Is this evidence that we can see the future?

[n2doc]

16:29 11 November 2010 by Peter Aldhous

Extraordinary claims don't come much more extraordinary than this: events that haven't yet happened can influence our behaviour.

Parapsychologists have made outlandish claims about precognition – knowledge of unpredictable future events – for years. But the fringe phenomenon is about to get a mainstream airing: a paper providing evidence for its existence has been accepted for publication by the leading social psychology journal.

What's more, sceptical psychologists who have pored over a preprint of the paper say they can't find any significant flaws. "My personal view is that this is ridiculous and can't be true," says Joachim Krueger of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, who has blogged about the work on the Psychology Today website. "Going after the methodology and the experimental design is the first line of attack. But frankly, I didn't see anything. Everything seemed to be in good order."

Critical mass
The paper, due to appear in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology before the end of the year, is the culmination of eight years' work by Daryl Bem of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. "I purposely waited until I thought there was a critical mass that wasn't a statistical fluke," he says.

more

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19712-is-this-evidence-that-we-can-see-the-future.html
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[struggle4progress]

1. Let folk duplicate it in a hundred different large studies, all somewhat different, using

very good pseudo-random generators, and I might take it seriously

[laconicsax]

2. +1

[Orsino]

3. Not yet, it's not.

It will probably be years before we find out how the data were fudged, or how the methodology was flawed, but the failure to replicate the results will be what sinks this story.

But James Randi will offer them one million dollars if it survives rigorous testing.

[Swede]

4. Well that is interesting.

Can't wait to read more on this one.

[dimbear]

5. No wonder Las Vegas is in so much financial trouble. n/t

[Codeine]

6. Oh, the stupid just never stops, does it?

[Joe Chi Minh]

9. There's nothing to stop you educating yourselves. It's just a matter of the will.

You have to want to learn.

[Codeine]

13. Mm-hm.

whatever.

[FLPanhandle]

7. In a single word....NO

[TZ]

8. One paper outweighs the hundreds of others that show no correlation?

Mkay. the pseudoscientists/internet /PhD's will love it, but I'm going to wait until the study is repeatable by random INDEPENDENT LABORATORIES using the same design before I take it seriously.---Thats called science.

[Name removed]

10. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Orsino]

12. Credibility with whom, do you think? n/t

[hunter]

11. Is there evidence that we can see the past?

Perhaps the past is always changing to meet the future and the future is always changing to meet the past.

How would we know?

[laconicsax]

14. This is dumb.

From the article:

In one experiment, students were shown a list of words and then asked to recall words from it, after which they were told to type words that were randomly selected from the same list. Spookily, the students were better at recalling words that they would later type.

In another study, Bem adapted research on "priming" – the effect of a subliminally presented word on a person's response to an image. For instance, if someone is momentarily flashed the word "ugly", it will take them longer to decide that a picture of a kitten is pleasant than if "beautiful" had been flashed. Running the experiment back-to-front, Bem found that the priming effect seemed to work backwards in time as well as forwards.

Seems more likely that the priming phenomenon affects recollection rather than working backwards in time, especially since our memory is so marvelously susceptible to revision and invention based on subsequent events.

This is dumb. Interesting, but dumb when presented as "CAN PEEPUL SEE TEH FUTUR?!?!?" Is New Scientist choosing to be a rag?