That is why no one has yet won the one million dollar prize offered by the James Randi Educational Foundation, offered to anyone who can demonstrate paranormal ability under agreed-upon scientific testing criteria. Thousands of fraudsters and charlatans have taken James Randi up on this challenge, and each time their “paranormal” abilities have mysteriously vanished and been exposed for what they really were; mere trickery.
However, there are some experiments that have yielded positive results for the existence of paranormal phenomena. In the 1930’s, the Rhines conducted a series of telepathy experiments in which a receiver had to guess the identity of a target being looked at by an agent (Gross, 2005). A set of symbols were developed and made into a pack of 25 cards, consisting of five squares, five circles, five crosses, five wavy lines and five stars. The rationale behind the experiments was that the results achieved could be compared with what would be expected by chance. If receivers consistently scored above what chance would predict, then this would suggest that they were receiving some information about the cards, and if the experiment would sufficiently controlled as to exclude all known sensory cues, then the information must be coming from ESP.
The Rhines found that the results were far beyond what would be expected from chance alone (Blackmore, 1995), and they claimed that they had established the existence of ESP. However, these claims faced considerable opposition within the scientific establishment. The degree of isolation between receiver and experimenter was questioned, thus it was claimed that information could have been passed unwittingly between the two and they questioned the precision of the checks performed on the data. When the Rhines tightened up their experimental procedure, these above chance results became much rarer, although they remained sufficiently common to constitute evidence for ESP. When psychologists without a belief in ESP tried to replicate these findings, they failed to produce any positive results.
Another famous experiment which yielded positive results for the existence of paranormal phenomena was the ganzfeld experiments of 1974, conducted by Honorton and Harper. In a typical ganzfeld experiment, there is a receiver placed in a chair in a room with halved ping-pong balls placed over their eyes, with red light being shone on them. They also wear a set of headphones through which “white noise” (static) is played. During this time a sender observes a randomly chosen target and attempts to send this information to the receiver. The receiver is to speak out loud throughout the experiment, describing what they can see. This is recorded by the experimenter. The receiver is then taken out of the ganzfeld state and given a set of possible targets, from which they must decide which one is the most similar to the images they witnessed during the ganzfeld state.
They obtained a result of 1,008 hits out of 3,145 tests. Since there were 4 targets to choose from, chance would have predicted a hit rate of 25%, but the true hit rate was approximately 32%. Honorton believed he had demonstrated evidence of paranormal phenomena, but was not without his detractors. Wiseman made the point that many of the ganzfield experiments were conducted in rooms which were not soundproof, so that when the target was a video, the experimenter could have heard it and then gave involuntary cues to the receiver when they were selecting the target. Radin countered that the hit rate when using soundproof rooms was similar to rooms that were not soundproof. Upon visiting a laboratory in which a ganzfeld experiment was being conducted, Susan Blackmore (1987) criticised elements of the experimental procedure, including the randomisation procedure for the targets which she claimed was not performed to a satisfactory degree.
One general criticism of positive evidence for paranormal activity is the so-called “filing-drawer problem” (Radin, Nelson, Dobyns, Houtkooper). Supporters of this explanation for paranormal evidence claim that whilst some experimental results may seem significant, they are in fact insignificant when compared to the large number of experiments conducted by parapsychologists. They claim that experiments that fail to produce a positive result in favour of paranormal phenomena are selectively underreported by pro-paranormal parapsychologists.
Kennedy published a paper in the Journal of the American society analysing a survey in which persons were asked questions about paranormal belief (Kennedy, 2003). He analysed a national Canadian survey conducted by Project Canada that obtained data in 1995 that included items on belief in psi and religious and spiritual faith. Data was obtained from 1,765 people, including answers to questions including “Do you believe in ESP?”, “Is there such a thing as psychic powers?” and “Do you believe miraculous healing sometimes occurs?” 64% of females indicate a firm belief in paranormal activity, whereas only 36% of males did so. This supported the hypothesis that sceptics of paranormal phenomena tend to males, and believers in the paranormal tend to be females. This was linked to a difference in the importance the two sexes’s assigned to “spirituality”. Is this really the case? Do females tend to believe in the existence of paranormal phenomena more than males?
Aim: To ascertain the ubiquity of paranormal beliefs in contemporary Northern Irish society amongst a student population, and discover whether gender has a role to play in the development of such beliefs in humans. “Paranormal belief” referring to a belief in phenomena which cannot be explained by the laws of science, including unsubstantiated religious claims. This will be conducted via the design and distribution of questionnaires testing the degree of the individual’s belief in paranormality.
Alternate hypothesis: Significantly more female students will show paranormal belief than male students (one-tailed hypothesis).
Null hypothesis: Significantly more female students will not show signs of paranormal belief when compared to male students. Any difference will be due to chance alone.
