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Hi Mark,
Let me start by saying, I agree that Parapsychologists should avoid invasive and abusive AnPsi research. Unless we can point to an absolutelu huge benefit, like potentially curing cancer (and which needs to be more than just a hypothetical), as a very likely benefit of such research, the ethical bar should be virtually insurmountable.
As far as the “source problem”, I think that’s only a problem because so many of us are still thinking in terms of sources and targets, an essentially Newtonian way of thinking about the phenomenon, instead of in more advanced and contemporary terms of nonlocal systems in which information, and perhaps sometimes mass and energy, are exchanged among the parts of a system in which the exchange is probably always in every direction instead of from a “source” to a “target” in a local causational manner.
The other thing to consider is that not every research question about AnPsi need be based on whether the animal or human is the source of Psi or even whether can actually speak of sources and targets. Consider Sheldrake’s research on dogs predicting when their masters will come home: even if the human is the source, dogs are a domesticated companion species, and thus any observed effects still tell us something valuable about the role of Psi in the relationship between our two species, and it is likely that even if we are the source, that we would have selectively bred them (at times perhaps consciously and deliberately) to be better recipients of our Psi influence. Thus, the dog studies by Sheldrake speak to a phenomenon reported by real dog owners, and regardless of the source it still tells us something useful and ecologically valid.