Psi and Psychology: The Recent Debate

Psi and Psychology: The Recent Debate
Panelists: Daryl Bem, Jonathan Schooler, Samuel Moulton
Moderated by J. Richard Hackman

April 21st | 3:30-5:30pm | Tsai Auditorium (CGIS South)

Daryl Bem's recent article—Feeling the future: Experimental evidence for anomalous retroactive influences on cognition and affect—has reinvigorated the debate over the existence of extrasensory perception, and sparked a public discussion among social scientists about how to best conduct and report research. This controversial article will be discussed by a panel of scholars who have a diversity of perspectives on the article—and on the role of psi in psychological science more generally. The panel includes:

Daryl Bem, a professor emeritus of psychology at Cornell University and the author of the target article.

Jonathan Schooler, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a reviewer of Bem's manuscript.

Samuel Moulton, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University and a researcher who has published evidence against the existence of psi.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• psi
• psychology
• recent
• debate
• harvard
• bem
• schooler
• moulton
• hackman
• ESP
• precognition
• retrocausality
• extrasensory
• perception
• feeling
• future
• presentiment
• premonition

[ritter89]

@IceAges14Aces which is ironic because orthodox psychology has more in common with the humanities and parapsychology than it does the hard/empirical sciences. after more than 100 years of research, psychology is still left with a diagnostic system based on a constellations of subjective symptoms that have no biological correlates. perhaps this is the reason why psychologists/psychiatrists seem to be paranoid about parapsych research and are often the first to criticize it?

[electricfunk]

Sam Moulton complains that his failed replications were not mentioned in Bem's published version of the paper, yet he openly admits that he didn't bother trying to publish his own work himself!

[Joe22c]

@electricfunk

As an actual Psychology Masters student, just let me say that there's a real tradeoff when it comes to publishing in questionable journals such as parapsyc journals. It kind of taints your CV.

But yes, I will agree with you if you were chastising him for not attempting to publish in more mainstream journals; although it's not clear if he didn't try or whether mainstream journals (e.g. JAP) just don't care enough about results.

[MsJustanotherhuman]

@ritter89 ditto

[rgoodwinau]

Fascinating discussion. Thanks to all involved for addressing this in such a calm focused. way!

[IceAges14Aces]

Not to mention selection bias......

[IceAges14Aces]

The scientific community is not a "Oh, show me the evidence and we'll accept it" it is a social society full of prejudices, knee-jerk reactions, and quite frankly cognitive and confirmation biases. As a critiquer in scientific and parapsychological studies, it baffles me how most of these scientific studies especially psychological ones are published in peer-reviewed journals when they suffer from confirmation and publication bias, yet they get less attention than parapsychological studies.....

[NanZing1]

I doubt seriously that Sam Moulton's work has had any impact on Daryl Bem; Sam's work is considered to be seriously flawed inside the parapsychological community and a sad loss of resources. One can hope that more contact with Daryl Bem will have a positive influence on Sam, but it's doubtful given how he was described by the moderator of the panel.

[richerite]

So refreshing to see intelligent debate on psi phenomena.

[stehoz87]

lol at using a 100 person sample and thinking 57% shows a positive correlation

[rotagorretni]

Samuel Moutlon comes out as the worst scientist in this panel - whatever the topic, the fact that he adamantly disbelieves what he failed to prove in his own experiment shows him to misunderstand the way science accumulates understanding - his own experiment doesn't matter in the whole world of experiments on this topic - to try to shame Bem for reporting only a dozen or so experiments, accusing him of fraudulently withholding negative results, only shows up Moulton to be a bad scientist