Of Two Minds: Sceptic-Proponent Collaboration within Parapsychology
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Plain English Summary
This is the grand finale of one of parapsychology's most fascinating collaborations: a skeptic and a believer running the exact same experiment side by side. In two earlier studies, Marilyn Schlitz (the believer) had participants sit in a shielded chamber while someone in another room either stared at them or didn't, measuring tiny changes in skin conductance — basically, whether your body notices being watched even when you can't see the watcher. Remarkably, when Schlitz ran the sessions, participants' skin reliably reacted. When skeptic Richard Wiseman ran identical sessions, nothing happened. Same equipment, same lab, different results depending on who was in charge. So for this third round, they got clever. They split the experimenter's job into two roles — the person who greets and preps the participant, and the person who does the actual staring — then mixed and matched Schlitz and Wiseman across both roles with 100 volunteers. The big reveal? Nothing worked this time. Not for Schlitz, not for Wiseman, not for any combination. The effect that had shown up twice before simply vanished. The authors honestly lay out two possible explanations: maybe something genuinely strange was happening in the earlier studies but some unknown factor disrupted it here, or maybe the original results were just flukes. It's a refreshingly honest ending to a genuinely important experiment in how the researcher themselves might shape what they find.
Research Notes
The third and final chapter of the landmark Schlitz-Wiseman experimenter-effects series. Studies 1 (1997, n=16/condition, IONS lab) and 2 (1999, n=35/condition, Schlitz's lab) both showed a consistent pattern: Schlitz's sessions significant (es=.50, es=.33), Wiseman's null (es=.11, es=.07). This 2006 study used a 2x2 design to test whether the effect arose from rapport-building or from the staring itself. Neither factor mattered — all conditions null. 100 IONS staff and local volunteers (68% female, mean age 49). EDA via Biopac M150 in electromagnetically shielded chamber. Conducted 2002-2004 at IONS psychophysiology lab. A paradigmatic case study in experimenter effects and skeptic-proponent collaboration.
Third in a series of joint sceptic-proponent collaborations on remote staring detection. The first two studies (Wiseman & Schlitz, 1997, 1999) found that the proponent experimenter (Schlitz) obtained significant EDA effects (es=0.50, es=0.33) while the skeptic (Wiseman) did not (es=0.11, es=0.07). This third study employed a 2x2 cross-over design (N=100) at IONS to determine whether the earlier experimenter effects arose from the greeter role or the sender role. Neither main effects of greeter (F(4,93)=0.46, p=.50) nor sender (F(4,93)=0.21, p=.64) reached significance. The condition replicating the original protocol yielded es=-0.03, p=.87. Results are consistent with either genuine psi disrupted by uncontrolled factors, or chance/artifact explanations of the earlier studies.
Links
Related Papers
Cites
- Distant intentionality and the feeling of being stared at: Two meta-analyses — Schmidt, Stefan (2004)
- Does Psi Exist? Replicable Evidence for an Anomalous Process of Information Transfer — Bem, Daryl J (1994)
- Does Psi Exist? Lack of Replication of an Anomalous Process of Information Transfer — Milton, Julie (1999)
- Anomaly or Artifact? Comments on Bem and Honorton — Hyman, Ray (1994)
- Give the Null Hypothesis a Chance: Reasons to Remain Doubtful about the Existence of Psi — Alcock, James E (2003)
Companion
- The Sense of Being Stared At, Part 1: Is It Real or Illusory? — Sheldrake, Rupert (2005)
- The Sense of Being Stared At: A Preliminary Meta-Analysis — Radin, Dean I (2005)
- The Capricious, Actively Evasive, Unsustainable Nature of Psi: A Summary and Hypotheses — Kennedy, J.E (2003)
- Lessons from the First Two Years of Operating a Study Registry — Watt, Caroline (2015)
- The Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Paradox in the Brain: The Transferred Potential — Grinberg-Zylberbaum, Jacobo (1994)
- Skepticism and Negative Results in Borderline Areas of Science — Kennedy, J.E (1981)
Same Research Program
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📋 Cite this paper
Schlitz, Marilyn J, Wiseman, Richard, Watt, Caroline, Radin, Dean (2006). Of Two Minds: Sceptic-Proponent Collaboration within Parapsychology. British Journal of Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1348/000712605X80704
@article{schlitz_2006_two_minds,
title = {Of Two Minds: Sceptic-Proponent Collaboration within Parapsychology},
author = {Schlitz, Marilyn J and Wiseman, Richard and Watt, Caroline and Radin, Dean},
year = {2006},
journal = {British Journal of Psychology},
doi = {10.1348/000712605X80704},
}