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What was the nature of the mediums' statements? General statements, or very detailed statements? And how eager were the participants to find that they had been correctly "spotted" by a medium?


Valid concerns, axo, and it is to the discredit of modern journalism (which, by employing inadequate reporting techniques, is perhaps seeking to subtly debase its subject matter and thereby strengthen the physicalist/materialist paradigm) that the study isn't presented with the details necessary to obviate (if possible) such epistemological concerns. On the other hand, perhaps the Sunday Herald was being overly kind to the study; we shan't know without the details.

Fortunately, there are the carefully designed studies of related paranormal subjects to show us examples of very acceptable experimental procedure. Marlyn Schlitz, PhD., Richard Wiseman, PhD., and Dean Radin, PhD., are making ever more careful and rigorous double-blind studies of "inentionality" phenomena (the feeling of "being stared at," for example), which have already provided much statistically-significant data that, if considered thoroughly, may be capable of softening the disbelief of even some of the most determined rationalists. What's more, we have the excellent work conducted by the BLT Institute regarding crop-circle phenomena. I'm grateful for the efforts of such researchers, because their data speaks to scientists in a language they can understand.