Discovery Lab Answers

Ephraim I. Schechter

Ephraim I. Schechter is a parapsychologist whose work at the Psychophysical Research Laboratories (PRL) in Princeton centered on the automated ganzfeld paradigm and on efforts to identify what predicts psi performance. ESP-Nexus profiles him at Ephraim I. Schechter.

What the retrieved sources document

The sources retrieved for this question place Schechter as a co-author on several of the core PRL ganzfeld papers:

• The autoganzfeld series. He is a co-author of Honorton, Berger, Varvoglis, Quant, Derr, Hansen, Schechter, and Ferrari (1990), the paper reporting eleven ganzfeld experiments run on the automated testing system and comparing the results with a meta-analysis of earlier studies ^[1]. The automated testing system used in that program was designed and built by Rick E. Berger (Berger & Honorton, 1986).

• The four-factor predictor model. Schechter co-developed, with Honorton, a model to predict successful ganzfeld performance among first-time (“novice”) participants. This is the work cited across the retrieved literature as “Honorton & Schechter (1986/1987)” — exploratory analyses of variables (such as prior laboratory psi testing) that might forecast a novice’s initial performance ^[4][5]. He is also a co-author on the “First-timers” paper that explored factors affecting initial psi ganzfeld performance ^[2].

• Micro-PK / computer psi games. With Berger and Honorton, he co-authored a preliminary review of performance across three computer psi games, examining assumptions micro-PK investigators had made about feedback from random-number-generator target systems ^[3].

How his predictor work was received

The Honorton–Schechter predictor model became a reference point in later ganzfeld research. Dalton (1997) treated the PRL model — including the prior-laboratory-testing factor — as a set of predictions to be “strengthened or weakened by future ganzfeld studies,” framing it as a working best guess rather than a settled result ^[4].

Milton and Wiseman (1999), in their non-replication analysis of the ganzfeld, noted a specific interpretive caution about this line of work: they observed that the Honorton and Schechter (1986) analyses of variables predicting novice performance were exploratory, and flagged the difficulty of treating exploratory predictor analyses as confirmatory findings ^[5]. This is the standard confirmatory-versus-exploratory distinction — the predictor factors emerged from post-hoc examination of the data rather than from pre-specified hypotheses, which bears on how much weight later replication attempts can place on them.

A note on the two profile pages: ESP-Nexus currently carries both Ephraim I. Schechter and a placeholder Ephraim Schechter page pending a generator pass; the first is the populated one.