A Joint Communiqué: The Psi Ganzfeld Controversy

Instead of continuing with another round of our debate on the psi ganzfeld experiments, we decided to collaborate on a joint communiqué.The Honorton-Hyman debate emphasized the differences in our positions, many of these being technical in nature.But during a recent discussion, we realized that we possessed similar viewpoints on many issues concerning parapsychological research.This communiqué, then, emphasizes these points of agreement.We agree that there is an overall significant effect in this data base that cannot reasonably be explained by selective reporting or multiple analysis.We continue to differ over the degree to which the effect constitutes evidence for psi, but we agree that the final verdict awaits the outcome of future experiments conducted by a broader range of investigators and according to more stringent standards.We make recommendations about how such experiments should be conducted and reported.Specific recommendations are about randomization, judging and feedback procedures, multiple analysis and statistics, documentation, and the growing role we believe meta-analysis will play in the evaluation of research quality and the assessment of moderating variables.We conclude that psi researchers and their critics share many common goals, and we hope that our joint communiqué will encourage future cooperation to further these goals.The Journal of Parapsychology had planned to publish one more exchange between us on the debate that we initiated in the March 1985 issue (Honorton, 1985;Hyman, 1985).In fact, one of us had already written and submitted his reply, and the other was preparing a rejoinder when we encountered each other at the 1986 meetings of the Parapsychological Association.The idea of replacing another round of exchanges with this joint communiqué emerged from a discussion during a luncheon meeting. 2, 3 During the discussion we realized that each of us had not fully and accurately understood the other's position on some of the major issues dividing us.In addition, much of our disagreement at this stage involves technicalities and differences of opinion about the proper ways to assign and rate studies on specific attributes.To put emphasis on these details detracts from the broader and more important propositions, on which we find ourselves in agreement.These propositions relate in general to how psi researchers and critics can work together toward 1 [Originally published in JP, 1986, 50, 351-364] 2 Marcello Truzzi participated in this discussion.We would like to thank him for his encouragement and suggestions.3 To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time a parapsychologist and a critic have collaborated on a joint statement of this type.Hyman prepared the first draft and we continued exchanging drafts until we had one we were both satisfied with.