Should Ganzfeld Research Continue To Be Crucial In The Search For A Replicable Psi Effect? Part I. Discussion Paper And Introductionto An Electronic-Mail Discussion

The debate format had some unusual features intended to foster productive discussion. Participants were informed that there would be a strict policy of courtesy among discussants. In addition, so that arguments would be assessed on their merit rather than on their author's status, each author's identification and e-mail address were removed by a computer program en route to the mailbase and each message was only identified by a number. Authors could, however, reveal their identities in any particular message if this was necessary to make it clear that they spoke with authority on a question of fact (for example, in discussing unpublished data from their own research). Otherwise, participants were asked to help conceal their identities by wording messages in ways that would not reveal who they were. Participants were informed that the identity of each message's author would be announced after the discussion had closed and would be published with the debate transcript.

In order to ensure compliance with the rules of the discussion, a moderator, Professor Hoyt Edge, screened each message for anonymity and courtesy, with a remit to negotiate if necessary an acceptable wording before posting the message on to the other participants. Participants were informed that I would have no involvement in the moderating process, again in the interests of neutrality.

All members of the discussion group received an optional questionnaire before and after the discussion asking their opinions on the main issues, and a post-discussion questionnaire concerning their satisfaction with the organizational features of the debate. The questionnaire data are presented in Appendix C.

The edited debate material follows in Part II. Each message in the transcript is numbered, with its author listed in an appendix so that readers may, if they wish, have the same experience as the discussants of reading the material without knowing who wrote it, allowing themselves only to be swayed by the force of argument and evidence.

The writing of this paper and organization of the debate were generously supported by the Fundac[tilde{a}]o Bial and the Society for Psychical Research. I am grateful to Hoyt Edge for moderating the debate. Gertrude Schmeidler for editing the debate material, and Paul Stevens for writing the anonymizing software and acting as systems manager for the discussion, I am indebted to the researchers who were kind enough to observe or participate in the debate and to Bob Morris for comments on an earlier draft of the discussion paper.

(1.) It was not possible to calculate outcomes for three of the studies (see footnotes to Table Al) but given that one of these studies (Parker & Westerlund. 1998. Serial Ganzfeld) is clearly slightly below chance and the remaining two studies are very small with only 12 trials each, it is unlikely that their results would increase the cumulated outcome of the database by a meaningful amount.