However, I know that when people are under pressure to perform, they can not be at their best. I myself had an experience in which I continually was guessing correctly at a task that would imply ESP. The persons involved were amazed that I was constantly guessing correctly and would not leave me alone. I finally gave up trying to give the correct answer. You see nothing good would come of it. Being wrong made me normal and like them.

Another time I read a book about visualizing answers, it was very involved and I truly don’t remember the exact method. However, I tried the technique out with the lottery. This was at a time when there were only 5 numbers to match to win. I played one game only. I saw in my mind 4 correct numbers. I only missed one of the correct numbers. I won $80. I was very mentally drained by the visualization method. I vowed to never try it again. That was many years ago now. You don’t have to believe me. I have won small lottery prizes since then just having the machine choose the numbers, but I have never tried the visualization method again. As I say, it is so long ago I don’t even remember the name of the book I read or the exact method it taught. It was written by an Indian Yogi. I think the one on the Carson Show really believed he could levitate. In fact, I would not doubt if he had, but not on TV. I myself have seen objects levitate and move under their own power. I know others that have too, but they will never admit to it. I don’t know how it works, and can not do it myself at all. I just know it can be done.

I am a very down to earth, practical person. I am not flighty and in fact am not religious or mystical in any way. I have felt pressured to make up “psychic” stuff to appease my “fans” at times too. That is part of being human, wanting to please and console people. Real ESP is a thankless, uncertain and never ending demand for answers from desperate people. It is not something that people who have it can just give out on demand without error. That is why science will never get the answers it wants through the oppressive exactitude of the scientific methods that are currently used to test for it.

The best ESP comes in time of peril. That is really the only time ESP is very useful to those that possess it. Yet I like most people have come to push aside those psychic premenitions and to dismiss them. Why? For fear of being wrong and the terrible humiliation and embarrassment that I would be subjected to by people who want every thing to work like clockwork, like machinery. Because there is no room for being wrong ever. That is why people who could help never will. It would cause too much pressure to perform and to give comfort and right all the wrongs. It is not a panacea. Science and technology has in many ways led people to believe that everything that is correct works right every time or almost every time. I personally believe that ESP is most likely an ancient safety device that modern people just don’t need as much because they have devised better devices that are more foolproof ( like smoke detectors). That is why modern people have so little experience with using ESP and so little tolerance for failure of such safety devices.

Also, it’s usual for an fMRI study to show the result of a subtraction. Moulton and Kosslyn only published each condition (psi and non-psi) separately, leaving the reader to eyeball a comparison between each condition. Why did they do that? I would have much prefered the result of the subtraction showing no statistical differences…

“These findings are the strongest evidence yet obtained against the existence of paranormal mental phenomena.”

I think this overstates it a lot. Skeptics need to be careful not to overplay our hands lest we play into the hands of true believers by diluting our rhetoric. This single study is insignificant when compared with the mountain of evidence in the meta-experiment described by Dr. Novella. While Kosslyn is correct that a null result is meaningful if you have reason to believe that you should have detected the effect with your paradigm, his statements are much to broad to be justified. To his credit, he succeeded in demonstrating that appreciable psi effects do not exist under the range of conditions he tested.

“If psi exists, it occurs in the brain, and hence, assessing the brain directly may be more sensitive than using indirect behavioral methods (as have been used previously).”

Well, this kind of puts the cart before the horse in terms of convincing those with a penchant for making supernatural claims. Also, while measuring the brain is theoretically more sensitive than indirect behavioral methods, it is not necessarily more sensitive with our current tools. Presently, I’m not convinced that fMRI signal is superior to other methods for detecting general emotional arousal. Theoretically, brain metrics should be more sensitive, but fMRI signal is too crude of a measure to rule out more subtle neural effects.

There are far more compelling reasons to be skeptical of paranormal claims. This study adds little to adjust my low probability assessment for the existence of ESP-type phenomena.

A more interesting question might be if there’s an evolutionary advantage to believing in pseudo-science and superstition. Maybe true believers can make faster (if more erroneous) decisions, and expend fewer calories on thought.

Selection would not necessarily increase precognitive powers continually in animals. We are used to directional selection from domestic breeding programs (tinier dogs that fit in purses, cows that produce more milk, and sad-but-true leaner pigs). Optimal fitness in a dynamic natural environment tends to be a moving target, which leads to directional selection over short time scales and more complex patterns over long time scales (fish to terrestrial animals to whales is one example).

Of course, there may be another means of communication we are currently unaware of, but until we discover it, I think it is best to remain skeptical about ESP claims.

By the way, Steven, I am not surprised that you are not getting the academic kudos you deserve from the Yale administration. My impression of them was always that they were good conformists, and you, thankfully, are not. Thank you for supporting Dave Colquhoun in his battle with his craven Provost. The previous comment that the Provost may have an “alternative” agenda is, I think, well taken.