Outcomes, with their limits attached

The result: In 4,630 NDERF records, people answering YES to "was the experience difficult to express in words?" score higher on the standard depth scale than NO answerers (medians 16 vs 14, effect size 0.126, p=1.4e-13, confirmed independently twice). Present in both submission eras, stronger later. Cannot-describe language runs 17.6% in these narratives vs 0.77% in tinnitus patients describing their own hard-to-convey symptom (descriptive; survives length matching). This is a quantitative confirmation of a known feature of deep experiences, with receipts: preregistered rules, a sealed blind coding packet judged by a fresh isolated coder at 30/30 on every load-bearing category, and four adversarial review cycles, one of which caught and retracted an era-analysis error.

What it means: People are not sprinkling 'indescribable' around at random. The ones who say words fail are the ones whose experiences went deepest, and that pattern is strong enough to build on: it means the failure of language is itself a structured, studyable part of these experiences.

What it is NOT: Not proof the experiences are truly beyond language, because 'words cannot describe it' is also a phrase people learn from books and other tellers, and the questionnaire asks the question directly which nudges yes answers. Not a claim about verified persons, because the archive cannot confirm identities, so counts are distinct records.

Next test that could settle it: Recover NDERF questionnaire form history to test whether an instrument change explains the era strengthening

Open question: Does a documented NDERF questionnaire form change explain why the ineffability-depth association is stronger in later submissions?

The result: Validated markers in 2,192 OBERF narratives follow a coarse order in the telling: onset/body markers early, tunnel and light mid-narrative, felt presence after them, return-to-body last; p=1e-4 in both corpus halves under an event-set-preserving null. Early-cluster internal order is not stable, so the supported claim is a coarse gradient, not a step-by-step sequence.

What it means: People telling out-of-body stories follow a shared coarse order: how it started comes early, tunnel and light land mid-story, a felt presence after them, and the return to the body last. Two thousand narratives beat shuffled versions of themselves at odds of one in ten thousand, in both halves of the archive.

What it is NOT: Not the order events were experienced in, because this measures how stories are told. Not a fine-grained sequence, because the early markers swap order freely and only the coarse gradient is supported.

Next test that could settle it: Frozen replication on the independently collected NDERF corpus with a second precision rater.

Open question: Does the coarse telling-order gradient replicate in the independently collected NDERF corpus?

The result: In the public 128-study ganzfeld compilation: pooled excess +376.2 hits over the ~5,459-trial chance expectation (p<1e-5), robust to greedy removal of 46 of 128 studies; decline over time absent at the frozen 0.01 threshold; small-study association suggestive only (p=0.019-0.047). Structure of the compiled file; upstream selection untested; no psi conclusion either way.

What it means: The public database of 128 telepathy-style ganzfeld studies really does contain more hits than chance predicts, and the excess survives removing a third of the studies and shows no fade over time. Whatever explains it, the compiled numbers themselves are not fragile.

What it is NOT: Not evidence for telepathy, because the audit tested only the structure of the compiled table and upstream publication selection remains untested. Not a final word, because the same frozen audit on an independent compilation is the named next step.

Next test that could settle it: Same frozen audit on the independent Tressoldi MA_GanzfeldESP compilation.

Open question: Does the database-level structure (robust pooled excess, no decline, weak small-study signal) hold in the independent Tressoldi compilation?

The result: Closed-set pseudonymous linkage within DreamBank after obvious content clues were removed.

What it means: Dream reports are individually distinctive enough that the same anonymous dreamer can be re-identified across time inside an archive even after obvious clues are removed. Anonymized dream text is not as anonymous as it looks.

What it is NOT: Not real-name identification, because the test only matched pseudonymous records to each other inside one closed archive. Not a privacy verdict on all dream data, because open-set testing with separated recorders is the named next step.

Next test that could settle it: Independent open-set cohort with recorder/transcriber separation.

Open question: Does dream-report linkage generalize to independent open-set contributors?

The result: In two raw psychedelic-EEG datasets (ketamine and DMT), apparent increases in signal-diversity complexity (Lempel-Ziv) are largely explained by flattening of the 1/f aperiodic slope; after controlling for the aperiodic exponent, no separable complexity effect remains in these datasets.

What it means: In ketamine and DMT brain recordings, the celebrated rise in signal "complexity" mostly disappears once you account for a simple change in the overall shape of the frequency spectrum. The flagship complexity story largely reduces to a known, simpler measurement effect in these datasets.

What it is NOT: Not a claim that psychedelics do nothing to the brain, because the spectral change itself is real and large. Not universal, because two public datasets were tested and a person-level preregistered replication is the named next step.

Next test that could settle it: Replicate prospectively with person-level raw EEG and preregistered spectral controls.

Open question: Does the LZc effect remain absent after preregistered aperiodic control in new raw EEG?