Entangled Minds: Extrasensory Experiences in a Quantum Reality

Journal of Parapsychology, The, Spring, 2006 by Roger Nelson

ENTANGLED MINDS: EXTRASENSORY EXPERIENCES IN A QUANTUM REALITY by Dean Radin. New York: Paraview Pocket Books, 2006. Pp. 357. $14.00 (paperback). ISBN 1-4165-1667-8

In Entangled Minds, as in his earlier book The Conscious Universe, Dean Radin gives us a fine synthesis of clear storytelling and sophisticated scientific argument. The book is a keeper not only because of its comprehensive reportage of the evidence from lab and field explaining the subtitle, "Extrasensory experiences in a quantum reality," but also because the author is a deeply committed scholar who reads and talks to people who are creating the growing edge of physics, psychology, parapsychology, and other sciences, as well as philosophy and epistemology. His notes and references constitute a rich, deep survey of intellectual achievement useful for anyone with serious interest in the extended capabilities of mind and consciousness.

I should note in the interest of full disclosure that the book presents and discusses my research with care and grace, so I might be especially disposed to a positive view. Actually this gives me a sharply focused insight into the quality of Radin's reportage and the accuracy of his perspective. This is important because this book is really about bringing a powerful and potentially illuminating theoretical perspective into discussion. It is an attempt to connect the mystery of psi (extraordinary mental capacities) to the developing front of physical modeling. Psi researchers have collected a volume of excellent evidence that the mind can reach out for information and interaction through space and time, but there are no satisfactory models or theories to explain this. Radin suggests that entanglement, the linkage of quantum entities, may provide a vehicle for understanding psi. His book is a persuasive invitation to examine this possibility.

Radin is concerned about organized skepticism regarding psi research and about why high quality research is ignored, making it difficult to maintain support for good work in this field. His thoughtful assessments, based on empirical findings in social and experimental psychology, are helpful in thinking about the problem. He discusses the "rational man" fallacy and "confirmation bias" as possible explanations, but he cannot offer an ultimate solution. He is not discouraged by skepticism, however, and follows a simple but powerful approach, namely to continue to do and report clean, solid research on well-formed questions. This book is a testimony to the validity of this path; it synopsizes a remarkable historical body of evidence that provides (to an unbiased eye) important contributions to understanding human consciousness and its place in the physical world.

An especially pleasing, informative aspect of Radin's book is that he looks outside parapsychology to find illustrations of his points. For example, in discussing decline effects found in psi meta-analyses, he notes that a comprehensive survey of the technique applied in other fields finds that declines are ubiquitous to a significant degree. He shows a graph of the results of an antiparasite treatment on milk production from dairy cows that looks exactly like the long-term effect size changes in psi research. But sometimes he stretches his metaphors: looking for a similar example in physics, he shows a graph of the declining estimate of neutron weak coupling ratios. This, of course, is not a decline in a treatment effect, which is our concern. To be sure, Radin does say he doesn't want to push such comparisons too far, but I would prefer to see examples that exhibit appropriate substance and not just the patina of form or appearance.

As another example of how effective this book is, the chapter on "presentiment" traces the development of a paradigm for studying responses to what will shortly happen, showing that the mind and body may see a little into the future and respond a few seconds early to pictures or other stimuli that arouse emotions. Radin surveys the history and details the multiple perspectives that constitute the independent replications needed for solid science. His own experiments model the development of good evidence using sophisticated equipment and designs, but these are enhanced and extended by other researchers, who look at different stimuli and technologies. He ends the chapter saying,

   When you step back from the details of these studies, what you find
   is spectacular bodies of converging evidence.... These studies mean
   that some aspect of our minds can perceive the future. Not infer
   the future, or anticipate the future, or figure out the future. But
   actually perceive it. (p. 179)

The title of the book promises a look at how entanglement might help to explain psi research findings. But it is not until well past the middle of the book that Radin gets to that central topic, and even then, he proceeds with a gentle and progressive education. The first part of the book is all about evidence, sound scientific reasons to think there is a problem in search of a solution. It is a comprehensive presentation summarizing more than a thousand studies in a dozen different paradigms showing anomalies associated with consciousness. Then, to prepare us to consider various potential explanations, he provides clear, concise introductions of physical constructs and the history of the "queen of sciences" leading to quantum physics.