I would decline to say either way. There is no objective means to declare the trial a success and you don’t know the probability that the trial would be “successful” by chance. As I mentioned earlier (and see below), these problems might be easier for you to recognise if the subject says “I saw a picture of an animal”.
It is easier to understand if the subject says, "I saw a picture of an animal", but then your example goes to prove my point. Your choice of example demonstrates that you are able to subjectively understand the difference between "I saw a picture of an animal" and "I saw a picture of a bunny with eyeglasses" in terms of identifying whether the subject perceived the target ("eh, maybe" for the former, "holy cow!" for the latter).
Consider these scenarios:
Scenario A:
Parnia is running the AWARE study. Ten people who have some auditory/visual memories from the period of time of their cardiac arrest have been interviewed. One person leaves his body and clearly sees a "bunny with eyeglasses" picture from his OBE perspective. Parnia checks which target was in the room and it was the bunny with eyeglasses.
Result A:
Linda and the rest of the non-proponents say "holy cow!" But for the sake of a little more rigour, Linda gives several different sets of 5 different "bunny with eyeglasses" pictures to a blinded intern and asks her to get the subject to identify whether the picture he saw is among them. He thinks it may be the fourth picture in the first set of 5, but when he gets to the second set of 5, the subject confidently picks out the actual target. Champagne is popped.
Result B:
EF gives the picture set from which the target was drawn, for each of the ten subjects, to the intern. She takes them to four of her friends. They sit down with the pictures and the transcripts and pick a picture for each subject. Two are correct, including the "bunny with eyeglasses" target. They give the results to Parnia who is frustrated by his lack of success.
Scenario B:
Parnia is running the AWARE study. Ten people who have some auditory/visual memories have been interviewed. One says they saw a picture of "an animal of some sort". Parnia checks the target and finds it was a "bunny with eyeglasses".
Result A:
Linda gives several sets of 5 different animal pictures to the intern and gets her to ask the subject if the picture he saw is among them. The subject says that maybe it's the elephant in the first set and maybe it's the bunny with eyeglasses when he looks at the second set, or maybe the camel when he looks at the third set. The result is considered highly equivocal.
Result B:
EF gives the picture set from which the target was drawn, for each of the ten subjects, to the intern. She takes them to four of her friends. They sit down with the pictures and the transcripts and pick a picture for each subject. They pick "bunny with eyeglasses" because it's the only animal in the set. This time they get 5 correct and Parnia excitedly writes it up as promising.
So the truth of the situation is that one person spotted the target and the rest didn't. Which scenario and result accurately identified when this amazing result occurred and when it did not? Which scenario and results created results which were false - falsely negative and falsely positive?
I’ve already suggested that a forced choice procedure be used. However, you would need to randomly select the target from the same set of images used in the judging phase. That would give you an objective means to establish whether the trial is a success and you can work out the probability of observing a success by chance. You should also dispense with drawing conclusions based solely on subjective judgements as you were doing previously.
It doesn't give us a means of establishing whether a trial is a success because the subject saw the target, though. All it does is give us the opportunity to identify the target based on judging preferences and chance, when previously, it was almost impossible to identify the target unless the subject had actually seen the target. By turning it into a four-picture, forced-choice situation, you have manufactured a way for the target to be identified which has nothing to do with perceiving the target. And the effect of chance and judging preference is vastly greater than any real effect - so much so that the incredible number of false-positives you are generating will completely engulf the few true-positives you may be lucky enough to obtain. This means that you won't be able to reach the "statistical significance" you need to show that there is an effect. It also means that even if you do manage some "statistical significance", you won't have any idea which one or two, of your dozens or hundreds of "correct" results, actually involved perception of the target.
The way Parnia has it set up now, there is essentially no way to generate a "hit" unless the subject perceives the target. That is, it is essentially impossible to generate a false hit. The way you want to set it up, a "hit" can very easily be generated, so that essentially every hit which you generate will be false.
Linda