100 people were divided into pairs and given readings intended for both people, supposedly with everyone blinded. 65% of the time they choose the "correct" reading. Although the effect is weak, it is hard to argue that, if the methodology is good, then this finding is statistically significant.
But the methodology isn't good, because the selection of subjects is so questionable.
In addition, we don't know if the mediums were known to/ friends of the authors; considering the backgrounds of Liberale and Sinesio, and a lack of any statement to the contrary, this can't be ruled out.
A similar question applies to some of J. Beischel's research, using mediums "certified" by the
Windbridge Research Center, Director of Research, Julie Beischel:
External Quote:
The Center works with a team of Windbridge Certified Research Mediums (WCRMs) who volunteer their time by participating in research and providing suggestions for research directions.
As far as I know, Windbridge has never published research where the null hypothesis stands, which considering wider real-world evidence of mediumship is astonishing, if it reflects their actual findings.
Equally, I'm unaware of WRCMs demonstrating their abilities
en bloc outside of Windbridge activities, or Windbridge suggesting this: There are some good university psychology departments in the USA.
Undergraduate psychology "experiments" in a classroom setting often allow the use of fellow psy. students or staff as subjects, as (1) they're available and (2) it's a reciprocal arrangement. It avoids the time and effort needed to recruit naïve subjects, including the production of a participant information sheet, a formal consent process and arranging times to actually conduct the trial.
In some universities in the US, students get credits for participating as subjects in their colleague's trials IIRC.
But these experiments are usually run to teach the students (including the "experimenter") some basic, established feature of psychology or scientific methodology. They're not necessarily expected to produce novel results and are a long way from being anything that would be submitted to a peer-reviewed journal. Some psychology bachelor/ equivalent degrees require the student to conduct at least one more formal experiment in which they have to recruit subjects not known to them; this gives the student experience of producing recruitment and participation materials, and some understanding of the difficulties involved in obtaining and retaining subjects. -In reality, if the student is on a large residential campus, this often isn't as difficult as it is "in the real world".
A scientifically rigorous formal experimental trial would not normally include subjects known to the researchers if this can be avoided; subjects may- consciously or unconsciously- have a bias towards producing results seen as "wanted" by the researcher or by the subject themselves.
This might also feature in some famous psychology experiments using supposedly naïve subjects; Piaget's conservation experiments in child psychology- though definitely demonstrating a real effect- might have had more positive results in some populations due to the subject wanting to provide a "correct" answer that they did not in fact believe.
Zimbardo
et al.'s 1971 prison experiment, which took place at a time when the US was drafting young men for the Vietnam war, didn't identify a possible confounding variable: the subjects- male students- might have felt motivated to demonstrate that putting young men in uniform and a position of authority might have societally undesirable results. (As well as the draft, many students will have been aware of the deaths of 4 student protestors shot by National Guardsmen at Kent State University, May 1970).
A possible desire to produce results in a particular direction might be even stronger in subjects who are friends of the researchers, and who are familiar with the researcher's views.
An experimental trial of the type conducted by Patrizio Tressoldi, Laura Liberale, Fernando Sinesio (2022) might reasonably be expected to recruit subjects not known to the authors, and preferably,
as pointed out by @NorCal Dave, a control group of subjects who are not known to the authors and who are less likely to hold beliefs in mediumship.
(I was going to write, "This would be feasible using the same number of sitters as used in the 2022 study"- until, on checking, I found it very hard to see how many sitters there were. I can't find a number in the 2022 paper.)
To put it bluntly, recruiting friends/ colleagues, all of whom know at least one of the authors and some of whom might know each other outside of the experiment, raises the question of unconscious- or conscious- collaboration.
This suspicion could have been reduced had the researchers done what professional psychologists usually do: Recruit subjects (in this case sitters) who are unconnected with the researchers. Tressoldi
et al. chose not to take this basic step.
It seems likely the claimed mediums were known to the authors prior to the experiment,
External Quote:
Self-claimant mediums were invited by email...
...and considering two of the three authors have senior roles in the Gruppo di Ricerca Italiano sulla Medianita (GRIM, Italian Research Group on Mediumship).
It is not clear if any measures were taken to rule out the mediums knowing- and being in contact with- each other.
It isn't even clear
that the sitters did not know the mediums prior to the experiment- they might have known them from their mutual friends (e.g. the authors) and interests; they could have been in communication with them before, and during, but external to, the experiment, perhaps perfectly innocently.
Generally with published research papers, there's an assumption of veracity on the part of the reader: We assume that the authors are presenting the truth as they see it, and have been honest.
We should always be very careful not to state that someone has deliberately compromised experimental results unless we have very good evidence indeed. There are large numbers of experiments across the sciences which been shown to be flawed and to have produced unreliable results; very, very few are the result of deliberate fraud. Sadly, some are.
With extraordinary claims, the convention is to await replication and confirmatory evidence, although the original claimants are sometimes committed -perhaps understandably- to their findings more than a single experiment might warrant, e.g. Fleischmann and Pons re. their 1989
cold fusion experiment (Wikipedia).
The apparent detection of faster-than-light neutrinos at CERN's OPERA experiment, 2011, is pretty much a textbook example of how to deal with an extraordinary finding responsibly: with transparency, management of expectations, attempts to replicate the findings, a thorough checking of the methodology and equipment used, and ultimately confirmation by others; see Wikipedia
2011 OPERA faster-than-light neutrino anomaly.
Claiming to have objectively real communication with a dead person, where the deceased can use language to deliver information in real time, is an extraordinary claim.
With mediums, there
are problems that have to be considered:
(1) The paradigms of much of contemporary mediumship are relatively new, originating with the Fox sisters in the USA, late 1840s, Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_sisters. One of the sisters later revealed the methods they used to hoax audiences. However, the Fox sister's model of mediumship continued.
(2) There is no checkable and reliable evidence, anywhere, ever, of specific knowledge being gained from a deceased person via a medium which was not known to a living person.
(3) There are many deceased people who in their lives were very talented. Songwriters, composers, poets, scientists.
Despite several claims, supposed new works or discoveries from these people, conveyed by mediums, are usually, well, of dubious value and uncharacteristic of the supposed original source.
(4) There are many instances of mediums being shown to be hoaxers, fraudsters, or at best people misguidedly trying to comfort the bereaved by claiming to have communication where it is unlikely to exist. This includes mediums accepted and attested as genuine by their fellow mediums.
Some mediums have been shown to be deliberately deceptive and dishonest over many years. None have proven to be authentic.
(5a) Mediums as described in (4) sometimes use cold reading, many people receiving readings find this convincing. This has been convincingly replicated by non-mediums, including the illusionist Derren Brown.
(5b) Some mediums have shown themselves to be highly competent, and ingenious, at covertly gathering information about their sitter and the sitter's family/ friends.
Given the possibility of prior or extra-experimental communication between
all categories of participants in the Tressoldi
et al. 2022 experiment- the researchers, mediums and sitters- it must be regarded as methodologically weak, and vulnerable to "reading" findings being obtained via communication between living participants or from existing records. Additionally, the selected sitters might have been more biased to favourable interpretations of readings than the general population, through their friendships with the researchers and
their wanting to receive a reading being a selection criterion. The questionable rating system doesn't help.
We know that people who claim to be mediums, but who have obtained their information by "normal" means, exist.
We do not have any reliable, repeatable evidence of any person with an ability to contact the dead in rigorous experimental conditions. It seems unlikely this paper will change that position.
I'm trying to make sense of the data sets; early days and I could be totally wrong, but there
might be a possibility that (1) some sitters received multiple readings from different mediums, and/or (2) some of the individual deceased people were nominated by more than one sitter.
If either is correct- again, I'm not at all sure it is at present- and if the mediums were in contact with each other, which the researchers do not appear to have ruled out, this might represent multiple bites at the cherry; knowledge of a prior reading might inform a later one. Identification of specific sitters by mediums is an obstacle, but the "incestuous" nature of the recruitment to this experiment might allow it.
Tressoldi has made a number of startling findings, any one of which might be thought worthy of replication and further investigation:
External Quote:
Driving with Intuition?
...Tressoldi found statistically significant differences in participants' EEG readings in car crash trials compared to those in no-car crash trials a second before the car crash, providing more potential evidence of an 'anticipation effect'. ...Tressoldi speculates on mechanisms involving quantum mechanics...
External Quote:
Digital Photography
A paper published in The Journal of Parapsychology in 2022, describes explorations into the possibility of producing images onto photographic sensors by mental intention alone. ...when brightness was removed from the analyses, there was some evidence of a PK effect.
External Quote:
Remote Viewing
Tressoldi and
Debra Lynn Katz carried out a meta-analysis of remote viewing studies conducted between 1974 and 2022.
...they concluded that its experimental protocols appear to be the most efficient in ESP research for experiments and also practical applications ranging from military and intelligence gathering to archaeology and finance.
External Quote:
Out of Body Experiences
In a study reported in 2020, Tressoldi and coworkers tested the ability of four participants, chosen for their ability to attain an out-of-body state of consciousness via hypnotic induction, to describe five different locations, initially in an ordinary state of consciousness using remote viewing and then in an out-of-body state. According to independent assessment, ordinary state remote viewing gave a hit rate of 55 percent, and performance during an out of body state gave a hit rate of 54 percent
-All quotes,
Psi Encyclopaedia, Patrizio Tressoldi
https://psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/patrizio-tressoldi
Despite these utterly astonishing results, Tressoldi doesn't appear to have pursued any of them with further trials.
Abilities to predict car crashes, interfere with digital sensors by thought and reconnoitre distant locations by willpower alone might have some practical use. This is paradigm-shifting stuff, all from the same man.
And apparently not replicated by anyone else, which might be surprising as his (perhaps former) university, Padova (normally rendered "Padua" in English) has a substantial psychology department, list of staff
https://dpg.unipd.it/en/department/people
