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Exploring the limits of science and beyond: research strategy and status
Journal of Parapsychology, The, March, 1994 by J.E. Kennedy
The possible sources and mechanisms for psi effects listed in Figure 1 are generally more complex and difficult to test as one moves to the right and downward on the table. For example, the dominant-participant hypothesis is more difficult to test than the subject hypothesis because the dominant person could be any one of several people. Similarly, the goal-oriented psi hypothesis is more difficult to investigate than the assumption that psi focuses on individual trials because, for example, the experimental outcome may be determined by the experimenter's goal of getting a significant result rather than by the aspects of the procedure that are ostensibly under investigation.(2)
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Rhine narrowed the research program to the simplest hypothesis (ESP by subjects on individual trials) as shown in the upper left corner of Figure 1. This step was necessary to bring psychical research firmly within the scientific method. PK was established empirically shortly after ESP was established (Rhine, L. E., & Rhine, J. B., 1943). The research program then focused on research on ESP and PK effects by the subjects in experiments. Researchers investigated subjects' reactions to various test procedures and test environments, and how psi performance may be related to subjects' attitudes, personalities, moods, states of consciousness, and so forth.
After about four decades of this research, sufficient data had accumulated to compel researchers to move to column 2 of Figure 1, hypotheses about experimenter effects and dominant participants. This "paradigm shift" to experimenter effects occurred in 1976 when several major review articles brought the issue into the mainstream (Kennedy & Taddonio, 1976; Thouless, 1976; White, 1976a, 1976b). Evidence for psi-mediated experimenter effects had gradually accumulated over the years. In addition to the direct evidence for experimenter effects, the slow progress of the field was probably an important factor underlying the paradigm shift.
Research on experimenter/dominant-participant effects has thus far focused on hypotheses about effects on individual trials and groups of trials. Examples of this research include studies of observer/checker effects (see Schmidt, Morris, & Rudolph, 1986,; Weiner & Zingrone, 1989) and unique scoring patterns associated with certain individuals (e.g., Berger, 1988; Radin, 1993). Researchers have also recently started more openly to recognize and discuss their personal psi experiences and abilities, as evidenced by the symposium on "Exceptional Experiences of Psi Investigators: Their Meaning and Implications" at the 1993 Parapsychological Association Convention.
The Outer Limit of Testable Hypotheses: Goal-Oriented Psi
It appears to me that the hypothesis of goal-oriented psi by a dominant participant (usually the experimenter) is presently at the scientific frontier or outer limit of testable hypotheses. The goal-oriented experimenter-effects hypothesis can be tested. However, more complex hypotheses about combined effects, future observers, spirit guides, and so forth appear to be outside the range of available scientific data and methods because simpler hypotheses can explain existing data. These more complex hypotheses must be deferred for the present but may become amenable to direct investigation in the future.
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