one traditional way of testing telepathic ability is by getting the subject to guess which card you're holding. experiments using cards with symbols were pioneered at duke university, north carolina, in the 1930's. decks of 25 cards using 5 symbols (cross/square/circle/wavy lines/star) have since become a standard feature of esp tests.
the problem is that such tests do not reflect the emotionally charged nature of telepathy. anecdotal evidence suggests that telepathy operates naturally at moments of crisis. like sterile laboratory conditions, the use of neutral cards is not ideal for studying a supposedly spontaneous natural phenomenon.
the not-very-scientific term used to denote a message successfully received in a telepathy experiment is the 'hit'. in a run of card guessing, for instance, the receiver may score 9 hits out of 25, a hit rate 4 above the average 5 out of 25. if the message is less easily defined - as with transmitting messages or the technique of remote viewing - it may be difficult to say what constitutes a hit, and wishful thinking can affect judgement. one person's bridge may be another's rainbow.
in telepathy, as in all areas of parapsychological research, the difficulty lies in establishing at what point above-average results become statistically significant. in card guessing, again, the laws of chance would lead us to expect a success rate of 1 in 5 in each run - there are 25 cards in a run and 5 different symbols involved. this is known in statistics as the 'mean chance expectation'. but the laws of chance do not work with such unfailing accuracy. so, what scores would be seen as violating the laws of chance?
the probability can be worked out according to accepted statistical formulae. reputable parapsychologists, anxious to establish their scientific credibility, tend not to argue that their results are proof of esp unless the odds against are at least 100 to 1 (or even 1000 to 1). it may even be that our understanding of the laws of probability is incomplete and should be revised to take account of such phenomena as coincidence and synchronicity that would turn research on it's head...
(article taken from focus magazine)
