Discovery Lab Answers

Nancy L. Zingrone, PhD — Experiments and Data

Nancy L. Zingrone, PhD is a parapsychology researcher and historian whose work spans empirical investigations of anomalous experiences, historical scholarship on the field’s development, and critical engagement with its literature. Her profile is at Nancy L. Zingrone, PhD.

The sources retrieved for this question center primarily on her historical and bibliographic work rather than laboratory experiments — a reflection of where her published output is concentrated in the retrieved material. The sections below follow her record as those sources support it.

Experiments

The sources retrieved for this question do not document Zingrone as the primary designer or lead investigator of a controlled laboratory psi experiment. Her empirical contributions appear in collaborative survey and field research rather than in experimental laboratory protocols.

Out-of-body experience surveys. Zingrone collaborated with Carlos S. Alvarado on surveys of Spanish- and English-speaking populations examining the incidence and characteristics of out-of-body experiences (OBEs) in non-clinical samples. These surveys contributed baseline phenomenological data on OBE prevalence and were conducted in the 1990s. Kathy S. Dalton also collaborated with Alvarado and Zingrone on work examining OBE correlates in creative populations, including the relationship between OBEs, personality factors, and alterations of consciousness.

Spontaneous ESP case research. Together with Alvarado, Zingrone co-authored a historical and methodological examination of Ian Stevenson’s spontaneous ESP case research ^[5]. This was analytical and historiographical in character — tracing Stevenson’s methodological decisions and their place in the broader field — rather than a new primary data collection, but it engaged directly with the methodology and evidentiary basis of case-based psi research.

Mediumship and psychological history. Zingrone was a co-author on a multi-author study examining the historical influence of mediumship on the development of psychological and psychiatric concepts, published in the Archives of Clinical Psychiatry (São Paulo) ^[6]. This was a historical analysis rather than an experimental study.

Book reviewing and critical engagement. Zingrone authored a review of a work on parapsychology and skepticism ^[2], and contributed a book review in the Journal of Scientific Exploration ^[4], where she is listed as Assistant Professor of Research in Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Science at the University of Virginia Health System.

Methodology

The sources retrieved for this question do not provide detailed protocol-level descriptions of laboratory procedures designed or led by Zingrone. Her methodological contributions as documented here are of two kinds:

Survey methodology. The OBE survey work with Alvarado involved sampling non-clinical populations across language communities, documenting incidence and phenomenological characteristics. This extended existing survey frameworks to underrepresented populations.

Historiographical and archival method. Zingrone and Alvarado’s work on Stevenson ^[5] examined how methodological choices — specifically Stevenson’s decision to pursue spontaneous case research despite pressure toward laboratory work — shaped the field’s evidentiary base. Their argument was that rigorous methodology can be applied to field cases, not only controlled experiments, and that the two approaches provide complementary rather than competing evidence.

Editorial and evaluative contribution. Source ^[3] records that Alvarado credited Zingrone with editorial suggestions that improved a paper on Liébeault and psychic phenomena — a contribution to methodological clarity in that publication, though not a protocol design.

Data

No structured quantitative evidence block was retrieved for this question, which means no audited effect sizes, hit rates, z-scores, or p-values are available in the sources at hand. The retrieved excerpts do not contain primary statistical outcomes from experiments led or co-led by Zingrone.

What the sources do support descriptively:

• The OBE surveys with Alvarado found that OBEs were more common in non-clinical populations than previously assumed, and showed distinct phenomenological patterns — but the retrieved excerpts do not contain the specific sample sizes, prevalence figures, or test statistics from those surveys. The underlying data exist in the primary publications; the retrieved passages do not reproduce them.
• The spontaneous ESP case research essay ^[5] is analytical rather than data-reporting: it synthesizes Stevenson’s published case corpus rather than presenting new quantitative findings.
• Source ^[4] contains a figure — a 62.9% hit rate — that appears in Zingrone’s book review in the context of describing a study she was reviewing (an associative remote viewing commodities study by other researchers), not a finding from her own research.

The retrieved excerpts do not show them for her own empirical work; the primary publications should be consulted for those figures directly.

Skeptical critiques

The sources retrieved for this question do not include published criticism directed specifically at Zingrone’s empirical work or methodology. Source ^[2] shows Zingrone herself exercising critical judgment — she identifies an attribution error in Carter’s book regarding a Rhine-era publication, noting that a 1940 work was published with Pratt as first author and should not be attributed to Rhine alone ^[2]. This is a scholarly correction she raises, not a critique of her own work.

No named critic, methodological objection, or failed replication targeting Zingrone’s research appears in the sources retrieved for this question.