How close are we to seeing the end of science’s “psi taboo”, and a more open attitude towards the so-called paranormal? Dean Radin has long argued that a breakthrough is about to occur in science, and that concepts such as ESP, clairvoyance, precognition and telekinesis will soon become accepted as legitimate and “real” objects of scientific investigation. I am not so sure, and the reacton to an academic article soon to be published this year in The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, have circulated widely among psychological researchers in recent weeks and “has generated a mixture of amusement and scorn”, according to an article in the New York Times.
The paper is authored by Cornell University professor Daryl J. Bem, and entitled Feeling the Future: Experimental Evidence for Anomalous Retroactive Influences on Cognition and Affect. It outlines results for experiments which attempt to gauge whether future events influence the mind before they actually happen. In one of the experiments. Bem gave 100 college students a memory test before they categoried a list of words (categorizing assist memory). The experiment found the students were significantly more likely to remember words that they practised later. The conclusion presented in the paper is as follows.
