Perhaps they missed what psychologist James Alcock of York University in Toronto found in Bem’s paper entitled “Writing the Empirical Journal Article” on his Web site, in which Bem instructs students: “Think of your data set as a jewel. Your task is to cut and polish it, to select the facets to highlight, and to craft the best setting for it. Many experienced authors write the results section first.”

Bem has responded (www.dbem.ws), but I have a pre­monition his precognition was a postcognition.

This article was originally published with the title Extrasensory Pornception.

4 Comments

1. 1. jgrosay 05:03 PM 5/3/11

   Probably nobody will be able to prove such things, but there are some approaches thru physics to this: mind reading may be a combination of high sensibility to face and body changes of scrutinized person, and also the brain produces electric currents and fields; for premonitions, there are the relativity theory of space and time, and for influence on others, the use of imperceptible body sings, and why not, quantum entanglement. This kind of game is better done with mentalists; starting from Mesmer, it seems that there are always some of them

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2. 2. alien8r 10:08 PM 5/4/11

   This critique is probably a mix of fair and unfair criticisms. One-tailed t-tests are seldom used, but for no particularly principled reason. Much like the typical significance criterion (.05) in NHST, this is just convention. Both type-1 and type-2 errors can be dangerous depending on the situation. There is nothing innately wrong with a one-tailed test. Similarly, a vanishingly small effect can be either important or unimportant depending on the larger theoretical context of the experiment. Explaining the last 1% of unaccounted variance in a highly determined, well characterized domain can be valuable. Last, it is very common in psychology experiments to supplement a normed set of images or words in order to increase one's experimental power. In so far as Bem has provided the images for replication, I don't think this poses a significant methodological flaw. However, at the root of the problem of this and other psi/prayer/esp/paranormal research is the patchwork problem. Type-1 errors will always occur. They will be frequent in active research areas. This is why replication is essential. I'm confident that this effect will not replicate, because so many other experiments have failed to produce positive evidence of psi phenomena. While we can consider these unlikely possibilities, we should probably maintain a strong prior against them.

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3. 3. BenSix 05:11 PM 5/5/11

   The quote that Mr Shermer attributes to Daryl Bem is cherry-picked, as anyone who reads it in context will recognise.

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4. 4. dransen 02:50 PM 7/6/11

   I have known Daryl Bem for a very long time, having been fortunate to be the beneficiary of his guidance on my dissertation committee at Cornell in 1975-1979.
   
   There are certainly many issues open to legitimate debate and even skepticism regarding his psi experiments, and to the responses of his critics, including Shermer of Scientific American.
   
   There is one point I have not seen in any of the responses to Bem's work. Perhaps the greatest pleasure in working with him was his almost obsessive insistence on provoking debate, sometimes holding his own beliefs close to his chest. He was consistently more dedicated to that goal than to pontificating on what he believed to be The Truth.
   
   Despite Bem's spirited defense of his precognition studies, I would not swear in a court of law that he truly, down-deep, believes in precognition. I don't think that spreading wisdom or scientific discoveries are his top priorities. Rather, in the finest tradition of great science, he is a man who believes that few professional pursuits are nobler than to provoke honest and rigorous debate among careful, well-trained investigators.
   
   Of course his career has been an enormous gift to social psychology. But if he is remembered only for his success at provoking high-quality debate, then he will be remembered as a hero, at least by me.
   
   David L. Ransen, Ph.D.
   http://delrayholistictherapy.com
   DrRansen@DelrayHolisticTherapy.com

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