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for successful psi, so he encoded the word "PEACE" into Morse code, using a series of binary dots and dashes, and had a class of psychology students make repeated calls for each of the twelve bits. Then, like Ryzl, he had the students continue to guess, without feedback, until he had a solid majority vote for the identity of each of the twelve bits. Carpenter was successful in transmitting each bit of his message perfectly, using untrained college students as messengers.
Although highly successful experiments like these were carried out for more than forty years, the participants never improved their ability. Some, like Stepanek, held on to their scoring ability for years, but the performance of many declined to chance odds in a relatively short time. It's as though the most reliable phenomena in psi research at that time was the experimenters' ability to eventually extinguish the participants' natural ESP in the laboratory.
This so-called decline effect appeared to be the inevitable result of lengthy card-guessing experiments. In an effort to make the experiments less boring to the subjects, researchers began to use pictures of interesting scenes, and three-dimensional objects as targets. In this way, a subject could freely describe his mental pictures, instead of searching through his memory for a small set of possible targets, all known beforehand. The use of free-response target material was a great advance in psi research, because it gave the subject a task that actually corresponds to the way psi ability works. It allows the subject to use his psi, rather than his analytic abilities.
One of the most important things that we have learned is that analysis of target possibilities is the enemy of psi. If your only criterion for the existence of psi is how accurately a person can psychically read the serial number on your dollar bill, then you'll conclude that there is no psychic functioning.
This concept was understood by writer Upton Sinclair, who, in his 1930 book Mental Radio, thoughtfully describes years of successful telepathic picture-drawing experiments that he carried out with his wife, Mary Craig. 8 Craig was a heartful and spiritual woman who had a deep understanding, both intuitive and analytical, of the process of psychic perception. Einstein himself wrote in the book's introduction that the Sinclairs' work

 
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