Ganzfeld experiments & meta-analyses
🎓 Academic research
Honorton’s PRL → Cornell’s Bem (Psychological Bulletin 1994) · USA · 1974–2010
With half a ping-pong ball over the eyes and white noise, a receiver in sensory deprivation tries to pick a sender’s image from 4 (chance = 25%). Bem & Honorton’s 1994 meta-analysis reported ~32% hits; Milton & Wiseman 1999 was null; Storm et al. 2010 was positive again.
VerdictSmall effect size, contested replicability — parapsychology’s ‘best’ evidence and the mainstream’s longest-running dispute.
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Duke University Rhine lab Zener-card tests
🎓 Academic research
Duke University · J. B. Rhine · USA, North Carolina · 1930–1965
The botanist-turned-researcher ran hundreds of thousands of card guesses, published ‘Extra-Sensory Perception’ (1934), coined ‘parapsychology’ and founded its journal.
VerdictEarly high scores were criticised for lax anti-cheating, sensory leakage and statistics; effects faded as conditions tightened (the ‘decline effect’).
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Leningrad Brain Institute long-distance ‘mental suggestion’
🎓 Academic research
Bekhterev Brain Institute · physiologist Leonid Vasiliev · USSR, Leningrad · 1920s–1930s (published 1962)
State-funded work put subjects to sleep/woke them remotely by ‘mental suggestion’, even inside lead rooms and Faraday cages — shielding reportedly didn’t block the effect.
VerdictThe USSR concluded telepathy isn’t electromagnetic; the US DIA’s 1972 report estimated 20+ such centres; the West couldn’t replicate it.
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Maimonides dream-telepathy research
🎓 Academic research
Maimonides Medical Center dream lab · Ullman & Krippner · USA, Brooklyn · 1962–1978
After a subject entered REM, a sender concentrated on a famous painting; in 1971 a 2,000-strong Grateful Dead audience even ‘sent’ images collectively.
VerdictResearchers reported significant hits; critics cited subjective judging and later replication failures.
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SRI tests Uri Geller, published in ‘Nature’
🎓 Academic research
SRI · Targ & Puthoff · Nature 251:602 (CIA-funded) · USA · 1972–1974
In a shielded room Geller reproduced hidden drawings; the paper ran in ‘Nature’ with a rare editorial caveat; 2017 CIA files confirmed CIA funding.
VerdictMagician Randi showed the same could be done by trickery; Geller failed live on ‘The Tonight Show’ in 1973.
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Human brain-to-brain interface
🔬 Achieved by science
Univ of Washington Rao & Stocco (PLOS ONE 2014) · BrainNet (2019) · USA, Seattle · 2013–2019
In 2013 EEG read one person’s motor intent and, over the internet, triggered a TMS coil on another to press a key; 2014 sent ‘hola/ciao’ India→France; 2019’s three-person BrainNet cooperated to play Tetris.
VerdictTechnical telepathy is real — just one or two bits at a time.
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China’s ‘thought-sensing / ear-reading’ tests & the ‘three-no’ policy
🎓 Academic research
Shanghai ‘Ziran Zazhi’ symposium · Peking Univ · Sichuan Medical College · China · 1979–1982
In Feb 1980 Shanghai’s ‘Ziran Zazhi’ held the first somatic-science symposium; several ‘ear-reading’ children were tested. Peking Univ’s Chen Shouliang reported positives; Sichuan Medical College got negatives under strict anti-peeking conditions.
VerdictIn April 1982 the Propaganda Dept issued a ‘don’t promote, debate or criticise’ notice; such official research largely ended by the late 1990s.
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