Across all 100 sessions, participants correctly identified the future position of the erotic
pictures significantly more frequently than the 50% hit rate expected by chance: 53.1%, t(99) =
2.51, p = .01, d = 0.25.3 In contrast, their hit rate on the nonerotic pictures did not differ
significantly from chance: 49.8%, t(99) = -0.15, p = .56. This was true across all types of
nonerotic pictures: neutral pictures, 49.6%; negative pictures, 51.3%; positive pictures, 49.4%;
and romantic but nonerotic pictures, 50.2%. (All t values < 1.)

Code: Select all

                                  B1 (Chooses left pic)       |        B2 (Chooses right pic)
                                 _________________________________________________________

S1    (Target on Left) |               Hit (W)                |                 Miss (X)

S2    (Target on Right)|              Miss (Y)                |                 Hit (Z) 

jerome wrote:In reply to the non-erotic pictures (the ones juddges as negative) yep I would thought so too! I'm just waking u and have not had my coffeee yet, but I'll look at it as soon as I have woken.

jerome wrote:As to the methodology, as far as I can see yes that would be ide. Drop Bem an email - this is his page at Cornell - http://dbem.ws/ - he is very approachable. That may actually help; I have no idea why he did not apply it.

jerome wrote:On animal studies, I share your pain. Yes of course, can you drop me an email address? What kind of thing did you have in mind?

j x

tnjrp wrote:Hey, not fair getting a room and exchanging brown envelopes clandestinely this early into a discussion!

The public (read: me) needs to be told, especially about animal PSI studies.

tnjrp wrote:Nah, won't work. I'm definitely one of the goats, me...

And no horny jokes, please. This is a serious issue

tnjrp wrote:I for one am not exceedingly convinced by Sheldrake's studies. Those unpleasantly skeptical people Wiseman, Smith and Milton for example rained rather heavily on his parade about Jaytee, the psychic dog. Not sure if either Mr. Wiseman or Mr. Smith sported a goatee at the time of their studies on the said canine.

jerome wrote:I'm just having a look:of course Sheldrake does most of this stuff --
http://www.sheldrake.org/Articles&Paper ... s/animals/

jerome wrote:Now seeing as being rude about Richard Wisseman is something of a necessity in British parapsychology (and if you are brave being equally critical of Rupert Sheldrake - I am brave or stupid or both, but have never been rude about Wiseman - http://jerome23.wordpress.com/2010/02/10/1187/ is the closest I get) I don't know how well the critique of his critique of the Jaytee experiments holds up (I would cry a pox upon both your houses!) but I feel a new thread coming on with a discussion as Wiseman is accused of henous duplicity and probably unnatural relations with goats (ok I made that bit up) in said article

Ever think you could predict the future? The good news is, you're not crazy. The better news is—there's now scientific evidence that backs you up.

For most of us, the idea of psychic phenomena is just too science-fictiony. But it's true, according to Dr. Daryl Bem, a social psychologist who conducted nine different experiments on the phenomena.

Have you've ever taken a psychic test with Zener cards (the ones with the plus sign and the wavy lines)? If you have, you'll have averaged one correct answer, or "hit," out of every five cards. Psychology Today says the Zener test and others like it are flawed, because "such studies often fail to meet the threshold of 'scientific investigation.'"

However, Bem's studies are unique in that they represent standard scientific methods and rely on well-established principles in psychology. Essentially, he took effects that are considered valid and reliable in psychology—studying improves memory, priming facilitates response times—and simply reversed their chronological order.
In a test that we wouldn't have believed had it not been documented, 100 Cornell students were shown 48 common nouns and given three seconds to observe and visualize each word. Then they were asked to type out as many words as they could remember. After that, a computer re-displayed half of those words, which the students then retyped.

You don't have to be psychic to know where we're going with this: It turns out that the students more likely recalled the words that they were later asked to retype.

In his original paper, Dr. Bem wrote, "The results show that practicing a set of words after the recall test does, in fact, reach back in time to facilitate the recall of those words."

The reason for this phenomenon can be explained through science (or in this case, SCIENCE!), specifically physics:

Einstein believed that the mere act of observing something here could affect something there, a phenomenon he called "spooky action at a distance."
Similarly, modern quantum physics has demonstrated that light particles seem to know what lies ahead of them and will adjust their behavior accordingly, even though the future event hasn't occurred yet.

The study will be published in an upcoming volume of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. But if you can't wait to read it, the adventurous among you can downloadthe non-edited draft of Bem's paper for yourselves.

We predict you'll be conducting your own psychic experiments with lottery numbers.