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Perceptual and Motor Skills, 101, 771-786, © Perceptual and Motor
Skills 2005
TESTING FOR TELEPATHY IN CONNECTION WITH E-MAILS1,2
by Rupert Sheldrake and Pamela Smart

SUMMARY

This study investigated possible telepathic communication in
connection with e-mails. On each trial, there were four potential
e-mailers, one of whom was selected at random by the experimenter. One
minute before a prearranged time at which the e-mail was to be sent,
the participant guessed who would send it. 50 participants (29 women
and 21 men) were recruited through an employment web site. Of 552
trials, 235 (43%) guesses were hits, significantly above the chance
expectation of 25%. Further tests with 5 participants (4 women, 1 man,
ages 16 to 29) were videotaped continuously. On the filmed trials, the
64 hits of 137 (47%) were significantly above chance.

Telepathy has been investigated scientifically for more than 100
years, but its existence is still controversial. Some people believe
telepathy and other forms of "extrasensory perception" (ESP) or psi
are impossible in principle (e.g., Humphrey, 1995).. Hence, they
suggest that all the evidence for telepathy must be flawed and should
be treated with extreme skepticism. Others regard the question as
empirical. Maybe telepathy really occurs, even if the means by which
it operates is not yet understood. Its existence or nonexistence is
not a matter of belief but of evidence (e.g., Henry, 2005). Meanwhile,
many people claim that they themselves have had telepathic
experiences, and several surveys have shown that a majority of the
population thinks telepathy exists (Gallup & Newport, 1991; Blackmore,
1997; Sheldrake, 2003). Skeptics usually dismiss all personal
experience as unreliable. Only experimental evidence counts.

From the 1880s to the 1940s, the most popular experimental method for
the study of telepathy and other forms of ESP involved card-guessing
tests. During this period, 142 published articles described 3.6
million such trials, with statistically significant, positive hit
rates for which the average effect was small, i.e., less than 2% above
the level expected by chance (Pratt, Rhine, Smith, Stuart, &
Greenwood, 1966).

In the 1960s and 1970s, there was a new approach involving controlled
studies of dreams. Could people pick up images telepathically when
dreaming in a laboratory, while a "sender" in another room
concentrated on a randomly chosen image? In a meta-analysis of the 25
published studies on dream telepathy, covering a total of 450 trials,
the overall hit rate was significantly above chance expectation
(Radin, 1997).

In parapsychology laboratories since the 1970s, the prevalent method
for investigating telepathy has involved a mild form of sensory
deprivation, called the Ganzfeld, in which participants sit in a
relaxed state in dim red light with halved ping-pong balls over their
eyes. In another room, a "sender" concentrates on a picture or video
clip, selected at random from a pool of possible targets. After the
session is over, the participant is shown four pictures or video clips
and asked to pick one which most closely corresponds to impressions he
may have received during the test session. By chance, participants
would select the target picture roughly one time in four, with a hit
rate of 25%. A meta-analysis published in 1985 covering 28 studies
showed an overall hit rate of 37% (Honorton, 1985). A published
meta-analysis of the same data (Hyman, 1985) again showed that the
odds against chance were very high.

Hyman and Honorton together drew up a set of guidelines for further
research, which they published in a "joint communiquéé" (Hyman &
Honorton, 1986). They recommended rigorous precautions against sensory
leakage, extensive security procedures to prevent fraud, full
documentation of all experimental procedures and equipment, and
complete specifications about what statistical tests were to be used
to judge success.

Following these recommendations, a broader range of investigators in
several laboratories carried out a new series of computer-controlled
automated Ganzfeld experiments over the following years. In a
meta-analysis (Bern & Honorton, 1994) of the results from 354
auto-Ganzfeld sessions, the average hit rate was 32% (effect size
0.28, p < .01). But in 1999, a meta-analysis of data from 30
auto-Ganzfeld trials showed no significant effect (Milton & Wiseman,
1999). However, Milton and Wiseman excluded from their analysis a
recent series of studies from Edinburgh University. When these were
included, overall hit rates were again significantly above chance
(Milton, 1999). A more recent meta-analysis also yielded significantly
above-chance hit rates (Bern, Palmer, & Broughton, 2001).

Unfortunately, the Ganzfeld procedure bears little resemblance to
apparent telepathy in everyday life. Also, in most Ganzfeld and other
tests on telepathy in parapsychology laboratories, the "senders" and
"receivers" were strangers, whereas apparent telepathy in real life
generally takes place between people who know each other well
(Sheldrake, 2003). We have been exploring a new way of investigating
telepathy experimentally that is more "ecological," in the sense that
it is closer to common experience and involves "senders" who are
friends or family members.

One of the most common kinds of apparent telepathy occurs in
connection with telephone calls (Sheldrake, 2000, 2003; Brown &
Sheldrake, 2001). Most people claim to have had experiences in which
they think of someone for no apparent reason, then that person calls;
or they know who is calling when the phone rings before picking it up;
or they call someone who says "I was just thinking about you!" Many
people have had similar experiences with e-mails (Sheldrake, 2003).

An illusion of telepathy could be created if people remembered when
someone called (or e-mailed) soon after they thought about that person
but forgot all the times that they thought about someone who did not
contact them. Also, an illusion of telepathy could arise if the person
had an unconscious expectation that someone he knew well would call or
e-mail, based on an implicit knowledge of that person's behaviour.
Until recently, there were no scientific investigations of telephone
telepathy to test these hypotheses.

Over the last few years we have investigated telephone telepathy
experimentally (Sheldrake & Smart 2003a, 2003c). In our tests, a
participant received a call during a prearranged period from one of
four potential callers.

Participants were asked to choose callers from among their friends or
family members. Callers and participants were usually several miles
away from each other, and in some cases thousands of miles apart. On a
given trial, the participants knew who the potential callers were but
did not know which one would be calling. The caller was picked at
random by the experimenter. When the telephone rang, the participant
guessed who was calling before the other person spoke. The guess was
either right or wrong. By chance, participants would have been right
about one time in four. For a total of 571 such trials on telephone
telepathy, involving 63 participants, the average hit rate was 40%,
significantly above the 25% expected by chance. The effect size was
0.35 (Sheldrake & Smart, 2003a).

We then carried out a second series of tests under more rigorous
conditions, with the participants videotaped continuously. Their
guesses were recorded before they picked up the telephone. In a total
of 271 trials, 45% of the guesses were hits (effect size .45)
(Sheldrake & Smart, 2003c). In a recent replication at the University
of Amsterdam the hit rate was also significantly above chance (Lobach
& Bierman, 2004). In a test filmed for a British television show, the
hit rate was 50%) (Sheldrake, Godwin, & Rockell, 2004).

In this paper, we describe a series of tests for telepathy in
connection with e-mails following similar procedures. Our primary
objective was to find out if hit rates were at or above chance levels.
Our secondary objective was to investigate whether there was a
difference in hit rates with familiar and unfamiliar e-mailers.
Surveys have shown that telepathy mainly occurs between family
rnembers and close friends. In our experiments on telephone telepathy,
hit rates were significantly higher with familiar than with unfamiliar
callers (Sheldrake & Smart, 2003a, 2003c).
METHOD

Summary
Each participant had four potential e-mailers. At least two of these
were chosen by the participants and were family members or friends.
Participants could nominate all four, but if they nominated only three
or two people, unfamiliar e-mailers were included in the test to make
up a total of four.

Before each trial, the experimenter selected one of these four people
at random by the throw of a die and sent that person an e-mail asking
him to e-mail the participant at a fixed time, say 10:10 AM. The
participant knew that an e-mail would be sent by one of these four
people at exactly 10:10. One minute before, at 10:09, he sent an
e-mail to the experimenter, guessing who was about to e-mail. When the
chosen e-mailer sent the e-mail at 10:10, he also sent a copy (using
the "cc" procedure) to the experimenter. As e-mails display the time
they were sent as a standard feature, it was easy to establish that
the guesses were in fact sent before the e-mails.

In the first series of trials, the participants were not filmed. In
the second series, participants were filmed continuously on time-coded
videotape to ensure that they were not receiving any other e-mail
messages or telephone calls during the trials. The videotapes were
scrutinized "blind" by an independent evaluator.

Participanls
We recruited participants through advertisements on a recruitment web
site.3 Our advertisements read: "Do you know who is e-mailing you
before you receive it? Good rates of pay for simple fun experiments as
part of Rupert Sheldrake's psychic research project. If you would like
to take part, reply now!" We were not trying to sample the population
randomly, but to find people who might be telepathic in connection
with e-mails. A sample biased in favour of possible telepathic ability
would provide a stronger test of the null hypothesis.

We sent details of the test procedure to the people who replied,
asking them to nominate people to whom they thought they might respond
telepathically. We encouraged them to nominate four e-mailers, but
accepted participants who could find only two or three people willing
to take part. The participants supplied us with their own postal
addresses, e-mail addresses, and telephone numbers, as well as those
of their e-mailers. We also asked participants to tell us when they
would be able to take part in tests and to check that their e-mailers
would be free at those times. We paid participants £10 per unfilmed
trial and £15 per videotaped trial, regardless of the outcome. When
participants nominated only two or three e-mailers, one or both of the
authors served as e-mailers to make up the total number of four. The
authors were unfamiliar to these participants.

All participants were asked to take part in an initial series of 10
trials. Most people did so, but some were unable to complete the
series, most of- ten because it proved too difficult to persuade
several people to take part at the same time. We planned in advance to
test 50 participants in this first phase. When some participants
dropped out, we continued to recruit more until 50 had completed the
10 trials each. We then asked some people who scored at levels above
chance to take part in a further series of 10 trials to assess whether
their hit rates were consistent.

Of the 50 participants who completed at least 10 trials, 29 were women
and 21 men. These tests took place between January, 2002 and August, 2003.

For the second series of tests, we recruited five participants who had
scored at levels above chance in the preliminary tests and asked them
to take part in a new series of 30 videotaped trials each. Four were
women and one was a man, their ages ranged from 16 to 29 years. Their
details and their nominated e-mailers were as follows:

Subject 1: male; tested in February- March 2003 in Winchester,
England; date of birth March 20, 1982; his three familiar e-mailers
were fellow students in Winchester, living in different parts of the city.

Subject 2: female; tested in April-June, 2003, in East Kilbride,
Scotland date of birth January 21, 1974; three familiar e-mailers: two
were members of her family, living in the same town, and the other was
a friend who lived in Washington, Tyne and Wear, about 150 miles away.

Subject 3: female: tested in July, 2003 in Plymouth, England: date of
birth May 4, 1983; all four e-mailers were friends; one lived in the
same town, Plymouth, the other three in or near London, about 230
miles away.

Subject 4: female; tested in September-October, 2003, in Leicester,
England: date of birth August 13, 1982: all three familiar e-mailers
were friends living in her native place, Hong Kong, over 6,000 miles
from her student lodgings in Leicester.

Subject 5: female; tested in September-October, 2003, in
Wolverhampton, Eng!and; date of birth May 14, 1987; two friends were
in Tenbury Wells, Worcestershire, about 20 miles from her house in
Wolverhampton; another friend was in Sanquhar, Dumfries and Galloway,
Scotland, about 220 miles away.

Procedure
Before the series of tests began, the procedure was explained to the
participants, and they were notified in advance when each trial would
be carried out. The participants were asked to turn on their computers
at least 10 minutes before the first trial. There were five trials in
a session at 10-min. intervals, for example, at 10:00, 10:10, 10:20,
10:30, and 10:40 AM. One minute before each of these times the
participant had to e-mail the experimenter with a guess as to who was
about to e-mail. The participants knew that for each trial one of
their four potential e-mailers would be selected at random by the
throw of a die.

We used high-quality casino dice and a ribbed casino-style dice cup,
purchased in Las Vegas, Nevada. Each of the potential callers was
assigned a number from 1 to 4 and was selected by the die showing one
of these numbers after being thrown. If the die showed 5 or 6, then it
was thrown again until a number between 1 and 4 came up. The
randomizations were tested statistically as described below. In the
first series of trials, which were not filmed, the experimenter threw
the die repeatedly before the session began to select the e-mailers
for each of the trials. For the second series of trials, which were
filmed, the die was thrown immediately before each individual trial.

The participants either used their own computers at home or computers
at their place of work or study. They and their e-mailers were asked
to ensure that the clocks on their computers were set exactly to the
correct time before the experiment began. In cases where e-mail
addresses were web-based (as, for example, in hotmail.corn), the "time
sent" was derived from a clock on the web site and was therefore
already set to the correct time. Most ol the participants and
e-mailers in these tests had web-based e-mail addresses.

Seven to eight minutes before each trial, the experimenter sent an
e-mail to the randomly selected e-mailer saying that he had been
chosen, asking him to think about the participant and then send an
e-mail exactly at the specified time, with a copy to the experimenter.
The other three potential e-mailers were not notified. They were told
in advance that, if they had not heard from the experimenter by five
minutes before the trial time, they had not been chosen and should
carry on with whatever they were doing and not think about the
participant.

The experimenter printed the e-mails from the participants with their
guesses and also the copies of the e-mails from the e-mailers to the
participants. These hard copies provided a permanent record of the
exact times, to the nearest second, at which the e-mails were sent,
which made it possible to ascertain the guesses were in fact made
before the e-mailers sent their e- mails. Some trials were aborted or
were invalid so participants were asked to do extra trials to make up
the prespecified number. In Series 1, consisting of 552 unfilmed
trials with 50 participants, a total of 40 trials were excluded and
replaced with extra trials. In Series 2, consisting of 150 trials with
5 participants, 11 trials were excluded and replaced. None of these
exclusions depended on subjective decisions by the experimenters but
rather on the objective record provided by the e-mails as follows. The
numbers ot trials excluded in Series I and 2 are indicated in
parentheses. (a) The e-mailers sent their e-mails too early, before
the participants had made their guesses (Series 1, 18 trials; Series
2, 5 trials). (b) The e-mailers sent their e-mails too late, more than
5 minutes alter the designated time (Series 1, 2 trials; Series 2, 1
trial), (c) The e-mailers received their instructions but did not send
their e-mails, usually because their computers crashed (Series 1, 7
trials), (d) The participant failed to make a guess (Series 1, 1
trial), (e) The participants sent their guesses too late after the
e-mailers had sent their e-mails (Series 1, 2 trials).

Filming and Analysis of Videotapes
For the filmed experiments, we provided the participants with a Hi-8
camcorder, which they set up in a fixed position so that the
participant and the computer were in full view. The participants
themselves switched on the video camera at the beginning of the
session and switched it off after the trials had been completed. When
a cassette was full, they mailed it to the authors. In all cases, the
trials were filmed on time-coded videotape, with the date and time
burnt into the film.

We asked the participants to cover the screen of their computers with
a thick towel, so that the screen was not visible to ensure they were
not obtaining information by e-mail or through chat-rooms during the
test periods. We also asked them to turn off cell phones and told them
that any trials in which they received a phone call or text message
would be disqualified.

The participants were asked to say their guess out loud to the camera
a minute before the prespecified trial time, so that it was recorded.
Only then did they lift the cloth covering the computer screen and
send the e-mail with their guess on it. They then waited for the
e-mail from the e-mailer, and after they had received it replaced the
cloth over the computer screen.

The Hi-8 recordings were transferred to VHS video cassettes and viewed
by one of the authors, who noted the guesses made by the subjects, the
exact time at which they made their guesses, and the times at which
they uncovered and recovered the computer screen. She also noted if
and when they went off camera or received telephone calls, in which
case the trial was disqualified. This preliminary analysis of the
tapes permitted errors in procedure to be detected and trials to be
disqualified in time for the subject to do additional trials to make
up the prespecified total ot 30. However, this preliminary scoring was
not "blind" since the reviewers were the experimenters. All the tapes
were subsequently scored "blind" by a person who was not otherwise
involved in any of these tests. The agreement with the preliminary
analysis by the authors was excellent: all evaluations were in agreement.

Also, guesses spoken out loud to the camera were in agreement in all
cases with those communicated to the experimenter by e-mail.

Only for Subject 5 was it necessary to disqualify any trials as a
result of the reviewing of the videotapes. In her first three trials,
she forgot the instructions and uncovered the computer screen before
making her guess to the camera, and on one trial there was a telephone
call during the test session. She carried out four extra trials to
compensate.

For two participants, some videotapes were lost in the post, so these
filmed trials could not be included in the totals because they could
not be evaluated blind. But the results of these trials were still
available from the e-mail record and are included in parentheses in
Table 3.

Statistics
The exact binomial test was used for testing of the null hypothesis
that the proportion of correct hits would be at the chance level of
0.25 or 25% (Siegel & Castellan, 1988). Exact 95% confidence limits
for the true probability of a correct response were calculated as
described by Hahn and Meeker (1991). For the comparison of results
with familiar and unfamiliar callers, the Fisher exact test was used
(Siegel & Castellan, 1988). Cohen's effect size d was calculated
according to the formula d = [p(hits observed) - 0.25]/ &#8730;(0.25 x 0.75) .

For a participant-by-participant comparison of hit rates with familiar
and unfamiliar e-mailers, a randomized test was used. This involved
carrying out random permutations of the guesses (Noreen, 1989). The
number of e-mails from the different senders remained the same and so
did the number of guesses of each e-mailer's name, but the guesses
were assigned to the e-mails at random in 30,000 different
combinations. This statistical method does not alter the bias in
guessing the names of familiar e-mailers. Given this response bias,
the method estimates how likely the observed pattern was to have
arisen by chance. The results from different participants were
combined, using the Stouffer-Hemelrijk method, to obtain an overall
estimate of the significance of the difference.

Test for Randomness
Trials were randomized by the throw of a die, and for each trial, each
e-mailer was assigned a number from 1 to 4. We tested the
randomization by comparing the actual frequency of the numbers 1 to 4
with the expected frequency, using the chi-square test (with 3 df). We
also compared the actual with the expected number of repetitions, that
is, the number of times the same number appeared twice in a row, using
the binomial test. The expected number of repetitions was 0.25(n - 1).
These statistical tests showed that in all cases the randomizations
did not differ significantly from chance expectation.

RESULTS

Series 1: Unfilmed trials
Overall results - .Fifty participants completed the prespecified 10
trials each. Altogether, there was a total of 552 trials, on which
there were 235 hits (43%), significantly above the chance expectation
of 25% (z = 9.49, p = 2 x 10-19; Cohen d = 0.42). The 95% confidence
limits of this hit rate were from 38% to 47%. A detailed table of
results is available. 4

Out of the 50 participants, 43 scored above chance levels and 7 below.
By chance, according to the binomial distribution, 24 would be
expected to score above chance and 26 below. The difference of the
actual results from chance was statistically significant (z = 5.54; p
= 2 x 10-8, one-tailed). There were 29 female participants and 21
male. The difference between the average scores for men and women was
nonsignificant.

Three of the participants completed a second series of 10 trials, and
one completed a third series. In the first series, in 30 trials there
were 16 hits (53%, p = 0.001) and in the subsequent 40 trials 24 hits
(60%, p = 3 x10-6). These hit rates were not significantly different.

Some participants we recruited did not complete the prespecified
series of 10 trials. Usually this was because of the difficulty of
persuading their e-mailers to be available at the same time. Some gave
up because of change of circumstances, like getting a job. Perhaps
some lost interest. For whatever reasons, 48 people did fewer than 10
trials. Together these 48 people completed 195 trials, an average of
4.1 per person. They guessed correctly 67 times (34%), a hit rate
significantly above the chance level of 25% (z = 2.94, p = 0.002, d =
0.21).

Familiar and unfamiliar e-mailers - Ten of the 50 participants
nominated all four of their e-mailers, 34 nominated three e-mailers,
and 6 nominated only two. The overall hit rates were very similar in
all three groups (Table 1).

The overall hit rate with familiar e-mailers was higher than that with
unfamiliar ones (Table 2). However, these comparisons do not take into
account a response bias in favour of familiar e-mailers. This bias
would, by chance alone, give rise to differences in hit rates with
familiar and unfamiliar people. In an extreme example, if a
participant guessed only the names of familiar people and never
guessed the names of unfamiliar e-mailers, then the hit rates with the
familiar people would be above chance and with unfamiliar people zero.
The overall hit rate would be at the chance level of 25% in the
absence of telepathy. Some participants showed a response bias in
. TABLE I
NUMBER or VARIABLES IN COMPARISON OF TESTS WITH NO UNFAMILIAR
E-MAILERS WITH ONE AND WITH TWO UNFAMILIAR E-MAILERS

Unfamiliar E-mailers
None

One

Two
Participants
10

34

6
Trials
100

382

70



Hits
46

159

30
% Hits
46

42

43
z
4.73

7.44

3.31
p
0.000004

1 x 10-12

0.0008
d
0.48

0.39

0.41

favour of familiar people, and as a result the total number of guesses
of the names of familiar people exceeded the total number of trials
involving familiar people. There were correspondingly fewer guesses of
the names of unfamiliar people (see Table 2).
TABLE 2
HIT RATES WITH FAMILIAR AND UNFAMILIAR E-MAILERS IN TESTS WITH ONE AND
TWO UNFAMILIAR E-MAILERS
Measure

One unfamiliar (n = 34)

Two unfamiliar (n = 6)
Familiar

Unfamiliar

Familiar

Unfamiliar
Trials
272

110

36

34
Guesses
300

82

42

28
Hits
122

37

22

8
Hits % of trials
45

34

61

24
Hits % of guesses
41

45

52

29





A simple way of taking the response bias into account is to express
the hit rates on the basis of guesses (Schmidt, Mailer, & Walach,
2003). The greater the response bias in favour of familiar people, the
greater the chance of a hit and the lower the chance of a hit with
unfamiliar people. For the 34 participants who had only one unfamiliar
e-mailer, 41% of the guesses of familiar names were hits, but so were
45% of the guesses of the names of the unfamiliar e-mailers (Table 2).
This difference was nonsignificant.

By contrast, for the six participants with two unfamiliar e-mailers,
the hit rates remained higher with familiar than unfamiliar people
when expressed on the basis of guesses: 52% compared with 29%. In a
randomized permutation analysis, the hit rates with familiar and
unfamiliar people were significantly different (z = 3.37, p = 0.0004,
one-tailed test).

Series 2: Videotaped Trials
Overall results of filmed experiments - All five participants in the
filmed experiments had already taken part in unfilmed tests on which
their hit rates were 50% or more. In 137 filmed trials, there were 64
hits (47%), with 95% confidence limits from 38% to 55% (z = 5.77, p =
3 x 10-8, d = 0.50).

The videotapes of 13 trials were lost in the post, but the outcomes
were still known from the e-mails. When the data from these 13 trials
were included, there was a total of 150 trials with 70 hits, again a
hit rate of 47%, with 95%. confidence limits from 38% to 55% (z =
6.03, p = 1x10-8 d = 0.50).

Results for individual participants- Four subjects had hit rates
significantly above chance, ranging from 43% to 58% (Table 3); one
subject (Subject 2) had a hit rate at the chance level. The hit rates
with individual e-mailers varied from 17%) to 75%. Details of the
responses to individual callers are given in supplementary tables,
available on request (Supplementary Tables 5-9).4

TABLE 3
NUMBER OF TRIALS AND HITS FROM VlDEOTAPED E-MAIL TELEPATHY TRIALS FOR
FIVE SUBJECTS.
E-mailer3
Subject 1

Subject 2

Subject 3

Subject 4

Subject 5
Trials

Hits

Trials

Hits

Trials

Hits

Trials

Hits

Trials

Hits
F1
9

5

6
(7)

1

9

4

11

7

10
(12)

6
7
F2
5

3

9
(11)

2
3

8

4

4

3

4
(5)

3
4
F3
10

3

5
(8)

2
3

6

2

8

2

5
(6)

3
F4/UF1
6

2

1
(4)

0
1

7

5

7

4

7

4
Total
30

13*

21
(30)

5
8

30

15**

30

16**

26
(30)

16**
18**
% Hits
43

24 (27)

50

53

58 (60)

Note - Numbers in parenthesis show results including data from trials
for which videotapes were lost. Subject 3 had four familiar e-mailers,
FI-F4. The other four subjects had three familiar (F1-F3) e-mailers
and one unfamiliar (UF1) e-mailer. * p < 0.05), ** p < 0.01

Four of the subjects had one unfamiliar e-mailer. The average hit rate
with the unfamiliar and the familiar e-mailers was the same, 46%.
There was an overall response bias in favour of the unfamiliar
e-mailer, and the hit rate expressed on the basis of guesses was 37%
with familiar e-mailers and 48% with the unfamiliar e-mailer. However,
on a randomized permutation analysis this difference was nonsignificant.

DISCUSSION
Overall Findings
The hit rates in the unfilmed and filmed trials were well above
chance. These results were similar to those in tests of telephone
telepathy (Sheldrake & Smart, 2003a, 2003c; Sheldrake, et al., 2004).
As with telephone telepathy, some participants had higher hit rates
than others. These differences are not surprising. People differ in
visual acuity, auditory sensitivity, and in many other respects, so
differences in telepathic abilities would seem likely. The existence
of consistent individual differences is supported by retesting of
high-scoring participants. On unfilmed trials all three participants,
and in filmed trials four out of five participants (Table 3), again
scored above chance.

In all our tests, the e-mailers were in different buildings from the
participants and were usually many miles away. Direct sensory
communication, unaided by technology, was not feasible. The guesses
were made before the e-mailers sent their messages. Hence neither the
content of the messages nor the exact times at which they were sent
could have affected the guesses. These results might appear to support
the existence of telepathy. However, there could be alternative
explanations. On the one hand, perhaps the results could be accounted
for in terms of cheating. On the other hand, if the results cannot be
dismissed on the basis of cheating, then perhaps they could be
explained in terms of other forms of psi, rather than telepathy.

In the unfilmed experiments, there are three ways in which cheating
could have occurred. First, participants could have received other
e-mails from one or more of their e-mailers before they made their
guesses, telling them if they had been selected, or they could have
received telephone calls or text messages. Second, participants could
have had accomplices who received e-mails, text messages, or telephone
calls from e-mailers and passed this information on to them. Third,
participants could have altered the clocks on their computers, making
them a few minutes late. In this way they could have received messages
from their e-mailers first and then sent their "guesses." From the
time on the e-mails, it would then appear that the guesses had been
sent before they received the messages from their e-mailers. But only
some e-mail systems depend on the person's own computer clock for the
"time sent." In web-based e-mail systems, like hotmail.corn, the time
is given by a clock on the server. Most of our participants (and most
of their e-mailers) had web-based e-mail addresses, so altering
computer clocks could not have accounted for their responses.

We cannot rule out the possibility that some of our participants on
the unfilmed trials were cheating, but it seems to us unlikely that
most of them would have done so. Participants were recruited
independently; they lived all over Britain, and most did not know each
other. For cheating to explain our results, the majority of
participants would have had to want to deceive us, thought out ways to
do so, and taken the trouble to put these methods into practice. It
would have been much harder to cheat on the filmed trials than on the
unfilmed trials. Hence the average score in filrned trials should have
declined, but in fact it was somewhat higher, 47% as opposed to 43%.

Nevertheless, there are still at least two ways in which people could
conceivably have cheated when being filmed. First, they could have had
an accomplice not visible in the field ol view of the camera. Such an
accomplice could have received information through text messages, for
example, and given signals to the participant that we could not detect
on the videotape. To test this hypothesis in comparable telephone
telepathy tests, two experiments were carried out in which not only
the participants but also the callers were filmed continuously in the
presence of experimenters. The success rates were 47% (Sheldrake &
Smart, 2003c) and 50%. (Sheldrake, et al., 2004).

Second, participants could have had cell phones in their pockets or
concealed in their clothing set to the "vibrate" mode, through which
they could have received secret signals. In our opinion, it is very
unlikely that all the successful participants independently thought of
this method of cheating and were motivated to put it into practice.
They received no extra payment for high scores. In any case, an
examination of the actual data makes the vibrating cell phone
hypothesis implausible. Consider, for example, the results for Subject
4 (Table 3). Her highest hit rate occurred with F2. I/we assume that
F2, when he was selected, sent a secret message by telephoning her to
make a hidden cell phone vibrate, we might perhaps be able to account
for her scoring three out of four hits when F2 actually rang. But, in
fact, she guessed F2's name 10 times altogether, and 7 of these
guesses were wrong, In no cases were participants always correct with
any given e-mailer (Table 3), and in no case did they only guess that
e-mailer's name on trials when that person was e-mailing (as shown in
supplementary Tables 5-94 ). So if any of the participants were
cheating, they did so very inefficiently. But some skeptics might
argue that this just shows how cunningly they concealed their strategy.

In replications of this work, it would be important to test the
vibrating cell phone hypothesis. It is now technologically feasible to
do so. Cell phone detectors are commercially available at modest
prices and are used in theatres, schools, and examination rooms to
sound an alarm when there is a switched-on cell phone in the vicinity.
Such detectors could be used to ensure that no cheating through cell
phones was possible.

In the absence of "normal" sensory communication, if some people can
indeed tell when they are about to receive an e-mail from a particular
person, this need not necessarily imply telepathy. Instead, other
forms of ESP or psi could be involved. People might have predicted the
future state of e-mail receipts by precognition, or they might even
have clairvoyantly witnessed the sender's acts without any
mind-to-mind exchanges.

These forms of psi could in principle be distinguished from each
cither empirically. Whereas telepathy seems to take place primarily
with familiar people (Sheldrake, 2003), precognition might be expected
to work just as well with any sender. The clairvoyant hypothesis might
also predict that there would be no difference between familiar and
unfamiliar e-mailers, since no mind-to-mind exchanges are involved.

Comparison of familiar and Unfamiliar Callers
There was a higher success rate with familiar than unfamiliar
e-mailers in the unfilmed trials, but some of the participants showed
a response bias in that they guessed the names of familiar e-mailers
more often than unfamiliar people. When there was only one unfamiliar
e-mailer, the hit rates as percentages of guesses were similar with
the familiar people and the unfamiliar person, and the difference was
nonsignificant. The same was true for filmed trials. However, trials
with only one unfamiliar e-mailer provide a weak test of
familiar-unfamiliar differences. If participants could somehow feel
when familiar e-mailers were thinking about them, then the absence of
such a feeling could have helped them to detect when the unfamiliar
person was about to e-mail them.

By contrast, in tests with two unfamiliar e-mailers, there was a
higher hit rate with familiar than with unfamiliar people, even taking
the response bias into account. This difference was statistically
significant. In our experiments on telephone telepathy, in most of
which there were two unfamiliar callers, there was also a
significantly higher success rate with familiar than unfamiliar people
(Sheldrake & Smart, 2003c). These findings favour the telepathy
hypothesis as opposed to those about clairvoyance or precognition.

In further research, to compare the hit rates with familiar and
unfamiliar senders, it would clearly be better to have two unfamiliar
people rather than one.

Effects of Distance
In some of these trials, the callers and participants were hundreds or
even thousands of miles apart. For example, Subject 4 had strikingly
high hit rates with her friends in Hong Kong, 6,000 miles away (Table
3). These results suggest that telepathic influences are capable of
acting at great distances. Telephone telepathy also seemed to occur
over thousands of miles (Sheldrake & Smart, 2003a, 2003c). Previous
research has shown that apparent telepathy both under spontaneous and
experimental conditions does not appear to decline with distance
(e.g., Gurney, Myers, & Podmore, 1886; Stevenson, 1970; Braude, 1979;
Sheldrake, 1999, 2003). In research with e-mail and telephone
telepathy, it would be desirable systematically to test for the
effects of distance.

Replication Using, Automated Methods
In spite of the growing body of evidence for psi phenomena, their
existence is still controversial. This situation could perhaps change
were there a relatively simple way of carrying out replicable
experiments, enabling many people to take part in this research, for
example, in class or student projects. Tests involving e-mails could
provide one such method.

In further research on e-mail telepathy, it would probably be best to
use an automated procedure in which a computer selects the senders at
random and alerts them to the fact they have been chosen. For such
tests, the participant could choose two familiar people to act as
senders, and the computer could generate two virtual senders. Of
course, participants would not be expected to be telepathic with the
computer, but they could conceivably anticipate receiving messages
from virtual senders by clairvoyance or precognition.

Specifically to test for clairvoyance, the experimental procedure
could be modified so that there were four virtual senders instead of
two. In tests for precognition, the computer would select the senders
only after the participants had guessed who was about to send a message.

We do not expect that a random sample of the population would have hit
rates as high as those in this study. The wording of the advertisement
for participants probably attracted people who think of themselves as
telepathic, and for our filmed experiments participants with high hit
rates in unfilmed tests were selected. A sample recruited at random,
including people with little or no previous experience of telepathy,
would probably have hit rates closer to chance. Hit rates would
probably be lower still if the senders were unfamiliar. To study
telepathy experimentally, it is more fruitful to work with
participants with above-average abilities and with senders they know
well. An internet-based procedure would potentially enable large
numbers of people to take part in this research, making it possible to
identify people with high hit rates for further testing under rigorous
conditions.
RUPERT SHELDRAKE
London

PAMELA SMART
Ramsbottom, Bury

NOTES
1. This work was supported by grants from the Lifebridge Foundation,
New York, the Bial Foundation, Portugal, and the Institute of Noetic
Sciences, Petaluma, California. We thank those who participated in
these tests, Carole Macaulay for her blind evaluation of the
video-tapes, Jan van Bolhuis for his help with the statistical
analysis, and our anonymous referees for their helpful comments.
2. Address correspondence to Rupert Sheldrake. 20 Willow Road, London
N\X'3 ITJ, UK. or e-mail (ars@...)
3. Called www.hotrecruit.co.uk.
4. See supplementary tables on file as Dociiment APD2005-031 with the
Archive for Psychological Data, P.O. Box 7922, Missoula, MT 59807.
Remit $15.00 for photocopy to the Archive.

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Accepted October 26, 2005.



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