Telepathy

Telepathy (from the Greek τηλε, tele, "distant"; and πάθεια, patheia, "feeling") is the claimed ability of humans and other creatures to communicate information from one mind to another, without the use of extra tools such as speech or body language. Considered a form of extra-sensory perception or anomalous cognition, telepathy is often connected to various paranormal phenomena such as precognition, clairvoyance and empathy.

While there have been numerous scientific experiments into telepathy over the years, no positive result has ever resisted scrutiny. Positive results have always been demonstrated to be the result of flawed methodology, statistically erroneous conclusions, or could simply not be replicated by independent researchers.

The majority of the scientific community believes that claims of phenomena associated with telepathy constitute pseudoscience.

Early investigations

Western scientific investigation of telepathy is generally recognized as having begun with the initial program or research of the Society for Psychical Research. The apex of their early investigations was the report published in 1886 as the two-volume work Phantasms of the Living. It was with this work that the term "telepathy" was introduced, replacing the earlier term "thought transference". Although much of the initial investigations consisted largely of gathering anecdotal accounts with follow-up investigations, they also conducted experiments with some of those who claimed telepathic abilities. However, their experimental protocols were not very strict by today's standards.

In 1917, psychologist John E. Coover from Stanford University conducted a series of telepathy tests involving transmitting/guessing playing cards. His participants were able to guess the identity of cards with overall odds against chance of 160 to 1; however, Coover did not consider the results to be significant enough to report this as a positive result.

The best-known early telepathy experiments were those of J. B. Rhine and his associates at Duke University, beginning in the 1927 using the distinctive ESP Cards of Karl Zener (see also Zener Cards). These involved more rigorous and systematic experimental protocols than those from the 19th century, used what were assumed to be 'average' participants rather than those who claimed exceptional ability, and used new developments in the field of statistics to evaluate results. Results of these and other experiments were published by Rhine in his popular book Extra Sensory Perception, which popularized the term "ESP".

Another influential book about telepathy in its day was Mental Radio, published in 1930 by the Pulitzer prize-winning author Upton Sinclair (with foreword by Albert Einstein). In it Sinclair describes the apparent ability of his wife at times to reproduce sketches made by himself and others, even when separated by several miles, in apparently informal experiments that are reminiscent of some of those to be used by remote viewing researchers in later times. They note in their book that the results could also be explained by more general clairvoyance, and they did some experiments whose results suggested that in fact no sender was necessary, and some drawings could be reproduced precognitively.

By the 1960s, many parapsychologists had become dissatisfied with the forced-choice experiments of J. B. Rhine, partly because of boredom on the part of test participants after many repetitions of monotonous card-guessing, and partly because of the observed "decline effect" where the accuracy of card guessing would decrease over time for a given participant, which some parapsychologists attributed to this boredom.

Some parapsychologists turned to free response experimental formats where the target was not limited to a small finite predetermined set of responses (e.g., Zener cards), but rather could be any sort of picture, drawing, photograph, movie clip, piece of music etc.

As a result of surveys of spontaneous psi experiences which reported that more than half of these occurred in the dreaming state, researchers Montaque Ullman and Stanley Krippner at the Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, New York, undertook a series of experiments to test for telepathy in the dream state. A "receiver" participant in a soundproof, electronically shielded room would be monitored while sleeping for EEG patterns and rapid eye movements (REMs) indicating dream state. A "sender" in another room would then attempt to send an image, randomly selected from a pool of images, to the receiver by focusing on the image during the detected dream states. Near the end of each REM period, the receiver would be awakened and asked to describe their dream during that period. The researchers claim that the data gathered suggest that sometimes the sent image was incorporated in some way into the content of the receiver's dreams.

Notable experiments

The following is a list of some notable experiments done on telepathy in modern history. Many experiments on telepathy fail to achieve notoriety because of inconclusive results. That is, they fail to confirm the hypothesis that telepathy exists.

Zener Card experiments

Dates run: 1930's

Experimental philosophy: A Zener Card deck is created, which consists of five cards each of five different symbols. The deck is shuffled, and the possible psychic is asked to guess the identity of each card as it is drawn and viewed by a sender. In this experiment, telepathy is assumed to be weak, and only expected to give a small deviation towards correct answers.

Experimental design: J. B. Rhine, the experimenter, would sit across a table from the subject. He would shuffle the Zener Card deck, and draw cards one at a time. For each card, he would look at it and ask the psychic to guess its identity by reading his mind. A hit rate of more than 20% was taken as evidence of telepathy. Additionally, Rhine claimed that hit rates significantly below 20% were also evidence of telepathy. These were supposedly caused by a subject who didn't like him guessing incorrectly on purpose in order to spite him.

Results: Rhine claimed to have found many subjects who performed significantly above chance, and used this as evidence for telepathy. He also noted some subjects who performed significantly below chance, and this was also used as evidence for telepathy. He noted, however, that this experiment couldn't adequately distinguish telepathy from clairvoyance.

Criticism: The criticism of these results was very focused, and claimed simply that Soal had fudged his data in order to increase the hit rate. The following is evidence used to back up this claim:
*Soal claimed to have developed his lists of target numbers randomly, but no one was ever allowed to see how he did it.
*In one sitting, the sender accused Soal of changing 1's to 4's and 5's on the target sheet.
*The target lists used by Soal were later matched by computer with strings of digits found in log tables, except the target lists often had a 4 or 5 where the log tables had a 1.^{[citation needed]}¦¦}}

Notes:
*Due to the strength of the evidence for fraud in this experiment, it is generally considered to be the case today that Soal did indeed alter his data.
*This experiment was offered by Alan Turing when questioned on why he believed in telepathy, saying that this had proved it. He was apparently unaware of the significant evidence of fraud in the experiment.

Randi Challenge attempts

(Main article: Randi challenge)

Dates run: 1964 to present

Experimental Philosophy: The challenge has offered a $1,000,000 prize to any applicant who can empirically prove paranormal abilities. The belief is that if these do exist in some people, they will come forward, prove it, and claim the money. Note that the challenge allows for a large variety of paranormal ability beyond telepathy to be claimed.

Experimental Design: Each individual claim generally has a different experiment designed for it, which is agreed upon by both the applicant and the James Randi Educational Foundation as being an appropriate test. A full list of applicants and the experiments designed for them can be found here.

Results: To date, no applicant has made it past the preliminary testing of the challenge.

Criticism: As the JREF has a vested monetary interest in not paying out the million dollars, many critics claim they may be unfair in their judgments. However, the JREF points out that the money currently exists in the form of bonds from Goldman Sachs and is specifically held for the challenge. It is thus not accessible to them or anyone else, so they would be no worse off financially if the money were payed out.

The psi assumption - The assumption that any statistical deviation from chance is evidence for telepathy is highly controversial, and often compared to the God of the gaps argument. Strictly speaking, a deviation from chance is only evidence that either this was a rare, statistically unlikely occurrence that happened by chance, or something was causing a deviation from chance. Flaws in the experimental design are a common cause of this, and so the assumption that it must be telepathy is fallacious. This does not rule out, however, that it could be telepathy.{{cite web