Entertaining Without Endorsing: The Case for the Scientific Investigation of Anomalous Cognition
📄 Original study ↗📌 Appears in:
Plain English Summary
How should science handle phenomena that sound impossible but keep showing up in the data? This paper tackles that question head-on. The authors point out that respected scientists hold wildly different gut feelings about anomalous cognition (things like precognition or telepathy) -- from 'billion-to-one against' to outright support from a Nobel laureate. Using Bayes' theorem (a mathematical way of updating beliefs with new evidence), they show these opposing priors lead to genuinely different -- and both reasonable -- readings of the same results. And those results are nothing to sneeze at: multiple meta-analyses across precognition, telepathy, psychokinesis (mind influencing matter), and clairvoyance all show small but statistically significant effects. The clever solution? 'Entertain without endorse' -- take the findings seriously enough to investigate rigorously, but hold off on believing until nine strict benchmarks are met, including pre-registration, adversarial collaboration, and independent replication across multiple labs.
Research Notes
Published in a special issue of Psychology of Consciousness alongside Mossbridge & Radin (2018). The 'entertain without endorse' framework provides the most developed mainstream epistemological case for investigating psi, serving as a key reference point in the ongoing debate. The nine endorsement criteria offer a concrete benchmark for evaluating experimental programs in this library.
Drawing on Bayes's theorem, argues that scientists' vastly different prior probabilities regarding anomalous cognition — from physicist Sean Carroll's 'less than a billion to one against' to Nobel laureate Brian Josephson's endorsement — produce legitimately polarized evidence appraisals. Reviews meta-analyses across precognition (z=6.02; z=6.4 across 90 Bem-paradigm studies), ganzfeld telepathy (z=5.48), psychokinesis (z=15.76), and clairvoyance (z=3.07), noting small but statistically significant effects in most cases. Proposes the 'entertain without endorse' framework with nine strict criteria for endorsing anomalous cognition, including pre-registration, adversarial collaboration, locked protocols, off-site data logging, and independent multi-lab replication.
Links
Related Papers
Cites
- Feeling the Future: Experimental Evidence for Anomalous Retroactive Influences on Cognition and Affect — Bem, Daryl J (2011)
- Correcting the Past: Failures to Replicate Psi — Galak, Jeff (2012)
- Predictive Physiological Anticipation Preceding Seemingly Unpredictable Stimuli: A Meta-Analysis — Mossbridge, Julia (2012)
- Meta-Analysis of Free-Response Studies, 1992–2008: Assessing the Noise Reduction Model in Parapsychology — Storm, Lance (2010)
- Examining Psychokinesis: The Interaction of Human Intention With Random Number Generators—A Meta-Analysis — Bösch, Holger (2006)
- Evidence for Consciousness-Related Anomalies in Random Physical Systems — Radin, Dean I (1989)
- Experimenter Effects and the Remote Detection of Staring — Wiseman, Richard (1997)
- Estimating the Reproducibility of Psychological Science — Open Science Collaboration (2015)
- A Call for an Open, Informed Study of All Aspects of Consciousness — Cardeña, Etzel (2014)
Cited By
Companion
- Decline Effects: Types, Mechanisms, and Personal Reflections — Protzko, John (2017)
- Future Directions in Meditation Research: Recommendations for Expanding the Field of Contemplative Science — Vieten, C (2018)
- Precognition as a Form of Prospection: A Review of the Evidence — Mossbridge, Julia A (2018)
- Perspectives on Precognition — Woody, Erik (2018)
- Future directions in precognition research: more research can bridge the gap between skeptics and proponents — Franklin, Michael S (2014)
More in Overview
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Is the Sun Conscious?
Inner Experience – Direct Access to Reality: A Complementarist Ontology and Dual Aspect Monism Support a Broader Epistemology
📋 Cite this paper
Schooler, Jonathan W, Baumgart, Stephen, Franklin, Michael (2018). Entertaining Without Endorsing: The Case for the Scientific Investigation of Anomalous Cognition. Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice. https://doi.org/10.1037/cns0000151
@article{schooler_2018_entertaining,
title = {Entertaining Without Endorsing: The Case for the Scientific Investigation of Anomalous Cognition},
author = {Schooler, Jonathan W and Baumgart, Stephen and Franklin, Michael},
year = {2018},
journal = {Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice},
doi = {10.1037/cns0000151},
}