A follow-up study was conducted in 2018. The researchers wanted to know if mediums could identify whether a person was alive or dead based on photographs. After looking over 404 photographs, five of a dozen mediums performed better than chance. As there was no control group, however, the team had to keep testing.
For this study, a dozen professional mediums and a dozen volunteers were recruited. Every photograph was of a deceased individual. This time the task was to identify whether the person died of a heart attack, a car accident, or from being shot. Each image was cropped in such a manner so that you couldn’t easily recognize the cause of death. While giving answers, every volunteer was scanned for changes in neural blood flow and heart rate. The results surprised the team:
“Overall, participants were able to detect the cause of death of deceased individuals at statistically robust above-chance levels. Contrary to our expectations that mediums would perform better than controls, the controls performed significantly better than the mediums.”
