QuantumFog

March 12, 2007

Epistemology

Julie Beischel has her PhD in Pharmacology and Toxicology, which doesn't have much to do with her present mission in life. Right now, she wants to know where the messages come from.

Her domain is the Co-Director of the VERITAS Research Program at the University of Arizona. Part of what she does is assess the work of spiritual mediums, separating the wannabe's and nutcases from the real thing. After successful completion of a time-consuming 9 step certification process that can stretch over several weeks, Julie puts them to work.

At this point, you have to think about method. How to eliminate subtle cues that give away answers. Remove the remotest possibility of tells, scams and bias, including telepathy. Beischel and the Director, Dr. Gary Schwartz, create a triple blind approach that uses a sitter, the medium, research assistant and Julie as the experimenter. It works like this.

There are two "sitters" who know of a deceased relative. Each gives the name of a deceased relative to the research assistant.

The research assistant gives only the first names to the experimenter.

The experimenter gives the first names to the medium.

The medium records two reports, each based on the first name of a deceased.

The reports are given back to the experimenter, who removes the names and gives the anonymous reports to the research assistant.

The research assistant gives a copy of both anonymous reports to each sitter.

The sitters rate all the answers for accuracy, then pick the report they think belongs to them. They pick the correct report over 80% of the time.

If that seems complicated enough, consider this. The medium is in another city, probably in another state. The exchange between the medium and experimenter is done via email. The sitters are unknown to both the experimenter and the medium, and are in the lab only while they score the reports.

With all these obstacles in place, the messages still come.

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