From TREVOR MAGNUSSON
I believe the ganzfeld room experiments described ‘Roll up for the telepathy
test’ (15 May) confound two separate potential psychic effects. I assume
that after the judging process, the receiver is told if he/she was correct,
and if not, which video clip was the correct one. If we assume that such a
thing as clairvoyance exists, this effect would explain the result just as
much as would the telepathy effect.
To separate the telepathy effect from clairvoyance, you would have to do the
experiment simultaneously with a large number of senders and receivers. They
would have to be paired randomly, and placed in separate rooms, close to
each other. Care must be taken so that each person does not know, and cannot
find out in the future, which room he/she was in, or who was his/her
partner. After the test, the receiver must not be told the correct answer,
nor must he/she ever be able to find it out. Such an experiment would be
very difficult to conduct, but if it yielded a result it would be due to
telepathy in the absence of clairvoyance.
Trevor Magnusson
Weston Creek, ACT
Australia
