The Critique, the Reply, and the Decision Not to Continue

By the early 1980s Honorton had accumulated several dozen ganzfeld studies and reported a pooled hit rate above the twenty-five percent expected by chance. Ray Hyman examined the same set and produced a critique organised around specific defects rather than general suspicion: inadequate randomisation of the target order, the possibility of sensory leakage between the sender's and receiver's rooms, multiple analyses of single datasets, and selective reporting of series that had worked. He also argued that the flaws he identified correlated with study outcome, which if true would explain the effect without invoking anything unusual. Honorton replied with a reanalysis disputing that correlation and arguing that the studies with the tightest procedures had not produced smaller effects.

At that point the exchange could have continued indefinitely, as such exchanges usually do, with each side re-scoring the same studies against its own criteria. Instead the two men wrote a joint document. That decision, rather than either meta-analysis, is what makes the episode worth an entry. It is worth noting how unusual the starting position was. Both men had already published their analyses, both had readerships that expected them to win, and neither had any professional incentive to sign a document conceding ground. That they did so anyway is the reason this exchange is cited in methodology courses that have no interest in psi at all.