Thanks Mitch. It's happened to at least 3 generations of my mother's family, including myself. She was raised spiritualist, but rarely mentions her experiences due to my dad's skepticism. In my case, I very occasionally receive vague clues (such as dream images or numbers) which later seem to correspond very clearly to events once they have unfolded. I also experience synchronicities on a more frequent and convincing basis - another topic which is frustratingly overlooked by scientists and skeptics.
It certainly happened to me! 1997 or 1998, I was working in the Carnegie Museum of Art as a volunteer as part of a team conserving “The Chariot of Aurora” when I dreamed that the Objects Conservator had come in and told the team that he was taking disability retirement due to a chronic pain issue. A few days later, he did just that. It was too specific to be anything but precognition.
Mitch, what a fantastic write up of your exploration between the connection of time and precognition. I've been exploring how retrocognition can be used for quantum healing, but I wonder if induced precognitive states can do the same thing?
This study was carried out Zoltan Kekecs of Lund University and a large international team of collaborators (there are no less that 30 co-authors on their paper recently published in Royal Society Open Science). The results pretty conclusively demonstrate that the technique used in the original experiment is not capable of demonstrating precognition, if indeed precognition really exists. Strangely, I have yet to see any reports in the media of this negative finding.
The plain word summary presented in the paper is worth quoting in full:
"This project aimed to demonstrate the use of research methods designed to improve the reliability of scientific findings in psychological science. Using this rigorous methodology, we could not replicate the positive findings of Bem’s 2011 Experiment 1. This finding does not confirm, nor contradict the existence of ESP in general, and this was not the point of our study. Instead, the results tell us that (1) the original experiment was likely affected by methodological flaws or it was a chance finding, and (2) the paradigm used in the original study is probably not useful for detecting ESP effects if they exist. The methodological innovations implemented in this study enable the readers to trust and verify our results which is an important step forward in achieving trustworthy science."
The Bem experiments have failed--and proven replicable--dozens of times. Bottom line: his most significant trials proved confirmatory in a meta-analysis of 90 experiments (including the originals) in 33 different labs in 14 different nations, including in foreign languages such as Italian. Most of those trials, like the one you post, failed. But a substantial number cumulatively fell far below the P-value thus ruling out chance.
On a different tack, consider:
(a) no one experiment solves anything, especially in light of 90 previous reruns with an overall positive outcome;
(c) the raw datafile lists all of the contributed trials, and the first column in that spreadsheet is supposed to contain a timestamp; it doesn’t, meaning another aspect of the transparent study contains an error.
The purpose of this study was to develop a more rigorous methodology to study psi and other claimed phenomena. The irony is that the methodology, developed by multiple experts, still had problems of its own. So, again, no single experiment solves anything. What goes in the right direction, however, are multiple truly independent replications, because unless everyone is making exactly the same mistake, one hopes that all those replications will average out methodological problems. This isn't necessarily the optimal solution--I have my own criticisms of P-values--but it's the best approach that's been developed so far.
Thanks Mitch. It's happened to at least 3 generations of my mother's family, including myself. She was raised spiritualist, but rarely mentions her experiences due to my dad's skepticism. In my case, I very occasionally receive vague clues (such as dream images or numbers) which later seem to correspond very clearly to events once they have unfolded. I also experience synchronicities on a more frequent and convincing basis - another topic which is frustratingly overlooked by scientists and skeptics.
It certainly happened to me! 1997 or 1998, I was working in the Carnegie Museum of Art as a volunteer as part of a team conserving “The Chariot of Aurora” when I dreamed that the Objects Conservator had come in and told the team that he was taking disability retirement due to a chronic pain issue. A few days later, he did just that. It was too specific to be anything but precognition.
Thanks for writing such an eye opening article.
It really makes me wonder how many researchers won't research parapsychology because of the reasons you point out in the article.
While, I agree, suppression is a strong term, I don't know what else you can call this situation.
Mitch, what a fantastic write up of your exploration between the connection of time and precognition. I've been exploring how retrocognition can be used for quantum healing, but I wonder if induced precognitive states can do the same thing?
They may be the same continuum.
Brillant! Makes perfect sense when I think of it that way.
The best attempt to replicate these results, found here, https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.191375, was unable to do so.
from the article here https://www.skeptic.org.uk/2023/03/the-transparent-psi-project-the-results-are-in-so-where-are-all-the-headlines/:
This study was carried out Zoltan Kekecs of Lund University and a large international team of collaborators (there are no less that 30 co-authors on their paper recently published in Royal Society Open Science). The results pretty conclusively demonstrate that the technique used in the original experiment is not capable of demonstrating precognition, if indeed precognition really exists. Strangely, I have yet to see any reports in the media of this negative finding.
The plain word summary presented in the paper is worth quoting in full:
"This project aimed to demonstrate the use of research methods designed to improve the reliability of scientific findings in psychological science. Using this rigorous methodology, we could not replicate the positive findings of Bem’s 2011 Experiment 1. This finding does not confirm, nor contradict the existence of ESP in general, and this was not the point of our study. Instead, the results tell us that (1) the original experiment was likely affected by methodological flaws or it was a chance finding, and (2) the paradigm used in the original study is probably not useful for detecting ESP effects if they exist. The methodological innovations implemented in this study enable the readers to trust and verify our results which is an important step forward in achieving trustworthy science."
The Bem experiments have failed--and proven replicable--dozens of times. Bottom line: his most significant trials proved confirmatory in a meta-analysis of 90 experiments (including the originals) in 33 different labs in 14 different nations, including in foreign languages such as Italian. Most of those trials, like the one you post, failed. But a substantial number cumulatively fell far below the P-value thus ruling out chance.
On a different tack, consider:
(a) no one experiment solves anything, especially in light of 90 previous reruns with an overall positive outcome;
(b) this supposedly super-rigorous new experiment had multiple errors of its own, as published here in an extensive correction (https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.231080);
(c) the raw datafile lists all of the contributed trials, and the first column in that spreadsheet is supposed to contain a timestamp; it doesn’t, meaning another aspect of the transparent study contains an error.
The purpose of this study was to develop a more rigorous methodology to study psi and other claimed phenomena. The irony is that the methodology, developed by multiple experts, still had problems of its own. So, again, no single experiment solves anything. What goes in the right direction, however, are multiple truly independent replications, because unless everyone is making exactly the same mistake, one hopes that all those replications will average out methodological problems. This isn't necessarily the optimal solution--I have my own criticisms of P-values--but it's the best approach that's been developed so far.
thank you, bro