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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.
Research Notes
Published in Skeptical Inquirer Vol. 35, No. 2 (March/April 2011), pp. 31-39. Written by a prominent skeptic on CSI's executive council at York University. The most detailed single critique of Bem's precognition experiments. Key document for Controversy 2. Complements Wagenmakers et al.'s Bayesian critique and failed replications by Ritchie et al. and Galak et al.
An experiment-by-experiment methodological critique of Daryl Bem's nine 'Feeling the Future' precognition experiments. Identifies multiple procedural irregularities: protocols changed mid-study in Experiments 1 and 2 (after 40/100 and 100/150 participants), at least seven t-tests without correction for multiple comparisons rendering the headline p=.01 nonsignificant (~.06 after correction), ad hoc two-item stimulus-seeking scales with no psychometric validation, and deliberate use of one-tailed tests. Effect sizes correlate negatively with sample size across all nine experiments (r=-0.91). Placed in historical context alongside Rhine, Schmidt, Targ/Puthoff, PEAR, and ganzfeld as recurring cycles of psi breakthroughs followed by methodological critiques.
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
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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},
}