Discovery Lab Answers

Whately Carington: Experiments and Data

Who Was Carington?

Whately Carington (W. Whately Carington) was a British psychical researcher active primarily in the 1930s and 1940s. He died on March 2, 1947, at his home in Sennen Cove, Cornwall ^[5]. Gardner Murphy, writing an in memoriam piece, described him as a significant figure in the transition of psychical research toward quantitative methods ^[5]. He was also a member of the Council of the Society for Psychical Research ^[4].

The Drawing Experiments

Carington’s most influential empirical work was a series of experiments on what he called the paranormal cognition of drawings — a procedure designed to be repeatable and statistically analyzable, distinct from the anecdotal, qualitative work that had dominated earlier psychical research.

The basic design: Carington would hang a drawing (the “target” or “original”) in his study each evening. Percipients — typically at a distance — would attempt to sketch or describe what they thought the target was. This was done across multiple evenings and multiple participants, generating a large matrix of guesses and targets that could be evaluated for statistical correspondence.

Scoring method: Rather than a simple hit/miss count, Carington developed a formal scoring system using what he called “Fisher Scores,” designed to estimate the probability of correspondence between a guess and a target against a baseline of chance. He also compiled a detailed catalogue of object frequencies — tracking how often particular objects (boxes, bridges, goblets, etc.) appeared as targets or guesses across Experiments I through VII — to allow principled chance-rate estimation ^[1]. This catalogue work was substantial: the retrieved text shows entries covering dozens of object categories with original-experiment breakdowns.

Results reported: The aggregate outcome across the drawing experiments was, by Carington’s own analysis, strongly positive. The source text shows a grand total score with D/σ = 5.59 and P < 10⁻⁶ ^[1] — though the surrounding OCR text is partially damaged in places, so individual sub-experiment figures should be read with that caveat. What is legible shows sub-experiment results including D/σ values of 2.45 (P < .02) and 5.03 (P < 10⁻⁶) for different groupings ^[1]. Carington argued explicitly that even if a skeptic could attribute a single positive experiment to chance factors, a consistent positive majority across a succession of experiments would require chance to operate “consistently in favor of the percipients” — which he treated as self-contradictory ^[1].

Catalog and methodology: Carington was careful about the object-listing conventions he used. For instance, parts of the body were not separately listed unless specifically mentioned, and ambiguous descriptions of imaginary persons were excluded, to avoid inflating hit counts ^[1]. This level of methodological care was notable for the era.

The Displacement Finding and Its Consequences

One of Carington’s most consequential contributions was not a standalone experiment but a methodological suggestion that reshaped another researcher’s work entirely.

Carington had observed what he called temporal displacement in ESP results — percipients sometimes appeared to respond to the target immediately preceding or following the intended one rather than the target itself. He urged S. G. Soal, whose initial large-scale card-guessing experiments had yielded null results, “with remarkable pertinacity” (Soal’s own word) to reanalyze the data by checking each guess against the card one position forward or backward. When Soal did so, he discovered the displacement pattern that led to the identification of Basil Shackleton as a significant subject — the basis of the Soal-Goldney experiments ^[2].

This temporal displacement effect — reacting to a future or past target rather than the present one — was subsequently treated as a theoretically important feature of psi processes, not merely a methodological artifact, and was confirmed in Soal’s later work ^[2].

Replication at the ASPR

Upon publication of Carington’s 1944 paper ^[1], researchers at the American Society for Psychical Research — Ernest Taves, Gardner Murphy, and L. A. Dale — undertook a replication series using a similar drawing procedure ^[3].

Their results were more qualified. The ASPR team found that the first evening’s work yielded a CR of 2.88 (P = .002), which was significant — but this was followed by decline effects: subsequent sessions did not maintain that level, and the overall picture showed initial extrachance scoring that did not hold across the full series ^[3]. The experimenters considered the demonstration of an initial significant result followed by decline to be the principal finding, rather than a straightforward confirmation of Carington’s overall positive outcome ^[3].

A separate brief note on the repetition of Carington’s experiments was also published in the same ASPR proceedings volume, describing further efforts to test repeatability ^[3].

Theoretical Work

Alongside his experiments, Carington developed a theoretical framework for paranormal cognition. A review by Margaret Pegram Reeves, published in the Proceedings of the ASPR in 1945, summarized what she called “Carington’s Theory of Paranormal Cognition and Allied Phenomena” ^[3] — suggesting his ideas had sufficient coherence to merit extended theoretical treatment. The Psi and Consciousness page on ESP-Nexus also notes his book Matter, Mind and Meaning as part of the philosophical literature on psi and consciousness.

He also wrote on the question of post-mortem survival, and a memorial note records that his book on that subject concluded with a statistical probability estimate (P = .50 for post-mortem survival), which was seen in retrospect as a turning point marking his shift toward quantitative methods ^[2].

Precognition Experiments

The Proceedings of the SPR volume from 1935–36 shows Carington conducting and publishing preliminary experiments in precognitive guessing, including a revised and extended analysis ^[4]. These ran alongside his drawing work and formed part of his broader interest in temporal displacement effects. The source records sessions he ran himself as operator, with trial counts and success rates across multiple dates in late 1934 and early 1935 ^[4].

Skeptical Critiques

What critics argue. The ASPR replication team (Taves, Murphy, and Dale) found that while an initial session produced a significant result, subsequent sessions showed decline — raising the question of whether Carington’s sustained positive outcomes were replicable under independent hands, or whether initial scoring reflected factors that did not persist ^[3].

What the experimental data show. Carington’s own data, pooled across Experiments I–VII, produced a grand-total result with D/σ = 5.59 ^[1]. The ASPR replication found a significant first-session CR of 2.88 followed by decline, with the experimenters explicitly framing the decline as the salient finding rather than overall confirmation ^[3]. The ASPR proceedings also note that both the original Carington series and the American replication series found evidence of decline effects, described in the 1947 volume as a recurrent pattern in drawing-experiment data ^[5].

Analysis. Carington’s scoring methodology was sophisticated for its era and he was transparent about exclusion conventions, but his experiments were conducted largely by himself as experimenter and target-selector — a design feature that independent replicators could not fully reproduce. The ASPR team’s finding of initial significance followed by decline is a different outcome from Carington’s sustained positive results, and no further large-scale independent replication using his exact protocol has been identified in the sources retrieved for this question. The displacement suggestion he made to Soal had consequences that outlasted his own drawing work and became one of the most discussed episodes in mid-century parapsychology.

For broader context on the theoretical framework his work fed into, the Psi and Consciousness Theories page on ESP-Nexus covers the conceptual landscape in which Carington’s ideas were situated.