10 March, 2001
The Editor
New
Scientist
ESP:
Error Some Place!
Dear Sir
I was
directed recently to an article on your .com web site: http://www.newscientist.com/opinion/opinion.jsp?id=ns22805
. I cannot access site today, but it
describes an experiment that is supposed to demonstrate ESP. I wondered if your readers might be
interested to know how the trick is done?
This is how
it goes:
Person A,
the “sender” is placed in one room and looks at a picture, the “target”, chosen
at random from 100. The experimenter
does not know what the picture is.
Person B,
the “receiver” is in another room and thinks his own thoughts.
The
experimenter talks to B.
He then
presents B with four pictures, one of which is the target, the other three
chosen from the remaining 99.
I do not
remember being told that they are chosen “at random”, and this is crucial! My explanation is that they are chosen so as
to have less than the standard chance of being selected, which causes
the target to have increased chance.
For example,
suppose that conversation with B reveals that he is thinking about pretty
women. All the experimenter has to do
is pick as the three pictures that are at his discretion some that are not
of women! He has plenty to choose from.
The report
observed that the results depended on the characters of the participants. It would, wouldn’t it? It depends on how well the experimenter can
judge the “receiver’s” mood, and hence how well he can judge what the latter
will not pick.
Was it in
this article that it was suggested that ESP might stand not for “Extra Sensory
Perception” but for “Error Some Place”?
Not that I dismiss all
evidence of simultaneous thoughts – they might be triggered, for example, by
shared electromagnetic waves from the cosmos or from nearer home. I suspect that many of these are detected
subconsciously, or influence our body’s metabolism and thus indirectly affect
our mood and our thoughts. The case in
point, though, appears to be a result of error. It’s all in the mind, as they say. The experiment’s designers have concentrated on what B actively
chooses. It is natural to do so. It has not occurred to them that because he
has to choose one out of the four the
choices he does not make influence
the probability of success.
Yours sincerely
Caroline H
Thompson