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Why Ganzfeld experiments haven't proven ESP [1]

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Date: 2025-07-15  

The Ganzfeld procedure attempts to test for ESP by placing someone thought of as the "receiver" in a state of mild sensory deprivation. The receiver wears ping-pong ball halves over their eyes, with red light shining on them. White noise plays through headphones. Meanwhile, a "sender" will attempt to mentally transmit information about an image that has been chosen at random. After 30 minutes, the receiver is asked to try and identify the correct image from four options.

Some parapsychologists have claimed to discover positive results from the experiment, but many independent scientists have found critical flaws. As scientist Ray Hyman explained, there are issues in the experiment such as poor randomization and potential sensory leakage between sender and receiver rooms. "Until parapsychologists can provide a positive way to indicate the presence of psi, the different effect sizes that occur in experiments are just as likely to result from many different things rather than one thing called psi," Hyman wrote in a 2007 review.

The debate came to a head when a researcher named Susan Blackmore visited Carl Sargent's Cambridge laboratory in 1979 and documented serious protocol violations, including the experimenter cheating to influence subject choices. Despite these controversial findings, it looks like a lot of fun to listen to white noise with glowing ping pong balls over my eyes. As an introvert, this seems like the perfect set of accessories to wear out in public when I'm not in the mood to interact with people.

See also: ESP proponents claim that ESP skeptics are psychic, and use their powers to suppress ESP

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[1] Url: https://boingboing.net/2025/07/15/why-ganzfeld-experiments-havent-proven-esp.html

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