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Reflections on being a parapsychologist
Journal of Parapsychology, The, Fall, 2003 by Carlos S. Alvarado
In addition, as Rex Stanford (2003) has suggested, there is a need for research that goes beyond relationships between two variables. The great bulk of out experimental psychological studies have tried to relate ESP to belief in its occurrence, as well as to introversion-extroversion, altered states of consciousness, creativity, experimenter effects, and other variables. But there is much to do to understand why, for example, an altered state may induce ESP. It may be argued that an altered state affects ESP by producing psychophysiological changes, nonlinear thinking, or changes in a person's belief systems, or by reducing ownership resistance (Alvarado, 2000). Furthermore, one or more of the variables probably interacts with a variety of other mediating and moderating variables (Stanford, 2003).
Another important research-related issue is that of wasted opportunities. It is unfortunate to see that most recent free-response ESP researchers have done nothing with the rich imagery of participant's mentation other than use it for defining hits and misses statistically. While explorations of this sort have been conducted by Deborah Delanoy (1989), and more recently by James Carpenter (1995) and Adrian Parker (Parker, Persson & Haller, 2000), they are exceptions. (8) Almost all of our recent free-response ESP work has not been conducted with these interests in mind. In other words, as parapsychologists we limit what we can learn by the way we analyze our data. (9)
Similarly, other research areas are also affected by what we chose to emphasize in our research. Most of the questionnaire research of spontaneous experiences is generally limited to the experience's prevalence or frequency as the unit of analysis (e.g., Irwin, 1994). This may project a simplistic view of the phenomena because we can easily forget the different features of the experiences and ignore possible interactions between those features (Alvarado, 1996a, 1997).
CONCLUDING REMARKS
While the topics in this address may look somewhat disconnected, all of them touch on a central issue. I am referring to aspects of our identity as parapsychologists: who we are and what we do. Reflections on who we are and what our common problems are go a long way towards revitalizing and empowering us, especially in the light of the ever-present hostility and indifference of mainstream science. Issues such as what types of persons become involved in the field, how effective our training and education is, our feelings, our motivations, our conceptual approaches to phenomena, and the strategies by which we seek to legitimize our field, should always be kept in mind as we chart our future, especially as we enter this new millennium. Awareness of these issues allows us to consider the resources we have to go forward.
There is no doubt that, regardless of how few we are, we can claim to have contributed to knowledge even if our findings are not completely accepted by science at large. I have argued that our efforts as parapsychologists have contributed to: keep open the range of our potential as human beings, our understanding of the prevalence and features of a variety of experiences, the development of ideas in psychology, the fight against superstition and the evaluation of popular claims, the development of statistical techniques, and the study of varied forms of deceptive behaviors.
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