Charles Honorton

Charles Henry Honorton (February 5, 1946 - November 4, 1992) was an American parapsychologist.

Honorton was born in Deer River, Minnesota on February 5, 1946.

Honorton's research primarily focussed on ESP phenomena and he claimed that the purpose of his study was to bring the 'Mind-body' problem out of the realm of philosophy and into the realm of science. He believed that the various findings of parapsychologists showed a systematic process which was the system onto which ESP and PK (which together are called 'psi') are built.

To that end Honorton conducted many ESP experiments, both hypothetical and in the real world, which attempted to focus on replicating data which had been collected by other scientists previously. Honorton's ultimate goal was to produce a method which could easily detect extended mention functioning. Much of Honorton's work also concentrated on various states of consciousness and how the brain functioned under abnormal conditions.

During the course of his research Honorton created the Ganzfeld technique, a mild sensory-deprevation technique designed to refocus the mind inwards. Honorton produced a lot of his experimental evidence for ESP using this technique. However, after a 1985 debate between Honoton and one of his critics, the procedure was changed in line with peer-reviewed guidelines. After the process had been changed, Honorton was still able to achieve the same results as he had previously.

Honorton rejected the term parapsychology, instead preferring to call it psychophysics. To support this opinion he stated: "for the first time in history, we have begun to forge an empirical approach to one of the most profound and ancient of mysteries, the nature of mind and its relationship to the physical world."

Honorton was a research fellow at the Institute for Parapsychology Durham North Carolina from 1966–67, a research associate, then senior research associate, then Director of Research Division of Parapsychology and Psychophysics at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, New York from. 1967-79. After that he became the Director Psychophysical Research Laboratories at Princeton University, New Jersey from 1979-89 and from there he moved on to become a researcher at Edinburgh University from 1991 until his death.

He died in on November 4, 1992 of a heart attack.

Criticism

Many statisticians argued that the meta-analysis carried out by Honorton to try to prove an underlying pattern behind parasychological studies was ill-conceived and ignored basic rules of mathematics. Honorton continued to claim that his meta-analysis, developed in the 1980s, conclusively proved that paraspychological research was replicable.

Other critics have stated that the Ganzfeld technique is flawed as subjects still have partial awareness of their surroundings and as such could cheat during an ESP test.