Testing mediumship and channeling sources of information: a review

This review aims to describe the strengths and weaknesses of the modern methodological and statistical procedures adopted in the last 25 years to test scientifically the source of mediumship and channeling information and suggest the minimum methodological standards to adopt in this research field. For mediumship, the recommended minimum methodological standard is the blinding of the mediums from receiving information related to the requested deceased using conventional means, and the blinding of sitters about the reading related to their deceased to avoid any response biases to allow quantitative and qualitative comparisons between the intended (the requested deceased), and the control readings. For channeling, the recommended minimum standard is the comparison of information contents received from the purported identical external entities by different channelers.