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Automated Tests for Telephone Telepathy Using Mobile Phones
Objective:
To carry out automated experiments on mobile phones to test for telepathy in connection with telephone calls.
Study Method:
Subjects, aged from 10 to 83, registered online with the names and mobile telephone numbers of three or two senders. A computer selected a sender at random, and asked him to call the subject via the computer. The computer then asked the subject to guess the caller׳s name, and connected the caller and the subject after receiving the guess. A test consisted of six trials.
Interactions Evaluated:
The effects of subjects׳ sex and age and the effects of time delays on guesses.
Main Outcome Measure:
The proportion of correct guesses of the caller׳s name, compared with the 33.3% or 50% mean chance expectations.
Main Results:
In 2080 trials with three callers there were 869 hits (41.8%), above the 33.3% chance level (P < 1 × 10(-15)). The hit rate in incomplete tests was 43.8% (P = .00003) showing that optional stopping could not explain the positive results. In 745 trials with two callers, there were 411 hits (55.2%), above the 50% chance level (P = .003). An analysis of the data made it very unlikely that cheating could explain the positive results. These experiments showed that automated tests for telephone telepathy can be carried out using mobile phones.
