Thank you, Bryan, for keeping up this forum, and with an important message. In
my opinion the biggest problems in parapsychology are caused by the nature of
psi. Everything happens out of reach of our sense organs and some phenomena are
especially hard to believe in, for example macro-PK and precognition many years
ahead. As I understand, there are some "quantum-parapsychologists" that do not
accept those phenomena at all. And it is impossible to guarantee in advance that
psi will turn up in any single series of experiments. Most often the effect size
in the experiments is so small that the results are vulnerable to artifacts in
randomization.

Really, many fields of science have more serious problems in experimenting and
replication of experimental results than is generally thought. For example there
has been doubts if sociology, pedagogical science and psychology would be
science at all because of the lack of constant replication. And even in fringe
areas of physics there are difficulties.

In parapsychology there is much replication of results after all. Repeating same
kind of experiments over and over again has produced constantly positive
results. But I don't think there are any simple formulas that can guarantee
positive results as has been surmised in ganzfeld research. There are certainly
so many "hidden variables" in parapsychological research that there is much left
to learn still.

Every science ought to be approached with the most suitable working methods for
that field. The critics of parapsychology often forget that idea. Many phenomena
in astronomy are not possible to make experiments with. The scientist must only
wait for supernovas and many other phenomena to happen. I would compare research
of paranormal spontaneous phenomena with astronomy. There is nothing to do
except to try to be informed about such phenomena instantly and be prepared to
investigate them efficiently. In my opinion, parapsychologists have neglected
this field too much in recent years.

Where have all strong poltergeist phenomena disappeared? Have they ever existed
at all or has the sociological situation of people changed so much that strong
poltergeists have disappeared - or have parapsycholgists neglected the
phenomena? Reading the abstracts of the PA convention 2006 gave me the
impression that it is not necessary to try any more to gather evidence for the
existence of psi phenomena. There is only need to understand the processes
behind, with rather optimistic belief in success. In my humble opinion
parapsychology has not come so far yet. Publicizing more and better evidence for
psi phenomena would be good for funding of parapsychology, too.

- Olavi