(2018-09-02, 06:32 PM)Chris Wrote: I posted a link a few days ago to some pieces about parapsychology by the psychologist Eliot Slater. They included a review of Hansel's "ESP. A Scientific Evaluation" (1966), in which Slater endorsed Hansel's sceptical conclusions. The review includes this statement (this appears to be Slater's view rather than Hansel's; comments by Hansel quoted elsewhere read as though he was unaware of the results of the study, even though the report seems to have been published in 1963):
"Very inadequate use has been made of mechanical and electronic recording systems to guard against trickery or error. Apparently there has been only one really satisfactory experiment when such use was made, by the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratories with VERITAC, in which 37 subjects completed a total of 55,500 trials. Neither the group as a whole, nor any single member of it displayed any evidence of ESP in the form of clairvoyance, in precognition, or in general extra-sensory perception."
http://eliotslater.org/index.php/psychia...evaluation
Actually this is closely based on what Hansel wrote in the book. The comments of his I had seen quoted elsewhere come from the final paragraph of the book. Apparently Hansel was suggesting there that additional trials with VERITAC might settle the question of ESP one way or another. I don't know whether there were ever any further VERITAC trials.