Controversy
In 1979, Susan Blackmore visited the laboratories of Carl Sargent in Cambridge. She noticed a number of irregularities in the procedure and wrote about them for the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research.
It now appeared that on one session — number 9 — the following events had taken place.- Sargent did the randomization when he should not have.
- A 'B' went missing from the drawer during the session, instead of afterwards.
- Sargent came into the judging and 'pushed' the subject towards 'B'.
- An error of addition was made in favour of 'B' and 'B' was chosen.
- 'B' was the target and the session a direct hit.
This article, along with further criticisms of Sargent's work from Adrian Parker and Nils Wiklund remained unpublished until 1987 but were well known in parapsychological circles. Sargent wrote a rebuttal to these criticisms (also not published until 1987) in which he did not deny that what Blackmore saw occurred, but her conclusions based on those observations were wrong and prejudiced. His co-workers also responded, saying that any deviation from protocol was the result of “random errors” rather than any concerted attempt at fraud. Carl Sargent stopped working in parapsychology after this and did not respond "in a timely fashion" when the Council of the Parapsychological Association asked for his data and so his membership in that organization was allowed to lapse.
Read more about this topic: Ganzfeld Experiment
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