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This article is from the Scientific Skepticism FAQ, by Paul Johnson Paul@treetop.demon.co.uk with numerous contributions by others.

2.3: What is "Sensory Leakage"?

Sensory leakage is something that designers of tests for psi must be
careful to guard against. Tests for psi use powerful statistical
tests to search for faint traces of communication. Unfortunately the
fact that communication has taken place does not prove that it was
done by telepathy. It could have been through some more mundane form
of signal.

For instance one experiment involved a "sender" in one room with a
stack of numbered cards (1-10) and a "receiver" in another room trying
to guess what the next card was. The sender looked at a card and
pressed a button to signal to the receiver. The receiver then tried
to guess the number on the card. There was a definite correlation
between the card numbers and the guesses. However the sender could
signal the receiver by varying the delays between buzzes. When this
channel of communication was removed, the effect disappeared.

 

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• prev: 2.2: I have had a psychic experience. (scientific skepticism)
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science, engineering, scientific skepticism, skeptics, Conspiracy Theory