Can we feel the future through psi?

A storm is hovering over the editors of the  Journal Personality & Social Psychology which is to publish a paper offering evidence for precognition – knowledge of unpredictable future events Feeling the Future, written by Daryl Bem, an emeritus professor of Cornell University, reports the results of nine experiments with more than 1,000 subjects, all but one of which appear to suggest paranormal powers. His findings are due to be published by the respected journal this year, and sceptics have been queueing up to rubbish them.

Among Bem's contentions is that participants given a memory test were more likely to remember words that they were later asked to practise, suggesting that the effects of this post-test rehearsal somehow reached back in time. He also found that subjects asked to select which of two curtains on a computer screen hid an erotic image were able to do so at a significantly greater rate than chance would predict. Intriguingly, the same experiment didn't produce any unusual results when the images behind the virtual curtain were less titillating.

The study is striking not so much for its data – anomalous results from smallish one-off experiments can hardly be described as earth-shattering – but for the fact that it comes from such a distinguished source (Bem is a highly acclaimed research psychologist), and because it has been accepted by such a prominent publication, following the usual peer review procedures. But perhaps even more interesting is the reaction it is producing among some critics – Ray Hyman, another emeritus psychology professor has described the publication as "Pure craziness …an embarassment of Future life ", while Robert Park, a physicist at the University of Maryland called it. “a waste of time…it leads the public off into strange directions that will be unproductive”

The strength of such denunciations are curious. If Bem's experiments are indicative of ESP, then the implications are fascinating and wide-ranging, and at least worthy of continued investigation. Indeed, part of Bem's motivation, he says, was to construct easily replicable trial procedures so that interested parties could help build a reliable evidence base. If his trials are flawed, then they should be challenged robustly in the public domain.

Leaps in understanding require daring as well as rigour, and while extraordinary claims may require extraordinary evidence, there does seem to be sufficient data for ESP to at least merit an ongoing debate. Dean Radin's book  The Noetic Universe offers reams of serious studies purporting to show phenomena such as perception at a distance, mind-matter interaction and telepathy – including meta-analyses of apparently well-conducted trials – that appear to add up to something interesting. Radin also suggests that theories underpinning psychic phenomena are no weirder – and indeed potentially compatible with – those regularly put forward and accepted in mainstream physics, or in mind-body medicine.

To the interested observer, the wide divergence of views among psi experts can be as befuddling as the evidence itself. When the people who have devoted their careers either to proposing or debunking the existence of the paranormal can't agree on the fundamentals of their field, even when presented with the same data, then what chance does the lay observer have? The arguments tend to stand or fall on the finer points of study design or statistical interpretation. One of the main critiques of Bem's study is not that his results are suspect, but that he has analysed them insufficiently, although it's worth noting that one of the sceptic re-analyses concludes that his data offers a “Surprising degree of evidence” in favour of precognition.

But perhaps the most telling statistic in Bem's paper is that 34% of psychologists consider psychic phenomena to be impossible. Improbable, maybe. Unproven, perhaps. But impossible? That certainty seems to reflect a clinging to orthodoxy that is as much belief-based as the public's conviction that psychic powers are real and in our possession (apparently, 62% of us claim to know who’s calling before we pick up the phone).

Daryl Bem's experiments may or may not give us evidence that precognition exists – but if publication of his paper can show that interest in psychic phenomena isn't limited to crackpot true believers, and that studies of it are worthy of more than blind dismissal or uncritical acceptance, then it will have more than served a purpose.