the least understood phenomenon in all science, IMHO -- the ability to know, which is sometimes a variable that seems to operate independent of data.

Amos, your phantasy has carried away your language. No experimenter has ever made the nonsense claim that their subjects' ability to know was 'independent of data'. If a 'sender' in China looks at cards and a 'receiver' in the USA guesses what the sender sees the experimenter uses the objective data (in China) to evaluate how good the guessing (in USA) was. And only if the guessing was dependent of data then the experimenter claims to have found paranormal access to knowledge.

In my eyes, the really interesting phenomenon is that many humans often have the feeling to know, and now I mean it, completely independent of data.

Wolfgang