Notis 331, 26-08-2013. Om några av de svåra frågor som psi-forskningen har att jobba med. Donald West, en av de främsta profilerna i engelska SPR och JSPR-medarbetaren David Ellis nämner i deras tidskrift Journal of Society for Psychical Research, oktober 2012 några av dessa svåra frågor, och kommenterar dem, något man bör ta del av för att få perspektiv på denna forskning.

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West kommenterar följande frågor:

l) Why does the size of the paranormal effects found in experiments appear to have seriously declined?

2) Why have consistently-high-scoring subjects in psi-experimentation become so rare?

3) Why are secondary effects, such as displacement, non-random positioning of hits in runs of guesses, and alternating positive and negative scoring, once prominent in psi research, rarely featured in experimental reports today?

4) Why is there no agreement about what factors that are needed for psi to manifest?

5) Why do the statistical effects found in psi experiments not make an appearance in other contexts, such as in the statistics of gambling or in scientific research using blind judgments as control measures?

6) Are the macro-PK effects reported in real-life situations, poltergeists and séance-room phenomena, an extension of the micro-PK found in laboratory tests?

7) Why are reports of investigations of ‘communicators’ via mediums, as thorough  as was the work with Mrs Piper and others a century ago, absent from current SPR publications?

8) Why have reports of thoroughly investigated cases of spontaneously occurring psi experiences become infrequent in present-day publications?

9) Why has parapsychology not become an accepted science?

Donald Wests inlägg finns här

På SPR-konferensen 2012 i Northampton såg David Ellis i programmet att Donald West skulle hålla ett föredrag på detta tema, och eftersom han i många år arbetat med att publicera tidskriften Journal of Society for Psychical Research skrev han ner ett inlägg till redaktören om dessa frågor, ett inlägg som finns på länk här.