Sad news. Parapsychology author and researcher, Bill Roll, who has been associated with Lund University, is in a very serious condition. We send him and his close ones best wishes.

And there is an excellent article on how the skeptic Howard Gardner distorted the record on the research on probably the most impressive "trance medium" in history, Mrs. Piper. You can access it here http://darklore.dailygrail.com/samples/DL5-GT.pdf

In a later blog I will comment on the important research on presentiment/precognition by Daryl Bem, being published by one of the foremost journals in psychology.

1) For Swedish speakers: I was interviewed for an online magazine www.onyxmagasin.se/overnaturligt.html along with a skeptic. I spoke about specific references (including the latest ganzfeld meta-analysis, for which there is a link in the article) and he wrote that it is a "myth" that psi phenomena can be replicated. When i wrote to him, he wrote back that meta-analysis have problems with the file drawer effect (i.e., negative studies not being published). After I replied to him that the meta-analysis actually discussed and corrected for that effect and asked him whether he had actually read the paper, I never heard back. I have found the majority of psi skeptics (actually "deniers" is a better word) to have failed to follow the literature that they are commenting on...

2) There was in Swedish TV a fantastic program on the inception of one of the great symphonies of all times, Shostakovich's 5th, in which he might have been betting, literally, his life. Michael Tilson. Thomas, the extraordinary conductor of the SF Symphony orchestra, conducts the program and the music. The program is repeated in Swedish TV on the 18th at 14.50, svt 2, or can be seen online at http://video.pbs.org/video/1295305133/

3) And a reminder, as per my previous posting, that next week we have 3 fascinating events, on the 22nd at 10, a conference on consciousness, that same day at 1400, the dissertation defense of my student Devin Terhune on hypnosis, and the following day at 10 a conference on hypnosis. Details on times and places are in earlier blogs.

Here is an update for the lecture on the 23rd, 10-12,  mentioned in my earlier posting:

Towards a biological marker of the hypnotic state

Graham Jamieson PhD

University of New England, Australia

The field of hypnosis has long been split between those who advocate the critical role of a fundamental alteration in the organization of psychophysiological processes underlying conscious experience (a hypnotic state) and those who seek explanations within the psychology of mundane experience.  Pivotal to this debate is the identification of neurophysiological markers for the presence of a hypnotic state and for a psychobiological trait underlying individual differences in hypnotic responsiveness. After a century of investigation many have concluded this research program to be fruitless if not futile. However progress depends on asking the right questions. Developments in systems level neuroscience and the understanding of functional connectivity in brain networks is generating real breakthroughs. Evidence is presented which suggests a biological marker for trance states may be found in increased EEG theta band functional connectivity of centro-parietal regions, itself closely related to the psychobiological trait of absorption.