Discovery Lab Answers

Gerhard Mayer, PhD is a psychologist and methodologist based at the Institut für Grenzgebiete der Psychologie und Psychohygiene (IGPP) in Freiburg, Germany. His work spans empirical investigation of anomalous phenomena, editorial leadership of the Zeitschrift für Anomalistik, and theoretical critique of the methodological assumptions underlying parapsychological and anomalistics research. The sources retrieved for this question are drawn primarily from his editorial and review contributions to that journal in 2025; they do not include the full record of his empirical experiments, so the sections below reflect what those sources support and note plainly where they do not reach.

Experiments

The sources retrieved for this question document several lines of Mayer’s investigative work, though most are represented through citations within editorial and conference-report pieces rather than as full primary empirical papers.

Ghost-hunting and haunted-site investigation. Mayer has been conducting research into ghost-hunting groups and ghost hunters in Germany in collaboration with S. Nowara. This includes two online surveys of ghost-hunting practitioners, cited as Mayer & Nowara (in press) and Nowara & Mayer (2024) ^[2][4]. A parallel strand examines whether electromagnetic field (EMF) anomalies recorded at allegedly haunted sites constitute empirically measurable phenomena; the sources reference a study by Laythe and Owen that tested EMF readings under controlled conditions at a site without electricity-generating fields ^[4], which Mayer discusses in the context of evaluating the empirical credentials of ghost-hunting methodology.

Conference observation and field anthropology. Source ^[2] records Mayer’s firsthand report from the American Anthropological Association annual meeting, where he examined how mainstream anthropological scholarship uses terms like “ghost,” “spirit,” and “specter” — almost always metaphorically, in the sense of Derrida’s “hauntology” — in contrast to anomalistics researchers who attempt to record anomalies as empirical data using technical apparatus ^[2][4].

Historical and conceptual investigations. Mayer has undertaken careful historical and conceptual analysis of the synchronicity framework — tracing the development of Jung’s concept, examining Pauli’s critique of Jung’s attempt to subsume Rhine’s parapsychological experiments under it, and distinguishing synchronicity from acausal coincidence and quantum-mechanical explanation. The sources also show him reviewing work on astrological movements in the first half of the twentieth century ^[1] and on the concept of “aura” in anomalistics ^[3], with reference to his own earlier chapter on photography in anomalistics (Mayer, 2015) ^[3].

Methodological and editorial research. Source ^[5] and ^[6] show Mayer writing as editor of Zeitschrift für Anomalistik on the epistemological limits of experimental methodology in anomalistics, including the emerging role of AI in experimental design.

Methodology

Mayer’s methodological orientation is explicitly reflexive and critical. A central argument running through sources ^[5] and ^[6] is that the experimental model requiring hard, repeatable criteria is “appropriate and useful for a relatively small segment of science: namely, when inanimate objects are researched and humans are involved as little as possible” ^[6]. Applied to parapsychology and anomalistics, this means he argues against unreflective import of natural-science experimental standards into domains where human participants, subjective experience, and culturally embedded phenomena are central.

For the ghost-hunting survey work, the methodology is explicitly sociological: online surveys of practitioners, designed to characterize who ghost hunters are and how they operate, rather than to test whether ghosts exist ^[2][4]. The empirical EMF strand — referenced through Laythe and Owen’s controlled haunted-site study — represents a different methodological register: field measurement under controlled conditions with attention to potential confounds such as local electricity-generating sources ^[4].

His historical and conceptual investigations use close reading of primary correspondence and published texts (the Jung-Pauli exchange, Rhine’s experimental reports) to trace how explanatory frameworks were constructed, contested, and revised, rather than conducting new laboratory trials.

Source ^[5] also signals Mayer’s openness to AI-assisted experimental design as a “methodological revitalization” of experimental research, though he notes the scope of this development is not yet fully assessable.

Data

No structured quantitative evidence block was retrieved for this question, and the sources at hand do not contain reportable effect sizes, hit rates, z-scores, or p-values from Mayer’s own completed empirical studies. The retrieved excerpts are editorial, review, and conference-report texts rather than primary results papers.

What the sources do carry is qualitative characterization of findings: the ghost-hunting survey work is described as yielding “results” (Mayer & Nowara, in press; Nowara & Mayer, 2024) ^[2], but the retrieved excerpts do not include those results in extractable form. The EMF study by Laythe and Owen — which Mayer discusses — is described as having demonstrated under well-controlled conditions that electromagnetic field anomalies at an allegedly haunted site were measurable ^[4], but the extracted passage does not contain the study’s specific statistics, and reporting figures from a partially quoted source would risk misattribution.

The retrieved excerpts do not show them; the underlying papers should be consulted directly for quantitative outcomes.

Skeptical critiques

The sources retrieved for this question do not include published criticism directed specifically at Mayer’s empirical work by named critics, nor do they contain reanalyses or failed replications of his studies. The methodological position he advances — that experimental repeatability standards are of limited applicability to anomalistics research — is itself a form of engagement with the standard skeptical demand for replicable laboratory evidence, but the sources do not show a named critic responding to that argument in the retrieved material.

For a fuller account of Mayer’s research profile, including his theoretical framework and editorial contributions, see his page at Gerhard Mayer, PhD.