引言

Can human beings communicate by thought alone? For more than a century the issue of telepathy has divided the scientific community, and even today it still sparks bitter controversy among top academics.

人类能通过思维进行沟通吗？一个多世纪以来，心灵感应的问题一直在科学界引起分歧，即使在今天，它仍然在顶尖学者之间引发激烈争议。

第1自然段

Since the 1970s, parapsychologists at leading universities and research institutes around the world have risked the derision of sceptical colleagues by putting the various claims for telepathy to the test in dozens of rigorous scientific studies. The results and their implications are dividing even the researchers who uncovered them.

自1970年代以来，世界各地领先大学和研究机构的超心理学家们冒着嘲笑的风险，在数十个严谨的科学研究中对心灵感应的各种主张进行测试。结果及其意义甚至在揭示它们的研究人员中也存在分歧。

第2自然段

Some researchers say the results constitute compelling evidence that telepathy is genuine. Other parapsychologists believe the field is on the brink of collapse, having tried to produce definitive scientific proof and failed. Sceptics and advocates alike do concur on one issue, however: that the most impressive evidence so far has come from the so-called ‘ganzfeld’ experiments, a German term that means ‘whole field’. Reports of telepathic experiences had by people during meditation led parapsychologists to suspect that telepathy might involve ‘signals’ passing between people that were so faint that they were usually swamped by normal brain activity. In this case, such signals might be more easily detected by those experiencing meditation-like tranquillity in a relaxing ‘whole field’ of light, sound and warmth.

一些研究人员认为这些结果构成了心灵感应是真实存在的有力证据。其他超心理学家则认为，该领域正处于崩溃的边缘，他们努力寻找明确的科学证据却失败了。然而，怀疑者和支持者都一致认同一个问题：到目前为止，最令人印象深刻的证据来自所谓的“场整体”实验，这是一个德语词汇，意为“整个领域”。超心理学家们怀疑，在冥想期间人们的心灵体验可能涉及到在平常的脑活动中被淹没的“信号”在人与人之间传递。在这种情况下，那些处于冥想般宁静状态的人们可能更容易察觉到这些信号，在一个充满光、声音和温暖的放松的“整个场域”中。

第3自然段

The ganzfeld experiment tries to recreate these conditions with participants sitting in soft reclining chairs in a sealed room, listening to relaxing sounds while their eyes are covered with special filters letting in only soft pink light. In early ganzfeld experiments, the telepathy test involved identification of a picture chosen from a random selection of four taken from a large image bank.  The idea was that a person acting as a ‘sender’ would attempt to beam the image over to the ‘receiver’ relaxing in the sealed room. Once the session was over, this person was asked to identify which of the four images had been used. Random guessing would give a hit-rate of 25 per cent; if telepathy is real, however, the hit-rate would be higher. In 1982, the results from the first ganzfeld studies were analysed by one of its pioneers, the American parapsychologist Charles Honorton. They pointed to typical hit-rates of better than 30 per cent – a small effect, but one which statistical tests suggested could not be put down to chance.

场整体实验试图通过让参与者坐在密封的房间里的柔软躺椅上，听着轻松的声音，同时眼睛被特殊滤光器覆盖住只能透过柔和的粉色光线。在早期的场整体实验中，心灵感应测试涉及从一个大型图像库中随机选择的四个图片中辨认出其中一张图片。假设一个人充当“发送者”，试图将图像传送给坐在密封房间里的“接收者”。会话结束后，这个人被要求辨认出使用了哪一张图片。随机猜测的准确率为25%，然而，如果心灵感应是真实存在的，准确率将会更高。在1982年，首批场整体研究的结果由其中一位先驱美国超心理学家查尔斯·霍诺顿进行了分析。结果显示，准确率通常超过30% - 这是一个小效应，但统计测试表明不能归因于偶然性。

第4自然段

The implication was that the ganzfeld method had revealed real evidence for telepathy. But there was a crucial flaw in this argument – one routinely overlooked in more conventional areas of science. Just because chance had been ruled out as an explanation did not prove telepathy must exist; there were many other ways of getting positive results. These ranged from ‘sensory leakage’ – where clues about the pictures accidentally reach the receiver – to outright fraud. In response, the researchers issued a review of all the ganzfeld studies done up to 1985 to show that 80 per cent had found statistically significant evidence. However, they also agreed that there were still too many problems in the experiments which could lead to positive results, and they drew up a list demanding new standards for future research.

这意味着场整体方法揭示了心灵感应的真实证据。但是，这个论点存在一个关键缺陷 - 在更传统的科学领域经常被忽视的一个问题。仅仅因为排除了偶然性并不能证明心灵感应必然存在；还有许多其他获得正面结果的方式。这些方式包括“感官泄露”- 指的是关于图片的线索意外地传达给了接收者，或者直接涉及舞弊。作为回应，研究人员对截止到1985年的所有场整体研究进行了回顾，以显示80%的研究找到了具有统计学意义的证据。然而，他们也同意这些实验中仍存在太多可能导致积极结果的问题，并列出了要求未来研究的新标准清单。

第5自然段

After this, many researchers switched to autoganzfeld tests – an automated variant of the technique which used computers to perform many of the key tasks such as the random selection of images. By minimising human involvement, the idea was to minimise the risk of flawed results. In 1987, results from hundreds of autoganzfeld tests were studied by Honorton in a ‘meta-analysis’, a statistical technique for finding the overall results from a set of studies. Though less compelling than before, the outcome was still impressive.

在此之后，许多研究人员转向了自动场整体测试 - 这是一种使用计算机执行许多关键任务的技术变体，例如随机选择图像。通过最大限度地减少人为因素，旨在减少错误结果的风险。在1987年，霍诺顿对数百个自动场整体测试的结果进行了meta分析，这是一种从一组研究中找到总体结果的统计技术。虽然没有以前那么令人信服，但结果仍然给人深刻印象。

第6自然段

Yet some parapsychologists remain disturbed by the lack of consistency between individual ganzfeld studies. Defenders of telepathy point out that demanding impressive evidence from every study ignores one basic statistical fact: it takes large samples to detect small effects. If, as current results suggest, telepathy produces hit-rates only marginally above the 25 per cent expected by chance, it’s unlikely to be detected by a typical ganzfeld study involving around 40 people: the group is just not big enough. Only when many studies are combined in a meta-analysis will the faint signal of telepathy really become apparent. And that is what researchers do seem to be finding.

然而，一些超心理学家仍然对各个场整体研究之间的一致性不满意。心灵感应的支持者指出，要求每个研究都提供令人印象深刻的证据忽视了一个基本的统计事实：需要大样本才能检测到小效应。如果像当前的结果所示，心灵感应只产生略高于25%（即随机猜测）的准确率，那么在涉及约40人的典型场整体研究中很难检测到它：这个群体规模不够大。只有当许多研究在meta分析中结合起来时，心灵感应微弱的信号才会变得明显。而这正是研究人员似乎正在发现的。

第7自然段

What they are certainly not finding, however, is any change in attitude of mainstream scientists: most still totally reject the very idea of telepathy. The problem stems at least in part from the lack of any plausible mechanism for telepathy.

然而，他们肯定没有发现的是主流科学家态度的任何变化：大多数人仍然完全拒绝心灵感应的想法。这个问题至少部分源于对心灵感应没有任何可信机制的缺乏。

第8自然段

Various theories have been put forward, many focusing on esoteric ideas from theoretical physics. They include ‘quantum entanglement’, in which events affecting one group of atoms instantly affect another group, no matter how far apart they may be. While physicists have demonstrated entanglement with specially prepared atoms, no-one knows if it also exists between atoms making up human minds. Answering such questions would transform parapsychology. This has prompted some researchers to argue that the future lies not in collecting more evidence for telepathy, but in probing possible mechanisms. Some work has begun already, with researchers trying to identify people who are particularly successful in autoganzfeld trials. Early results show that creative and artistic people do much better than average: in one study at the University of Edinburgh, musicians achieved a hit-rate of 56 per cent. Perhaps more tests like these will eventually give the researchers the evidence they are seeking and strengthen the case for the existence of telepathy.