Independent re-analysis of alleged mind-matter interaction in double-slit experimental data
⚡ Contested ↗📌 Appears in:
Plain English Summary
A French researcher got hold of the full 80GB dataset behind a famous claim that human minds can influence light in a double-slit experiment (that's the classic physics setup where photons behave like waves). The original study reported staggeringly strong evidence -- a one-in-a-hundred-million chance of being a fluke. But Tremblay found a critical statistical mistake: the researchers trimmed their data before running their significance tests instead of after, which made results look roughly 100,000 times more impressive than they actually were. When he re-ran everything properly, correcting for the fact that the team had checked dozens of different time points and light patterns, the headline-grabbing result evaporated. There were still small shifts in the predicted direction, but nothing that cleared the bar for statistical significance. The full data and code are publicly available, making this a model of transparent skeptical replication.
Abstract
A two year long experimental dataset in which authors of [1] claim to find evidence of mind-matter interaction is independently re-analyzed. In this experiment, participants are asked to periodically shift their attention towards or away from a double-slit optical apparatus. Shifts in fringe visibility of the interference pattern are monitored and tested against the common sense null hypothesis that such shifts should not correlate with the participant's attention state. We i/ show that the original statistical test used in [1] contains an erroneous trimming procedure leading to uncontrolled false positives and underestimated p-values, ii/ propose a deeper analysis of the dataset, identifying several preprocessing parameters and carefully assessing the results' robustness regarding the choice of these parameters. We observe, as in [1], shifts in fringe visibility in the direction expected by the mind-matter interaction hypothesis. However, these shifts are not deemed significant (p > 0.05). Our re-analysis concludes that this particular dataset does not contain evidence of mind-matter interaction.
Links
Related Papers
Companion
- False-Positive Effect in the Radin Double-Slit Experiment on Observer Consciousness as Determined with the Advanced Meta-Experimental Protocol — Walleczek, Jan (2019)
- Response: Commentary: False-Positive Effect in the Radin Double-Slit Experiment on Observer Consciousness as Determined With the Advanced Meta-Experimental Protocol — Walleczek, Jan (2020)
- False-Positive Effect in the Radin Double-Slit Experiment on Observer Consciousness as Determined With the Advanced Meta-Experimental Protocol — Walleczek, Jan (2019)
More in Psychokinesis
Observer Influence on Quantum Interference: Testing the von Neumann-Wigner Consciousness-Collapse Theory
New Year's Eve as a Case Study in Experimental Metaphysics: Exploring Global Consciousness in Random Physical Systems
Anomalous Entropic Effects in Physical Systems Associated with Collective Consciousness
Psychophysical Interactions with Electrical Plasma: Three Exploratory Experiments
Psychophysical Interactions with a Double-Slit Interference Pattern: Exploratory Evidence of a Causal Influence
📋 Cite this paper
Tremblay, Nicolas (2019). Independent re-analysis of alleged mind-matter interaction in double-slit experimental data. PLoS ONE. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0211511
@article{tremblay_2019_reanalysis_double_slit,
title = {Independent re-analysis of alleged mind-matter interaction in double-slit experimental data},
author = {Tremblay, Nicolas},
year = {2019},
journal = {PLoS ONE},
doi = {10.1371/journal.pone.0211511},
}