Telepathy: Is It For Real?

Summary

Science Vs Episode Summary: "Telepathy: Is It For Real?"

Release Date: April 17, 2025 | Host: Wendy Zuckerman | Senior Producer: Rose Rimler

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1. Introduction to Telepathy and Its Popularity

Wendy Zuckerman opens the episode by introducing the topic of telepathy, framing it as a battle between scientific facts and popular beliefs. She welcomes Rose Rimler, Science Vs's senior producer, to discuss the recent surge in telepathy discussions, largely influenced by the popular podcast "The Telepathy Tapes."

[00:23] Rose Rimler: "Telepathy... is having a bit of a moment right now, probably because of this very popular podcast called the Telepathy Tapes."

"The Telepathy Tapes" gained significant traction, even briefly surpassing Joe Rogan's podcast on Spotify. Its central claim revolves around telepathy being a genuine phenomenon, particularly among nonverbal autistic individuals who purportedly communicate thoughts directly.

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2. The Telepathy Tapes: Claims and Content

Rose provides an overview of "The Telepathy Tapes," highlighting its focus on a specific group—nonverbal autistic individuals who supposedly exhibit telepathic abilities with their families and educators.

[01:42] Rose Rimler: "This is people with autism who are very limited in how they communicate and who require a lot of support... they are able to communicate telepathically with their family and with teachers and other people."

The podcast features Kai Dickens, a documentary filmmaker, who explores these claims by conducting tests designed to validate telepathy. One notable episode showcases a young woman from Mexico who appears to communicate the word "pirate" in Spanish ("pirata") without having seen the picture herself.

[07:13] Rose Rimler: "And we hear... the daughter... spells out... 'pirate' in Spanish... It seemed real."

Wendy observes:

[08:24] Wendy Zuckerman: "Huh?"

The episode conveys moments that leave listeners, including Rose, intrigued and questioning the authenticity of such telepathic claims.

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3. Critique of Facilitated Communication

The conversation shifts to facilitated communication (FC), a technique where a facilitator assists a nonverbal individual in typing out messages. Rose draws parallels between FC and the methods used in "The Telepathy Tapes."

[09:33] Rose Rimler: "This is called facilitated communication... the non-speaking person... has a facilitator who gently holds their arm or their wrist... to select letters."

Historically, FC garnered significant attention, even winning an Emmy and being featured on programs like Frontline, where deceptive outcomes emerged. For instance, a teenage girl named Betsy falsely alleged sexual abuse by her family through FC, leading to foster care placement before investigations debunked these claims.

[14:38] Kai Dickens: "Did you see it? ... she [Betsy] didn't type 'dog,' but 'sneakers.'"

Experts like Katherine Beals from the University of Pennsylvania critique these methods, emphasizing that facilitators often unconsciously influence the messages, whether intentionally or not.

[17:05] Rose Rimler: "It's actually called the ideomotor effect... your brain is sending these very tiny signals to your hand."

These revelations undermine the credibility of telepathic claims made through FC, revealing them as products of psychological phenomena rather than genuine mind-to-mind communication.

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4. Scientific Examination of Telepathy

Rose delves into the broader scientific research on telepathy, questioning its validity given the lack of a known mechanism.

[29:39] Rose Rimler: "How does telepathy work? Do we have any known physical explanation for how telepathy could work? No."

She discusses the Ganzfeld Protocol, a common method to test telepathy under controlled conditions. Participants are placed in a subdued environment to minimize sensory input, enhancing the potential for telepathic signals to be detected. A meta-analysis of over 100 Ganzfeld experiments suggested a slight increase in success rates beyond chance (32% vs. 25%).

[36:33] Wendy Zuckerman: "How much more? 32% of the time."

However, Chris French, an emeritus professor of psychology and former head of the anomalistic psychology research unit at Goldsmiths, University of London, remains skeptical.

[37:48] Chris French: "I'm gonna hold back a little bit because there've been so many twists and turns in this tale."

He highlights issues with meta-analyses, such as selective data interpretation and lack of pre-registration, which compromise the reliability of these findings.

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5. The Role of Pre-Registration and Replication in Research

Rose emphasizes the importance of pre-registering studies to prevent biased data interpretation. She cites a replicated study on precognition where initial promising results failed under rigorous, pre-registered conditions.

[42:25] Rose Rimler: "It produced absolutely no effects whatsoever to support the existence of precognition."

This demonstrates the necessity of stringent scientific methods to validate extraordinary claims like telepathy, which often fall short under scrutiny.

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6. Mechanisms and Explanations Beyond Science

When questioned about the mechanism behind telepathy, Rose reveals that proponents often resort to concepts from quantum physics, such as quantum entanglement. However, even experts in physics find no plausible connection.

[43:15] Wendy Zuckerman: "Do we have any known physical explanation for how telepathy could work? And he [the physicist] said no."

This absence of a theoretical foundation further weakens the case for telepathy within the scientific community.

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7. Conclusion: Human Connections vs. Paranormal Claims

Both hosts conclude that what many perceive as telepathy can be adequately explained by human intuition, emotional connections, and psychological phenomena rather than paranormal abilities.

[45:39] Rose Rimler: "The human mind, the human body, common shared humanity... that's good enough for me personally."

Wendy sums it up:

[45:57] Wendy Zuckerman: "Whether it is a parent who loves their child... it's just not paranormal."

They advocate for appreciating the depth of human relationships without attributing unexplained phenomena like telepathy.

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8. Notable Quotes

• Rose Rimler on facilitated communication's pitfalls:

  [17:05] "It's actually called the ideomotor effect... your brain is sending these very tiny signals to your hand."

• Chris French expressing skepticism about meta-analyses:

  [37:48] "I'm gonna hold back a little bit because there've been so many twists and turns in this tale."

• Wendy Zuckerman on intuitive human connections:

  [45:57] "Whether it is a parent who loves their child... it's just not paranormal."

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9. Additional Resources

For listeners seeking deeper insights, the episode references numerous studies and expert opinions. All citations and further reading materials are available in the episode's transcript linked in the show notes.

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Produced by: Rose Rimler, Wendy Zuckerman
Edited by: Blythe Terrell Mix
Sound Design: Bobby Lord
Fact-Checking: Erica Akiko Howard
Music: Peter Leonard, Emma Munger, Wiley, Bumi Hidaka

Listen to "Science Vs" on Spotify or your preferred podcast platform and follow them on Instagram at @sciencevs for updates and additional content.

Transcript

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Hi, I'm Wendy Zuckerman, and you're listening to Science Versus. This is the show that pits facts against feeling like you can read someone's thoughts. Today we are talking about telepathy, and here with me is Science Verse's senior producer, Rose Rimbler. Hi, Rose.

[Rose Rimler]

Hi, Wendy. So by telepathy, we mean the concept of beaming thoughts directly into someone else's brain or being able to read other people's thoughts. Mm, yes, that's an idea that's been around for centuries, but it's having a bit of a moment right now, probably because of this very popular podcast called the Telepathy Tapes.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Yes, I am hearing a lot about this podcast. Yes, yes, yes. And telepathy with it.

[Rose Rimler]

Yes. It was the top podcast on Spotify earlier this year. It actually knocked Joe Rogan off the number one spot briefly. And it's all about how telepathy is real.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

You know, a very clever friend of mine texted me about this show, and she thinks telepathy is real now. Exactly. It's very convincing.

[Rose Rimler]

Yeah. If you look at the comments, you'll see people saying, this is revolutionary. This has moved me to tears. I'm a believer. My life has changed because of this podcast. And so, you know, I was very curious, and so I listened to it. I listened to the whole thing. Wendy, I know that you haven't listened to it.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

No, that's right. We decided I wouldn't listen. So hopefully I can stand in for those of you who also haven't listened.

[Rose Rimler]

Okay, so let me tell you the premise. This show is about a very specific group of people. This is people with autism who are very limited in how they communicate and who require a lot of support.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Right, right.

[Rose Rimler]

And the show says that people in this group are able to communicate telepathically with their family and with teachers and other people. And in fact, here is the show's tagline. They play this at the beginning of every episode.

[Kai Dickens]

For decades, a very specific group of people have been claiming telepathy is happening in their homes and in their classrooms, and nobody has believed them. Nobody has listened to them, but on this podcast, we do.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Okay, that's a podcast, Hook.

[Rose Rimler]

It really is. So Kai Dickens, that's the host, that's who we just heard from. She is typically a documentary filmmaker, but she heard about this phenomenon and she wanted to study it, document it. And so she ends up visiting a lot of people who have had this experience with autistic people in their lives. Here she is again on the podcast.

[Kai Dickens]

And what touched me the most is these parents were grappling with something that they believed to be absolutely impossible. But here they were, they were watching something unfold that had no rational explanation.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

And so Rose, as you were listening to this podcast, what were you thinking?

[Rose Rimler]

Well, the stories were interesting and honestly, really intriguing. Obviously there's been skeptics here saying that something else is going on to explain this.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Uh huh.

[Rose Rimler]

So I wanted to find out what exactly was happening. And I got especially curious when I heard a scientist interviewed on the show say this.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Over the last 50 years, there's been a huge amount of research on telepathy published in peer reviewed journals which has proved to be repeatable and seems to me irrefutable in that it's showing that telepathy really happens. The problem is that the critics simply aren't interested in the evidence because their belief system is that this is impossible.

[Rose Rimler]

And I was like, wait, what? 50 years of research in peer reviewed journals, repeatable, irrefutable. I was like, I gotta look into that. That's what I wanna pull up, that 50 years of research in peer reviewed journals, 100%. And that's what I've been doing. So the last, you know, month or so and it's, you know, it turns out scientists have been studying this for some time and I learned a lot of really interesting stuff. Wendy, like this has just been so fascinating to work on. It's been surprising, it's been infuriating. Sometimes it's fun. So there's like a lot to unpack here and I'm just like excited to tell you about it.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Great. It's all coming up after the break. This episode of Science Versus is presented by Amazon. The last thing you want to do when you're sick is go to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription because then you're standing in a long line with a whole bunch of sick people and everyone is sick of being sick around other people who are sick. Amazon pharmacy will deliver right to you fast so you can get meds without congregating amongst the contagious. Health care just got less painful. Amazon Pharmacy, welcome back. Rose is here to talk about telepathy, inspired by this hugely popular podcast, the telepathy Tapes, which has really brought this topic back into the zeitgeist. So Rose, where do we begin?

[Rose Rimler]

Okay, so first we're going to talk about some of the specific claims made in the show, the telepathy tapes. Then we're going to zoom out and talk about the body of research that scientists have done on telepathy.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Great, let's do it.

[Rose Rimler]

So the show is about people with autism who are nonverbal or who speak very little. And what you hear over and over again on this podcast is that their family can never speak to them or really communicate with them until they learn this method of communicating, where the nonverbal person points at letters on a board or picks at keys on a keyboard, and essentially, they learn to painstakingly spell out words and communicate that way.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Okay.

[Rose Rimler]

And then all of a sudden, this is where the celebrity comes in. They start spelling out things that they shouldn't know, so they'll, like, tell their parent, oh, I know that you went to Target today. But the parent's like, I never told them that I was at Target today. Or they might say, I know that you brought me cookies for a snack, but you left them in the car. And that person's like, I never told you I was gonna bring you cookies. I didn't tell you I left them in the car. How do they know these things? And they start thinking, this person can read my mind.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Huh?

[Rose Rimler]

So if that was all the podcast offered, these, like, little anecdotes, or there could be a million little explanations or coincidence or luck, you know, that wouldn't be that interesting. Okay, but where it gets really interesting is that the host of the show doesn't just take people at their word for this. She goes and she specifically does tests to test that they are, in fact, telepathic.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

What? What kind of test?

[Rose Rimler]

Well, so, for example, in the first episode, she goes to visit a young woman from Mexico who is supposedly telepathic with her mom. And so, like I described, this is a nonverbal autistic person who communicates by pointing at a board with letters and numbers on it.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Right? Right.

[Rose Rimler]

And so this is the kind of test that Kai sets up. So she'll show something only to the mom, make sure the daughter can't see it, and then she.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Like a cat. A picture of a cat?

[Rose Rimler]

Yeah. Or like in this example, a picture of a pirate.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Okay.

[Rose Rimler]

And, you know, the. The daughter can't see it. Sometimes she's blindfolded. Or they'll put a partition between the mom and the daughter so the daughter can't see the picture. But then the mom says, okay, what am I looking at? Read my mind. What am I looking at? And we hear. And I'll play a little bit for you. The daughter, even though she can't see the picture, she starts pointing at letters, and she slowly spells out, remember, this is a picture of a pirate or pirata in Spanish.

[Kai Dickens]

She clearly types P, I, R a T, A, which spells pirate in Spanish. I love this moment because the crowd just goes wild at this point, everyone in the room had had their mind blown.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

I've seen it.

[Rose Rimler]

What are your thoughts? I mean, I wouldn't do it as a skeptic. I'm generally a skeptic in my life.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Who's this talking?

[Rose Rimler]

This is the cameraman. After seeing this, I can't. It's hard for me to not believe this is authentic. I'm looking at everything.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

I'm watching her.

[Rose Rimler]

I'm watching the mom. I'm watching. I'm watching everything. And for me, my perspective, it's real.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Aha. That is impressive. Yeah.

[Rose Rimler]

Hearing that, Hearing the cameraman's reaction is pretty compelling because you're like, wow. He was actually in the room and looking carefully. Right. And he said it seemed real. But the thing is, when autism experts hear about this, they immediately see a problem.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Okay.

[Rose Rimler]

And it goes back to the how people are communicating and the history of people trying to communicate with those who can't speak. I talked about this with Katherine Beals. She's an adjunct professor at the University of Pennsylvania and elsewhere. And I. And I talked to her specifically about this case. So. So does this impress you? No.

[Kai Dickens]

It's just I find it extraordinary that anybody thinks it's a compelling instance of telepathy.

[Rose Rimler]

But she's kind of the perfect person to talk to you about this.

[Kai Dickens]

I started out as a linguist. That was my PhD. And then I had a child with autism. The particular situation I'm in is actually kind of the perfect storm.

[Rose Rimler]

The perfect storm to see what's actually going on here. And Katherine says we gotta go back a few decades. Actually, the story starts in Australia. Wendy, you'll be happy to know, I feel right at home. Someone there had invented a special way for people who can't speak to communicate. And in the 90s, this technique spread from Australia to the US and it really took off here. It's a bit different from the way people are communicating in the telepathy tapes with the letterboard. The letterboard. This is called facilitated communication.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Mm.

[Rose Rimler]

Here's how it works. The non speaking person sits in front of, you know, some kind of keyboard. Right next to them is a facilitator who gently holds their arm or their wrist and helps them select the letters on the keyboard that they want to select.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

So it's a bit faster than them having to do it all by themselves. Is that the idea?

[Rose Rimler]

Not exactly. For some of these folks, they actually need someone to help guide their hands to the letters to use the keyboard, or they don't do it at all.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Oh, okay.

[Rose Rimler]

And so once this method started being used more and more, these incredible things started happening.

[Kai Dickens]

The claims were pretty extraordinary because these individuals who appeared to be completely nonverbal and maybe not attending to. To people speaking and language in general, were suddenly able to produce grammatically well formed sentences, perfectly spelled in many cases, and quite sophisticated in many cases. In some cases, poetry, sophisticated vocabulary. So it appeared to unlock what was people were thinking was an intact or fully developed intellect in terms of having learned somehow to read, having mastered language.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

And so on this idea that they. They can't speak beautifully, but locked inside their brain is this huge mastery over the English language that until now, they were not able to express exactly. Sort of this idea.

[Rose Rimler]

Yeah. And this, as you can imagine, that's. That's a huge breakthrough. Right. And it got a lot of attention. It was all over the news. It was on tv. There was a primetime Live episode. It eventually won an Emmy. Diane Sawyer reported on this as like this breakthrough. And you can hear how powerful this seemed.

[Kai Dickens]

And now a story about hope.

[Rose Rimler]

For decades, autism has been a dark mystery, A disorder that seems to turn children in on themselves against the world.

[Kai Dickens]

Tonight, however, you are going to see.

[Rose Rimler]

Something that has changed that.

[Kai Dickens]

Call it a miracle, call it an awakening.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

I mean, so hopeful if you're a parent, to be looking at your child and thinking, wow, there's so much in there. If only I could find a way to communicate. Yeah.

[Rose Rimler]

Your child has never spoken to you. He's never said I love you. And now there's this thing that says there's a lot going on in their head and they can tell you about it.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

I do have to say, as hopeful as this is, I am getting a Ouija board vibe here.

[Rose Rimler]

Yeah. That is a concern that people were actually people from the beginning. Some people did have that concern because you're holding someone's arm and potentially moving it for them, even if you don't think you are. So it could be that the facilitator is controlling what this person is typing.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Yeah. Not, not, not meaning to necessarily just wanting to move through it faster, like.

[Rose Rimler]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

D o. You probably mean dog.

[Rose Rimler]

Exactly. That kind of thing. And they're always a little bit. There's always some skeptics out there. But for a while, because this is just so cool to people, they just kept chugging along. But then the cracks started to show in these very dramatic ways. Because in some Cases, people were spelling out very disturbing messages. Some of their stories were told in a Frontline documentary. It was called Prisoners of Silence. It came out in 1993. And here they are talking about a teenage girl with autism named Betsy. One day, using a letter board, Betsy and her facilitator wrote that everybody in her family, her father, mother, grandparents and brother were sexually abusing her. Social services were called. Betsy was taken out of her home, put in foster care. An investigation was started. But the people working this case were like, mmm, can we really trust these allegations? They came from this unusual technique. Someone else is holding Betsy's hand and helping her point out letters, tight. So what they wanted to know was, who is writing the messages? Is it the autistic person or is it the facilitator? So they set up tests for Betsy. And Catherine described the kind of tests that they did.

[Kai Dickens]

You might have a divider between the facilitator and the person they're facilitating. And the person they're facilitating sees a picture of a hat, and the facilitator sees a picture of a shoe.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

This is the telepathy type test, kind.

[Rose Rimler]

Of with a key difference. They're showing two different pictures. They're showing one picture to the facilitator. So in this example, a picture of a shoe and one picture to the person with autism. In this example, a hat.

[Kai Dickens]

And then you ask the person with autism, what do you see here?

[Rose Rimler]

What you would want them to write would be hat.

[Kai Dickens]

Yes. And if they type shoe, then where did that come from?

[Rose Rimler]

Very fishy. Because that's what the facilitator saw, not what they saw.

[Kai Dickens]

Yes, yes.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Ah.

[Rose Rimler]

In the telepathy tapes, the person with autism is being asked to spell out what someone else sees. And here they're being asked to spell out what they themselves see.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Right, right, right, right.

[Rose Rimler]

The Frontline documentary is really useful because it actually shows what these tests were like. And they talk about what happened when they ran tests like this with Betsy. When Betsy was shown a picture of a dog, she didn't type dog, but sneakers. What the facilitator saw when Betsy was shown a boat, she didn't type boat, but sandwich. What the facilitator saw. And that happened in every test they tried. Every single test of Betsy.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Or in studies as well?

[Rose Rimler]

In studies as well.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Every single test, yes.

[Rose Rimler]

There was an autistic program in New York that had been using facilitated communication with 12 of their autistic students. Getting good results, they thought. But they said, oh, maybe we should test this. Make sure they tested Each student in the same way. I asked Katherine what happened, and they.

[Kai Dickens]

Didn'T get a single correct response.

[Rose Rimler]

Not one.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Yeah.

[Rose Rimler]

And this has been repeated many times.

[Kai Dickens]

There were a whole bunch of studies that came out in the 90s that, that just one after another after another were showing failure.

[Rose Rimler]

How often do they find it was in fact the person with autism who.

[Kai Dickens]

Was doing the communicating in well designed studies? Not at all. Never.

[Rose Rimler]

Never.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Right.

[Rose Rimler]

Wow.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

[Rose Rimler]

Yeah. So in the case with Betsy, the investigators concluded that the sex abuse allegations were totally unfounded.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

And so do we know why the facilitator was doing that?

[Rose Rimler]

Yeah, in the Betsy case, we do know what's going on here because the facilitator, like, came out and talked about it, wrote a paper about it, and she explained that, you know, she had had some doubts in the beginning, like, oh, am I really. Am I moving Betsy's hand or is it really Betsy? It's kind of hard to tell, but there was so much momentum and it was so exciting to think that she was making breakthroughs with her student that she kind of let herself believe in it.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Oh, okay. So it's almost like this subconscious response. The facilitators, I mean, if they're not actually doing it on purpose, I would have thought it was just really just trying to help, Trying to communicate.

[Rose Rimler]

Yeah. I think that's usually what people think is going on. It's actually called the ideomotor effect. The Ouija board. Everyone thinks they're not. Well, I don't know. I would sometimes move the planchette on purpose, but many of us just think we're not moving it. But then it does move, and especially it might move to a letter that makes a lot of sense after the previous letter. And how does that happen? There's also something called the Chevrolet pendulum illusion, where you think you're holding the pendulum steady in the air, but when you think about moving it to the right or to the left or up or down, suddenly it starts moving that way and you're like, I'm not even doing that. But it's just like your brain is sending these very tiny signals to your hand, and that is enough to make very small movements that can have very big consequences, you know?

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Uh huh. So can we go back to the telepathy tapes now?

[Rose Rimler]

Yeah. Because just to be clear, these abuse allegations we're talking about, that's part of the Frontline documentary, not the telepathy tapes?

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Yeah, yeah. Okay, so then to go back to that Pirata example. The pirate.

[Rose Rimler]

Exactly. Yeah. So that's the question, right? Is that what they're doing?

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Did the kid have a facilitator on hand?

[Rose Rimler]

Yes. In all of these cases, the person with autism is speaking via a facilitator. It varies in exactly what the facilitator is doing and how they're communicating, but there's always somebody else there that has to be there. It's not fully independent, and it's typically the parent who's the facilitator.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Oh, yeah. So the.

[Rose Rimler]

The one who supposed mind is being.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Read, the mom is looking at the pirate and also holding her kid's hand?

[Rose Rimler]

Well, yes and no. So what they're doing in. In the celebrity tapes is a. Is not technically facilitated communication in the classic sense, because they're not literally holding the person's hand and hovering it over a board. What they're typically doing in the telepathy tapes, they hold up a letter board, and then the person with autism points, and then they. Then they call out P, I, R. And in fact, the host of the podcast, she. She said she just say at one point, like, oh, there was this controversy with facilitated communication. But this is different. This is different. And the big thing that they point out is we're not really touching the kid in the same way that they were touching them before. This method is often called spelling to communicate or just spelling.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Mm. So what does Catherine say about that?

[Rose Rimler]

Well, she points out that, you know, it's problematic that the facilitator is also the transcriber of the message. Like, if you're holding a letterboard, A, you can move it around slightly, and B, you can say, oh, you've selected the letter P. Oh, now you've selected the letter I. That gives you a lot of latitude in deciding where exactly the person's finger went.

[Kai Dickens]

So they will decide when a letter was selected, and they'll decide in an ambiguous case which letter was selected because.

[Rose Rimler]

Someone could be pointing in between the letters in between F and G in.

[Kai Dickens]

Some cases, and in some cases, believe it or not, nowhere near. And so there are videos where you can actually the. Is using a transparent letter board. So from watching from the other side, you can see letters sometimes being called out that we're not pointing to at all.

[Rose Rimler]

And also they are often touching. So, like, there's a hand on the back. Or in the case of the mom and the daughter from Mexico, the mom is often touching the daughter's forehead or.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Holding her chin in the telepathy tapes. Did you watch the videos?

[Rose Rimler]

I did. So there are Videos available for some of the tests. You have to pay a small fee and become a member. But it's on their website, and I did watch them. In fact, I watched some of them with Catherine. I didn't see any obvious examples where you see someone pointing at a T and the facilitator calls out pee or something like that. But it's clear from these videos that typically the facilitator is really involved in one way or another. So we watched one where the. The daughter is sitting next to the mom, but they have a partition between them. The mom is shown a random number generator on someone's iPad, and this random number 978, is generated. Here I am watching it with Katherine. The mom sees that the number is 978. They take away the partition. She's kind of gently touching her on her forehead. Yeah. And here she's got the letter board up.

[Kai Dickens]

Yeah. So what you could clearly see was that the mother was touching the girl just didn't happen to be her finger. And that there were changes in how hard she was in her pressure, the pressure that she was exerting on the daughter's temple and cheek. And so that might have been all that was needed to cue the girl about when to actually make a selection.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

And this, I mean, it doesn't need to be intentional, Right. I mean, you could be doing this without even realizing it easily.

[Rose Rimler]

We know that's true. And actually, the fact that this could be subconscious really explains a lot. I think if the person facilitating is spelling out their own thoughts, but doesn't realize they're spelling out their own thoughts, that explains why they might genuinely think, oh, my God, this person is reading my mind.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Mm. Of course.

[Rose Rimler]

But there was one case that it didn't really make sense, and I. I couldn't figure out how it was possible. This is a young autistic man and his mom. He seems to be able to read his mother's thoughts by typing them out independently on a keyboard. So in this case, no one's holding up a letterboard for him. Kai describes him as not touching. And I watch the videos online, and that's true. There's nobody. They aren't touching. So their telepathy really does look pretty convincing. So for this, I called up Jim Todd. He's a professor of psychology at Eastern Michigan University, and I teach conditioning and learning in general, the basics of behavior. The kind of basics of behavior that you kind of need to know to parse some of this stuff out. Like with Katherine, I watched one of these videos with him. Can you see my screen? I can see your screen, yes. So in this video, the son is sitting next to the moment and he has like an iPad sort of device that when he touches the letter, the device says the letter out loud in like this robot voice. Uh huh. So in this test, the mom is shown an image. The son can't see it. It's a picture of a crocodile.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Okay.

[Rose Rimler]

And the son is asked to spell out what his mom can see. And we can see him pick out letters on this device. And the computer starts spelling out crocodile.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

G.

[Rose Rimler]

L, E, crock. Well, mom is moving her hand and her body in sequence with the letters. It's just signaling. Do you want to see the tape, Wendy?

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Want to watch it? Yeah, I want to watch it.

[Rose Rimler]

Okay.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Yeah, yeah. Okay. So Kai shows the mom a picture of a crocodile.

[Rose Rimler]

Did you see it? Did you see what Jim is.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

What Jim saw from the mom. She played again.

[Rose Rimler]

Okay. And look at the mom, not the son.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh yeah.

[Rose Rimler]

She's.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

She's moving her hand.

[Rose Rimler]

Every time he moves a, he selects a letter just before that she has.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Moved, she's moving her hand and in a very, in a very deliberate way. Whether she is conscious of that deliberateness, but she's not. It's not if. Yeah, oh yeah, for sure. Did you ask Kai why didn't she move them away from each other knowing what she clearly knew about facilitated communication?

[Rose Rimler]

I did reach out to Kai to ask specific questions like that, but her team said that she was too busy working on season two of the celebrity tapes and making a documentary about it as well, so she couldn't get back to us.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Well, that's very frustrating.

[Rose Rimler]

Yeah. I also reached out to the mom in the crocodile video and I didn't hear back from her either.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Okay.

[Rose Rimler]

So I don't know. I don't know. I mean, I will say in the episode they say a lot of stuff about how, oh, we can do this across the room and then they start to do that, but then the son becomes uncomfortable and doesn't cooperate. And so they say, well, he needs to sit next to his mom for the emotional support. So stuff like that happens.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

I mean, what's, what's sort of, I guess interesting is there is some lovely communication happening between the parent and the child. It's not telepathy, but clearly they have learnt a language with each other that when the parent touches the kid or makes this signal with their hand, they point to a letter. I mean, they have a language together. And that there is sort of something lovely about that, I guess in a.

[Rose Rimler]

You can make that argument. I mean, in that video we just saw, it does seem like the young man is having a good time, like, enjoying being with his mother. But I've seen plenty of other videos from other sources that show this technique where it doesn't really go that way. And Catherine has, too.

[Kai Dickens]

A lot of the time, the child doesn't look like they really want to be doing this.

[Rose Rimler]

You know, I have noticed that, but I don't really understand necessarily what I'm seeing. I don't know much about people with severe autism. So when you see someone, like, kind of trying to get away or calling out or saying, I'm sad. There was a video of a girl who was doing this. Yeah, I'm sad.

[Kai Dickens]

I've seen it.

[Rose Rimler]

Is that what they're like? That seems like she's saying she's sad. She doesn't want to be doing that.

[Kai Dickens]

Yeah, it certainly does.

[Rose Rimler]

And in fact, a professional organization called the American Speech Language Hearing association has explicitly said, don't use these methods of communicating this facilitated communication, the newer ones that are sometimes called, like spelling to communicate, a rapid prompting method. Don't use them.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

This stuff happening on the telepathy tapes.

[Rose Rimler]

Yes. And one reason why is that they say these methods strip people of their human right to independent communication.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

So does this put a cap on the telepathy tapes, then?

[Rose Rimler]

Well, yeah, as far as the whole people with autism are telepathic thing, because, you know, the show goes on to say a lot of other stuff. Extraordinary stuff. But all these extraordinary claims, they're all hinging on this supposition that the folks with autism can send messages to their parents or their teachers. But we know now that the way they are doing this is with these, like, letterboard methods or similar methods that are totally bunk, and we can't trust that it's the kid's message coming through. In fact, we shouldn't expect that to be the case based on all we know about how unlikely this is to work.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Yeah, it's like the fruit. The podcast keeps creating more fruit, but the tree is rotten.

[Rose Rimler]

Yeah, exactly.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Well, I can't wait for season two, then.

[Rose Rimler]

I don't know if I'll be listening. But, you know, this doesn't put a cap on our episode because there is a lot more to talk about when it comes to the science of telepathy. There's a lot to tell you. I did promise you that, Right?

[Wendy Zuckerman]

That's right. All of these repeatable studies over decades of research.

[Rose Rimler]

Yeah. And I looked into that. So after the break, I'm gonna tell you about the pretty, like, bonkers way that scientists have tried to test for telepathy and the results that are actually quite surprising.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Coming up, today's Ask Wendy Anything. Ask Me Anything is brought to you by Amazon. Whether it's delivering medication to your door with Amazon Pharmacy or 247 virtual care with Amazon One Medical. Thanks to Amazon, Healthcare just got less painful. So for our little Ask Me Anything, senior producer Rose Rimler has come to me with some listener questions that have been gathered through social media. Hey, Rose.

[Rose Rimler]

Hey, Wendy. Our first question comes from Kelsey on Instagram, and she asks, how do you wade through all the misinformation and inaccurate information to get to the truth?

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Ooh. Love this question. Cause I feel like we do so much homework on this show that no one gets to see. So when someone asks this kind of question, I'm like, yes. For me, when I'm making an episode, my first step is to go online and try and understand what is the misinformation or at least what people are saying about a particular topic. A diet, for example, you'll start to see people are saying that it makes them smarter and gives them all this energy and makes their body look a certain way. And so I'll start to turn that into scientific questions. Does this diet affect your brain? How does it affect your body? And then I'll just dive into the scientific research and start chatting to scientists. And I won't stop until I feel like the answers have really started to coalesce, where I feel like I've got the scientific consensus or as close to it as possible. And now I can start to build an episode.

[Rose Rimler]

Sounds good. Someone named Nishala, also on Instagram, she asks, have you ever considered doing stand up? There is talent here. Oh.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Thank you. So I actually did stand up a couple of times.

[Rose Rimler]

Wow.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Yeah. When I was doing a job I didn't really like and I wanted to put some fire up my. Yeah, just, urn.

[Rose Rimler]

Mm, mm.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Here is why I do not do standup comedy anymore, because, Rose, would you like to hear the one joke that.

[Rose Rimler]

I remember from your routine?

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Yeah.

[Rose Rimler]

Yes, I do.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Was something like this. Was something like this. Okay, so tuna are so amazing, aren't they? These amazing creatures, they're just so majestic in the ocean, Just so beautiful. And it's amazing that evolution created this creature that swims in a little capsule with lemon and pepper all in there. So it's so convenient that we could just eat it all up.

[Rose Rimler]

That's five out of 10. I'd say maybe we'll let Nishala be the judge of that one.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

All right, let me know. Did I make the right call? Sticking with science journalism. Thanks, Rose.

[Rose Rimler]

Thanks, Wendy.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Today's Ask Wendy Me Anything was brought to you by Amazon. Thanks to Amazon, Healthcare just got less painful. Welcome back. Rose just told us why we really can't believe the telepathy you might hear about on the telepathy tapes. But now we're gonna broaden out to the land of how science has tested telepathy. Rose?

[Rose Rimler]

Yeah, I talked about this with emeritus professor of psychology, Chris French. Until recently, he was the head of the anomalistic psychology research unit at Goldsmith's, University of London.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Okay.

[Rose Rimler]

Anomalistic psychology means stuff outside the norm, maybe even the paranormal.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Right, right, right.

[Chris French]

I accept that there are some really interesting and challenging ideas out there for skeptics. I mean, some of the, some of the evidence isn't easy to dismiss. And certainly when you get skeptics who say there is no evidence for the existence of telepathy or precognition and so on, that's just nonsense.

[Rose Rimler]

Chris has spent much of his career looking at paranormal stuff in kind of a, in a rigorous way. So he tries to figure out if it's real or if there's a more mundane explanation. So you're a professional party pooper?

[Chris French]

I am indeed. Yeah. I don't get invited to. Well, I don't get invited to parties at all because of my overwhelmingly negative personality.

[Rose Rimler]

Okay. So one common way to test for telepathy involves something called the Ganzfeld Protocol.

[Chris French]

It's based on the idea that if there is such a thing as telepathy, it may well be that it's a very, very faint signal in comparison to all the background noise.

[Rose Rimler]

So the Ganzfeld Protocol. And by the way, Ganzfeld is German for whole field. Okay, so the experimenters set someone up in a very controlled, very subdued environment so that the telepathic signal has as much of a chance as possible to come through.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Uh huh.

[Rose Rimler]

So the people in the experiment will wear headphones with white or pink noise playing. They make sure there's nothing for them to see by putting on these goggles on their eyes.

[Chris French]

They look like half ping pong balls, one over each eye. And you, you obviously light could still get in there through the gaps. So you use cotton wool just to plug that up and then you tape over the eyes and then you have a red light bulb. So if they open their eyes, all they'll see is red. So it's not that you've got no sensory input, but you've just got a uniform sensory input. And it basically, it's a very, very nice, comfortable, relaxing situation to be in. And people typically report that after a while they relax and their head begins to fill with imagery, you know, and.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

At this point, someone sends an image of a pirate crocodile.

[Rose Rimler]

Yeah, exactly. So someone's in another room, in another room, in another room, and they're looking an image or maybe a video clip, and they're really focusing on it, and they're really trying to send it to the other person.

[Chris French]

And the sender would try to concentrate on that target image and send the information to the receiver.

[Rose Rimler]

Just by thinking about it really hard.

[Chris French]

Just by thinking about it real hard. Exactly.

[Rose Rimler]

So then after some time, the person takes off their silly ping pong goggles, comes out of the room, they're shown four images or four video clips, and they say, which is the one that was being beamed to you? So they pick one. And so if you were just picking by chance, you would get this right 25% of the time.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Right.

[Rose Rimler]

But lots of these studies find that people pick the right image or the right video clip more than 25% of the time.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

How much more?

[Rose Rimler]

32% of the time.

[Kai Dickens]

Okay.

[Rose Rimler]

That number comes from a meta analysis that came out just last year. They looked at over 100 experiments done in the Ganzfeld condition over the last 50 years. It includes some studies on clairvoyance and other psychic phenomena tested using the Ganzfeld protocol, but it's mostly tests of telepathy. And the authors concluded that there was a small but statistically significant effect here.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

That is intriguing.

[Rose Rimler]

That's not all. You can find something similar with other tests that have been done, like these telephone telepathy tests. You tell people that they're going to get a phone call from one of four specific people, and they have to guess as the phone is ringing, which of these four people, the one calling them by chance, they should get the right person 25% of the time. A lot of studies find they get it right more often than that. 30 or 40% of the time.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

So what are you. What is what. What does Chris make of this?

[Rose Rimler]

Well, so this meta analysis, this Ganzfeld one, it made a big splash among the telepathy crowd.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

No doubt.

[Rose Rimler]

It was definitely referenced on the telepathy tapes podcast. And so I asked Chris about it. Did it rock your world?

[Chris French]

No, because I've had my fingers burnt with meta analyses before. I mean, meta Analysis, I think, is, you know, is a very useful tool. And I think we should take this latest meta analysis seriously. But whether I'm gonna say yes, okay, I'm convinced now, I'm gonna hold back a little bit because there've been so many twists and turns in this tale.

[Rose Rimler]

Yeah. This isn't Chris's first. Ready. And it's not his first Ganzfeld meta analysis claiming a 30% hit rate.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Okay.

[Rose Rimler]

He said that there was actually something very similar back in the 90s. He was younger, more naive then. Right.

[Chris French]

And I read that and thought, oh, my God. Wow, this really looks like very powerful evidence.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

So what are these analyses doing wrong?

[Rose Rimler]

Well, there's a few funny things that are going on here. So we know that in studies about paranormal stuff, if the test is done by a believer, they tend to find an effect. Well, if it's done by a skeptic, they tend not to find an effect. Like, imagine that you're more of a skeptic like Chris, and you run one of these telepathy experiments and you find that people guess right 25% of the time. As a skeptic, when you get a result like that, you might say, oh, okay, all right. No effect here. Done. Right. If you're a believer, you might look at that and say, I'm gonna go look through the data again. I. I would have expected something else to happen. So I'm gonna go and I'm gonna look through the raw data. Maybe I'll get rid of some outliers. Maybe I'll find a piece of the data and I'll just look at this subgroup.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Bob wasn't really concentrating during the experiment.

[Rose Rimler]

We want his data.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Yeah, exactly.

[Rose Rimler]

And vice versa. You know, if you're a skeptic and you get a result that says telepathy is real, you might start combing through that data very carefully, you know?

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Right. Yeah.

[Rose Rimler]

So to avoid this, there has been a movement, and this is especially true in psychology research, to pre register your study. So you basically publish a protocol ahead of time saying, this is how I'm gonna do the study. This is how I'm gonna analyze my data. And then that can't happen. Right. This like tweaking and nudging after the fact.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Yeah, well, less so.

[Rose Rimler]

Less so.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Yeah.

[Rose Rimler]

And when you look at that meta analysis, they're not looking specifically at studies that were pre registered. So it's really hard to know if we can trust them. Oh, no, this makes me so sad.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

I'm like, scientists, do your job properly.

[Rose Rimler]

I know. Well, Funny you should ment, because not long ago there was a very concerted effort to do a proper study on psychic phenomena.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Okay.

[Rose Rimler]

So specifically, they were trying to replicate a study from 2011 on precognition. So like predicting the future, basically, yes, yes, yes, yes. The way this study worked, they had a computer program they were showing to people with a picture of two curtains. And they asked people, of these two curtains, which one has an erotic image hiding behind? So that people would guess, and then only then would the computer program assign the erotic image randomly to one or the other slot.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Oh, so this was. You were trying to. Oh. Predict what the computer would do. Right. An unknown. An unknown, basically, yes. Okay. Wow.

[Rose Rimler]

In the original study, people got this right more than 50% of the time, which the author suggested could mean they were actually predicting the future.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Sure. Okay.

[Rose Rimler]

There was a lot of attention on this study at the time, no doubt. Yeah. And skeptics said, you know, can I.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Just ask if you got it right? Did the curtains open and then you got to see the willy?

[Rose Rimler]

I believe so, yes. Or what? They actually controlled for people's sexual preferences. So if you wanted to see a willy, you might get to see a willy. If you wanted to see a booby, you might get to see a booby.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Okay. So they replicate this study.

[Rose Rimler]

Yeah. So because a lot of skeptics said, like, we don't like this part of your methodology or this thing you did about your stats. What basically happened is that the skeptics and the believers got together, designed a new research protocol, designed a new study they both agreed on. They pre registered it. They said, this is the protocol we're going to use. Great. And this is how we're going to do it and how we're going to analyze it.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Yes.

[Rose Rimler]

It took five years. It took 10 labs participating, 30ish authors, skeptics and believers working together to look to see, is there an effect here?

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Wow. A new future is possible. And what did they find?

[Rose Rimler]

When all this was said and done.

[Chris French]

It produced absolutely no effects whatsoever to support the existence of precognition.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Okay. Thus the suggestion being if we were to rigorously test telepathy, putting the skeptics and believers all together, perhaps we would see the same effect. But I guess we don't.

[Rose Rimler]

We don't have the same exact thing for telepathy. But a lot of the issues that this precognition study we're confronting are very similar to issues that people have with telepathy research. So I don't know. I think it's pretty Damning to telepathy as well. But would love to see a similar group effort doing one of these. Some of these studies.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Can I ask, what is the mechanism, the purported mechanism of telepathy?

[Rose Rimler]

Like how? I was hoping you wouldn't ask me that.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Yeah. Are they reaching for quantum physics here?

[Rose Rimler]

Yes, they are. Quantum entanglement, specifically, which is about like this weird connection between subatomic particles where they seem to influence each other and it doesn't matter how far apart they are. And actually I did talk to a physicist who I was referred to by someone who's sort of telepathy friendly. As a physicist who's also telepathy friendly, he's open minded about it. And I asked him, does quantum entanglement, could that explain how telepathy works? And he said no. And I said, do we have any known physical explanation for how telepathy could work? And he said no. And he's like, look, maybe it happens, but if it's happening, it's happening outside of physics as we understand it. And I'm open to that. That's what I'm open. There's stuff about the spirituality we don't understand.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

So where does this leave you, Rose?

[Rose Rimler]

All right. So especially considering that there's no known mechanism that this could work. Looking at the research, the Ganzfeld, the telephone, telepathy stuff, you gotta believe one of two things. One is that the telepathy vibes are there. They're just very weak and very fickle. Or you can believe that there are no vibes. What do you think, Wendy? Weak, fickle vibes or no vibes?

[Wendy Zuckerman]

I mean, I think that the vibes, when people say they're experiencing something like telepathy are like intuition and other human vibes that are not paranormal. Is what I would. Whether it is a parent who loves their child, their nonverbal child so much, and there is some communication there and there's something nice being shared. It's just not paranormal. And when two friends, you know, one calls the other and one says, oh my God, I knew you were gonna call. They probably haven't spoken in a long time and they love each other. And there's some intuition there, which is beautiful. And we don't need to reach for the. We don't need to reach for quantum physics or telepathy. We could just reach for our common humanity to explain this.

[Rose Rimler]

Yeah. Which I think we underestimate when we come up with a paranormal explanation. The human mind, the human body, common shared humanity, you know, whatever that is. Like, that is Impressive enough to produce a lot of these incredible things that happen between people. And that's good enough for me personally.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Do you wanna try? All right. We've been working together for a long time. Do you wanna try? Send me a. Think of an image. Think of an image.

[Rose Rimler]

Okay, I'm looking. How about this? I'll look at a painting on my wall.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Okay.

[Rose Rimler]

I'm looking at it really hard. Wendy. I want to send this image to Wendy.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Okay? Okay. So the first thing going through my head is, what image would Rose have on her wall? But that's not. Cause then I immediately think, dad. Okay, okay. Jellyfish, bird. Okay, but. All right, what images? All right, I'm gonna close my eyes. I don't have ping pong balls, but I close my eyes. Okay. What are you thinking about it really hard? I don't think you're thinking about it hard enough, Rose. You're thinking about other things.

[Rose Rimler]

I'm furring my brow.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Okay. Is it. Is it an ocean view? No, no, no, no, no. A cat. A cat.

[Rose Rimler]

No, but you know what's so funny?

[Wendy Zuckerman]

It's an ocean.

[Rose Rimler]

No, you mentioned a jellyfish. You mentioned a cat. I do have pictures of both those things in my apartment. I just am not happen. That's not the one I'm looking at. I'm looking at a painting of flowers, poppies. Oh, the cat picture's right here. So if I'd happened to look this way, she would have gotten it right and we would have been like, holy.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

All right, how many citations in this week's episode?

[Rose Rimler]

This week we have 51 citations.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

51. And if people want to see them in all of their glory. Read more about telepathy. Where should they go?

[Rose Rimler]

They can click on the link to our transcript. That's where all the citations are. And that link is in the show notes.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Excellent. And if anyone wants to send us any curtains and let us try and guess what kind of erotic image is behind them.

[Rose Rimler]

She just asked people to send us dirty pictures, Rose.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

I've asked them to send us pictures of curtains.

[Rose Rimler]

Pictures of curtains.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

You can find us on Instagram at sciencevs. You can say hello to me on TikTok. I'm Wendy Zuckerman.

[Rose Rimler]

Thanks, Rose. Thanks, Wendy.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

This episode was produced by Rose Rose Rimler, with help from me, Wendy Zuckerman, along with Aketti Foster Keys, Meryl Horne and Michelle Dang. We're edited by Blythe Terrell Mix and sound design by Bobby Lord. Fact checking by Erica Akiko Howard. Music written by Peter Leonard, Emma Munger. So Wiley, Bumi Hidaka, and Bobby Lord. Thanks to all of the researchers that we spoke to for this episode, including Dr. Zoltan Kekech, Professor Stefan Schmidt, and Janice Boynton. Special thanks to Enrique Perez, Isabel Lura, Lindsay Cherner, Lily Kim, and Lauren Silverman. Science Versus is a Spotify Studios original. Listen to us for free on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. But if you are listening on Spotify, you can follow us and tap the Bell icon so you get episode notifications when new episodes come out. And if you like what you're listening to, please give us a five star review because it helps people people find the show, which is awesome. I'm Wendy Zuckerman. Back to you next time.