Adrian Parker data, experiments and critical commentary

Question

ESP-Nexus Discovery Lab · Accepted Answer

Adrian Parker — a caution on identity before the data

There is an attribution hazard here that has to be flagged at the top. The retrieved sources involve two different “Parker”s, and they are not obviously the same person:

Adrian Parker of the Department of Psychology, University of Gothenburg, Sweden — the sole author of the Journal of Scientific Exploration commentary ^[3], and (per its own citation, “Goulding and Parker, 2001”) the ganzfeld-era Swedish parapsychologist.
“Andrew Parker” / “A. Parker” — a recurring co-author on the Manchester Metropolitan-linked cognitive-psychology group (Dagnall, Denovan, Drinkwater, Escolà-Gascón) across ^[1], ^[2], ^[4], ^[5], ^[6].

The numbered sources render this collaborator’s forename as “Andrew,” not “Adrian.” Whether the JSE Adrian Parker and the Manchester “Andrew/A. Parker” are the same individual is not established by anything in these sources, so I will keep the two strands separate rather than merge them under one biography. The ESP-Nexus Adrian Parker profile is currently a placeholder pending a content pass, so it cannot resolve the ambiguity either.

The theoretical work attributed to Adrian Parker (Gothenburg)

The one source unambiguously authored by Adrian Parker is a 2021 commentary in the Journal of Scientific Exploration, “Thought-Forms Gone Rogue: A Theory for Psi-Critics and Parapsychologists” ^[3]. It is a theoretical/philosophical piece, not an experiment — it argues that “thought-forms” could, in some states of consciousness, develop apparent autonomy, and it engages the psychedelics–psi literature (via Luke, 2017) and the free-will debate (Fifel, 2018) ^[3]. There are no effect sizes or experimental data in this paper; it is framed explicitly as a commentary addressed to both critics and parapsychologists ^[3].

The empirical data (the Manchester “Parker” co-authored papers)

The experimental/quantitative material in the retrieved set comes from the paranormal-belief-and-cognition program co-authored by Parker with Dagnall, Denovan, Drinkwater and colleagues. These are individual-differences studies of paranormal belief, schizotypy, reality testing and executive function — not tests of psi itself. Reported figures include:

Study	N	Key statistic	Effect size
Drinkwater, Denovan, Dagnall & Parker (2017), RPBS structure ^[6]	3,744	women > men in paranormal belief, t(3,742) = 15.31, p < 0.001	d = 0.55
Drinkwater et al. (2022), latent profiles × executive function ^[1]	—	MANOVA main effect, Pillai’s = 0.57, F(12,1533) = 30.40, p < 0.001	η² = 0.19
Drinkwater et al. (2021), perceived paranormal ability ^[2]	~498	MANOVA, Pillai’s = 0.54, F(18,978) = 20.13, p < 0.001; working memory contrast t = 7.88, p < 0.001	d = 0.72 (working memory)
Denovan, Dagnall, Drinkwater & Parker (2018), schizotypy/belief LPA ^[4]	~660 (four latent classes)	RPBS-Total class contrast t = −6.30, p < 0.001	—
Dagnall, Denovan, Drinkwater, Parker & Clough (2017), urban legends ^[5]	222	UL-scale model fit χ²(14) = 20.47, p = 0.11, CFI = 0.98	—

Note that these mix non-comparable metrics — standardized d’s, η², model-fit indices — so there is no single pooled effect to report; they are separate findings on separate questions.

What the retrieved sources do and do not carry

No psi-performance data (ganzfeld hit rates, precognition results, etc.) authored by Parker appears in these excerpts. The 2001 Goulding & Parker ganzfeld work is only referenced ^[4], not present as a source.
No skeptical/critical commentary on Parker’s own work appears in the retrieved sources. I therefore can’t surface a “what critics argue / what the data show” exchange without inventing one, so I’m omitting that section rather than fabricating it. Note that these retrieved passages are a small sample, not an inventory of the library — critical commentary may exist in the corpus without appearing here.

Scope

This is what the passages retrieved for this question contain; it is not a measure of the library’s full Parker holdings. For the canonical biography — and, importantly, to resolve the Adrian-vs-Andrew Parker identity question — the Adrian Parker profile is the intended home, but it is still a placeholder awaiting a generation pass.