Johann Baptista experiments and data

Question

ESP-Nexus Discovery Lab · Accepted Answer

Johann Baptista — Experiments and Data

The ESP-Nexus page for Johann Baptista is currently a placeholder, with full content pending a curator and generator pass. What the sources retrieved for this question do show is Baptista’s work primarily as a co-author and methodological critic operating within the ganzfeld, forced-choice, precognition, remote viewing, and dream research traditions — rather than as a primary experimenter running novel protocols.

Co-authored review of anomalous cognition research ^[1]

Baptista, Derakhshani, and Tressoldi (2014) produced a broad review of what they judged the best evidence across four paradigms: ganzfeld, forced-choice ESP, remote viewing, and dream studies ^[1]. Their analysis touched on several key quantitative benchmarks from the existing literature:

Paradigm / Dataset	Key figure reported in review	Source credited
Ganzfeld post-PRL (Storm, Tressoldi & Di Risio, 2010) — 105 four-choice studies	Overall hit rate 32.2%; mean N ≈ 42	Storm et al. (2010)
Autoganzfeld (Bem & Honorton, 1994) — 329 sessions	Z = 2.89, p = .002; hit rate 32.2%	Bem & Honorton (1994)
Post-PRL follow-up (Milton & Wiseman, 1999) — 30 studies	Z = 0.70, ES = 0.013, p = .24; hit rate 27.55% (null)	Milton & Wiseman (1999)
Selected participants subset (post-PRL)	Hit rate 40.1%	Derakhshani (2014)
Ganzfeld: trials needed for 80% power (selected Ss only)	~56 trials	Baptista & Derakhshani analysis
Forced-choice precognition “optimal studies” (Honorton & Ferrari, 1989)	Described as having “remarkably high” ES	Honorton & Ferrari (1989)
Dream telepathy — most successful post-Maimonides studies	Child (1977): ES = .58 and .80; clairvoyance series ES range also noted	Child (1977); Dalton et al. series

These figures are drawn from earlier meta-analyses that Baptista and colleagues were reviewing and synthesizing; they are not figures from Baptista-run experimental trials ^[1].

The review’s substantive argument was that the ganzfeld evidence base does not show the decline-in-effect-size or quality-versus-ES inverse relationship that skeptical hypotheses predict — a point the authors framed as ruling out certain artifact explanations rather than as proof of psi ^[1].

Methodological critique of skeptical arguments ^[2]

Baptista and Derakhshani (2014) in the Journal of Parapsychology examined specific claims made by Richard Wiseman (2010) about publication bias and replication failure in parapsychology ^[2]. Several concrete points from the retrieved text:

A mail survey by Blackmore (1980) found 32 unreported ganzfeld studies; of 19 analyzable ones, 14 showed directionally positive results — cited as evidence that the file-drawer is not heavily negative ^[2].
The paper argued that the replication controversy in the ganzfeld had evolved from asking whether individual studies replicate to whether groups of studies, assessed through meta-analysis, replicate — and that multiple meta-analyses support the latter ^[2].
On power: using the 32.2% hit rate from Storm et al. (2010), achieving 80% power in an unselected ganzfeld study would require at least 236 trials per study — noted as typically inaccessible to investigators. The largest single ganzfeld study to that point ran 138 trials (Parra & Villanueva, 2006) ^[2].
For selected participants (those with prior psi experience, meditation practice, or prior psi training), the predicted needed N drops to ~56 trials for 80% power ^[2].

The paper’s practical recommendations included prioritizing selected participants and implementing trial-by-trial feedback, which an earlier analysis associated with improved replication rates ^[1].

What the sources do not contain

The retrieved excerpts do not include results from any original experiment designed and run by Baptista — no Baptista-as-principal-investigator trial data, no session counts, no direct hit rates from a Baptista laboratory protocol. Whether such experiments exist in the broader literature is not determinable from these excerpts; the sources show Baptista primarily in the roles of reviewer, meta-analyst, and methodological critic. If you are looking for a specific Baptista-run study, the retrieved passages do not carry it, and the ESP-Nexus page currently has no populated content to draw on.

Skeptical critiques

What critics argue. The Milton and Wiseman (1999) meta-analysis — itself a direct engagement with the PRL-era claims that Baptista and colleagues defend — examined 30 post-PRL ganzfeld studies (1987–1997) and returned a null result (Z = 0.70, ES = 0.013, p = .24, hit rate 27.55%) ^[1]. Their conclusion was that the PRL autoganzfeld results had not been independently replicated, and that the paradigm did not constitute evidence for psychic functioning.

What the experimental data show. Baptista, Derakhshani, and Tressoldi (2014) responded that the Milton–Wiseman database analysis did not account for participant-selection effects: the post-PRL selected-participant subset achieved a 40.1% hit rate ^[1], substantially above the null-expected 25% in a four-choice design. They further argued that the skeptical prediction of an inverse relationship between study quality and effect size is not supported by Storm et al.’s (2010) database ^[1].

Analysis. The exchange identifies a concrete, unresolved empirical disagreement: Milton and Wiseman analyzed the post-PRL corpus as a whole and found no significant effect; Baptista and colleagues argue that disaggregating by participant type reveals a positive effect concentrated in selected-participant studies. Whether that disaggregation was pre-specified or post-hoc, and whether independent replication of selected-participant protocols outside the original research groups has been published, are questions the retrieved sources do not settle.

The ESP-Nexus Scientists section is the right place to watch for Baptista’s full profile once the curator pass is complete.