Book Reviews - Review 144

Dean Radin is one of the small number of professional psychologists who devote their lives to the thankless task of trying to prove to the world that there's something in paranormal phenomena - or psi, to use the shorthand term.

Most scientists take the view that it's not even worth reading reports by alleged cranks such as Radin, when the claims they make have - they say - long since been proved groundless by systematic scientific enquiry. Exceptions to this attitude, though, include some respected and even great names of recent science - Nobel prizewinning physicist Brian Josephson, biologist Rupert Sheldrake, physicist Nick Herbert, cosmologist Carl Sagan, and Albert Einstein himself.

One thing all these figures have in common is that they actually have studied the evidence for psi, and concluded that it is not merely ambiguous or suggestive, but pretty much irrefutable. It's this evidence that Radin discloses in this book, after first presenting an exhaustive explanation of statistical metaanalysis.

Most of the evidence Radin discusses - all from laboratory experiments - seems highly credible, with even sceptics such as Ray Hyman acknowledging its statistical significance while remaining reluctant to grant it epistemological importance. The most extensive set of data comes from tests known as "Ganzfeld" ("whole field") experiments, in which subjects were tested for telepathic and clairvoyant abilities while subjected to white noise and visual blocking. Evidence for telekinesis has been obtained by getting subjects to try to influence electronic random number generators. Metaanalysis of these experiments has yielded odds against chance of one in millions and billions. Radin also addresses the issue of the "file drawer" problem - the hypothetical assumption that there always exist unsuccessful studies that are never published - by demonstrating how many unpublished unsuccessful studies would be needed to offset the positive studies and bring the results down to chance level. Typically, hundreds of file drawer studies would be required to counteract every positive study.

The studies I found somewhat less convincing were those conducted by Radin himself, in which he purports to show that when millions of people concentrate on a single event, the "randomness" of random number generators diminishes. It's not that the data is totally unconvincing, but to be honest there isn't all that much of it, and the criteria for what constitutes an "event" could be seen as somewhat arbitrary. And how do we know there wouldn't be hundreds of additional "peaks" of nonrandomness for which no corresponding "events" can be found?

This isn't to say that Radin's own research should be discounted, merely that it needs honing and building on if it's to withstand serious flak from sceptics (such flak being, of course, a necessary and desirable part of the scientific process). As for the other evidence here, I don't think anyone calling themselves a rationalist could argue with the methodical, level-headed and thoroughly sane approach that Radin takes. It's true that the careful, systematic description of experiment after experiment makes this book somewhat less entertaining than the more anecdotally-based The Sense of Being Stared At by Rupert Sheldrake, but it is well-written and is enlivened by Radin's wry humour.

Arch-sceptics can dismiss the evidence here without reading it if they wish; but that does raise the question of why one should take them any more seriously than the wishy-washy pseudo-mystics and pseudo-psychics who have done so much to give serious "paranormal" (for want of a less loaded term) research a bad name.