Do Humans Have the Ability to Sense the Future? This Survey of Experiments So Far Says….Yes!
Can we sense the future before it happens? That question was at the heart of a set of nine experiments that sparked widespread controversy and debate when Professor Daryl Bem published his results in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 2011. The reason: Bem's results were positive, suggesting that we can in some way do the seemingly impossible, and somehow ‘know' (precognition) or ‘feel' (presentiment) things before they even occur. The controversy grew even further, however, with widespread coverage in science media outlets of attempted replications from others that failed to find the same astonishing results. A number of scientists and ‘skeptics' poured scorn on Bem's experiments, and prominent skeptic James Randi was even moved to award his infamous ‘Pigasus Award' to Bem “for his shoddy research that has been discredited on many accounts by prominent critics”.
In a previous post I pointed out that this focus on replications with negative results had glossed over the fact that there had also been a number of positive replications, suggesting that there might just be something to Bem's original results. And now, a meta-analysis of 90 experiments which replicated Bem's research, performed in 33 different laboratories (in 14 different countries and involving 12,406 participants), has offered significant support for the theory that humans can indeed sense the future:
