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TARGET ARTICLE
Precognition as a Form of Prospection: A Review of the Evidence
Julia A. MossbridgeNorthwestern University and Institute of Noetic
Sciences, Petaluma, California
Dean RadinInstitute of Noetic Sciences, Petaluma, California
Prospection, the act of attempting to foresee one’s future, is generally assumed to be basedon conscious and nonconscious inferences from past experiences and anticipation of futurepossibilities. Most scientists consider the idea that prospection may also involve influencesfrom the future to be flatly impossible due to violation of common sense or constraintsbased on one or more physical laws. We present several classes of empirical evidencechallenging this common assumption. If this line of evidence can be successfully andindependently replicated using preregistered designs and analyses, then the consequencesfor the interpretation of experimental results from any empirical domain would be profound.
Keywords: prospection, precognition, presentiment, anticipatory activity, retrocausality
In this review, we discuss a set of controlledexperiments investigating what we will argue is aninherent human ability that allows for accurateprediction of future events without inferentialmeans; in the vernacular this ability is known asprecognition. While taking this line of researchseriously may seem beyond the pale to some, it isworth remembering that advances in psychologyand physics have repeatedly demonstrated thateveryday intuitions about the nature of reality onlypartially reflect the nature of reality itself. It ispossible that such imprecise intuitions include theconcept of a fixed “arrow of time,” which Einsteinfamously called a “stubbornly persistent illusion”(Einstein & Hawking, 2007).
Everyday Intuitions About Events in Time
Common sense intuitions about events un-folding in time include the following:
• Events in the physical world are mirroredby our almost immediate perceptual recre-ation of those events in essentially the sameorder that they occurred.
• The recreation of physical events, first inperception and later in memory, occurs in alinear order based upon our original per-ception of events. Thus, given two eventsand assuming perfect perception and mem-ory, Event A is said to occur before EventB if at some point we remember Event Abut we have not yet experienced Event B,and then later, after Event B occurs, weremember both events.
• Event A may only be said to “cause” EventB if Event A precedes Event B.
• What we remember has occurred in thepast.
These everyday intuitions seem reasonablebecause they arise and are inculcated by innu-merable conscious waking experiences (Moss-bridge, 2015). However, as developments inpsychology and physics have repeatedly shown,even reasonable assumptions should be thor-oughly checked using multiple methods to de-termine if in fact they are correct.
What methods can allow us to double-checkour intuitions about the nature of time? If oureveryday intuitions are correct and we assumethat certain future events cannot be inferredfrom present circumstances or extrapolations
Julia A. Mossbridge, Department of Psychology, North-western University, and Institute of Noetic Sciences, Peta-luma, California; Dean Radin, Institute of Noetic Sciences.
The first author was supported by Bial fellowship 97/16and the second author by Bial fellowship 260/14. We thankCaroline Watt and Imants Barušs for providing useful com-ments on portions of this article.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressedto Julia A. Mossbridge, Department of Psychology, North-western University, Swift Hall, Room 102, 2029 N CampusDrive, Evanston, IL 60208. E-mail: [email protected]
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Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice © 2018 American Psychological Association2018, Vol. 5, No. 1, 78–93 2326-5523/18/$12.00 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/cns0000121
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based on past circumstances, and if we alsorecognize that coincidences will occasionallyoccur by chance, then the following predictionsshould be borne out in carefully conducted ex-periments: (a) Dreams will bear no relationshipto unpredictable future events beyond chancelevels; (b) individuals cannot consciously out-guess unpredictable future events at a rategreater than chance; (c) behavioral measuresadministered in the present will not be affectedby future events; (d) physiological measureswill not be affected by future events; (e) eventsin the future do not influence what occurs in thepresent, except in cases of prospective planning(e.g., “I need to prepare for rain tomorrow, sotoday I will purchase an umbrella”).
Precognition is not required to guess thatresearchers have performed experiments thatexamine all of these predictions, nor that someof these studies suggest that widely held intu-itions about time are empirically falsifiable.Here we will describe and evaluate the literaturein domains known as precognitive dreaming,forced-choice precognition, free-response pre-cognition, implicit precognition, and presenti-ment. We will build from what we believe to bethe weakest to the strongest evidence for pre-cognition. Along the way, and in a concentratedform at the end of this review, we will suggestmethodological improvements and future direc-tions, as well as present some speculationsabout potential mechanisms.
Tests of Precognitive Dreaming
Anecdotal claims of precognitive dreams arecommon, reported by �17–38% of survey par-ticipants (Lange, Schredl, & Houran, 2000;Parra, 2013). Many such claims have been re-ported, including dreams of historical figuressuch as Abraham Lincoln and Mark Twain. Inthe former case, on each of 3 nights before hewas assassinated, the bodyguard assigned toAbraham Lincoln reported that the presidentmentioned dreams of his death (Lewis, 1994).In the latter case, Mark Twain wrote that hedreamed of his brother’s death before hisbrother was tragically killed in a steamboat ac-cident (Zohar, 1982). These stories are intrigu-ing, but because of known frailties of memory,including confabulation and elaboration, andbecause some events are predictable based onnonconscious associations drawn from sensory
cues (e.g., Bechara, Tranel, Damasio, & Dama-sio, 1996), anecdotes alone cannot provide per-suasive evidence that precognition actually oc-curs in dreams.
For scientifically valid evidence, we turn tocontrolled experiments. Researchers have pub-lished four well-controlled precognitive dreamexperiments in peer-reviewed journals. By“well-controlled,” we mean the following: (a)Participants were asked to attempt to dreamabout a target they would see the next day (i.e.,images, staged multisensory experiences, orvideo clips); (b) a random-number generatorwas used to select one target from a pool of atleast four available targets (e.g., a video clip ofa birthday party) and only that one target waslater shown to the dreamer; (c) on each trial theexperimenters selected the target only afterdream reporting was complete and submitted tothe experimenters, and before the experimentersread the dream reports; (d) independent judgesnaïve to the identity of the actual target judgedthe similarity between dream content and thetarget; (e) judges’ responses were consideredfinal. Researchers reported significant resultsusing binomial statistics (� � 0.05, two-tailedtests) in three out of four of these studies (Krip-pner, Honorton, & Ullman, 1972; Krippner,Ullman, & Honorton, 1971; Watt, 2014). Thefourth study (Watt, Wiseman, & Vuillaume,2015) did not show statistically significant re-sults but the effect was in the predicted direction(ES � 0.11; N � 20 with one trial per person).1
Four other peer-reviewed experiments de-serve consideration (Luke, 2002; Luke & Zy-chowicz, 2014; Luke, Zychowicz, Richterova,Tjurina, & Polonnikova, 2012; Sherwood, Roe,Simmons, & Biles, 2002), although they do notfit our methodological constraints. The differ-ence is that in these additional studies, dreamersviewed all items in the target pool after theirdreams had been recorded. This allowed eachdreamer to rank the similarity of all of the itemsin the target pool against his or her own dreamcontent, which in turn simplified the judging of
1 Another study (Schredl, Götz, & Ehrhardt-Knutsen,2010), which is sometimes mentioned alongside these otherreports, did not make our list because although the specifictarget was selected after dreams were recorded, the prese-lected target pool contained only two targets, small enoughthat the resulting outcome, while significant, is of question-able importance.
79PRECOGNITION AS A FORM OF PROSPECTION
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dream accuracy. But it also violated require-ment (a) above. This type of design may pose aproblem if dreams can indeed gather informationabout a future event. This is because all potentialtargets, rather than just the actual target, mightconfuse underlying precognition mechanisms inthat they might send information about multipletargets backward in time. This postulated “infor-mation confusion” could explain why none ofthese studies produced a significant result. It isworth reminding readers that the investigator’sgoal when exploring a hypothesis is to try todisprove that hypothesis. If the hypothesis is thatpeople can precognize future events, then it is notuseful for researchers to expose participants toseveral future events, because according to thehypothesis the researcher is trying to disprove,participants should be able to precognize any or allof those events.
Further description of Watt’s (2014) studycan illustrate the important elements of a well-controlled precognitive dream experiment, aswell as a methodological concern that was ad-dressed by the authors in a timely fashion. Thetargets in this study consisted of a group of 68video clips the experimenters developed beforethey reviewed participants’ dreams. The studywas preplanned to include 200 trials, with fourtrials performed by each of the first 50 partici-pants. Mörck (2015) raised the concern thatindividuals who did not complete the four trialsin a timely manner might have been discour-aged by their performance on the first few trials.Accordingly, they may have exited the study,thereby producing a self-selection bias in thatthe participants who completed all four trialsmay have believed their dreams best matchedthe targets. A follow-up analysis (Watt & Va-lásek, 2015) indicated that the results of thatstudy were indeed skewed toward cases inwhich participants’ dreams happened to matchthe targets, although after accounting for thisself-selection bias the results trended towardsignificance.
Each dreamer submitted a report of the con-tents of any dreams that occurred over fivenights in which they attempted to focus on thetarget video, which had at this point neitherbeen viewed or even selected. After that reportwas submitted an independent judge ranked thesimilarity between that participant’s dreams andfour video clips selected for the target poolusing a random number generator based on at-
mospheric noise as the random source. Thejudge then completed a preplanned outcomemeasure, which was a ranking of the four clipsin the target pool ranging from 1 (most similarto dream content) to 4 (least similar). After thisranking process was completed and submitted,the experimenters, who did not know thejudge’s ranking results, used the random num-ber generator to select one target video clipfrom the four ranked by the judge. The experi-menters then sent a website link to this onevideo clip to the dreamer. The two earlier dreamprecognition studies were similarly well con-trolled, but those studies used only one dreamerwho performed multiple trials (Krippner et al.,1972; Krippner, Ullman, & Honorton, 1971).
In sum, two well-controlled studies with sta-tistically significant findings, two well-con-trolled studies with nonsignificant findings, andfour controlled studies with potential for infor-mation confusion that yielded nonstatisticallysignificant findings constitute too small a data-set from which to draw firm conclusions aboutwhether dreams can reveal the content of up-coming unpredictable events. One mundane ex-planation for significant results is that they aredrawn from a much larger pool of unpublishedexperiments with nonsignificant results (i.e.,publication bias, a questionable research prac-tice known to be pervasive across disciplines;e.g., Ioannidis, 2005; Pashler & Wagenmakers,2012).
If the reader desires to further delve into thefield, more detailed reviews of this topic areavailable elsewhere (Baptista, Derakhshani, &Tressoldi, 2015; Sherwood & Roe, 2013). Thusfar, we may conclude that these data are insuf-ficient for drawing conclusions. To better assesswhether dreams can reveal veridical informa-tion about truly unpredictable future events,what is needed are repeated studies performedacross multiple laboratories. Those studiesshould ideally use the same controlled group-study methods employed by Watt et al. (2015)with larger sample sizes and controls for self-selection bias, or with controlled single-participant methods (see Krippner et al., 1972;Krippner, Ullman, & Honorton, 1971).
A Note on Meta-Analysis
In many of the remaining sections, we reportthe results of meta-analyses. In the present dis-
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cussion, we contend that meta-analysis is thebest approach to determine whether a particularempirical effect replicates across studies, al-though it has been argued that meta-analysis isnot an ideal tool for changing researchers’minds (Ferguson, 2014). The Association forPsychological Science has included meta-analysis in its standards for building a cumula-tive discipline, as meta-analysis is the basis forevidence-based medicine (Cumming, 2014).The premise of meta-analysis is that a p valuefor any experiment may be above or belowsignificance, even if the underlying effect ismeaningful. This is because many uncontrolledfactors can influence the result, especially inpsychological experiments. When the averagetrend of the effect sizes is in the same direction,and the trend is statistically validated via awell-conducted meta-analysis, then we can bereasonably sure that the effect under consider-ation is meaningful (for updated reviews, seeLakens, Hilgard, & Staaks, 2016; Shamseer etal., 2015). In contrast, a single trial in a multi-trial experiment often provides a poor indicatorof the overall average effect of interest. Simi-larly, a single successful or failed replication ofany study should be regarded as tentative andwith caution, providing a rationale for why (a)all attempted replications should be included inany meta-analysis and (b) we restrict our pre-sentation of p values to those from meta-analyses and simply comment on the signifi-cance of only a few individual studies(assuming an alpha of 0.05 and two-tailed tests,with noted exceptions).
It important to note that although it is seldomdiscussed explicitly, the meta-analytic approachis based on an implicit assumption that thestudies included report results that are not fraud-ulent, nor based on inappropriate multiple anal-yses (otherwise known as p-hacking, or fishingfor a significant effect), and that all experimen-tal results pertaining to the question under studywere reported. Fraud, multiple analyses, andunderreporting of negative results remain diffi-cult to assess, but well conducted meta-analyses, such as those reviewed here, attemptto address these concerns.
Prospective meta-analyses are used in clini-cal medicine to further enhance the predictivevalue of meta-analysis. Caroline Watt of theUniversity of Edinburgh is currently organizingsuch analyses for the parapsychological re-
search community, based on her experience op-erating a study registry for precognition andother controversial experiments (Watt & Ken-nedy, 2015). In a prospective meta-analysis, thestudies to be analyzed and the methods of anal-yses are preplanned. This approach offers a wayto further avoid the biasing effects of potentialfraud, multiple analyses, and underreporting ofnegative results. Prospective meta-analysis is anapproach sympathetic to an argument made byWagenmakers, Wetzels, Borsboom, van derMaas, and Kievit (2012), who suggest that allresearchers should conduct confirmatory exper-iments with preregistered analyses and designs.
Forced-Choice Conscious Precognition Tasks
A second approach to studying precognitionis to test whether people can consciously accessfuture information using a simple forced-choicetask. In a forced-choice precognition task, aparticipant is offered two or more choices, oneof which will randomly occur in the future, likethe outcome of a coin toss. Participants performmultiple trials of the task, and the proportion ofcorrect trials is the dependent variable. A meta-analysis of such experiments based on reports of309 experiments published between 1935 and1987 (Honorton & Ferrari, 1989) yielded asmall overall effect size (Rosenthal ES � 0.02).Nevertheless, due to the high statistical powerafforded by the many studies considered, it wasstatistically significant (Stouffer Z � 6.02, p �1.1 � 10�9). Using Rosenthal’s failsafe esti-mate, the authors calculated that 14,268 unre-ported studies averaging a null effect wouldhave been required to transform the databaseinto one with an overall null effect. The size ofthat file-drawer estimate, in comparison withthe number of laboratories studying precogni-tion, suggested that selective reporting was anunlikely explanation for the observed effect.However, small effect sizes may also reflectconsistent artifacts or methodological errors in-stead of a genuine effect.
Forced-choice, repeated-guessing precogni-tion experiments began to fall out of favor in the1990s for two reasons: (a) The tests were bor-ing, encouraging participants to use consciousdeliberation to try to outguess the next target,and (b) the tests did not resemble individuals’spontaneous experiences of apparent precogni-tion (Storm, Tressoldi, & DiRisio, 2010). So,
81PRECOGNITION AS A FORM OF PROSPECTION
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investigators began to gravitate toward two newtypes of precognition tasks: free-response con-scious precognition tasks and implicit precog-nition tasks.
Free-Response Conscious Precognition Tasks
In a free-response conscious precognitiontask, the participant is asked to describe thecontents of a randomly selected visual targetthat will be shown to the participant in thefuture. In a properly controlled precognitiontest, at the time the participant reports her or hisimpressions, no one (not even a computer)knows what the target will be. Only after theparticipant has recorded and submitted her orhis impressions is a target randomly selectedand presented to the participant.
Beginning in 1976, researchers from thePrinceton Engineering Anomalies ResearchLaboratory performed multiple free-responseprecognition studies using this protocol. Deanof the School of Engineering and head of thePrinceton Engineering Anomalies ResearchLab, Robert Jahn, summarized those studies in apublication in the Proceedings of the IEEE(Jahn, 1982). He presented multiple “precogni-tive remote perception” experiments that re-sulted in highly significant results. A later anal-ysis suggested that methodological weaknesses,including allowing investigators in one condi-tion to freely choose targets according to theirpreferences, might have provided percipientswith clues about the target in both precognitivetrials and those in which the targets were chosenat the same time or before the percipients’ de-scriptions were recorded (Hansen, Utts, &Markwick, 1992). Thus, the overall findingswere considered suspect until responses fromthe original experimenters made it clear thateven after dropping the volitionally selectedtarget trials, the data were still statistically sig-nificant (Dobyns, Dunne, Jahn, & Nelson, 1992;Nelson, Dunne, Dobyns, & Jahn, 1996). Fur-ther, taking into account only precognitive tri-als, data from a series using randomly selectivetargets located in the Chicago, Illinois, area aswell as data from a series in which the percip-ient was located alone on a boat in the oceancould not be considered suspect because thepercipient would have had no clues about thetarget (see “Chicago” and “Ocean” series; Jahn,1982). Each of these precognitive remote view-
ing series were accurate significantly beyondchance, and neither suffered from the problemsdiscussed by Hansen et al. (1992).
In support of the idea of using free-responseinstead of forced-choice tasks to examine pre-cognition, Dunne and Jahn (2003) pointed outthat trials using a truly free-response methodproduced larger effect sizes than those employ-ing a partial-free-response (multiple-choice rat-ing) approach (called feature importance dis-crimination option analysis). However, theyperformed this analysis as a post hoc attempt toexplain what appeared to be a decline effectover time, and it is worth noting that some ofthe later trials that did not use feature impor-tance discrimination option analysis still hadgenerally smaller effect sizes than the originalfree-response trials.
May (2014) performed an experiment thatexemplified a free-response precognition exper-iment with methods following the recommen-dations of Hansen et al. (1992). Three partici-pants who had produced above-chance results inprevious free-response tasks administered in thecontext of a classified government program,participated in a nonclassified experiment inwhich they were tasked with performing a totalof 50 preplanned free-response conscious pre-cognition trials. First, researchers asked a par-ticipant to describe a future target; this descrip-tion was recorded. Then the experimenter madea “fuzzy-logic” judgment about that descriptionprior to the random selection of a target image.To allow this judgment to be made withoutknowing the eventual target, researchers used acoding method that matched the elements in aparticipant’s description against a prearrangedset of elements describing aspects of the targetstimulus set (e.g., each potential target imagehad already been coded to indicate if the imagedepicted water, buildings, trees, etc.). After thejudgment was completed, the target image andtwo additional decoy targets were randomly se-lected from a stimulus pool consisting of 300images.2 Then, based on the number of match-ing elements between the previously coded de-
2 Comparison images were not selected uniformly at ran-dom—they were instead selected randomly within two cat-egories of images that were not in the same category as thetarget image. All images were selected from the followingcategories: canyons, waterfalls, bridges, cities, or Asianstructures.
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scriptions of each of the three target images,researchers calculated a “figure of merit” for thetarget image. After these calculations, the soft-ware randomly selected a target image, and thetrial was judged to be a “hit” if the figure ofmerit for the target image was the highest figureof merit out of the three images. Finally, thetarget image was shown to the participant asfeedback. This experiment produced 32 hits outof the 50 planned trials, a statistically significanthit rate based on a binomial test with a successrate of 33% expected by chance.
A significant result based on three partici-pants is not worth mentioning if the experiment-er’s goal is to determine whether an effect gen-eralizes to the population at large. However, weunderstand that May’s (2014) experiment wassimply a proof-of-principle demonstration thatcertain individuals can successfully predict fu-ture events that are specifically designed to beunpredictable by any ordinary means. Assum-ing that May’s results were not due to chanceand that his report was accurate, his resultsdisproved the null hypothesis. Independent at-tempts to replicate May’s experiment using thesame participants would be both constructiveand informative.
Implicit Precognition Tasks
The methods used in implicit precognitionexperiments may at first appear to be quitedifferent from the methods already discussed,but they are similar in that implicit precognitiontasks can be used to examine whether presentactions are related to unpredictable futureevents. For example, we know that practicing orstudying material that one desires to remembergenerally enhances recall of the studied materialin the future. Daryl Bem (2011) conducted aclever experiment in which he reversed thispractice effect in time to examine whether fu-ture practice might influence present perfor-mance on a recall task. Bem reported that theresults of the first two of such tests revealed thatparticipants were better at recall for words thatthey were going to practice in the future (Bem,2011). This experiment and attempts to repli-cate its findings will be discussed in more detailbelow.
In recent decades, implicit precognition de-signs have become increasingly popular be-cause they involve simple time-reversals of con-
ventional tasks commonly used in experimentaland social psychology. As such, these experi-ments are relatively easy to implement and theyavoid the necessity of requiring participants toconsciously guess future events, which re-searchers have long suspected impedes access-ing future information (Carpenter, 2004, 2005).
Bem’s (2011) report on a series of nine im-plicit precognition experiments, all showing sta-tistically significant or near-significant results,is perhaps the most widely discussed recentpaper on the topic of implicit precognition. Bemwas criticized for using 1-tail statistical tests,lack of clarity in reporting his methods, andpotentially using multiple analyses to get thedesired results (e.g., Alcock, 2011). Critics alsosuggested that a Bayesian approach should beused for all data analyses in psychology, insteadof null-hypothesis significance-testing, withBem’s report acting as the primary motivationfor this suggestion (Wagenmakers, Wetzels,Borsboom, & van der Maas, 2011). A responseto that critique showed that after applying aBayesian analysis with an appropriate prior dis-tribution, the results were highly significant(Bem, Utts, & Johnson, 2011). Other authorsalso suggested that the analysis by Wagenmak-ers and others was flawed (Rouder & Morey,2011). They reanalyzed Bem’s combined datausing a Bayesian approach and found the resultsto be personally unconvincing, though it is clearthat in a less controversial field the Bayes factorthat they had calculated for Bem’s experimentswith nonerotic stimuli would have been consid-ered “moderate” to “strong” evidence (Good-man, 1999). Rouder and Morey (2011) stated atthe end of the abstract of their report,
There is some evidence. . .for the hypothesis thatpeople can feel the future with emotionally valencednonerotic stimuli, with a Bayes factor of about 40.Although this value is certainly noteworthy, we believeit is orders of magnitude lower than what is required toovercome appropriate skepticism of ESP. (p. 682)
Others have been critical of the approach ofcombining different studies in this way, andthey do not accept that there is strong enoughevidence in favor of precognition based on thesedata (Wagenmakers, Wetzels, Borsboom, Ki-evit, & van der Maas, 2015).
In general, consensus exists among scepticsthat many of the concerns raised about Bem’sresearch could have been avoided if Bem had
83PRECOGNITION AS A FORM OF PROSPECTION
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preregistered his experiments as confirmatorystudies (see methodological recommendations,below). When there is too much freedom in theanalytical steps that can be taken to confirm ahypothesized outcome, the probability increasesthat researchers will obtain their desired out-come. Preregistration of a confirmatory experi-ment, which includes specifying in advance thedesign and analytical strategies that will be ad-opted, constrains the experimenter to use onlypreplanned methodology, thereby mitigating orprecluding confirmation bias in this or in anyempirical field (Brandt et al., 2014).
Taken at face value, one of the most impres-sive findings from the Bem (2011) series ofexperiments was that practice on a list of wordsafter a word-memory task was correlated withsignificant improvements in recall for the wordsthat would subsequently be practiced. This wasan implicit precognition test in that participantswere not explicitly asked which words would bestudied after they performed their word-memory test, but the test did use consciouslydeliberated responses (words typed by the par-ticipants) as the dependent variable. In contrastto these slower, more deliberate responses,other experiments in Bem’s report included de-signs that required relatively fast response timesas the dependent variable.
The distinction between slow and fast re-sponses is pertinent. The most statistically im-pressive results in Bem’s original report werefrom the two experiments investigating thetime-reversed word-practice effect (Bem, 2011;Wagenmakers et al., 2011), but similar implicitprecognition experiments, and some exact rep-lications, using deliberate, slower responses(using so-called slow-thinking cognitive sys-tems; e.g., Kahneman, 2011; Evans & Stanov-ich, 2013) have not produced reliably repeatableeffects. It appears that experiments requiringfast responses (using so-called fast-thinkingcognitive systems) have produced remarkablyreliable and repeatable effects. This distinctionwas noted in a post hoc evaluation within ameta-analysis of 90 implicit precognition exper-iments conducted between 2000 and 2013,which included all known published and unpub-lished attempts to replicate Bem’s experiments(Bem, Tressoldi, Rabeyron, & Duggan, 2016).The authors used dual-process theory, as de-scribed by Kahneman (2011) as well as Evansand Stanovich (2013), to divide the experiments
into fast versus slow-thinking—although, again,it is worth noting that this division was made bythe authors after the authors were aware of eachexperiments’ results. According to that division,of the studies reported 61 were categorized asfast-thinking, including five categories: precog-nitive detection of reinforcement, precognitiveavoidance of negative stimuli, retroactive prim-ing, retroactive habituation, retroactive practice.The remaining 29 studies were categorized asslow-thinking, including the categories of retro-active facilitation of practice on recall and ret-roactive facilitation of practice on text readingspeed.
Taken together, based on the original (notpost hoc) analysis, the effect size for all 90experiments combined was small but highlysignificant (Hedges’ g � 0.09; p � 1.2 �10�10). The possibility of significant declineeffects, that is, a reduction in the effect size ofa given phenomenon over time, has beenpointed out as a problem in parapsychologyresearch (Hyman, 2010). If an effect declines tonull over time, it is possible that the originaleffect was spurious, and as the quality of theexperimental design and analyses improved, theeffect would be understood as a fluke or anartifact. Analysis of the effect sizes for all 90Bem-style experiments over time showed nosignificant decline effect (year vs. effect size:Pearson’s product-moment correlation: �0.149,p � .161). There was also little evidence thatthose results were due to multiple unreportedanalyses (p-hacking) or selective reporting(Bem et al., 2016). One concern that has beenraised is that this meta-analysis included studiespublished prior to Bem’s (2011) study, but aspointed out in the meta-analysis, Bem startedproviding software for replications in 2000, theyear of the first replication report included inthis meta-analysis, so that concern seems un-warranted. In terms of fast- versus slow-thinking paradigms, the authors observed thatall five categories of fast-thinking tasks inde-pendently produced significant results withineach category, and the overall fast-thinking ef-fect was highly significant (z � 7.11, p � 6 �10�13). By contrast, slow-thinking tasks pro-duced nonsignificant results in both experi-mental categories as well as overall (z � 1.38,p � .15).
Bem et al. (2016) suggested that the disparitybetween fast- and slow-thinking outcomes is
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due to the former not suffering as much as thelatter from conscious judgment or from altera-tion of the information obtained from noncon-scious sources. An alternative explanation couldbe that many of the experiments requiring fastresponses also used emotionally charged stim-uli, which are more engaging than the stimuliused in the experiments requiring slower re-sponses (Barušs & Rabier, 2014). If attention toprecognitive information depends on motiva-tion and engagement, which seems reasonable,then this explanation would both make intuitivesense and be empirically testable. A third pos-sibility may be that implicit precognition fol-lows a decay time-course similar to that ob-tained in studies of forced-choice consciousprecognition (Honorton & Ferrari, 1989), suchthat tasks providing immediate feedback pro-duce more accurate precognition than tasks pro-viding delayed feedback.
A useful next step in a research programfocusing on implicit precognition would be tocontinue to examine moderators of the effect.The analysis of moderators such as age, gender,and Big Five personality type (McCrae & John,1992; Tupes & Christal, 1961) could provideuseful information about potential psychologi-cal, physiological and personality variables as-sociated with precognitive effects, which mightfurther shed light on whether precognition ef-fects are due to subtle artifacts. In terms ofpotential mechanisms underlying purported pre-cognitive effects, most fast-thinking paradigmscurrently conflate fast responses with immedi-ate feedback. By teasing apart these two factors,researchers could determine if it is the speed ofthe response, the speed of the feedback, or both,contribute most to the precognitive effect. If thespeed of the response matters most, this wouldsuggest that deliberation over which response toselect is what must be eliminated to accessaccurate precognition about future events. Ifinstead the speed of the feedback matters most,this might suggest that precognition decays witha time course similar to decay of ordinary mem-ory for past events. In general, variations of theimplicit precognition paradigm offer many op-portunities to study variables that interact withand modulate perception of future information,which in turn may offer insights into underlyingphysical mechanisms.
Presentiment: A Physiological Measure ofImplicit Precognition
Outstanding predictive abilities, for exampleamong elite athletes, may be based on highlyefficient unconscious processing of sensorycues as well as exceptionally accurate predictivealgorithms (e.g., Aglioti, Cesari, Romani, &Urgesi, 2008). This idea probably explains atleast some aspects of superior performance.However, several decades of physiological ev-idence demonstrate that in humans and someanimals, unconscious or semiconscious pro-cesses also seem to correctly anticipate unpre-dictable future events. This phenomenon hasbeen called predictive anticipatory activity(Mossbridge, Tressoldi, & Utts, 2012; Radin,2011), but a simpler moniker is presentiment(Radin, 1997; Radin & Pierce, 2015). As wedescribe below, presentiment may underlie su-perior performance in any sort of task that re-quires anticipation of noninferable futureevents.
In the first experiment that explicitly testedthe presentiment hypothesis (Levin & Kennedy,1975), contingent negative variation (CNV), anegative slow cortical potential that correlateswith sensorimotor expectancy (Walter, Cooper,Aldridge, McCallum, & Winter, 1964), wasused as a nonconscious physiological measureof precognition. Participants were asked topress a button as quickly as possible, but onlyafter they saw a green light. After a red light,they were asked to withhold their button press.Electroencephalographic data showed a signifi-cant difference in CNV before the green light(when a motor action would be required), butnot before a red light. Subsequent attempts touse CNV to measure presentiment failed to suc-cessfully replicate the effect (Hartwell, 1978,1979).
Radin (1997) investigated the idea that emo-tional stimuli might be more likely to producepresentiment effects. He used heart rate, bloodvolume, and electrodermal activity as physio-logical measures. These measures were simul-taneously recorded while participants viewed arandomized series of images. The protocol forthese experiments included features that even-tually became standard for most presentimentreplication attempts, including the following:(a) Each trial consisted of an event that waseither calm or emotional (e.g., viewing a picture
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of a tree vs. a plane crash), (b) the order of theseevents was completely randomized, (c) the ex-perimental procedure provided no known sen-sory or statistical cues about the content ornature of the next event, and (d) the values ofthe physiological measures in a predefined pe-riod preceding each trial type were the depen-dent variables. This protocol revealed signifi-cantly different physiological changes precedingupcoming emotional events, as compared withcalm events, with the difference emerging be-tween 2 and 4 s, on average, prior to an event(Radin, 1997).
This basic result has been successfully repli-cated more than 20 times after Radin’s originalstudy (e.g., McCraty, Atkinson, & Bradley,2004; Radin, 2004; Radin & Lobach, 2007;Radin & Borges, 2009; Spottiswoode & May,2003; Tressoldi, Martinelli, Semenzato, & Cap-pato, 2011). A statistically conservative meta-analysis of all known presentiment experimentsfollowing the above-described protocol con-cluded that presentiment is a repeatable effect(N � 26 studies; random effects: overall ES �0.21, z � 5.3, p � 5.7 � 10�8; fixed effects:overall ES � 0.21, z � 6.9, p � 2.7 � 10�12),and that it occurs over a range of durations thatappear to depend on the physiological systemused to measure the effect (Mossbridge et al.,2012). An analysis of the meta-analytic data inMossbridge et al. (2012) indicates that there isno significant decline effect in the findings overtime (year vs. effect size: Pearson’s product–moment correlation � �0.14, p � .49). In thismeta-analysis and also in a later review, poten-tial problems were assessed including multipleunreported analyses (p-hacking), publicationbias, and fraud. All three possibilities were re-jected as viable explanations (Mossbridge et al.,2012; Mossbridge et al., 2014), at least partlybecause this meta-analysis tested a slightly dif-ferent hypothesis than the original experiment-ers did. That is, almost all of the original ex-perimenters tested a nondirectional hypothesisthat physiological variables will differ consis-tently (in any direction) prior to emotional ver-sus calm stimuli, whereas the authors of themeta-analysis tested a directional hypothesisthat physiological variables will change in aconsistent direction prior to emotional versuscalm stimuli. The fact remains, of course, thatp-hacking, publication bias, or fraud might not
be detected in the data examined in any meta-analysis.
Of the various conventional explanationsproposed to explain presentiment effects, themost plausible is the gambler’s fallacy. In thiscontext the gambler’s fallacy would manifest asparticipants gradually becoming more anxiousafter a series of calm events because they wouldincreasingly expect that an emotional eventought to occur soon. The fact that the underly-ing sequence of events is randomly determined,and independent of one another, is overpoweredby inaccurate expectations about sequential ran-domness (e.g., Laplace, 1796/1951; Tversky &Kahneman, 1971). In fact, simulations haveshown that a small presentiment-type outcomecould potentially be explained by increases inphysiological arousal due to a series of calmevents that, by chance, just happened to precedean emotional event (Dalkvist, Westerlund, &Bierman, 2002; Wackermann, 2002). However,of the 26 experiments examined in the 2012presentiment meta-analysis, 19 of the studieswere performed by researchers who were awareof this potential confound and performed anal-yses to determine if the gambler’s fallacy biascould have reasonably explained the observedresults. None of the researchers found convinc-ing evidence for such an anticipatory bias(Mossbridge et al., 2012). In addition, a simu-lation of presentiment using a common expec-tation-bias test, a linear regression on the num-ber of calm trials preceding an emotional oneversus the physiological response preceding theemotional trial, found that 92% of the modeledpresentiment effect remained unexplained evenafter removing experiments for which expecta-tion bias detected with this test could potentiallyexplain the results (Mossbridge et al., 2015).
Based on the results of the meta-analysis, theauthors concluded that, barring widespread col-lusion among independent investigators, it ap-pears that nonconscious access of future, unpre-dictable information is possible (Mossbridge etal., 2012). Of course, like the other experimen-tal categories, research on presentiment effectshas evoked debate (e.g., Mossbridge et al., 2015;Schwarzkopf, 2014). Schwarzkopf (2014) raisedsix points of concern, which were responded toin an exchange with Mossbridge and colleagues(2015). First, any meta-analysis is only as goodas the data it considers. Meta-analyses, like anyanalysis, can be biased both in terms of which
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articles are included and how the statisticalanalysis is performed (Franklin, Baumgart, &Schooler, 2014). Although Mossbridge and oth-ers performed a quality check and adopted astatistically conservative approach against theirhypothesis whenever there was a choice of ap-proaches, their meta-analysis might have beenbiased in some unspecified way. Schwarzkopfcontended that the meta-analysis should havebeen broadened to include data from experi-ments not designed to test presentiment. In fact,Mossbridge et al. (2012) did analyze relevantpsychophysiological data, but they did not in-clude those results in their meta-analysis be-cause the protocols did not use randomization ofstimuli with replacement, an important featureof presentiment experiments intended to helpreduce expectation bias. Schwarzkopf also ex-pressed concern that because many of the pre-sentiment experiments included in the meta-analysis used an uneven ratio of calm toarousing stimuli (often 2:1 or 3:1), which mighthave generated a response bias if participantsfigured out the stimulus ratio. Mossbridge andothers pointed out that if this were the case, itwould bias participants toward expecting calmstimuli, making presentiment more difficult todetect, not easier. Schwarzkopf then noted thatclamping of the physiological trace to zero at atime prior to the stimulus could have producedthe effects, but it was not clear how that couldbe the case given the analytical methods em-ployed. Schwarzkopf further suggested thattesting for expectation bias is generally per-formed by assuming that such biases wouldmanifest linearly, but expectation biases mightbe nonlinear. Mossbridge et al. (2015) agreed.And finally, Schwarzkopf (2014) questioned ifpresentiment effects were biologically plausi-ble. Mossbridge and others (2015) respondedthat if a presentiment effect were observed inthese experiments, then there must be a naturalexplanation, even if one were not yet identified.Assessments of plausibility depend on currenttheoretical assumptions about what is or is notbelieved to be possible. Declaring a repeatableempirical effect to be implausible should arouseboth caution and celebration; caution becauseexpert intuitions about what is possible can beuseful in identifying subtle confounds, artifacts,or experimenter biases, but also celebration be-cause implausible effects can, at times, reveal
entirely new, previously unimagined realms ofknowledge.
Aside from these results in humans, a recentpresentiment experiment in planaria (Alvarez,2016) followed up a previous report of presen-timent in birds by the same researcher (Alvarez,2010). Experiments using lower level animalsare useful in that they rule out common humanforms of bias, such as the gambler’s fallacy. Inthe experiment with planaria, the worms wereobserved prior to a random number generator’sdecision about whether a loud sound would beplayed. The experimenter measuring the behav-ior of the planaria was blind to whether the loudstimulus would be played. The planaria showedsignificantly more head movement (indicatingstress or exploration) prior to when the loudstimulus was played as compared to times whenit was not played. If researchers conduct a pre-registered confirmatory experiment based onthis finding, and if that experiment replicatedthe original effect, this would go a long waytoward suggesting that biological mechanismscan use information about future events to in-fluence present-time behavior.
Ideally, future presentiment experiments willcontinue to address what we believe to be themost outstanding concern: How do we knowthat the physiological effect we observe on anygiven trial is not caused by a delayed or latentresponse to the previous trial or trials? Mostresearchers performing psychophysiological ex-periments assume that trial randomization takescare of any such order effects and generallyremain unconcerned about them, but those in-volved in presentiment research have been mo-tivated to develop both analytical and experi-mental methods to determine whetherexpectation bias can explain presentiment (e.g.,Dalkvist, Mossbridge, & Westerlund, 2014). Asfar as we know, the only guaranteed way to ruleout order or expectation effects as an explana-tion for presentiment is to perform experimentsin which each participant only experiences asingle event, and in which comparisons betweenphysiological measures preceding emotionallycontrasting events are made across participants.The results of such a presentiment experiment,if they revealed a statistically significant presen-timent effect, could strongly argue against anyorder- or expectation-based explanations forpresentiment.
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Recommendations for Future Investigationsof Precognition
For decades, researchers interested in precog-nition and related phenomena routinely pre-specified the numbers of participants and trialsto eliminate “optional stopping.” This strategycan be especially effective when it is incorpo-rated into a preregistered design in a prospectivemeta-analysis. More recently, researchers haverecommended preregistration of experimentalmethods and analyses, especially for confirma-tory experiments, to help ensure that researcherscannot change their planned experimental oranalytical approaches after the study is under-way (see http://www.koestler-parapsychology.psy.ed.ac.uk/TrialRegistry.html for several re-cently registered precognition experiments).Replications across multiple laboratories withdata analyses performed by individuals who areunaware of either the hypothesis or the experi-mental manipulation(s) are particularly valuable.We also recommend that researchers attemptingto perform a meta-analysis of precognition studiescollaborate with a statistician who is unaware ofthe underlying hypothesis of the meta-analysis.This extra step would eliminate concerns aboutresearcher biases affecting data analysis.
As for recommended next steps in precogni-tion research, we contend that beginning to un-derstand the psychological and physiologicalmechanisms underlying free-response precogni-tion, implicit precognition, and physiologicalprecognitive effects like presentiment should bethe top research priority. Such a research pro-gram is especially important in light of theargument that potentially all other purportedlyanomalous psychological phenomena, such astelepathy, clairvoyance, and psychokinesis, maybe explainable via precognition (Marwaha &May, 2016). Another fruitful area is the exam-ination of potential moderators of precognitionsuch as age, personality type, mood, gender, andbelief regarding the phenomenon. We may notethat the use of prescreening to find participantsskilled at the precognitive task of interest re-mains an important step for researchers attempt-ing to gain insight into the mechanisms under-lying precognition. Assuming that precognitionis distributed unevenly in the population, likeany other cognitive or physical talent, then anyattempt to gain a deeper understanding of themechanisms underlying these skills without
studying participants who exhibit some skill isunlikely to be fruitful (Barušs & Mossbridge,2016). Following these recommendations, fu-ture precognition research should work toward(a) estimating the robustness and repeatabilityof precognitive effects; (b) gaining a clearerunderstanding of the relationships, if any,among different types of precognitive tasks; and(c) shedding light on underlying mechanisms.More mechanistically inspired recommenda-tions for future work are offered below (seeSummary).
Potential Psychological Mechanismsof Precognition
Based on the experiments discussed above, itappears that nonconscious mental processes arelargely responsible for precognition (Stanford,2015). Historically, scientists and the lay publichave resisted the idea that a part of the mindfunctions in a way that is completely beyondconscious awareness. Subliminal perception isnow openly discussed in most psychology textsand courses, but for many decades the idea ofnonconscious cognitive processes was regardedas ridiculous (Kihlstrom, Barnhardt, & Tataryn,1992; Hassin, 2013). Indeed, the idea that non-conscious processing associated with dreaminghas any utility has only recently gained scien-tific respectability after robust evidence showedthat dreaming influences learning (e.g., Bob &Louchakova, 2015; Hobson & Pace-Schott,2002; Karni, Tanne, Rubenstein, Askenasy, &Sagi, 1994; Llewellyn & Hobson, 2015; Stick-gold, Hobson, Fosse, & Fosse, 2001). Further,only in the last 15 years have most researchersin psychology and neuroscience acknowledgedthat nonconscious or implicitly accessed cogni-tive processes can sometimes assist in recallingmemories, making choices, and solving com-plex problems better than conscious cognitiveprocesses (Bowden, Jung-Beeman, Fleck, &Kounios, 2005; Dijksterhuis, Bos, Nordgren, &van Baaren, 2006; Voss, Baym, & Paller, 2008;Voss, Lucas, & Paller, 2012). In other words,evidence continues to accumulate that our intu-itions about the nature, scope, and abilities ofour conscious and unconscious awareness arenot necessarily accurate.
The frailty of our intuitions becomes espe-cially clear when we are confronted by datasuggesting unconscious awareness of future
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events. Not only is a persuasive theoretical ex-planation for precognition unavailable at thispoint, but we do not even know whether weshould be attempting to identify one mechanismor many. Perhaps the time span between theprecognition and the event is important; perhapsthere is one mechanism for behavioral precog-nition (like precognitive remote viewing andprecognitive dreaming, with time frames on theorder of days) and a different mechanism forphysiological precognition (like presentiment,with time frames on the order of seconds). An-other unresolved question is whether precogni-tion is achieved via accessing information aboutprobable or actual future events, or by events inthe future “influencing” or constraining eventsin the past.
Summary
The full epistemological and ontological con-sequences of time-reversed influences are notyet clear, but one implication is that the exper-imental sciences may soon be faced with atroubling dilemma: Time-reversed effects, ifthey exist, cannot be prevented by any currentlyknown experimental controls. As we have seenin this review, several classes of experimentshave demonstrated time-reversed anomalies un-der tightly controlled protocols. Accordingly,our most cherished epistemologies may be un-avoidably influenced by future outcomes. Wemay take comfort in the likelihood that themagnitudes of these influences are probablysmall, but in some disciplines, especially do-mains like the life sciences and experimentalpsychology in which thousands of variables in-fluence the observed effects, time-reversed ef-fects may fundamentally affect the interpreta-tion of results.
Such speculative implications, of course, canbe considered scientific heresies of the first or-der. But if positive empirical evidence contin-ues to accumulate, especially if the methodolog-ical recommendations suggested by ourselvesand others are followed, then a time may comewhen we are forced to think the unthinkable.Indeed, the implications of retrocausation are soremote from engrained ways of thinking that thefirst reaction to this line of research is that itmust be flawed. The second reaction may behorror that it represents a previously unacceptedfact about reality.
To better understand the nature of precogni-tion, we need to study the relationships betweennonconscious processes, conscious processes,and how time unfolds in the physical world.Several avenues of inquiry that may lead togreater understanding include examining thecircumstances under which nonconscious pro-cesses share information with conscious pro-cesses about imminent events, determining howa conscious decision to receive informationabout a future event influences one’s ability toaccurately perceive that information, collaborat-ing with physicists to study how nonconsciousand conscious processes might interact withevents as they unfold in time, and examininghow time is perceived during alterations in con-sciousness.
A recent “taxonomy of prospection” delin-eates four broad categories in which most skillsrelated to prospection seem to fall: simulation,prediction, intention, and planning (Szpunar,Spreng, & Schacter, 2014). Based on the datareviewed here, it seems to us that precognitionmay eventually be considered just one of sev-eral forms of prediction that have evolved toenhance our survival. A handful of neuroscien-tists, psychologists, and physicists are examin-ing precognition with this idea in mind, andsome have published their results (e.g., Bem,2011; Franklin et al., 2014; Mossbridge, Tres-soldi, & Utts, 2012). However, due to a lack ofawareness of this line of research in mainstreamacademia, such efforts are vastly underfunded.That is a pity because the ability to gain infor-mation about future events could potentiallylead to major advances in both psychologicaland physical theories, as well as a host of prag-matic applications. We join others (Franklin etal., 2014) in supporting efforts to increase fund-ing for precognition research.
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Received November 9, 2015Revision received February 14, 2017
Accepted February 26, 2017 �
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COMMENTARY
Cross-Examining the Case for Precognition: Comment onMossbridge and Radin (2018)
James Houran and Rense LangeIntegrated Knowledge Systems, Dallas, Texas, andInstituto Politécnico de Gestão e Tecnologia, Vila
Nova de Gaia, Portugal
Dan HooperFermi National Accelerator Laboratory, Batavia,
Illinois, and University of Chicago
Based on a review and meta-analyses of empirical literature in parapsychology,Mossbridge and Radin (2018) argued for anomalous replicable effects that suggest thepossibility of precognitive ability or retrocausal phenomena. However, these conclu-sions are refuted on statistical and theoretical grounds—the touted effects are neithermeaningful, interpretable, nor even convincingly replicable. Moreover, contrary toassertions otherwise, the possibility of authentic retrocausation is discredited by mod-ern theories in physics. Accordingly, Mossbridge and Radin’s interpretations arediscussed in terms of misattribution biases that serve anxiolytic functions when indi-viduals confront ambiguity, with potential reinforcement from perceptual–personalityvariables such as paranormal belief. Finally, we argue that research in human con-sciousness should be multidisciplinary, and notably, leverage informed investigators inthe physical sciences to advance truly valid and cumulative theory building.
Keywords: transliminality, precognition, effect size, meta-analysis, physics
For generalization, psychologists must finally rely, ashas been done in all the older sciences, on replication.Cohen (1994, p. 997)
The conceptual foundation above sets thestage to confront Mossbridge and Radin’s(2018) case for “precognition” built on a reviewand synthesis of empirical literature in parapsy-chology. Anomalistic and clinical psychologistsare well acquainted with esoteric experiences of“advance knowing” that can occur in many con-
texts, for example, waking visions, déja vu ex-periences, “crisis apparitions” and intuitive think-ing. But beyond issues of phenomenology orepidemiology—and working from a misunder-standing of Albert Einstein’s description of timeas a “stubbornly persistent illusion (Einstein &Hawking, 2007)”—Mossbridge and Radin(2018) argued that the evidence suggests a rep-licable anomaly that denotes precognitive abil-ity or retrocausation that is implicitly rooted inpsi1. We credit this Journal for its willingnessto publish controversial data that can have enor-mous import in model or theory building inconsciousness studies, but skeptical readersscrutinizing the reasoning for those authors’provocative conclusions might regard belief inthe paranormal as another stubbornly persistent
1 Psi is a collective term used by parapsychologists forextrasensory perception (ESP, or paranormal cognition) andpsychokinesis (PK, or paranormal action); see Irwin andWatts (2007). Mossbridge and Radin did not explicitly usethis term, but it will be obvious to informed readers thattheir case for “precognition” is implicitly synonymous withpositive evidence for �.
James Houran and Rense Lange, Integrated KnowledgeSystems, Dallas, Texas, and Laboratory for Statistics andComputation (ISLA), Instituto Politécnico de Gestão e Tec-nologia, Vila Nova de Gaia, Portugal; Dan Hooper, Theo-retical Astrophysics Group, Fermi National AcceleratorLaboratory, Batavia, Illinois, and Department of Astronomyand Astrophysics, University of Chicago.
We thank the Bial Foundation (Portugal) for financiallysupporting many of the research programs by the JamesHouran and Rense Lange cited herein.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressedto James Houran, Integrated Knowledge Systems, 7041 Bri-armeadow Drive, Dallas, TX 75230. E-mail: [email protected]
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Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice © 2018 American Psychological Association2018, Vol. 5, No. 1, 98–109 2326-5523/18/$12.00 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/cns0000126
98
illusion—one that evokes the familiar pun bySam Walton (1992/1993, p. 68), who wrote thatESP stood for “error some place.”
Unfortunately, we did indeed find errors allover the place in Mossbridge and Radin’s(2018) presentation. These shortcomings ren-dered the paper fundamentally and fatallyflawed, so we would have rejected it as review-ers. There were too many misconceptions ormisstatements to address comprehensively in arebuttal limited to several thousand words;therefore, our present commentary focuses ontwo major issues that must be clarified in anyargument for precognition. In particular, weseek empirical and robust answers to the ques-tions, “Is there a replicable and meaningful sig-nal within the statistical noise?” If so, “Howdoes any such finding square with well-validated physics theory?”
We further note that this commentary, per-haps uniquely, represents a multidisciplinary ef-fort that draws on specific expertise in anoma-listic psychology, tests, measurement andstatistics, and theoretical physics. This is notmentioned as an appeal to authority, but ratherto emphasize that one of our goals here is toencourage investigators to pursue, and grant-giving agencies to prioritize in funding, quanti-tative or experimental approaches that leveragecollaborations across scientific disciplines. Inthis way, as Lange (2017) discussed at length,we can achieve truly cumulative and valid the-ory building in consciousness studies, and ulti-mately throughout all of science.
Statistics and Replication
Statistical models for data are never true. The questionof whether a model is true is irrelevant. A more ap-propriate question is whether we obtain the correctscientific conclusion if we pretend that the processunder study behaves according to a particular statisticalmodel. (Zeger, 1991, p. 1064)
The authors’ basic arguments in favor of pre-cognition are problematic for statistical reasons,as their presentation in places harks back totimes when lower p values (i.e., the probabilityof incorrectly rejecting the null hypothesis [H0])were interpreted as reflecting stronger effectsthan do larger values. This approach is likely toreinforce in the readers’ minds the classic “oddsagainst chance fantasy” (Carver, 1978), whichconfuses the probability (P) of observing the
data (D) given the H0, i.e., P(D|H0), with theprobability of the H0 given the data, i.e.,P(H0|D). This is clearly erroneous. Most (stan-dard) statistical tests explicitly assume H0 to betrue (i.e., with fixed probability at 1.0 and not p,the probability value estimated by the test). Aswell, P(H0|D) bears no relation to P(D|H0): Forexample, although it is highly likely that a per-son is dead (D) after being lynched (H0), it doesnot follow, that most dead people must havebeen lynched.
Mossbridge and Radin (2018) reported ex-tremely small, but highly significant, effect sizesacross meta-analyses for precognitive dreamingstudies, forced-choice conscious precognitiontasks, implicit precognition tasks, and presen-tient studies. These studies, however, have theconceptual flaw that two-sided hypotheses ofthe form H0: � � 0 and H1: � � 0 wereapparently used, and these hypotheses weretested by standard statistical tests. In this con-text, we first note that it has long been recog-nized (e.g., Edwards, Lindman, & Savage,1963) that rejection of such null hypothesesmay result from an exaggeration of the evidencefor the postulated effect, which occurs becausestandard statistical tests are consistent only ifthe H0 is false. That is, if we increase samplesize, we are guaranteed to reject H0, no mistakeswill occur, as any deviation from 0 will even-tually be flagged as having a probability lessthan � (i.e., the preselected Type-I error rateconcerning H0). On the other hand, mistakes dooccur when H0 is true because H0 will be re-jected with probability �, and Rouder, Speck-man, Sun, Morey, and Iverson (2009) noted thatthis rejection bias already starts occurring forrealistically small sample sizes.
Also, it is no secret to most researchers thatpsychological experiments are inherently noisyand their results are potentially distorted bymany factors, not all of which are random andnot all of which can be controlled. Bluntlyspeaking, the tests and measurements commu-nity call this the crap factor to remind us thatsmall effects, regardless of their statistical sig-nificance, are best interpreted as artifacts. Forinstance, should we really expect human behav-ior to be described precisely by theoretical coinflips when the behavior of real coins is known todeviate from theory (Diaconis, Holmes, &Montgomery, 2007)? We suspect that Moss-bridge and Radin might well agree, as they
99COMMENT ON MOSSBRIDGE AND RADIN (2018)
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noted that small experimental effects could re-flect “. . . consistent artifacts or methodologicalerrors instead of a genuine effect” (p. 10). It issomewhat surprising that they advocate the useof meta-analysis, as well as propose or endorseinterpretations of small experimental effects asviable examples of precognition, retrocausation,or paranormal presentiment.
In our opinion, meta-analysis is ill-advised inthe present context, and our objections agreesubstantially with those already voiced byWagenmakers, Wetzels, Borsboom, and van derMaas (2011) in a similar context. First, in thebest case (i.e., when no included study is dis-torted by any artifacts), a meta-analysis is justanother experiment, and therefore the objectionthat (standard) statistical tests artificially favorH1 applies here as well. Second, in reality, allexperiments are flawed because of the crap fac-tor referred to earlier. The question arises, there-fore, do meta-analyses not simply combine mul-tiple irrelevant findings into a single equallyirrelevant pile? Third, note that two-sided (null)hypotheses may be rejected because of oppositeempirical findings. That is, provided that theestimated probability P(D|H0) falls below �, H0:� � 0 can be rejected with M � 0 as well aswith M � 0 (where M is a statistic computedover the data, e.g., a mean). But, is it reasonableto say that two experiments showing opposite(and likely artificial) outcomes both support thesame kind of precognition? We do not think so.
It is possible to avoid some of the statisticalobjections listed above by adopting a Baysianapproach (Rouder et al., 2009) that takes intoaccount specific H0 values, so as not to exag-gerate the evidence favoring the H0 (i.e., it isconsistent). Simultaneously, it allows research-ers to express their preferences for either H0 orthe alternative. This approach will decrease theputative effect size when H0 is seen as lesslikely to be true (for examples, see, Wagenmak-ers et al., 2011). Applied to the research re-viewed here, this would further undermineMossbridge and Radin’s (2018) conclusions. Inthe end, however, their basic logical argumentrelies on the finding of unlikely data patternsthat seemingly support the existence of precog-nition. We already noted that this very argumentis not logically tenable, and that the support forthis hypothesis derives from ambiguous datathat were gathered in a noisy context, and ana-lyzed using questionable assumptions. We thus
agree with Wagenmakers et al. (2011) that “thefield of psychology currently uses methodolog-ical and statistical strategies that are too weak,too malleable, and offer far too many opportu-nities for researchers to befuddle themselvesand their peers” (p. 426).
Yet, even if Mossbridge and Radin’s (2018)statistical arguments were valid, this alonewould not establish precognition or retrocausa-tion as a workable theory. As we discuss next,retrocausation disagrees with all establishedknowledge of the natural world, and to deter-mine whether we should even take this expla-nation seriously, it is important to know whetherthe proposed phenomena are theoretically possi-ble.
Perception, Time, and Causality
First, and admittedly it sounds nit-picky, butwe balk at the four “everyday intuitions abouttime” set forth by Mossbridge and Radin(2018). We suspect they meant to say “beliefs”or “assumptions,” not “intuitions,” as the latterterm refers to a very specific, and possibly dis-tinct, psychological phenomenon. Nevertheless,their source for these “straw-man” assumptionsis unclear. To assist readers, they are repeatedhere: (a) “Events in the physical world are mir-rored by our almost immediate perceptual rec-reation of those events in essentially the sameorder that they occurred;” (b) “The re-creationof physical events, first in perception and laterin memory, occurs in a linear order based uponour original perception of events;” (c) “Event Amay only be said to ‘cause’ event B if event Aprecedes event B;” and (d) “What we rememberhas occurred in the past.”
We are unaware of any evidence that peoplehold some or all of these beliefs, and the scien-tific community understands these four prem-ises to be misguided. To be sure, even thoughlay people often confuse correlation and causa-tion, many can still appreciate and grasp thenotion that effects can apparently precede theircauses under certain circumstances. In particu-lar, roosters crowing at sunrise is an everydayexample of reverse causation, and in other dailycontexts, such as economics (e.g., Stock, &Trebbi, 2003; Heckman, 2008), causes and ef-fects are routinely observed to coincide in time.
Furthermore, a multitude of studies, for ex-ample, the classic, replicable work of Elizabeth
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Loftus (see, e.g., Loftus, Doyle, & Dysert,2008), upend the above assumptions speakingto sensation, perception and the encoding, re-trieval and accuracy of memory in relation toevents in the physical world. It is well-knownthat perception and memory are so malleablethat people even vividly remember things thatnever happened. For example, discussing eventscan influence memories of the events or in-crease the rate of false memories of the events,as exemplified in studies involving (a) discus-sions among romantic partners (French, Garry,& Mori, 2008), (b) conversational encounters ata beach (Carlucci, Kieckhaefer, Schwartz, Vil-lalba, & Wright, 2011), and (c) discussions of afilm (Gabbert, Memon, & Wright, 2006). Inaddition, not only is eyewitness testimony notnecessarily reliable, but witnesses can evenvoice strong confidence in their inaccurate re-membrances (Smalarz & Wells, 2015).
Second, and most important, credible infor-mation about time and causality needs to beinjected into any serious discussion of precog-nition, because Mossbridge and Radin onlycited two questionable sources referencingphysics. In particular, the case for precognitionbegan with a misunderstanding of Einstein’scomment about the nature of time. They are notalone, as evidenced in a lay article published onredOrbit (Savage & Penman, 2007) that usedEinstein’s same words to help promote the un-substantiated idea that precognition had increas-ing acceptance among mainstream academics,and especially informed physicists. But the de-scription of time as a “stubbornly persistentillusion” actually reflects Einstein’s view of theuniverse and its laws as objective and determin-istic. What he was referring to here is the im-possibility, according to his theory of relativity,of any objective determination of “now,” andthe lack of a unique, objective distinction be-tween past and future, as these depend on areference frame (more on this below). For Ein-stein, reality is what is true, not what is illusory,as exemplified by his further clarification.
If, then, it is true that the axiomatic basis of theoreticalphysics cannot be extracted from experience but mustbe freely invented, can we ever hope to find the rightway? Nay, more, has this right way any existenceoutside illusions? . . . I answer without hesitation thatthere is, in my opinion, a right way, and that we arecapable of finding it. . . . In a certain sense, therefore,I hold that pure thought can grasp reality, as the an-cients dreamed. (Einstein & Seelig 1954, p. 274)
To be clear, nothing about Einstein’s ex-pressed views or body of work suggest that heconsidered retrocausal mechanisms or behav-iors as possibilities. Any claim to the contrarybetrays an erroneous understanding of modernphysics theory.
Of course, some parapsychologists with re-ported backgrounds in physics have publishedproposals that seem to be the antithesis of Ein-stein’s thinking. For example, consider DickBierman’s (2010) thesis grandiloquently titled,“Consciousness-Induced Restoration of Time-Symmetry (CIRTS): a Psychophysical Theoret-ical Perspective.” Upon a review of Bierman’sassertions in that paper by the third author (DanHooper), a professional physicist, it is difficultto know how to respond to proposals like these.In particular, Bierman’s sentences about quan-tum physics often appear to be poorly informed,and carry little or no actual meaning or sub-stance. We therefore wonder whether “physics-oriented” parapsychologists like Bierman aresufficiently informed on modern theories inphysics or are possibly being intentionally dis-ingenuous.
From a physical perspective, there are ex-tremely compelling reasons to discard the pos-sibility of retrocausal phenomena. In contrast toMossbridge and Radin’s (2018) suggestions,physicists do not disregard the possibility ofsuch phenomena on the grounds that they vio-late their “everyday intuitions” about the natureof reality. Generally speaking, contemporaryphysicists are very comfortable with, and haveaccepted, the highly counterintuitive nature ofour universe, in particular, within the realms ofthe subatomic and the cosmological. The phys-ics community has instead rejected retrocausalmechanisms on well-substantiated, empirical,and logical grounds.
In contrast, individuals ignorant of modernphysics and its nuances sometimes referencesome of the counterintuitive phenomena associ-ated with special relativity and quantum me-chanics in an effort to provide conceptual sup-port for precognition, related retrocausal events,or other so-called paranormal phenomena. Inspecial relativity, for example, it is the case thatthe order in which a series of events occurs candepend on the choice of reference frame. Thismay seem to suggest that retrocausal behavior ispossible, but in fact this is not the case at all. Allevents that have the potential to influence an-
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other (e.g., any event within another’s lightcone) are strictly causally, although not neces-sarily deterministically, related. There is simplynothing about special (or general) relativity thatallows for retrocausal phenomena (see, e.g.,Carroll, 2010).
Quantum mechanics is also often cited insupport of retrocausality or other putative para-normal phenomena, but again this connection ismisplaced. Quantum entanglement, for in-stance, has often been referenced in support ofretrocausal behavior. In fact, however, entan-glement does not in any way enable informationto propagate in anything but a causal fashion.There is nothing about quantum mechanics, orits more modern incarnation, quantum field the-ory, that enables any authentically retrocausalbehavior (see, e.g., Bub, 1999).
On more general grounds, any means by whichinformation could be transferred from a futureevent to a past event would violate the secondlaw of thermodynamics (i.e., the entropy of alarge system always increases, or the reasonwhy an egg cannot be unscrambled), allowing,among other things, for the possibility of per-petual motion machines, and leading to consid-erable and deep logical challenges, such as theclass of problems known as the “grandfatherparadox.” In summary, any explanatory modelfor precognition, or any retrocausal or paranor-mal-presentiment-type effects, for that matter,must be reconciled against the overwhelminglyvalidated theories in modern physics.
Unconscious–Conscious Processing ofSensory Cues
Perhaps the most useful and interesting—butleast developed—part of Mossbridge/Radin(2018) presentation was the section on predic-tive anticipatory activity (PAA), that is, presen-timent effects. Setting aside these contrivedterms, this is where the construct of intuition (orintuitive thinking) now becomes relevant, aswell as the concept of transliminality, defined asthe “hypothesized tendency for psychologicalmaterial to cross (trans) thresholds (limines)into or out of consciousness” (Thalbourne &Houran, 2000, p. 853), which was inexplicablyomitted from their references to unconscious–conscious processing of sensory (and other)cues. We submit that any discussions or modelsrelated to the issues in Mossbridge and Radin
are incomplete without addressing the literatureon these two important variables.
Transliminality, a perceptual–personality vari-able, is measured with the Revised TransliminalityScale (RTS: Lange, Thalbourne, Houran, &Storm, 2000; cf. Houran, Thalbourne, & Lange,2003), which has considerable literature sup-porting its content and predictive validities (forreviews, see: Lange & Houran, 2000; Houran,Hughes, Thalbourne, & Delin, 2006). Over all,the available evidence suggests that a variety ofhighly unusual or anomalous experiences are afunction or correlate of heightened transliminal-ity (Cardeña, Lynn, & Krippner, 2014; Lange &Houran, 2000). In particular, its major corre-lates are syncretic cognitions (Houran et al.,2006; Lange & Houran, 2000), that is, the fu-sion of perceptual qualities in subjective expe-rience such as physiognomic perception (fusionof perception and feeling), synesthesia (fusionof sensory modalities), and eidetic imagery (fu-sion of imagery and perception). Accordingly,transliminality is presently conceptualized asenhanced interconnectedness between brainhemispheres, as well as among frontal corticalloops, temporal-limbic structures, and primaryor secondary sensory areas or sensory associa-tion cortices (Houran et al., 2006; Thalbourne,Crawley, & Houran, 2003; Thalbourne, Houran,Alias, & Brugger, 2001). Studies of perception,imagery, and memory all provide evidence for athreshold that mediates unconscious–consciousawareness, and findings from several psycho-physiological experiments seem consistent withthe neurological interconnectedness model inparticular (cf. Crawley, French, & Yesson,2002; Fleck et al., 2008; Houran et al., 2006).
Transliminality and intuitive thinking are re-lated phenomena (Lange & Houran, 2010)—even to the extent that questionnaire items mea-suring both constructs can be subsumed withina common Rasch (1960/1980) scale (cf. Houran& Lange, 2010, Appendix, pp. 73–75). Thesefindings suggest to us that presentiment-typeeffects are extremely complex, conventional phe-nomena grounded in established neurologicalmechanisms. In particular, the human brain hasevolved over tens of thousands of years into athree-pound, organic computer, arguably with thesole task of “making things more certain.” Gain-ing mastery and a sense of control over our phys-ical and psychological environments is, therefore,a natural, inherent motivation. But beyond the
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brain’s amazing sophistication, there seems to besomething especially remarkable happening inhighly transliminal minds. These individuals canappear almost “superhuman” in the permeabilityand manifestations related to their mental bound-aries.
For instance, intuition essentially appears tobe an unconscious confluence of affect, imag-ery, ideation, and perception. Langley, Mintz-berg, Pitcher, Posada, and Saint-Macary (1995)concluded that decision-making processes arepartially driven by emotion, imagination, andmemories all collectively crystallized into occa-sional insights. Eisenhardt and Zbaracki (1992)echoed this view in their multidimensional ap-proach to decision making encompassingbounded rationality, heuristics, insight, and in-tuition. Moreover, most researchers acknowl-edge that (a) intuitive events originate beyondconsciousness, (b) information is processed ho-listically, and (c) intuitive perceptions are fre-quently accompanied by emotion (Shapiro &Spence, 1997; Sinclair & Ashkanasy, 2005).Accordingly, Sinclair and Ashkanasy (2005)conceptualized intuition as “a nonsequential in-formation processing mode, which comprisesboth cognitive and affective elements and re-sults in direct knowing without any use of con-scious reasoning” (p. 353; cf. Simon, 1987;Epstein, Pacini, Denes-Raj, & Heier, 1996; Sha-piro & Spence, 1997).
This definition does not explicitly identify thesource of the cognitive and affective contents ofintuitions, and there are two competing viewson this issue (Boucouvalas, 1997; Shirley &Langan-Fox, 1996). One view defines intuitionas an experience-based phenomenon that drawson tacit knowledge accumulated through expe-rience and retrieved through pattern recognition(e.g., Behling & Eckel, 1991; Brockmann &Anthony, 1998; Isenberg, 1984; Klein, 1998;Simon, 1987). The second view is that theseexperiences follow from a more spontaneous,natural psychophysiological ability that relyheavily on sensory and affective elements in theintuitive process (e.g., Bastick, 1982; Epstein,1998; Parikh, Neubauer, & Lank, 1994; Petit-mengin-Peugeot, 1999).
Sinclair and Ashkanasy (2005) proposed ageneral model that incorporates both mecha-nisms simultaneously. It is important to notethat intuitive thinking often occurs in situationsof significant ambiguity or uncertainty (Burke
& Miller, 1999; Isenberg, 1984)—such as situ-ations in which problems are poorly structured(Behling & Eckel, 1991) or involve nonroutinedecisions (Simon, 1960), in which problems donot have existing precedents (Parikh et al.,1994), or when an individual is faced with con-flicting facts or inadequate information (Agor,1984). Other contributing factors include moti-vational issues like the perceived importance ofthe decision (Goodman, 1993) and its potentialimpact on the decision-maker (Kriger & Barnes,1992). Intuitive thinking strongly resemblesmagical thinking and paranormal belief and ex-perience, which we find interesting, as thesephenomena also thrive during situations ofmarked ambiguity or uncertainty (e.g., Houran,Irwin, & Lange, 2001; Irwin, 1992; Lange &Houran, 1998, 1999, 2000). Moreover, the sit-uational and motivational factors associatedwith intuitions arguably parallel the well-knownexperimenter effects documented in the para-psychological literature (e.g., Schmeidler, 1997;Storm & Thalbourne, 2005; Wiseman & Watt,2002).
There is ample rationale to hypothesize that“flashes of genius,” or intuitions about key deci-sions or future events are examples of translimi-nality manifesting in everyday contexts. First, thephenomenology of intuitions summarizedabove strongly parallels the neurological inter-connectedness model of transliminality andsuggests that intuition is either caused or mod-erated by transliminality. Second, and consis-tent with the neurological interconnectednessmodel, there is preliminary experimental evi-dence that intuitive processes involve interac-tions among the frontal, temporal, occipital andparietal brain areas, and perhaps even the car-diovascular system (McCraty, Atkinson, &Bradley, 2004a, 2004b). Finally, Lange andHouran (2010) found a moderate correlation,r � .38, p � .001, between transliminality andself-reported intuitions in the workplace in asample of individuals at different managementlevels. However, self-reported intuitions in-creased with higher management level, inde-pendent of transliminality. These findings areconsistent with a two-mechanism model of in-tuition (cf. Sinclair & Ashkanasy, 2005),whereby transliminality equates to intuitive pre-disposition subsequently honed or reinforcedover time by tacit knowledge that comes fromwork experience or structured training. In other
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words, intuitive ability might build upontransliminality, but then goes beyond it.
Next we discuss some important points ofelaboration that were mistakenly excluded inthe published version of Houran and Lange(2010). Although previous studies have foundthat transliminality correlates with characteris-tics that promote misattributions in reasoning(i.e., memory aberrations, impulsive thoughtand behavior; Lange & Houran, 2000; Thal-bourne et al., 2003; Houran & Thalbourne,2003), Lange and Houran’s (2010; cf. Houran &Lange, 2010) sample showed no evidence con-sistent with the hypothesis that the workplaceintuitions in their study were related to emo-tional or cognitive biases. Specifically, Houranand Lange (2010) reported that transliminalityshowed nonsignificant correlations with scoresof emotional and cognitive biases, whereas scoreson the Intuitive Decision-Making Profile (An-drews, 1999) showed a nonsignificant correlationwith overcoming emotional biases and a moderatecorrelation with scores on overcoming cognitivebiases (i.e., higher scores indicate a lack of con-firmatory biases).
In other words, there is no evidence that theintuitive experiences analyzed by Lange andHouran (2010; cf. Houran & Lange, 2010) wereillusory in nature. Assuming instead that theintuitions under study were accurate in theircontent and not the result of misattributionalprocesses, this implies that phenomena liketransliminality and intuitive thinking can collec-tively facilitate markedly keen, rich, and accu-rate anticipatory senses or instincts that mightappear practically clairvoyant in nature, a la thefamous investor and philanthropist Warren Buf-fet, nicknamed the “Oracle of Omaha.”
It is also instructive to note, in these contem-plations about permeability in mental boundar-ies, the classic anomaly of déja vu (French for“already seen”), which the social and medicalsciences have studied intensely for decades. Inparticular, Brown (2004) reviewed severalphysiological or psychological explanatorymechanisms that include (a) a brief change innormal neural transmission speed causing aslightly longer separation between identicalmessages received from two separate pathways,(b) a brief split in a continuous perceptual ex-perience that is caused by distractions (externalor internal) and gives the impression of twoseparate perceptual events, and (c) the activa-
tion of implicit familiarity for some portion (orall) of the present experience without an accom-panying conscious recollection of the prior en-counter.
Similar to intuitive thinking and transliminal-ity, these general hypotheses for déja vu allrelate to unconscious–conscious processing. In-vestigators have even begun to map specificneurological mechanisms at play, which we findinteresting. For example, Bartolomei et al.(2012) found that synchronized neural firingbetween the rhinal cortices and the hippocam-pus (involved in memory formation) oramygdala (involved in emotion) were increasedduring electrical stimulation that induced déjavu experiences in epileptic patients. This sug-gests that some sort of coincident occurrence inmedial temporal lobe structures may trigger ac-tivation of the recollection system. The role ofmesiotemporal structures in the pathogenesis ofinduced déja vu experiences has been corrobo-rated in other studies as well (e.g., Kovacs et al.,2009).
Psychophysiological phenomena—for exam-ple, intuitive thinking, transliminality and déjavu—that are salient to investigations of PAAand “advance knowing” are still under activeinvestigation. As such, it seems reasonable to usthat considerable research is still needed to gaincomprehensive models of known perceptualand decision-making mechanisms like these be-fore scientists have reason to speculate aboutunknown, esoteric ones like paranormal presen-timent or precognition.
Discussion
In the court of public opinion, which istraditionally sympathetic to the paranormal(McClenon, 1984), Mossbridge and Radin’s(2018) review might be readily accepted ascompelling evidence. But scientifically speak-ing, Mossbridge and Radin’s case for precogni-tion or retrocausal phenomena arguably fails onstatistical and theoretical grounds. Their infor-mation and arguments neither convince us thatthere are any meaningful, empirical anomaliesthat defy the ever-present crap factor in mea-surement and analysis, nor do they present alogical and internally consistent case, much lessexplanation, for precognitive phenomena. It istantalizing and entertaining to ponder precogni-tion, retrocasuality, or paranormal presentiment
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as legitimate phenomena that reflect some in-tersection between consciousness and space–time, but a dispassionate analysis of their pre-sentation does not give any scientific impetus tospeculate that such phenomena could even the-oretically exist. If anything, their review onlyreinforces to us the tremendous potential andopportunity for consciousness studies in explor-ing established constructs like transliminality,intuitive thinking, and déja vu.
As it stands, we propose that principles inclinical and anomalistic psychology help to ex-plain why some people might believe in precog-nition (or retrocausality) based on the type ofstudies reviewed by Mossbridge and Radin(2018). Along with other authorities (e.g., Ir-win, 1992; Bentall, 1990, 2000), we haveequated general paranormal belief and experi-ence to fundamentally adaptive, nonpathologi-cal delusions (Houran & Lange, 2004; Lange &Houran, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001), which in theabsence of clear and convincing orthodox ex-planations, give people a sense of relief or con-trol when facing stressful or ambiguous stimuli(cf. Kossowska, Szwed, Wronka, Czarnek, &Wyczesany, 2016). Part of that work specifi-cally targeted self-reported experiences of pre-cognitive dreams (Houran & Lange, 1998;Lange, Shredl, & Houran, 2000–2001), whichwe modeled as “meaningful coincidences” fa-cilitated by dream recall, tolerance of ambigu-ity, and belief in the paranormal, as well asbolstered by misunderstanding the probabilityof coincidences (cf. Blackmore, 1997; Black-more & Troscianko, 1985; Brugger, Regard,Landis, Krebs, & Niederberger, 1994). Ofcourse, Mossbridge and Radin presented empir-ical data from controlled, experimental studiesthat appear immune to psychological explana-tions like misattribution biases or unconsciousprospection revealed in dream content.
Nevertheless, Mossbridge and Radin’s (2018)presentation is a workable case study of cogni-tive–emotional reaction to ambiguity, as pre-dicted by Lange and Houran’s (2000) misattri-bution model for delusional thinking. At best,their case seems only to show evidence foreffects that amount to “replicable ambiguity”—statistical results that do not overcome the crapfactor, and even if they did, the meaning andimport of the results would still remain ambig-uous and dubious in relation to the immensepredictive power of modern physics. And yet, in
the absence of a meaningful, interpretable, andreplicable effect—much less an explanatorymodel—some people feel compelled or justifiedto levy speculations of disruptive, paranormal,or retrocausal mechanisms. In other words,Mossbridge and Radin are imposing order andmeaning on chaos and ambiguity by using oneunknown (precognition, or psi) to explain an-other unknown (trivial, ambiguous effects).This is the fundamental logical fallacy thatHouran, Lynn, and Lange (2017) referred to intheir discussion of the self-deceiving nature ofotherwise well-meaning investigators who in-tentionally set out to prove the ontological re-ality of psi, or at least are comfortable withinferring its existence (or any retrocausalevents) simply from a lack of other, readilyavailable explanations.
Mossbridge and Radin (2018) do not overtlyclaim that their review proves precognition orpsi exists; they instead position such hypothesesas rational alternatives that deserve legitimacyand continued study. They acknowledge that“such speculative implications, of course, canbe considered scientific heresies of the first or-der” (p. 29), but immediately pivot with thefollowing assertions.
. . . If positive empirical evidence continues to accu-mulate, especially if the methodological recommenda-tions suggested by ourselves and others are followed,then a time may come when we are forced to think theunthinkable. Indeed, the implications of retrocausationare so remote from engrained ways of thinking that thefirst reaction to this line of research is that it must beflawed. The second reaction may be horror that itrepresents a previously unaccepted fact about reality.
Their assertions are flatly incorrect, as con-siderably more would need to occur before thescientific community, and principally informedphysicists, are compelled to “think the unthink-able.” For instance, Bierman (2010) reasonedthe following.
Since psi phenomena are labeled anomalous becausethey appear to be in conflict with our present dayphysical worldview, any fundamental psi theoryshould be an extension or a modification of physics.Psychology is not in conflict with psi phenomena perse, so although psychological theories . . . are usefulwhen speculating how to optimize effect size, they donot touch upon the apparent anomalous character ofpsi. (p. 274)
Similarly, we agree that psychology does nota priori conflict with psi experiences, because at
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this point it seems to us that the latter derivesfrom the former. Moreover, psychological prin-ciples should be able to help parapsychologistspinpoint precise reasons for low effect sizes instudies and then remedy them, assuming we aredealing with a natural ability grounded in estab-lished psychophysiology—a topic discussed atlength by Houran et al. (2017). But contrary toBierman’s claim, skeptical scientists do not de-scribe psi phenomena as anomalous becausethey appear to conflict with existing scientifictheory. Rather, the moniker anomalous is syn-onymous with unexplained—it refers to the am-biguity surrounding apparent psi phenomena;they are experiences or outcomes susceptible toa myriad of interpretations and explanations.
So, yes, proving scientifically the case forprecognition (retrocausation, or psi in general)is a formidable challenge on several levels: (a)replicable effects must be demonstrated, as perCohen (1994); (b) the effect sizes should bemeaningful, that is, large enough to exceed thecrap factor in measurement and analysis; and (c)the effects should be interpretable, that is, theyare unambiguous and grounded in a genuineexplanatory model that is reconciled with mod-ern physics theory. This third criterion will bethe compelling factor in disrupting modernphysics theory, or consciousness studies, forthat matter. Time will tell whether there willever be studies that clearly and convincinglysatisfy these three criteria, but we submit thatMossbridge and Radin’s (2018) case, at least,did not overcome any of them.
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109COMMENT ON MOSSBRIDGE AND RADIN (2018)
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COMMENTARY
On the Plausibility of Scientific Hypotheses: Commentary onMossbridge and Radin (2018)
D. Samuel SchwarzkopfUniversity College London
Mossbridge and Radin reviewed psychological and physiological experiments thatpurportedly show time-reversed effects. I discuss why these claims are not plausible. Iconclude that scientists should generally consider the plausibility of the hypothesesthey test.
Keywords: plausibility, base rate fallacy, statistics, scientific inference
Science seeks to explain a chaotic world byformulating lawful relationships that permitcausal predictions. When I flip a coin, it willland on either heads or tails. The exact outcomedepends on a multitude of factors and is difficultto predict—but I am confident that after manyflips, the number of heads and tails should beroughly equal. However, I watch as my friendFrank flips a coin, and it keeps landing onheads. Something is obviously amiss.
It is possible that Frank is a wizard. In fact, ifyou knew Frank, you could be forgiven forthinking that. He looks and acts like a wizard.So, it is theoretically possible that Frank canmagically force the coin to land on heads everysingle time. However, in spite of his arcaneaura, this would not be my first hypothesis.
My first step would probably be to inspect thecoin. Perhaps it shows heads on both sides? Ifthat is not the case, I could give Frank anothercoin, one I know to be fair. If this one also landson heads all the time, my next guess will be thatFrank uses some kind of trick. Perhaps he isthrowing the coin in a particular way that en-sures it will land on heads? I would carefullywatch how he flips the coin to see if I can spotanything unusual. I could compare his coin flip-ping movements to those of other people. I
could enlist the help of modern technology andrecord his coin flips with a high-speed cameraand play them back in slow motion. When I getdesperate to find a rational explanation, I mightanalyze magnetic fields and air pressure.
How long should I search for an explanationuntil I conclude that Frank is a wizard? What-ever the explanation for Frank’s uncanny coinflipping ability, calling him a wizard is essen-tially admitting defeat. All we really know isthat he can get coins to always land on heads.That is an interesting observation, but it is notan explanation.
The hypothesis that Frank is a wizard is veryimplausible. I do not know any other wizards. Imay have watched or read about some fictionalwizards, and I know magicians who can per-form elaborate magic tricks. But to the best ofmy knowledge, I have never witnessed the cast-ing of any actual magical spells. I also have noidea how magic could physically work. I acceptthat I do not know everything about the uni-verse—but I choose to go with what I do know.Therefore, my prior belief in the existence ofmagic, and in Frank being a wizard, remainsextremely weak. Whatever his coin flippingabilities, it cannot convince me that he is awizard. I want more conclusive evidence thanthat. For instance, if lots of wizards suddenlyrevealed they are capable of similar feats, theinterpretation that Frank is one of them wouldseem far more likely.
It is the same with the scientific study ofprecognition. In the current issue of this journal,Mossbridge and Radin (2018; henceforth,
Correspondence concerning this article should be ad-dressed to D. Samuel Schwarzkopf, Experimental Psychol-ogy & Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University Col-lege London, 26 Bedford Way, London WC1H 0AP, UnitedKingdom. E-mail: [email protected]
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Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice © 2018 American Psychological Association2018, Vol. 5, No. 1, 94–97 2326-5523/18/$12.00 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/cns0000125
94
M&R) reviewed studies testing the hypothesisthat future events can influence the past. Thisincludes experiments on precognitive dreams,lab experiments in which participants correctlyguess events before they occurred, and so-calledpresentiment effects, physiological responsesthat manifest only before emotional stimuli. Iwill not address all the points they raised. Ipreviously commented (Schwarzkopf, 2014) ontheir earlier meta-analysis on presentiment(Mossbridge, Tressoldi, & Utts, 2012). In myview, M&R failed to address my earlier con-cerns, in particular with regards to expectationbias or randomization procedures, but I do notwant to dwell on those smaller points. Instead, Ionly want to discuss one fundamental issue: Arepresentiment or precognition effects plausible?
I previously raised the concern that the time-reversed physiological responses to emotionalstimuli reviewed by M&R are not biologicallyplausible. In conventional thinking, an emo-tional stimulus generates neuronal responseswithin the first few hundred milliseconds after itis shown to the participant. Slower physiologi-cal responses, such as pupil dilation, galvanicskin responses, and changes in neural bloodflow then follow this neuronal response.
According to M&R, presentiment effectsshow similar differences in the response la-tency, but they are time reversed: Electrophys-iological responses are reported to occur hun-dreds of milliseconds prior to the stimulus,while galvanic skin responses or hemodynamicchanges occur even several seconds earlier(Mossbridge et al., 2012). Does this mean thatall such events are mirrored back in time rela-tive to stimulus onset (Bierman, 2010)? Doesblood flow increase because several secondslater neurons in the brain will fire, and in turn,they fire because even several hundred millisec-onds later an emotional stimulus will appear?The main reason for hemodynamic responses inthe brain is thought to be the metabolic demandcaused by increased neuronal firing. Therefore,should these retrocausal electrophysiologicalresponses not also cause hemodynamic conse-quences? If presentiment existed, the responseto any stimulus would be a constant swamp ofcausal and retrocausal effects as well as theirnonlinear interactions.
Similarly, it is implausible that participantscan guess trials in a two-alternative forced-choice task correctly at a rate of 51–53%, the
rate Daryl Bem’s (2011) precognition experi-ments reported. I am not a betting man, but ifthis were true, I would start a coin-flip bettingbusiness. Even with such a miniscule winningmargin, this would nevertheless soon turn apretty healthy profit (see Figure 1). Even if weaccept ideas about quantum entanglement orother subatomic time reversals as possible ex-planations, such effects should be tiny. EitherBem somehow amplified his participants’ natu-ral precognitive ability by several orders ofmagnitude, or his findings were the result ofmethodological flexibility and/or experimentalartifacts instead. The latter is a far more plau-sible hypothesis.
In their review, M&R casually dismissed myearlier concerns with the plausibility of time-reversed phenomena like presentiment and pre-cognition. According to them, the fact that labexperiments found such effects directly demon-strates that they are plausible. This is a circularargument. A statistically significant observationdoes not prove that a hypothesis is true. Theplausibility of a hypothesis depends on whetheran observation is consistent with our currentunderstanding of the world. I have little reasonto believe that Frank is a wizard other than the
Figure 1. Simulated universes in which typical reportedprecognition effects exist. I start with $10. For every coinflip, I bet $1 that I can guess the outcome. If I guesscorrectly, I get back $2 and thus win $1. If I fail, I lose mybet. I keep flipping the coin 1,000 times or until I run out ofmoney. The curves show the amount of money I have,plotted against the number of coin flips (averaged across10,000 simulations). Different line styles denote different“natural precognition rates.” Without any precognition (� �0.5), I would not win any money. However, even with tinyprecognition effects (0.5 � � � 0.54), I would turn a profit.
95PLAUSIBILITY OF SCIENTIFIC HYPOTHESES
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fact that his coin flipping is unusual and that hekind of looks like one. I have no reason tobelieve that precognition is possible but forsome anecdotes and a handful of parapsychol-ogy experiments with effect sizes that are reallysmall—but at the same time, far too large to betheoretically feasible.
M&R’s argument is known as the base ratefallacy: No matter how strong the statisticalevidence, if the hypothesis is impossible, it mustnecessarily be false. The p value is irrelevantwhen the observed effect size cannot be ob-served under the alternative hypothesis. I cannotconfidently claim that precognition and presen-timent are impossible. I simply do not knowenough about the universe to know this forcertain. I am, however, extremely skeptical thatsuch retro-ausal effects exist. Critically, even ifI accept that such effects are at least possible,the rate at which they can be observed in noisypsychology or physiology experiments must benanoscopic, many orders of magnitude belowthose reported by these studies. The reportedeffects are not plausible under this hypothesis,and thus, alternative explanations are far morelikely.
Therefore, I must disagree with M&R that weare dealing here with “scientific heresies of thefirst order.” Rather, this statement betrays afundamental misunderstanding: There are noheresies in science. Dogma is antithetical toscience and any assumption can be challenged.Critically, however, nobody should take youseriously without compelling evidence. Frankmay very well be a wizard, but unless you showme more conclusive evidence that wizards ac-tually exist, I remain doubtful. I am skepticalthat precognition is even possible, but I cer-tainly will not be convinced of its existence bysome implausible observations, no matter howsignificant the meta-analysis.
What evidence for precognition would I findcompelling? The experimental test must behighly sensitive (much larger sample sizes andlow-noise measurements) and provide rigorouscontrol for methodological flexibility like p-hacking. In that regard, I applaud M&R’s callfor preregistered replications of these effects.Preregistration provides a clear delineation ofthe confirmatory and exploratory aspects of astudy. Statistical significance is only meaning-ful for the former. I would go one step furtherand suggest that such replications should be
Registered Reports (https://cos.io/rr), a formatenjoying increasing popularity in several psy-chology journals including the recentlylaunched Nature Human Behavior. Here, themethods are refined in an initial stage of peer-review and data collection only commenceswhen the methods have been finalized. How-ever, even that does not control adequately forsome of the problems that could skew the find-ings. To ensure that the results are convincingeven to skeptics, the experiment should be con-ducted as an adversarial collaboration, whereskeptics and proponents of precognition effectswork together to ensure the experiment is con-ducted in a way they both agree with. Whilesuch collaborations do not always end the dis-agreement between parties, both sides are givena chance to interpret the results—and the read-ers can make up their own mind about whichhypothesis the evidence supports.
If all these steps have been taken and pre-cognition findings nonetheless replicate in aset of homogenous replications, I will acceptthat there is a result worthy of an explanation.However, even such a finding still does notmean that precognition exists. If the effectsize is similar to Bem’s reports of 51–53%correct, then it is simply not plausible thatthis occurs in the general population and ev-eryday situations. At most, this would implythat precognition can only be demonstrated inthese particular experimental contexts, whichseems rather unlikely. The onus then is onproponents of the precognition hypothesis toshow experimentally what makes this effectso unstable. If they cannot do so, methodolog-ical artifacts or other uncontrolled flexibilityremain a more plausible alternative explana-tion.
In general, the burden of proof must alwayslie with the one making a claim. Therefore, itfalls on proponents of a novel hypothesis toprovide compelling evidence for it. More-over, a fundamental principle of scientific re-search is that a hypothesis should be falsifi-able. Before setting out to test a newhypothesis, investigators should always askthemselves what evidence could disprove thishypothesis. If they cannot answer this ques-tion, the hypothesis is probably not worthtesting. To my knowledge, proponents of pre-cognition have yet to provide an answer tothis question.
96 SCHWARZKOPF
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But let me be clear: My problem with theresearch on precognition is not with its fringenature. Instead it is with the approach and theinterpretation of these findings. This is not aproblem limited to parapsychology but itplagues a lot of scientific research. The pre-cognition effects reported in these studies arenot plausible but neither are claims that un-scrambling words related to old age can makeparticipants walk down a corridor a secondmore slowly than controls (Bargh, Chen, &Burrows, 1996). Given the messy nature ofhuman behavior, it seems very unlikely that asimple psychology experiment can have sucha profound effect. It should therefore not sur-prise anyone when such findings fail to rep-licate (Doyen, Klein, Pichon, & Cleeremans,2012). The same principle must apply to re-ports of gravitational waves, discoveries ofarsenic microbes, brain-behavior correlations,and even simple psychophysical tests of vi-sual perception.
We can all do a lot better. We should putour hypotheses to much greater scrutiny. Ifyou observe an effect, you must ask whetherit is plausible under the hypothesis you aretesting. Extraordinary claims require extraor-dinary evidence. And always ask yourselfwhat would convince you that you are wrong.Mossbridge and Radin (2018) clearly chal-lenge our current science—just not in the waythey seem to think.
References
Bargh, J. A., Chen, M., & Burrows, L. (1996). Auto-maticity of social behavior: Direct effects of traitconstruct and stereotype-activation on action. Jour-nal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71, 230–244. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.71.2.230
Bem, D. J. (2011). Feeling the future: Experimentalevidence for anomalous retroactive influences oncognition and affect. Journal of Personality andSocial Psychology, 100, 407–425. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0021524
Bierman, D. (2010). Consciousness-induced restora-tion of time symmetry (CIRTS). A psychophysicaltheoretical perspective. Journal of Parapsychol-ogy, 24, 273–300.
Doyen, S., Klein, O., Pichon, C.-L., & Cleeremans,A. (2012). Behavioral priming: It’s all in the mind,but whose mind? PLoS ONE, 7, e29081. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0029081
Mossbridge, J., Tressoldi, P., & Utts, J. (2012). Pre-dictive physiological anticipation preceding seem-ingly unpredictable stimuli: A meta-analysis.Frontiers in Psychology, 3, 390. http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00390
Mossbridge, J. A., & Radin, D. (2018). Precognitionas a form of prospection: A review of the evidence.Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research,and Practice, 5, 78–93. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/cns0000121
Schwarzkopf, D. S. (2014). We should have seen thiscoming. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 8, 332.http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2014.00332
Received April 15, 2017Accepted June 3, 2017 �
97PLAUSIBILITY OF SCIENTIFIC HYPOTHESES
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REPLY
Plausibility, Statistical Interpretations, Physical Mechanisms and aNew Outlook: Response to Commentaries on a Precognition Review
Julia A. MossbridgeNorthwestern University and Institute of Noetic
Sciences, Petaluma, California
Dean RadinInstitute of Noetic Sciences, Petaluma, California
We address what we consider to be the main points of disagreement by showing that(a) scientific plausibility (or lack thereof) is a weak argument in the face of empiricaldata, (b) the statistical methods we used were sound according to at least one of severalpossible statistical positions, and (c) the potential physical mechanisms underlyingprecognition could include quantum biological phenomena. We close with a discussionof what we believe is an unfortunate but currently dominant tendency to focus onreducing Type-I statistical errors without balancing that approach by also payingattention to the potential for Type-II errors.
Keywords: precognition, retrocausality, statistical arguments, plausibility
We thank James Houran, Rense Lange, DanHooper, and Samuel Schwarzkopf for theircommentaries on our review of experimentalevidence for precognition (Schwarzkopf, 2018).Science advances not only when novel data areobserved in rigorous experiments, but also as aresult of serious debates about the interpretationof those data. Here we respond to the two com-mentaries by briefly stating our own positionson what we believe to be the major points ofdisagreement. We are grateful to the journaleditors and the commentators for the opportu-nity to clarify these points.
Plausibility and the Scientific Venture
Both commentaries raise the question of theplausibility of our interpretation of results fromexperiments testing precognition and related ef-fects. Schwarzkopf’s commentary (Schwarz-
kopf, 2018) is almost entirely focused on thisissue, so we first respond to his points here.
Schwarzkopf stated, “The plausibility of ahypothesis depends on whether an observationis consistent with our current understanding ofthe world. . . . No matter how strong the statis-tical evidence, if the hypothesis is impossible, itmust necessarily be false (Schwarzkopf, 2018,p. 95).” This argument is invalid because it iscircular. If our current understanding of theworld is inexact, which is a core assumption inscience, then we cannot be sure that any hy-pothesis is impossible. Thankfully, Schwarz-kopf is aware of this problem, so he immedi-ately followed that statement with this one: “Icannot confidently claim that precognition orpresentiment are impossible. I simply do notknow enough about the universe to know thisfor certain. I am however extremely skepticalthat such retro-causal effects exist (Schwarz-kopf, 2018, p. 96).”
Schwarzkopf’s skepticism is understandable.Precognition challenges the commonsense no-tion that cause precedes effect. Our scientificskepticism remains intact as well, except unlikeSchwarzkopf, we have the benefit of repeatedlyobserving reversals of the usual cause–effectsequence in our own laboratory studies. Weinvite Schwarzkopf and other scientifically
Julia A. Mossbridge, Department of Psychology, North-western University, and Institute of Noetic Sciences, Peta-luma, California; Dean Radin, Institute of Noetic Sciences.
Correspondence concerning this article should be ad-dressed to Julia A. Mossbridge, Institute of Noetic Sciences,101 San Antonio Road, Petaluma, CA, 94952. E-mail:[email protected]
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Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice © 2018 American Psychological Association2018, Vol. 5, No. 1, 110–116 2326-5523/18/$12.00 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/cns0000152
110
minded skeptics to recall their first time readingabout the results of the delayed-choice quan-tum-eraser experiment (Kim, Yu, Kulik, Shih,& Scully, 2000). That experiment providedhighly repeatable data for a retrocausal phenom-enon at the quantum scale. Because it seems toviolently disagree with everyday experience,some scientists continue to struggle with thatinterpretation and they offer different interpre-tations of the data. The same is true, we believe,for the data from precognition experiments.
Schwarzkopf went on to say, “Critically,even if I accept that such effects are at leastpossible, the rate at which they can be observedin noisy psychology or physiology experimentsmust be nanoscopic, many orders of magnitudebelow those reported by these studies (Schwar-zkopf, 2018, p. 96).” Schwarzkopf’s reasoningis not clear. No reference or theoretical argu-ments are provided that would allow us to judgethis claim, unless he is implying an effect op-erating at the quantum scale. In any case, weremind the reader that the supreme achievementof science has been to repeatedly disprove ourcherished assumptions; for a recent summary ofsome seemingly impossible phenomena in theworld of physics, consider the cover story inNew Scientist from April 2016, in which theauthor states, “There’s no shortage of hints thatour current theories don’t provide a full pictureof reality” (Brooks, 2016, p. 28). It is abun-dantly clear that this is also the case for thefields of psychology and physiology.
Schwarzkopf continued, “If you observe an ef-fect, you must ask whether it is plausible under thehypothesis you are testing (Schwarzkopf, 2018, p.97).” This suggests that if a dataset challengesone’s prior conceptions, then one should questionthe validity of the data. We agree. But if a meth-odologically sound experiment provides data thatsupport a clearly stated hypothesis, even one thatviolates one’s prior beliefs, then what? Reject theanomalous data because existing theory must betrue? In our view such a position is antiscientific inthat, if followed to its logical limits, Schwarzko-pf’s approach would collapse today’s scientificworldview into unassailable dogma.
We have previously countered Schwarzkopf’smethodological and analytical concerns about pre-sentiment experiments (Mossbridge et al., 2015),and we and other investigators performing similarexperiments have also countered other critiques(e.g., Bem, Utts, & Johnson, 2011; Dalkvist,
Mossbridge, & Westerlund, 2014; Mossbridge etal., 2014; Radin, 2004; Utts, 1996). Indepen-dently repeatable empirical results continue tosupport the precognition hypothesis, so in prin-ciple, the weight of the accumulating evidenceought to eventually overcome skeptical objec-tions. Unfortunately, the history of scientificdiscoveries clearly documents that when andeven whether that happens depends more onsociopolitical factors, idiosyncratic tempera-ments, and maintenance of the status quo, ratherthan a neutral assessment of data (Kuhn, 1970).
We agree with Schwarzkopf (2018) that, evenif rigorous meta-analyses continue to support theprecognition hypothesis, that does not necessarilyprove that some overlooked methodological arti-fact cannot explain the effect. But we would pointout that over the past 40 years, there have beenrepeated attempts to find such artifacts, and whenpotential loopholes were identified, they wereclosed and the phenomena continued to be ob-served. It is thanks to critiques like Schwarzkopf’sthat this line of research has continuously tight-ened its methods and controls, and in the process,has introduced important methodological ad-vancements, including the use of meta-analysis,study preregistration, and awareness about selec-tive reporting and multiple analyses. It is alwayspossible that other artifacts may someday be dis-covered that will explain what seems like precog-nition to instead be a result of a mundane, butprobably subtle, mistake. Our best guess at thispoint is that this will not happen. But time will tell(pun intended).
Ultimately, critiques about the plausibility ofprecognition seem to rest far less on the availableevidence, and far more on what is deemed to bealready understood about the nature of conscious-ness and its role in the physical world. Assigningplausibility based on commonsense is obviouslyunsatisfactory, but so are assumptions based onthe existing scientific worldview. That worldview,a hodge-podge collection of sometimes contradic-tory theories and data, continues to evolve, and itdoes not take a crystal ball to predict that futurescience will contain many surprises.
Is There Something Wrong Withthe Statistics?
We find Houran, Lange, and Hooper’s (2018)concerns with the statistical results cited in ourreview partly reasonable and partly unreason-
111REPLY TO COMMENTS ON MOSSBRIDGE AND RADIN (2018)
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able. First, they raised the concern that ourinterpretation of p values was likely to reinforcethe idea that p values reflect the probability ofthe null hypothesis given the data. They arecorrect. The way we discussed some of ourinterpretations of p values might have rein-forced this erroneous idea. Nevertheless, thatinterpretation does not change the p valuesthemselves. Their second concern was stated asfollows.
These studies, however, have the conceptual flaw thattwo-sided hypotheses of the form H0: � � 0 and H1:� � 0 were apparently used, and these hypotheseswere tested by standard statistical tests. In this context,we first note that it has long been recognized . . . thatrejection of such null hypotheses may result from anexaggeration of the evidence for the postulated effect.This occurs because standard statistical tests are con-sistent only if the H0 is false. (Houran et al., 2018, p.99)
Yes, but the point of a well-conducted meta-analysis is to determine whether the effect sizesrecorded in replications are in the same direc-tion. They continued, “But, is it reasonable tosay that two experiments showing opposite (andlikely artificial) outcomes both support the samekind of precognition? We don’t think so(Houran et al., 2018, p. 100).” And neither dowe. That is why the meta-analyses applied tothe precognition and presentiment experimentswe discussed tested a one-sided hypothesis.That is, these meta-analyses could only end upwith a significant outcome if the replications onaverage produced outcomes in the same direc-tion.
Their third concern was about what thesecommentators call a “crap factor,” that is, noisein the data, and how that crap factor can bemagnified by meta-analyses. There are severalopinions on this topic among statisticians, andHouran et al. (2018) cite only one side of theongoing debate. It is obvious that noise exists inall measurements, especially in the biologicaland social sciences. One of the most straight-forward ways to see through the noise is toconduct a conservative meta-analysis. Other-wise, there is no way to judge if an effect hasbeen independently replicated. And if effectsizes need to be of a certain magnitude to betaken seriously, then what is the appropriatethreshold? Taking an aspirin each day is said toreduce the risk of a heart attack; the estimatedeffect size is a mere 0.03 (Rosnow & Rosenthal,
2003). And yet, aspirin is regularly prescribedfor preventing heart attacks. By contrast, themeta-analytical estimate of the effect size forpresentiment effects is nearly an order of mag-nitude larger (0.21; Mossbridge, Tressoldi, &Utts, 2012). Is that large enough? We suppose itdepends on one’s Bayesian priors about theplausibility of precognition.
Houran et al. (2018) did suggest Bayesiananalyses, but they failed to point out that Bayes-ian analyses are unavoidably influenced by sub-jective bias—the setting of at least one of thetwo necessary priors, which is set according tothe researcher’s beliefs. An article discussingproblems of multiple analyses pointed out thatBayesian analyses increase researchers’ degreesof freedom by giving them the decision to set atleast one prior (Simmons, Nelson, & Simon-sohn, 2011). Because this degree of freedom is,by definition, tied to a researcher’s prior beliefs,it is not clear how Bayesian methods can pre-vent a researcher from discovering somethingthat she did not already expect to find, or notfind something she preferred to avoid. Despitesuch real concerns, in our paper we turned to themedical Bayesian-analysis literature to assess ifprecognition effects reported by Daryl Bemwere large enough to be of practical importance.The answer was clearly yes.
Overall, we take issue with the final commenton statistics made by Houran et al.
In the end, however, their basic logical argument relieson the finding of unlikely data patterns that seeminglysupport the existence of precognition. . . . [This] veryargument is not logically tenable, and that the supportfor this hypothesis derives from ambiguous data thatwere gathered in a noisy context, and analyzed usingquestionable assumptions. (Houran et al., 2018, p. 100)
This criticism is invalid because it impliesthat there is something unique to this line ofresearch, when in reality the same criticismcould be applied to any experiment in any do-main. We are all striving to improve our meth-ods, and we suggested several such improve-ments (e.g., preregistration, preregistered meta-analytic methods, and prospective meta-analyses). Schwarzkopf suggested an additionalapproach in his commentary, namely, collabo-rations between precognition researchers andskeptics. That might sound reasonable, but ac-tually it perpetuates a false distinction. Itwrongly implies that scientists who report suc-cessful precognition experiments are not prop-
112 MOSSBRIDGE AND RADIN
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erly skeptical. For example, a scientist with noprior involvement in precognition studies, likeDaryl Bem, conducts several experiments andreports positive evidence. Skeptics then labelhim a “proponent,” or worse, a “believer,” andthen he is no longer trusted as being sufficientlyskeptical. For the rare skeptics who actuallyconduct an experiment and obtain positive evi-dence, they either have to accept that they willno longer be considered skeptical, or they mustfeel obligated to dismiss their own evidencebased on the ever-convenient crap factor (e.g.,Delgado-Romero & Howard, 2005, who, whenfaced with their own evidence supporting �abilities, called it a “crud” factor).
Later in the Houran et al. (2018) commen-tary, we were presented with a review of theliterature of transliminality and intuition. Al-though these phenomena are intriguing and pos-sibly relevant to precognition, we did not com-ment on them within the limited space allottedto us in our original review. However, we findtheir discussion in the commentary more thana little peculiar in light of their concernsabout the mysterious crap factor. Indeed, re-search on transliminality and intuition are per-fect exemplars for the very problems they hadalready decried. And yet now the reader is ex-pected to take these topics seriously?
They ended this part of their critique withthe statement, “Considerable research is stillneeded in order to gain comprehensive modelsof known perceptual and decision-makingmechanisms . . . before scientists have reason tospeculate about unknown, esoteric ones likeparanormal presentiment or precognition(Houran et al., 2018, p. 104).” It seems to usthat if scientists felt compelled to wait untileverything known were already understood,progress would come to a grinding halt. It is notonly reasonable to use rigorous methods to askwell-formed questions of experiences sugges-tive of precognition and other commonly re-ported, if exotic, experiences, we feel it is ab-solutely essential. Intuition, transliminality, anddéja vu are experiences suggesting that some-thing about our ordinary perception of time maynot be correct. What better way to probe thatunknown than by experimentally tackling ourbasic assumptions about the nature of timehead-on about the nature of time?
Finally, suggesting an odd lack of familiaritywith the literature on intuitive thinking, Houran
et al. stated that, “Consistent with neurological[sic] interconnectedness model, there is prelim-inary experimental evidence that intuitive pro-cesses involve interactions among the frontal,temporal, occipital and parietal brain areas, andperhaps even the cardiovascular system(Houran et al., 2018, p. 102; McCraty, Atkin-son, & Bradley, 2004a, 2004b).” The studiesthey cited explicitly provide evidence of presen-timent and are noted as close replications ofpreviously reported presentiment experiments(e.g., Radin, 1997). In fact, the key methodolog-ical factor in those studies was that the upcom-ing stimulus was selected at random, thus un-known at the time of the response. Even acursory glance at the methods and the accom-panying task-timeline figures in those citations(Figure 2 in 2004a, Figure 1 in 2004b) showthat the period during which physiological pre-responses are measured comes before the timeat which the software selects the stimulus. Thisoversight suggests that Houran et al. (2018)have not differentiated between methods usedto test for unconscious decision making or un-conscious intuition and those used to test forprecognition. If this is indeed the case, thenHouran et al.’s concerns about our interpreta-tions of the precognition data would make moresense. Of course, if any sensory informationabout an upcoming event is available at the timea response is measured, it is perfectly reason-able to assume that the results are not due to aresult of precognition. Clearly, it is only byusing methods that explicitly rule out such “sen-sory leakage” about the future event, as was thecase in our reported experiments, that one canbegin to think about precognition as a viableexplanation. This apparent misunderstanding ofthe methodological details of precognition ex-periments perhaps explains Houran et al.’s con-cerns about our interpretations of the data.
Physical Mechanisms and Causality
We agree with Houran et al.’s (2018) com-ments that physical mechanisms and a discus-sion of causality should be discussed in a reviewabout the possibility of precognition. We in-cluded that material in our original submission,but we were asked to remove it by an editor whofelt that the physics potentially underlying pre-cognition did not appear to be within our areasof expertise. We are grateful to have the oppor-
113REPLY TO COMMENTS ON MOSSBRIDGE AND RADIN (2018)
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tunity here to include that discussion in its en-tirety.
A common criticism of the experiments reviewed hereis that reversed time violates common-sense assump-tions about causality, and thus any positive effectsfound in such studies are impossible and can only beunderstood as flukes or flaws. Such complaints mayseem reasonable, but science has repeatedly demon-strated that common-sense assumptions do not apply tothe world beyond the reach of the ordinary senses. Forexample, Einstein demonstrated that matter, energy,space and time are not the separate entities suggestedby commonsense, but rather they are intertwined rela-tionships. Likewise, quantum theory tells us thatquanta (i.e., elementary particles) do not have definiteproperties when no one is looking, at least not in theway we understand either “properties” or “looking” incommon-sense terms.
But perhaps one of the most self-evident conceptsquestioned by modern science is the nature of causal-ity. This topic has generated more uneasiness amongscientists and philosophers than is commonly appreci-ated. As Bertrand Russell put it in 1913, “All philos-ophers imagine that causation is one of the fundamen-tal axioms of science, yet oddly enough, in advancedsciences, the word ‘cause’ never occurs. . . . The law ofcausality, I believe, is a relic of bygone age, surviving,like the monarchy, only because it is erroneously sup-posed to do no harm.” (cited in Pearl, 2000, p. 337)
Or as mathematician John von Neumann wrote in1955, “We may say that there is at present no occasionand no reason to speak of causality in nature—becauseno [macroscopic] experiment indicates its presence . . .and � quantum mechanics contradicts it.” (cited inRosen, 1999, p. 88)
With such cautions in mind, it is worth noting that,within physics, it is well-known that on a quantumscale, present events can be influenced by futureevents, a clear violation of the commonsense expecta-tion that cause must always precede effect. As de-scribed by physicist Brian Greene, “By any classical-common-sense-reckoning, that’s, well, crazy. Ofcourse, that’s the point: classical reckoning is thewrong kind of reckoning to use in a quantum uni-verse.” (cited in Aharonov & Zubairy, 2005, p. 875)
This retrocausal effect, first proposed as a thoughtexperiment by Wheeler (1978), has been experimen-tally demonstrated to high degrees of confidence inphysics labs around the world (Aharonov & Zubairy,2005; Jacques et al., 2007; Peruzzo, Shadbolt, Brunner,Popescu, & O’Brien, 2012). A critic might respond bysaying that time reversal might exist at microscopiclevels, but that it is irrelevant for understanding pre-cognition because the special, fragile state of quantumcoherence—which is required to sustain these strangeeffects—is rapidly washed out within the hot, wetenvironment of the brain. This was the prevailing viewfor many years. But today, with rapid theoretical andexperimental advancements in quantum biology (e.g.,Vattay, Kauffman, & Niiranen, 2014), there are now
cogent reasons to suspect that living systems, includingthe human brain, have very likely taken advantage ofquantum effects in nontrivial ways, including “har-nessing quantum coherence on physiologically impor-tant timescales” (Lambert et al., 2013, p. 10). In addi-tion, with new evidence indicating that individualneurons are associated with memory, learning, andstimulus novelty (Rutishauser et al., 2015), it appearsto be increasingly likely that quantum-level effects,which are present in neuronal synapses, may in factinfluence the brain.
These speculations do not fully explain retrocausaleffects in human conscious experience, but they dostrongly counter proposals that such effects are prohib-ited by known physics. Thus, until the “quantum brain”is better understood, the most prudent proposal we canoffer is that a conceivable physical mechanism forprecognition may be on the horizon. Whether afleshed-out model based on this idea will lead to fal-sifiable theories will require further research.
From the above, it is clear that we disagreewith the Houran et al.’s (2018) assertion that“The physics community has instead rejectedretrocausal mechanisms on well-substantiated,empirical and logical grounds,” or that, “Thereis nothing about quantum mechanics, or itsmore modern incarnation, quantum field theory,than enables any authentically retrocausal be-havior (Houran et al., 2018, pp. 101–102).” Asto the concern about Einstein, at no point did weassert that he championed retrocausality, northat general relativity supports retrocausality.We simply quoted his “stubbornly persistentillusion” phrase because it emphasized that as-sessing the plausibility of any phenomenonmust always take into account assumptionswhich may or may not be true.
Finally, we would like to point out thatHouran et al.’s (2018) description of the secondlaw of thermodynamics is questionable on twogrounds. First, their reliance on the second lawis odd because it contradicts their opening gam-bit, which quoted Zeger (1991), namely, “Sta-tistical models for data are never true (p.1064).” The second law of thermodynamics is,of course, a statistical model, thus, by theirlogic, complete reliance on its infallibility isquestionable (Boltzmann, 1974/1886). Second,their interpretation of the second law is incor-rect. They state, “On more general grounds, anymeans by which information could be trans-ferred from a future event to a past event wouldviolate the Second Law of Thermodynamics. . .(Houran et al., 2018, p. 102).” In fact, thatstatement is only true for a closed system (Spa-
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kovszky, 2017). Here we are dealing with livingorganisms, that is, open systems. The secondlaw does not apply to open systems, includinghumans, birds, and worms, the three living sys-tems we discussed in our precognition review.Further, recent empirical results reveal a rever-sal of the arrow of time as a result of using aclosed system consisting of particles with quan-tum correlations, which trade their correlationsfor a decrease in entropy, suggesting that thesecond law must be modified to take informa-tion correlations into account (Micadei et al.,2017).
The Crux of the Disagreements
The strength of today’s scientific worldviewrests upon theories that accurately explain ob-servations, which, in turn, rest upon a host ofexperimental methodologies. Those very samemethodologies were used in the experimentsunder discussion, and they reveal what appearto be precognitive effects. Thus, it is invalid toargue that precognition is implausible, espe-cially on methodological grounds, because do-ing so would necessarily have to raise red flagsabout the very foundations of the scientificworldview. Thus, we suspect that plausibilityarguments against precognition are really basedon a commonsense or everyday view of reality,and not the worldview actually revealed by sci-ence, which abounds with counterintuitive dis-coveries.
It seems to us that the commentators havebeen primarily concerned about making aType-I error, (i.e., accidentally declaring some-thing to be real that isn’t). All researchers aretaught to be careful about finding meaning indata when meaning isn’t there. To guard againstthis possibility, we advocated for further re-search using even more rigorous approachesthan those already in place. At the same time,we trust it is clear that overconcern aboutType-I error carries the risk of not seeing some-thing in data that is in fact real. Concern aboutType-II errors is less commonly emphasized,but it is just as serious a problem as Type I,because it reduces the rate at which genuinediscoveries can be made. Another more seriousrisk of overlooking the possibility that precog-nition is real is that we may fail to make use ofpotentially life-saving applications. A specula-tive example that is not without precedent is that
precognitive remote viewers could potentiallydetermine the whereabouts or timing of immi-nent terrorist events using precognitive means(May & Marwaha, 2014). Even if a much lessdramatic application of precognition could savelives on a smaller scale, it would be a pity to failto explore such applications because of over-concerns about Type-I error. In summary, wefeel it is likely that better balance between con-cerns about Type-I and Type-II errors will leadto a higher rate of useful discoveries withoutlosing essential scientific rigor.
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Received November 16, 2017Revision received November 28, 2017
Accepted December 24, 2017 �
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