Cited Podcast #2: Repeat After Me
May 5, 2020
Daryl Bem, a retired Cornell psychologist and former magician, dives into his groundbreaking research on precognition, sparking heated debates in psychology. He recounts his infamous 'Feeling the Future' study, where participants predicted the location of erotic images, achieving surprising success. Bem discusses the replication crisis triggered by his work and reflects on the implications for scientific integrity. He also touches on the allure of parapsychology and the intersection of magic with scientific inquiry, revealing a captivating world of possibilities.
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Magician-Turned-Researcher
- Daryl Bem was a respected social psychologist who also performed mentalism magic since youth.
- Parapsychologists invited him to expose cheating and he became convinced by lab experiments that psi might be real.
Project Alpha Deception
- James Randi orchestrated Project Alpha to expose sloppy parapsychology labs using fake psychics.
- The hoax convinced skeptics that strong laboratory controls are needed because researchers were easily fooled.
Small Effect, Big Claim
- Bem designed experiments where participants guessed which curtain hid erotic images and reported 53% accuracy.
- He treated a small but statistically significant above-chance result as evidence for precognition.
