My favorite ESP experiment is, of course, the one that Bill Murray carries out at the beginning of Ghostbusters, the one where the pretty blonde, amazingly enough, gets 100% accuracy.
David:
I once complained about the dogmatic tone of one of your responses to a mailbag question. I just thought that I should tell you that I have read many of your recent responses with interest and have enjoyed them all with no complaints. This particular response is a case in point. What you wrote is informative and interesting.
I would add to your response by noting that, as a scientist, we ALL are susceptible to our personal biases entering into our work, and we must be vigilant to ensure that we do not allow our bias to blind us to the facts.
Thanks for your continued hard work.
Eissclam
All my life I’ve wanted to be psychic - I’ve wanted to be able to “use the force”, even before that phrase entered the cultural landscape.
Being an avid reader of science as a child, and quite into experimentation, I quickly realized I lacked any obvious powers. From a very young age I was skeptical that such powers existed. “Why can’t I bend a spoon with my mind, Mom?”
Every time I’ve heard of a new experiment indicating the possibility of ESP, I’ve been excited about it. I’ll read as much as I can about the experiment. Most of the time, the design of the experiment is so obviously flawed that I’m immediately disappointed. Ganzfeld was one of the few experiments that intrigued me, but I remained cautious because meta-analysis can be a tricky tool to wield properly.
My wife, being a true believer of sorts, got me to participate in a ganzfeld at Stanford. I saw a bunch of colors, a few other images and concepts, and that’s it. My choices were among four video clips: The gyrocopter/helicopter air combat scene from that Sean Connery James Bond movie (You Only Live Twice?), a cartoon (I think Bugs Bunny), a wierd scene from a movie with a baby crawling around on Escherian staircases and a young woman trying to find him, and butterflies flitting about. Because I’m psychic, I picked the butterflies and was correct. OK, just kidding about the psychic part.
Anyway, I wasn’t very impressed when I was done, especially after participating in several trials as the sender. I got to see the experiment from the omniscient third person perspective. The results I saw were just about chance, so no big surprise there. The design of the experiment was pretty decent, but on occasion it appeared that experimenter blindness was broken due to technical problems. The other aspect of the experiment was that the receiver was wearing an EEG, and that the brain waves were recorded. The analysis is supposed to detect if there is a response in the brain waves even if the receiver is not conscious of it. I’d like to see the results of it, but the more I saw of the experiment the less hopeful I was that it would get anywhere.
Thanks for another in a series of good articles, David.
[whispers]
Ha, we have persuaded the foolish Earthling that he experienced nothing during the experiment! Subliminal conditioning works! Today Douglips, tomorrow–MTV!!
[tiptoes away]
While all such experiments must be scrutinized to ensure that the results are truly not due to experimenter error or design error when they are greater than predicte by chance, the handful of experiments cited in the response are not at all the only ones extant. J.B. Rhine at Duke University did years of similar experiments and achieved significant results greater than chance. The Department of Defense funded quite a number of studies in this arena in the early 1970’s (including some at Cornell and at Aberdeen Proving Grounds) that were successful, largely in response to the fact that the Soviets were doing a lot of experimentation with gifted psychics. A careful review of the literature would probably yield more compelling examples.
First, I’d like to thank the first three posters for their compliments. I’m blushing. 
Now, on to rfs001, who said:
As Martin Gardner noted in an interview: “It has often been pointed out that as Rhine slowly learned how to tighten his controls, his evidence of psi became weaker and weaker.”
I refer you to a previous Staff Report on this very topic.