Therapeutic touch.

r Proponents of an alternative medical treatment known as therapeutic touch claim that each person has a human energy field (HEF) that can be perceived and manipulated by touch.

Therapists trained to recognize HEF-related perceptions are said to be particularly adept at manipulating HEFs. In an experiment that started out as a fourth-grade science fair project, therapeutic touch practitioners were tested under blind conditions to see whether they could correctly identify whether the HEF of an unseen hand hovered over their left or right hand (Figure 11.7). Fifteen therapeutic touch therapists underwent an initial set of 10 trials each. If HEF perception through therapeutic touch was possible, the therapists should have each been able to detect the experimenter’s hand in 10 (100%) of 10 trials. Chance alone would produce a mean score of 5 (of 10). However, the n = 15 touch therapists correctly identified the location of the hand an average of 4.67 times (standard deviation 1.74). Calculate a 95% confidence interval for the mean number of correct identification of the HEF. Is the confidence interval compatible with random guessing?