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Plain English Summary
Skeptic James Alcock dug into Daryl Bem's nine famous experiments claiming people can sense the future — and found them riddled with problems. Rules were changed mid-study, statistical tests were repeated without correction (inflating false positives), and custom questionnaires were never validated. Correct for the repeated testing, and Bem's headline p=.01 balloons to an unremarkable .06 — not significant. Most damning: the bigger the experiment, the smaller the effect (r=-0.91), a classic red flag that results aren't real. Alcock frames this as the latest in a long cycle of psi breakthroughs followed by methodological takedowns, from Rhine's card-guessing to remote viewing.
Abstract
Psychologist Daryl Bem has reported data suggesting that individuals' future experiences can influence their responses in the present. Careful scrutiny of his report reveals serious flaws in procedure and analysis, rendering this interpretation untenable.
Related Papers
Companion
- Why Psychologists Must Change the Way They Analyze Their Data: The Case of Psi — Wagenmakers, Eric-Jan (2011)
- Fearing the Future of Empirical Psychology: Bem's (2011) Evidence of Psi as a Case Study of Deficiencies in Modal Research Practice — LeBel, Etienne P (2011)
- Failing the Future: Three Unsuccessful Attempts to Replicate Bem's 'Retroactive Facilitation of Recall' Effect — Ritchie, Stuart J (2012)
- Correcting the Past: Failures to Replicate Psi — Galak, Jeff (2012)
- False-Positive Psychology: Undisclosed Flexibility in Data Collection and Analysis Allows Presenting Anything as Significant — Simmons, Joseph P (2011)
- A Bayes Factor Meta-Analysis of Recent Extrasensory Perception Experiments: Comment on Storm, Tressoldi, and Di Risio (2010) — Rouder, Jeffrey N (2013)
- Results from a Confirmatory Replication Study of Bem (2011): Precognitive Detection of Erotic Stimuli? — Wagenmakers, Eric-Jan (2012)
Same Research Program
More in Skeptical
Searching for the Impossible: Parapsychology's Elusive Quest
False-Positive Effect in the Radin Double-Slit Experiment on Observer Consciousness as Determined with the Advanced Meta-Experimental Protocol
Cross-Examining the Case for Precognition: Comment on Mossbridge and Radin (2018)
N,N-Dimethyltryptamine and the Pineal Gland: Separating Fact from Myth
Paranormal psychic believers and skeptics: a large-scale test of the cognitive differences hypothesis
📋 Cite this paper
Alcock, James E (2011). Back from the Future: Parapsychology and the Bem Affair. Skeptical Inquirer.
@article{alcock_2011_back_from_future,
title = {Back from the Future: Parapsychology and the Bem Affair},
author = {Alcock, James E},
year = {2011},
journal = {Skeptical Inquirer},
}