Harry's recent disclosure of apparent mediumship type messaging from his late Mum reminded me that I had never mentioned a study recently published in the cheerily named "Omega - Journal of Death and Dying" which tried some "triple blinding" testing of non-professional mediums. (The idea is to try to exclude the mediums source of information as being the sitter, either by direct clues from them, or from the theoretical possibility of mind reading.)
You can read the whole paper here. This is the abstract:
The accuracy of information obtained by 28 self-claimant mediums related to 100 readings obtained with a triple level of blinding was examined across three indices: percentage of correct reading identified by the sitters, global score of readings and percentage of difference between correct and incorrect information.All three indices showed statistical differences of the intended versus the control readings: correct identification 65%; global score: intended readings, mean = 2.4, SD = 1.5; control readings, mean = 1.7, SD = 1.2; percentage difference between correct and incorrect information: intended readings, mean = −7.9%, SD = 38.7%; control readings, mean = −27.3%, SD = 38%.Our results using a very large sample, confirm previous results, supporting the hypothesis that self-claimant mediums are able to retrieve correct information about deceased people without knowing and interacting with the sitters having access with only to the deceased persons’ first name.
Trying to understand how it was done is much harder than it should be, however. If I have it right, the the "sitter" does not directly communicate with the medium, who is asked by a researcher to give two readings - one for a deceased person (identified only by a first name) and one "control" reading. The researcher dealing with the medium doesn't know anything about the deceased person (or the sitter, I think). The sitter is later provided the two sets of information given at the reading (as categorised by the researcher) and rates their accuracy.
As indicated in the abstract, the result was that 65% of the time the sitter correctly identified the "intended" reading from the control.
But the thing that I don't quite understand is how the "control" reading works:
The mediums were contacted for the consultation by research assistant A (raA) who acted as proxy-sitter. On the day of the consultation, raA contacted the medium via either Skype or WhatsApp and gave her only the deceased’s first name (without the surname) as sent by raB. Italian first names did not convey any information about age and ethnicity.
The medium was required to provide oral information relative to the deceased, related to physical description of the person during life, any other information pertinent to the deceased’s identification by the sitter, and anything the deceased wished to communicate to the sitter. At the conclusion of the reading, raA electronically recorded each detail into a column, excluding generic information, for example “I love you” or “Don’t worry about me”, “I’m well”, etc., and sent them to raB.
In a session, each medium was always asked to contribute two readings of pairs of deceased individuals of the same gender, male or female as the only common characteristic.
So, I guess, the proxy sitter says "give me some identifying information for [real deceased] Jack" and then "can you give me another reading for another deceased male"? But do they ask for exactly the same identifying type of information, or is there something different about what they ask for from a the "control" reading. Because that would seem to me to be one way in which you could get a difference between control readings and the one directed to a named person.
Or does the way they operate hide which reading is the control? I mean, it could easily, if they just asked for a reading for (real deceased) Jack, and a reading for (not real) James.
If I knew exactly how it was done, there is (shall we saw) at least the potential to be impressed - it does seem, as a gut reaction, that correct identification of the "intended" reading 65% of the time is pretty high above random guessing.
But I would really like some psychic skeptic to be observing the whole show before being satisfied there isn't some ready explanation.
1 comment:
There are numerous studies and meta-analyses demonstrating above chance results in psychic studies. I've heard accounts from people who have been surprised at how accurate the psychic was.
Don't know Steve but it is worth noting that psychic studies were among the first to demand more rigorous controls, something psychology generally was very slow to adopt.
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