Abstract

This is the second of several reports to be made available by the Parapsychological Association (PA) for people outside of the associ ation who are interested in its activities. The previous report (Para psychological Association, 1989) described four research approaches

in parapsychology: survey research, field research, demonstration research, and process research. This report will focus on demonstration re search, which involves the comparison of observed events with what would ordinarily be expected in a single carefully defined situation. In this type of research, statistically unlikely outcomes in parapsy chological experiments indicate that events have occurred that do not appear to be explicable by known mechanisms and are unlikely to be coincidence, but the research does not give information about how or why the events occurred.

Demonstration research is research aimed at obtaining incon trovertible evidence for the existence of a phenomenon. It may mean conducting a crucial experiment that has appropriate controls against all possible sources of error. In such complex subjects as parapsychology, it is hardly feasible to prespecify all sources of pos sible error and hence to control against them; it is always possible to invent-after the fact--a scenario of possible error. In areas where the hypothesis of experimenter fraud is entertained, there can be no crucial experiment inasmuch as the fraud hypothesis, in the final analysis, is itself unfalsifiable. Therefore, parapsychologists generally tend to favor replication as a means of demonstrating psi instead of conducting the so-called crucial experiment.