Understanding the Factors at Play in the Sender-Receiver Dynamic During the Telepathy Ganzfeld

Abstract

Objective. To use meta-analysis to explore five previously uninvestigated factors related to the sender-receiver dynamic in the telepathy ganzfeld. The five factors of interest are: a) did the receiver see the sender’s room prior to the session?; b) could the sender hear the receiver during the mentation period?; c) could the sender hear the receiver during the judging period?; d) was the sender explicitly told to be silent?; and e) did the experimenter assist in the review section of the session? Method: Telepathy ganzfeld studies conducted post Joint Communiqué, with one session per day and the receivers rating the targets, were chosen. Two mixed-effects models were fit: 1) using the study hit rates as the binomial mean; and 2) using the study hit rates as a proportion. Both models have the five factors as binary moderators. Results: Both the binomial mean and proportion models suggest a significant effect of the moderators overall and two factors individually: 1) the sender being able to hear the receiver during the mentation period; and 2) a review period after the mentation period. Permutation tests for both models also show significant effects of the moderators and the two factors. Conclusion: The sender being able to hear the receiver’s mentation appears to increase overall study success, while the review period decreases overall study success

Letter to the Editor

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To the Editor, I read with great interest the article "Understanding the factors at play in the sender-receiver dynamic during telepathy ganzfeld: A meta-analysis" (Pooley et al, 2023) in the latest issue of the Journal of Anomalous Experience and Cognition in which the authors disregarded Parra´s ganzfeld studies, remarking that: "serious fraudulent actions and widespread plagiarism conducted by Alejandro Parra […] we deemed it best to remove all the Parra studies from the dataset (a total of 5 data points). I am in agreement to discard studies containing plagiarism, however these ganzfeld studies are not affected by plagiarism or experimental fraud.

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