Dr. Diane Powell
Appearances
The Telepathy Tapes
Talk Tracks Ep 3: Q&A with Parents, Scientists & Educators from Season One
I'm Dr. Powell and I first became interested in autism back in 1986. Because I was aware of autism, I was also aware of savant syndrome, and it was exceedingly rare. I went to India to evaluate these savants. When I met them, their parents said to me that they were all telepathic. And so I switched from studying savant syndrome per se and started studying telepathy.
The Telepathy Tapes
Talk Tracks Ep 3: Q&A with Parents, Scientists & Educators from Season One
Yeah, I definitely have concerns about that. I'm very protective of the children and very protective of the mission, you know, that... that we all have here to really uplift humanity. And one of my concerns is that people who are supported by the CIA or even members of the CIA don't walk around wearing badges saying they're a member of the CIA.
The Telepathy Tapes
Talk Tracks Ep 3: Q&A with Parents, Scientists & Educators from Season One
And so the parapsychological community at large has a lot of people who fall into that category who've gotten their funding from those sources. And as I said, it's not something that they're going to share.
The Telepathy Tapes
Talk Tracks Ep 3: Q&A with Parents, Scientists & Educators from Season One
Yet at the same time, the world is demanding that we involve other scientists to come into our space and to actually see what these children can do, because otherwise they're going to say, well, what are you hiding and why won't you let us observe some of these experiments, etc. So
The Telepathy Tapes
Talk Tracks Ep 3: Q&A with Parents, Scientists & Educators from Season One
What I've thought about as a way to address that is to obtain the data and then de-identify the data before it gets handed over to somebody to look at who's a scientist. In other words, protect the names and locations and whatnot of the children, but allow the data to be seen. That's great.
The Telepathy Tapes
Talk Tracks Ep 3: Q&A with Parents, Scientists & Educators from Season One
Well, they will stand up to those methods because I'm going to do them in a manner that is highly scientific. I mean, you know, one of the things that you
The Telepathy Tapes
Talk Tracks Ep 3: Q&A with Parents, Scientists & Educators from Season One
brought out in the podcast, and it's definitely my experience, is that people who have trained as parapsychologists, and I'm a full-blooded parapsychologist, I'm on the board of the Parapsychological Association for the third time, we're people that are considered true scientists in our approach to this. And the parapsychologists are far more rigorous in terms of what they would ask for as proof
The Telepathy Tapes
Talk Tracks Ep 3: Q&A with Parents, Scientists & Educators from Season One
than a lot of other classically trained scientists. And the reason for that is that we know what kind of evidence already exists out there, and we know what the criticism has been around it. And so we want to try to be proactive in terms of trying to, if we can avoid that criticism, then setting up the experiment so that we don't have that as a side issue. Great.
The Telepathy Tapes
Talk Tracks Ep 3: Q&A with Parents, Scientists & Educators from Season One
Well, let me just let me just say this, that actually how I've met the parents is that the parents have reached out to me. It's not that I've presented to the parents this information. It's that all over the world. They have been witnessing something in their home that they didn't understand, and then they go on the Internet and they find my name.
The Telepathy Tapes
Talk Tracks Ep 3: Q&A with Parents, Scientists & Educators from Season One
Yeah, well, see, I think what's happened is that the term double-blind has taken on this sort of gravitas. Like, you know, the double-blind is, you know, the standard of science. And where that comes from is where you have clinical trials that are double-blind. And what does that mean? It means that it's usually... for example, pharmaceutical trials.
The Telepathy Tapes
Talk Tracks Ep 3: Q&A with Parents, Scientists & Educators from Season One
So what it means is that neither I as the doctor nor the patient know whether or not they're getting an active pill or a placebo until after you've done the experiments and then you crack the code and see, oh, you know, compare this person's symptoms with this other person's symptoms and you figure out who got what.
The Telepathy Tapes
Talk Tracks Ep 3: Q&A with Parents, Scientists & Educators from Season One
Well, the thing is, is that when it comes to the kind of research that we're doing, there really isn't, you can't really blind anybody to anything. And so I think that people are throwing the term double blind out there without really being someone who really thinks it through enough to realize what you're exactly asking of people here. And so these trials will be controlled.
The Telepathy Tapes
Talk Tracks Ep 3: Q&A with Parents, Scientists & Educators from Season One
You know, we're using randomization as a type of control, trying to have the greatest amount of separation, ideally in separate rooms. That's a control. And so you need the appropriate control. controls for the type of research that you're trying to engage in. And I can guarantee that we're going to be doing the experiments with that aim.
The Telepathy Tapes
Talk Tracks Ep 3: Q&A with Parents, Scientists & Educators from Season One
That's how, I mean, I met Manisha, and that's how I met Katie. And now we're getting deluged with people who are saying, yes, I have a child who's just like this, and I've been afraid to say anything. And so I don't see that we're having to present anything to them. It's more that they're presenting to us.
The Telepathy Tapes
Talk Tracks Ep 3: Q&A with Parents, Scientists & Educators from Season One
I'm coordinating with scientists who are at universities and they are skeptical in the true sense of skepticism. I mean there are people out there who call themselves skeptics and they really are die-hard materialists who would never even consider this as possible. And so those aren't the scientists I'm talking about.
The Telepathy Tapes
Talk Tracks Ep 3: Q&A with Parents, Scientists & Educators from Season One
I'm talking about scientists who are open-minded enough that they feel that these things are possible and think that it's an important research. But at the same time, they're going to want to see as much separation as possible between the telepathic pair, ideally in separate rooms, If that's not possible, then we have to have as much in the way of barriers to any kind of visual or auditory cueing.
The Telepathy Tapes
Talk Tracks Ep 3: Q&A with Parents, Scientists & Educators from Season One
But I'm optimistic that we should be able to get some experiments done with those kind of conditions. It's just that it takes time. You can't just come in and just say, okay, this is how we're doing the experiment today. It really requires a certain sensitivity. to the fact that that could be very intrusive. And the last thing that I want to do is anything that's intrusive.
The Telepathy Tapes
Talk Tracks Ep 3: Q&A with Parents, Scientists & Educators from Season One
The last thing I want to do is anything that makes people feel like they're being challenged in a way that is not honoring the children And so I really believe that we can walk that walk where we honor the children, we believe in the children, but at the same time we realize that the world at large is not going to believe it unless we do the controlled trials properly.