Discovery Lab Answers

James McClenon: Experiments and Data

Who McClenon is

James McClenon is a sociologist and parapsychologist whose research spans two distinct but connected domains: the cross-cultural study of anomalous experiences (particularly near-death experiences) and informal group psychokinesis (PK) experiments. His approach is explicitly sociological — grounded in participant observation and grounded theory — which sets it apart from the controlled laboratory tradition. The James McClenon page on ESP-Nexus is currently a placeholder pending full content generation.

Near-Death Experience Research

McClenon conducted systematic content analysis of anomalous experience narratives across multiple cultural settings. Two retrieved papers illustrate the scope:

African-American NDE collection ^[1]: Working from 1,832 anomalous experience accounts collected predominantly from an African-American sample (71.2% African-American, 68.5% women, drawn largely from students and blue-collar/service workers), McClenon selected 28 NDE narratives for content analysis. He applied three established NDE measurement instruments — a scale derived from Moody (1975), Ring’s (1980) scale, and Greyson’s (1983) NDE Scale — and compared crisis cases (N=22) against non-crisis cases (N=5). The paper evaluates his ritual healing theory, which links NDE phenomenology to shamanic initiation patterns: the symbolic “death and rebirth” structure of shamanism, he argues, parallels the NDE narrative in ways that are cross-culturally recurrent ^[1].

Kongo (Central African) NDEs ^[3]: A separate study analyzed eight NDE accounts from the Kongo region, arguing they display universal structural features alongside culturally shaped perceptions — supporting the cross-cultural universality claim central to the ritual healing theory ^[3].

The ritual healing theory itself proposes that anomalous experiences, including NDEs, contribute to healing and social cohesion, and that their recurrence across cultures reflects an underlying biological or psychological substrate rather than purely cultural construction ^[1].

Online Group PK (“Pinwheel PK”) Experiments

McClenon’s most recent experimental work, published in 2024, describes a series of informal online group PK experiments in which participants attempted to influence a physical pinwheel via videoconferencing sessions ^[2]. Key features and reported results:

The second series was terminated by McClenon when participants reported the tests had become boring — a methodological decision he frames as consistent with grounded theory’s flexibility ^[2]. He also reports that his own observation of the pinwheel appeared to inhibit its turning, and that extremely critical commentary from one participant was associated with reduced turning — both interpreted within his trickster effect framework, drawn from Hansen (2001) ^[2].

McClenon explicitly frames this work as hypothesis testing and theory development using participant observation rather than a traditional controlled protocol. He distinguishes this sociological methodology from standard parapsychology laboratory design ^[6].

Theoretical Framework: The Ritual Healing Theory and Trickster Effect

Across both research streams, McClenon argues for a theoretical link between anomalous experiences (NDEs, PK phenomena) and ritual healing — the idea that the occurrence and social transmission of such experiences facilitates psychological and community wellbeing. He connects this to shamanic traditions cross-culturally ^[1][3]. In the PK context, he incorporates Kenneth Batcheldor’s sitter-group model and the trickster effect (the observation that psi phenomena tend to resist controlled scrutiny) ^[2][4].

Commentary and Peer Response

The 2024 Journal of Scientific Exploration published McClenon’s pinwheel PK paper ^[2] as a target article with three invited commentaries, which gives some picture of how colleagues received the work:

• Gerhard Mayer (2024) ^[4] offered a multi-method perspective, noting McClenon’s long experience with sitter groups and his familiarity with Batcheldor’s framework, while advocating for holding multiple, possibly contradictory explanatory models simultaneously rather than committing to any single one.
• James C. Carpenter (2024) ^[5] engaged the work through his own First Sight model, framing the group’s narrative investment in the paper figures (“Alice” and “Lefty”) as consistent with the idea that positive affect and active interest in anomaly facilitate PK expression, while negative affect suppresses it.
• McClenon’s reply (2024) ^[6] thanked Walter von Lucadou, Mayer, and Carpenter, and clarified that his sociological, participant-observation approach differs from traditional parapsychology — emphasizing that participants’ desire for phenomena to continue is itself a methodological variable, not a confound to be eliminated.

Carpenter also published a 2024 commentary specifically on McClenon’s macro-PK group experiments, discussing their sociological and psychological dimensions (noted on the James C. Carpenter page).

Skeptical Critiques

What critics argue. The commentary exchange itself surfaces implicit methodological concerns: Mayer ^[4] notes that no single explanatory model — including McClenon’s — can account for the full range of empirical data across disciplines, and advocates neutrality across competing frameworks. The informal, open-ended participant-observation design leaves the experiments susceptible to the standard objection that without blinding and independent measurement of the pinwheel, experimenter observation effects and participant suggestion cannot be separated from any putative PK effect. McClenon himself acknowledges in ^[2] that cell phone camera heat could affect pinwheel turning, and that his own observation appeared to inhibit turning — a confound he raises but does not resolve within the paper’s design.

What the experimental data show. The reported t-statistics for the second series reach conventional significance thresholds ^[2], but the design is explicitly non-blinded and participant-directed. No independent replication of the pinwheel protocol outside McClenon’s own group has been published in the retrieved sources.

Analysis. The published commentary from Mayer, Carpenter, and von Lucadou engages the theoretical framing seriously while leaving open the question of whether the informal design can bear the evidential weight McClenon places on it. McClenon’s own response ^[6] does not claim the experiments constitute proof of PK; he positions them as a path toward model-building and theory development. The participant-observation methodology is internally consistent with his sociological framework, but it produces a different kind of evidence than a controlled laboratory protocol would — the commentators note this distinction rather than resolving it.