A Forced-choice Precognition Experiment with Selected Cohorts
Can experienced meditators predict the future better than others?
Meditators showed more variable psychic test results, but no clear precognition ability.
French researchers developed an online platform called Psi@Home to test whether people can predict random future events from their own homes. They recruited two groups: experienced meditators and general volunteers interested in psychic research. The study was conducted entirely online, allowing participants to contribute to science from anywhere with an internet connection.
Key Findings
- The main study found no evidence that either group could predict the future better than chance.
- However, meditators showed much more variable results - some scored very high, others very low, while general volunteers had more consistent (average) scores.
- Surprisingly, the preliminary tryout sessions showed strong statistical evidence for precognition, but this disappeared in the formal study.
What Is This About?
Participants downloaded custom software and completed 20-question prediction sessions at home. In each trial, they had to guess which of several options would be randomly selected by the computer in the future. The researchers collected 80 sessions from each group (meditators vs. general volunteers) plus 90 additional tryout sessions. They measured both overall accuracy and how much individual session scores varied from person to person.
Participants completed online precognition sessions at home using custom software, with 20 forced-choice trials per session. Two groups were compared: experienced meditators and general volunteers.
The main study found no evidence for precognition, but preliminary tryout sessions showed significantly higher variance in hit rates than expected by chance.
How Good Is the Evidence?
The tryout sessions showed precognition effects with odds of 1 in 33,000 against chance (p = .00003) - stronger than many published psychology studies. However, this effect vanished in the formal study, highlighting how preliminary results can be misleading.
This study was pre-registered (meaning the analysis plan was publicly filed before data collection began), which is excellent for preventing cherry-picking of results. The sample size was moderate with 160 total sessions across both groups. The researchers clearly reported effect sizes and p-values. However, there was no blinding (participants knew they were being tested for precognition), no control group doing a different task, and the data doesn't appear to be publicly available. The study was published in a specialized parapsychology journal. The contradictory results between tryout and formal phases highlight both the importance of pre-registration and the challenges in this field.
The study failed to replicate the promising tryout results in the formal experiment, raising questions about reproducibility. The post-hoc explanation that participant attitudes differed between phases is speculative and highlights the challenge of controlling psychological factors in psi research. The variance-based approach, while interesting, provides weaker evidence than direct hit rate effects.
Mainstream: The results show no evidence for precognition; the tryout effects were likely statistical flukes that proper controls eliminated. Moderate: The variance differences between meditators and controls suggest something interesting about consciousness states, even if not classic precognition. Frontier: The strong tryout effects indicate genuine psi abilities that are disrupted by the psychological pressure of formal testing.
Many people think precognition research is about dramatic fortune-telling abilities. Actually, researchers test for tiny statistical deviations from chance in simple guessing tasks - like correctly guessing 52% instead of 50% of the time.
Convincing evidence would require multiple independent labs replicating the effect using the same protocol, with larger sample sizes and proper blinding. The results would need to be consistent across different testing conditions, not disappearing when formal controls are applied. This study meets the pre-registration criterion but falls short on replication and consistency.
Two pre-registered cohort studies found no direct evidence for a psi effect. However, for tryout data whose collection was specified in pre-registration using the same participants and protocol, variance across sessions was highly significant.
Stance: Mixed
What Does It Mean?
It's like having a strong intuition about which elevator will arrive first, then finding your hunches work great during practice but fail when someone's actually timing you. The pressure or awareness of being tested might change how our intuitive abilities work.
This study demonstrates why pre-registration is crucial: the dramatic difference between tryout and formal results shows how easy it is to be misled by preliminary findings that seem impressive but don't hold up under rigorous testing.
Understanding Terms
What This Study Claims
Findings
The pre-registered study found no direct evidence for precognition in either the meditator or general volunteer groups
moderateMeditators showed significantly higher variance in session hit rates compared to general volunteers (p = .03)
moderateTryout sessions showed markedly strong increase in session variance (p = .00003), suggesting possible psi effects under different conditions
moderateMethodology
The Psi@Home platform was successfully tested as a novel collaborative platform for at-home psi experiments
strongInterpretations
Differences in participant attitudes during different data collection periods may account for the discrepancy between tryout and main study results
weakThis summary is for general information about current research. It does not constitute medical advice. The scientific interpretation of these results is debated among researchers. If personally affected, please consult qualified professionals.