Reading. During any research reading, we need to
ensure that we only ask the mediums to report the types of information they
usually report. Since this does not include winning lottery numbers,
combinations to locks, or what color shirt the sitter should wear tomorrow, I
didn’t ask for any of those things in my experiments. Additionally, although in
your physical life you are regularly known by your personally-identifiable
information (PII), like your name, date of birth, social security number,
address, and phone number, these are not the types of information mediums are
regularly observed reporting, so I didn’t ask for those during research. To
further optimize the environment, I needed to limit both the number and length
of readings in order to best mimic the real-world experiences of practicing
mediums.
Maximum Controls. In order to control for artifacts, I
needed to implement maximum experimental controls. If I wanted to study how a
seed grows naturally, I would need to control for things like fertilizer and
supplemental UV lamps or I’d end up making errors in my understanding of plant
growth. In mediumship research, we need to address the normal, sensory
explanations for the source of the information the mediums report. These
include factors like hot and cold readings.
The Windbridge Research Center offers
descriptions of how a fraudulent medium uses these to fabricate accurate
readings:
With hot reading, the fraud will obtain
information about the sitter beforehand and feed it back to them during the
reading and act like it’s coming from the deceased. The information can be
looked up online through social media or using confederates onsite to chat up
the sitter. With cold reading, the fraud asks the sitter questions and uses
their responses or uses sensory clues or cues (for example, the name, age, or
gender of the sitter, their clothing or accent, tears, gasps, nods, pupil
dilation, the sitter smelling of cigarette smoke, etc.) to steer the direction
of the reading. A reading containing information so general it could apply to
nearly anyone is also a form of cold reading.
In addition to hot and cold reading,
some sitters may have a cognitive tendency to remember many items as accurate
even when they were incorrect or unclear. When a sitter knows a reading was
intended for them, they may rate or score items differently. During research,
this ‘rater bias’ can be responsible for what seems like an accurate reading.
Finally, another possible explanation for a medium’s accuracy is precognition:
that is, the medium may obtain, from the future, information about which items
in the reading were scored as accurate by the rater when the medium is given
feedback about the scored reading.
To address these explanations for the information mediums
report, the Windbridge protocol uses five levels of experimental blinding (also
called masking). In research, blinding refers to the act of preventing people
associated with an experiment from knowing certain pieces or types of
information. For example, in a standard randomized controlled trial (RCT)
involving double-blinding, the patient and the doctor are both blinded to
whether the patient is taking a placebo or the medication being studied. In
what we have nicknamed our “quintuple-blinded” mediumship protocol, the medium,
the sitter, and three experimenters are blinded to various aspects of the
protocol and to different types of information. This does not mean that anyone
is blindfolded or gets poked in the eye to ensure experimental constraints. It
just means that access to information is controlled.
To create the quintuple-blinding, our
research readings involve only phone readings, and the sitter is not on the
call. An experimenter blinded to information about the sitter and their
associated discarnate serves as a proxy sitter in place of the absent sitter.
Because the medium has no access to the sitter, and the blinded experimenter
cannot provide cues or clues, this protocol addresses the hot and cold reading
explanations. In addition, the experimenter asks the medium specific questions
about the discarnate’s physical and personality characteristics, hobbies, cause
of death, and any messages for the absent sitter. By asking for specific
information, this addresses the overly general information explanation.
Furthermore, each medium performs two
readings for two different discarnates, and then each associated sitter scores
formatted transcripts of both readings without knowing which was intended for
them (the target reading) and which was intended for another sitter (the decoy
reading). The protocol addresses rater bias by comparing the accuracy scores of
all the target readings with the accuracy scores of all the decoy readings. To
address precognition, we never give the research mediums feedback about their
research readings. Finally, each reading contains information about only one
discarnate. This prevents cues that multiple-discarnate readings may provide to
the raters.
This quintuple-blind protocol was vetted and peer-reviewed at least four times by multiple qualified peers: first, when a description of the planned project was selected to be funded by the funding organization’s reviewers; second, when the final report about the study findings was reviewed by the funding organization; third, when a description of the protocol and findings was vetted and accepted for presentation at a scientific conference; and fourth, when an article describing the findings was reviewed for publication in a journal.
Dr. Julie Beischel is the Director of Research at the Windbridge Research Center. She received her PhD in Pharmacology and Toxicology with a minor in Microbiology and Immunology from the University of Arizona and uses her interdisciplinary training to apply the scientific method to controversial topics. For over 15 years, Dr. Beischel has worked full-time studying mediums: individuals who report experiencing communication with the deceased and who regularly, reliably, and on-demand report the specific resulting messages to the living. References cited in her paper are deleted from these excerpts but a full paper with references is available at the Bigelow website (https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php).
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