Anomalous Information Reception by Research Mediums Demonstrated Using a Novel Triple-Blind Protocol
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Plain English Summary
Can mediums really pull accurate information about dead people out of thin air? This study tackled that question with an impressively locked-down design. Eight pre-screened mediums each did phone readings knowing only a deceased person's first name. A stand-in (called a proxy sitter) sat in for the real grieving family member, so the medium couldn't fish for clues or read body language. Then the actual sitters scored blinded transcripts without knowing which reading was meant for them. The results were striking: sitters rated the readings intended for them significantly higher than decoy readings, and picked out their own reading 81% of the time (chance would be 50%). The triple-blind setup effectively rules out cold reading, fraud, and even telepathy with the living sitter as explanations. The one question it can't settle is a big one: are mediums genuinely contacting the deceased, or tapping into some extraordinary psychic source among the living? Either way, these are hard numbers to dismiss.
Research Notes
First triple-blind mediumship experiment, introducing the proxy-sitter protocol that eliminates telepathy as an explanation — a major advance over prior single/double-blind designs. Foundation for the Windbridge Research Center's subsequent mediumship program. Central to controversy #6 (mediumship).
Eight pre-screened research mediums each performed two phone readings for absent university student sitters in a novel triple-blind design: mediums knew only the deceased's first name, a blinded proxy sitter conducted the session, and sitters scored itemized transcripts without knowing which reading was intended for them. Each deceased parent was paired with a same-gender deceased peer. Intended readings received significantly higher global scores than controls (M = 3.56 vs. 1.94; t = 3.105, df = 15, p = 0.007, effect size = 0.5). Sitters chose the intended reading 81% of the time (13/16, p = 0.01). The design eliminates cold reading, fraud, and telepathy with the sitter as explanations, though it cannot distinguish survival of consciousness from super-psi.
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Related Papers
Extended By
- A Mixed Methods Phenomenological and Exploratory Study of Channeling — Wahbeh, Helané (2018)
- Intuitive Assessment of Mortality Based on Facial Characteristics: Behavioral, Electrocortical, and Machine Learning Analyses — Delorme, Arnaud (2018)
- Electrocortical activity associated with subjective communication with the deceased — Delorme, Arnaud (2013)
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📋 Cite this paper
Beischel, Julie, Schwartz, Gary E (2007). Anomalous Information Reception by Research Mediums Demonstrated Using a Novel Triple-Blind Protocol. Explore. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.explore.2006.10.004
@article{beischel_2007_anomalous,
title = {Anomalous Information Reception by Research Mediums Demonstrated Using a Novel Triple-Blind Protocol},
author = {Beischel, Julie and Schwartz, Gary E},
year = {2007},
journal = {Explore},
doi = {10.1016/j.explore.2006.10.004},
}