Why It Did Not End the Argument

Three things kept the dispute open. The first is that automation closes the loopholes it was designed to close and no others; critics raised the acoustic isolation of the two rooms, and specifically whether a video target with a soundtrack could be faintly audible, which the 1986 list had not anticipated in that form. The second is that every series came from one laboratory, run by the person whose hypothesis was being tested, and the field's own literature on experimenter effects makes that hard to wave away. The third and most consequential is what happened next. Milton and Wiseman pooled thirty ganzfeld studies conducted after this series and found no significant overall effect, which is the outcome one expects if the original result was specific to its laboratory. Storm, Tressoldi and Di Risio later pooled free-response studies from 1992 to 2008 and found a significant effect, using a wider inclusion rule. Neither team accepts the other's pool. The laboratory itself closed in 1989 when funding ran out, and Honorton died in 1992, so nobody could simply run the series again under his supervision and see. The result stands as reported, unreplicated by an independent group, and unexplained.