, John Swets, told the press, "Perhaps our strongest conclusions are in the area of parapsychology. The committee finds no scientific justification from research conducted over a period of one hundred thirty years for the existence of parapsychological phenomena." Hyman chaired the subcommittee on parapsychology, and selected James Alcock to provide a second opinion. Both Hyman and Alcock were members of CSICOP at the time and were known for their criticisms of parapsychology. Incidentally, Alcock contributed two skeptical essays to Debating Psychic Experience, one of which is rather tellingly titled "Attributions about Impossible Things." 

With both Hyman and Alcock apparently convinced in advance that psi phenomena are "impossible things," the conclusion of the report was inevitable. Carter, in presenting the whole thing as little better than a put-up job, relies heavily on US Army Colonel John Alexander, who investigated many of these subjects himself as part of his military duties. In 1989 Alexander wrote: 

... the only person assigned to the committee who had had any previous familiarity with the parapsychological research literature was Ray Hyman -- who was known from the outset to have his mind already made up.... Thus, I questioned from the beginning the issues of "bias" and "objectivity" as they related to the committee's constitution. For it seems clear that [Dr. George] Lawrence, and then Hyman and James Alcock ... proceeded on an intentional path to discredit the work in parapsychology.... Throughout the parapsychology section of the EHP Report, the committee referred only to those published articles that supported its position and ignored material that did not. 

Clearly stung by Carter's attack on the committee's work, Hyman mounts a lengthy defense. He decries Carter's version of events as an "urban legend" and insists that the committee behaved responsibly. Some of his points are well taken, but on the whole Hyman makes too many questionable assertions to be really persuasive. For instance, he claims he selected Alcock simply because Alcock was well-versed in the subject matter, and for no ulterior motive. But clearly this is disingenuous; there were other people equally well-versed in these controversies who could have brought a more neutral or disinterested perspective to the investigation than Alcock, who has been vociferously and intransigently hostile to psi research for decades. Hyman obviously chose Alcock, at least in part, because he knew that Alcock would agree with his own preconceived conclusions.

Hyman also says he allowed parapsychologists to review his and Alcock's findings. This, he implies, ought to clear him of any charge of bias. But letting parapsychologists comment on the report after it was already finalized amounts to very little. As far as I know, no parapsychologists' comments were included in the official report. The only dissenting view that ever saw daylight belonged to Robert Rosenthal -- a psychologist, not a parapsychologist, who found himself impressed with the psi data. Carter observes that committee chairman John Swets actually took the extraordinary step of attempting to suppress Rosenthal's contribution to the report. Despite going into tedious detail on other aspects of the committee's work, Hyman does not even comment on this point. 

The exchange about the NRC Report dominates the debate between Carter and Hyman, but there are other issues, as well. In particular, Hyman has many criticisms of the ganzfeld and autoganzfeld experiments, which are generally viewed as the strongest laboratory evidence for psi. He claims that the "autoganzfeld experiments failed to replicate the original ganzfeld data base. In the original data base the average effect size was derived from studies that all used static targets. The autoganzfeld experiments used both static and dynamic (action video clips) targets. Only the dynamic targets produced a significant effect. The results on the static targets were consistent with chance and differed significantly from the results on the static targets in the original data base."

Carter responds that this version of events is nearly the opposite of the truth. He writes,

The original ganzfeld experiments used quasi-dynamic targets (ViewMaster "slide" reels) in addition to completely static targets. Studies using the ViewMaster reels produced significantly higher hit rates than did studies using single-image targets (50% versus 34%). Meta-analysis of the original data led to the prediction that dynamic targets would show greater results than static targets. This prediction was in fact strongly corroborated.

In other words, the fact that psi was shown to be more effective in perceiving dynamic targets had been predicted on the basis of the original studies, and the prediction was vindicated by the subsequent, more stringent studies. 

Hyman goes on to complain that some experimenters were not able to replicate the ganzfeld results. On page 159 Carter includes a table listing all autoganzfeld experiments conducted from 1991 to 2003. The initial autoganzfeld experiments were carried out at Princeton; later experiments took place in North Carolina, the Netherlands, Scotland, and Sweden -- in short, at laboratory facilities around the world. These subsequent trials produced reasonably consistent hit rates, with outlying results of 27% (close to chance) in one study and 47% in another (involving artistically gifted subjects), but with the remaining six results clustered around 34%. In other words, the Princeton autoganzfeld results were not a fluke; they were repeatedly duplicated by independent researchers at other labs. 

Perhaps showing a touch of desperation, Hyman further argues that there has been a "decline effect" in the autoganzfeld studies. This often-repeated claim has been exploded as a canard so many times, it's amazing to see it still appear in print. The only "decline" that occurred was in new exploratory studies that tested different, previously unanalyzed aspects of psi. For instance, there was an attempt to test for auditory psi by seeing if subjects could psychically perceive musical passages; results were no better than chance. This is entirely different from testing for psychic perception of visual images, and conflating the two sets of data only serves to confuse the issue.

Carter concludes bluntly, "It seems clear that Hyman and the other counteradvocates have lost the ganzfeld debate." 

Naturally I approach this subject with a strong bias in favor of psi -- a bias that I like to think is supported by my extensive reading on the subject. From my (hardly neutral) perspective, Carter comes across as serious, knowledgeable, and persuasive, while Hyman comes across as thin-skinned, overly emotional, and less than reliable in his presentation of the facts. Will the average reader come away with this impression? I'm not sure. Though the book is intended to be a balanced presentation of both sides of the issue, the skeptics dominate in terms of page count. I count ten essays critical of parapsychology versus five essays sympathetic to parapsychology (with three more-or-less neutral essays contributed by Damien Broderick and the editors). 

Some of the skeptics do a pretty good job of concealing what I believe to be their agenda. Richard Wiseman, in his essay "Heads I Win, Tails You Lose," claims that the preceding "collection of essays makes me very concerned." Shedding crocodile tears, he declares he is worried "because after over one hundred years of parapsychological research there exists no real consensus on the most fundamental question facing the field -- does psi exist? Worse still, time is running out... Indeed, I believe that if parapsychology continues on its current trajectory, university-based psi research has only another few years to run." Those who are familiar with Wiseman's history of questionable conduct and dubious assertions will take his claims with more than a pinch of salt, but the uninformed reader just may be taken in.

Meanwhile, some of the pro-psi arguments are problematic in their own right. In his essay "The Antique Roadshow," Stephan A. Schwartz, who has done yeoman's work in applying psi to archaeology, tries to discredit the critics of psi by comparing them to other "denier" movements, namely creationism and "climate change deniers." As something of a climate change denier myself, I'm not overly impressed with this approach. It seems to me that the highly pejorative term "denier" ought to be reserved for people who are denying facts that are almost universally uncontroversial among educated people, such as the Holocaust or the moon landings. Applying this term to anthropogenic global warming or to parapsychology strikes me as premature and unfair. (As far as creationism is concerned, I have no sympathy for young-earth creationism, but I do think there may be merit to the arguments of Intelligent Design theorists like William Dembski, who apply information theory to evolution. Psi itself may possibly play a role in evolution.) 

Although I wish the pro-parapsychology side had been given equal space with the skeptics, I still found Debating Psychic Experience to be a worthwhile , illuminating -- and often surprisingly entertaining -- read. Perhaps the best thing about the book is that it is clearly aimed at an academic audience, incidentally giving the lie to Wiseman's lament that university-based parapsychology is on the verge of extinction. While the book could have been bolder, I applaud the effort to bring a serious debate about psi into the classroom. I hope it finds the intelligent and open-minded audience it deserves.

Mirabile dictu!

Roger Knights sent me this quote from G.K. Chesterton's 1908 book Orthodoxy (full text here and here). There's a lot to like in it, though I have one or two caveats.

Here it is:

But the materialist is not allowed to admit into his spotless machine the slightest speck of spiritualism or miracle. 

Somehow or other an extraordinary idea has arisen that the disbelievers in miracles consider them coldly and fairly, while believers in miracles accept them only in connection with some dogma. The fact is quite the other way. The believers in miracles accept them rightly or wrongly because they have evidence for them. The disbelievers in miracles deny them rightly or wrongly because they have a doctrine against them.

 

The question of whether miracles ever occur is a question of common sense and of ordinary historical imagination, not of any final physical experiment. One may here surely dismiss that quite brainless piece of pedantry which talks about the need for scientific conditions in connection with alleged spiritual phenomena. If we are asking whether a dead soul can communicate with a living, it is ludicrous to insist that it shall be under conditions in which no two living souls in their senses would seriously communicate with each other. The fact that ghosts prefer darkness no more disproves the existence of ghosts than the fact that lovers prefer darkness disproves the existence of love.

 

It is just as unscientific as it is unphilosophical to be surprised that in an unsympathetic atmosphere certain extraordinary sympathies do not arise. It is as if I said that I could not tell if there was a fog because the air was not clear enough, or as if I insisted on perfect sunlight in order to see a solar eclipse.

 

I conclude that miracles do happen. I am forced to it by a conspiracy of facts the fact that the men who encounter elves or angels are not the mystics and the morbid dreamers, but fishermen, farmers, and all men at once coarse and cautious; the fact that we all know men who testify to spiritualistic incidents, but are not spiritualists; the fact that science itself admits such things more and more every day

 

The sceptic always takes one of the two positions: either an ordinary man need not be believed or an extraordinary event must not be believed. For I hope we may dismiss the argument against wonders attempted in the mere recapitulation of frauds of swindling mediums or trick miracles. That is not an argument at all, good or bad. A false ghost disproves the reality of ghosts exactly as much as a forged banknote disproves the existence of the Bank of England--if anything it proves its existence. 

Caveats: 

It's not always the case that "the disbelievers in miracles deny them ... because they have a doctrine against them." Sometimes they deny miracles because they have found actual evidence of fraud, or have reasonable grounds for suspecting fraud. For instance, James Randi famously exposed the "miracles" of faith healer Peter Popoff as fraudulent by recording secret radio communications sent to him by his wife. 

And while it's true that "the believers in miracles accept them ... because they have evidence for them," it's also true that the believers have a doctrine that makes them more inclined to accept evidence that others might reject or doubt.

Overall, however, I'm pleasantly surprised that Chesterton was so open to the phenomena of spiritualism. In this he differs from C.S. Lewis, another famed Christian apologeticist, who dismissed spiritualism as mostly empty blather. 

===

P.S. Late in life, Lewis may have changed his mind a bit. Look at Dave Armstrong's first comment on this page for an excerpt from Lewis's A Grief Observed, in which Lewis recounts a spectral visitation by his late wife. Two reported ADCs from Lewis himself are also mentioned.