Discovery Lab Answers

Deborah L. Delanoy, PhD

Deborah L. Delanoy, PhD is an American-born parapsychologist whose career spanned the University of Edinburgh — where she worked under Robert L. Morris at the Koestler Parapsychology Unit — and the University of Northampton, where she became Professor of Psychology and founding director of a research centre. She served as President of both the Parapsychological Association and the Society for Psychical Research.

Before reading any summary of her findings: the two studies currently in the ESP-Nexus library for this question do not represent a measured share of the published literature on her work. The library’s coverage of the full published record has not been quantified, so what follows is a summary of what the library holds, not a settled account of her research output or findings across the field.

Experiments

Delanoy’s experimental record spans three main lines:

Free-response ESP training. Working with Morris and Caroline A. Watt, she ran a training study examining whether ESP performance could be improved through mental training techniques accounting for individual differences in learning style. A follow-on study — Delanoy, Watt, Morris, and Richard Wiseman — tested a new free-response methodology with experienced participants outside the laboratory, using tamper-evident security bags and independent randomization.

DMILS (direct mental interaction with living systems). With Morris, she conducted a 36-session DMILS training study using two shielded environments, examining whether an agent’s mental intention could influence a receiver’s electrodermal activity (EDA). An earlier related study with Sunita Sah examined cognitive and physiological psi responses to remote positive and neutral emotional states.

Ganzfeld sender/no-sender comparison. As a co-experimenter and co-author with Morris, Kathy Dalton, and Watt, she participated in a systematic comparison of three sender conditions in the ganzfeld. She also contributed to the design and security architecture of the Edinburgh automated ganzfeld system.

Psi-conducive practices. She published an observational paper synthesizing impressions from six parapsychological laboratories visited in 1989, identifying practices and environmental factors associated with psi-favorable outcomes.

Methodology

Free-response and out-of-laboratory design. The training study was designed around individual differences in learning style — a deliberate departure from one-size-fits-all protocols. When informal practice exercises in an earlier phase outperformed the formally secured trials, Delanoy and colleagues drew the methodologically cautious conclusion that the practice-trial results could not be claimed as evidence, because those trials lacked security against sensory access to targets. That caution directly motivated the development of a new out-of-laboratory methodology using tamper-evident security bags and independent randomization.

DMILS shielded environments. The 1998 DMILS study used two acoustically attenuated shielded rooms — one for the agent and one for the receiver — with a computer monitoring and displaying the receiver’s EDA in real time for the agent. Randomization of activation/calm periods was computer-controlled, and the design allowed comparison of sessions where experimenters versus non-experimenters served as agents and receivers.

Ganzfeld automation and security. Delanoy was a co-author of the Edinburgh automated ganzfeld system’s security architecture, which used computer-controlled target selection, randomization, and feedback delivery to remove the experimenter from direct contact with the receiver during critical phases. The system was designed to resist both subject bias and intentional or unconscious experimenter bias.

Sender-condition comparison. The Morris, Dalton, Delanoy, and Watt (1995) ganzfeld study incorporated three distinct sender conditions in the same design — a methodological advance over earlier studies that confounded sender presence with other variables.

Data

The two studies in the ESP-Nexus library for this question use different metrics and cannot be pooled into a single overall figure.

The DMILS study (Delanoy, 1998) produced a null result on its primary measure — overall activate-versus-calm EDA across all 36 sessions. The ganzfeld sender/no-sender study (Morris et al., 1995) produced a positive outcome across all 97 trials, with a small effect size by Cohen’s h.

These two results point in different directions: one null, one positive. The effect sizes are similar in magnitude but on non-comparable metrics (Pearson r versus Cohen’s h), so no pooled figure is meaningful across them. The unsettled signal here is real: the library’s two results do not converge on a consistent direction.

The sources retrieved also record experimenter-level variation within the 1995 ganzfeld study, where outcomes differed across the three experimenter/sender roles — but those within-study breakdowns are not in the structured evidence rows and cannot be stated as settled figures here.

Skeptical critiques

The sources retrieved for this question include a methodologically significant self-critical observation by Delanoy, Morris, and Watt themselves: informal practice exercises in the free-response training series scored markedly above what the formally secured trials showed, yet the authors explicitly declined to claim those practice results as evidence of ESP, because the trials lacked security against sensory leakage to targets. That documented caution — published by the researchers themselves — is the clearest critical engagement in the retrieved sources: positive-looking informal results were set aside rather than reported as findings, because the controls were not adequate.

Within the 1995 ganzfeld study, the sources note that Delanoy’s prior ganzfeld work had tended to produce overall chance results as an experimenter, while another experimenter in the same study obtained a statistically significant outcome. The study itself surfaces this experimenter-effect variation without resolving its source.

No externally authored published critique of Delanoy’s specific studies appears in the sources retrieved for this question.

For a fuller picture of her work, including the ganzfeld automation and security spoke, see her profile at Deborah L. Delanoy.