Bem’s ‘Feeling the Future’
🎓 Academic research
Cornell, Daryl Bem (JPSP 2011) · Ritchie/Wiseman/French replication (PLOS ONE 2012) · USA · UK · 2011–2012
9 experiments, 1,000+ subjects, reversing classic paradigms (test first, practise after) reported a significant ‘retrocausal’ effect; three labs following the original protocol all failed to replicate.
VerdictThe paper itself became a catalyst for methodological reform in psychology.
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‘Presentiment’ meta-analysis
🎓 Academic research
Northwestern’s Mossbridge · Tressoldi · Utts (Frontiers in Psychology 2012, 26 studies) · USA · Italy · 1997–2012
Skin conductance and heart rate rose seconds before a randomly presented emotional image appeared.
VerdictA small effect, questioned for expectation bias and statistics.
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The Aberfan premonition & Britain’s Premonitions Bureau
📜 On record
Psychiatrist John Barker · the ‘Evening Standard’ · UK, Wales · London · 1966–1968
After the 1966 Aberfan slag collapse killed 144 (116 children), Barker gathered 76 ‘premonitions’, including a 10-year-old victim who the day before said she dreamt the school was covered by something black; a ‘British Premonitions Bureau’ was then set up to collect predictions.
VerdictA few predictions came true, the vast majority didn’t — later seen as memory bias.
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Stargate ‘precognitive remote viewing’
🏛️ Official record
SRI / SAIC · CIA / DIA · USA · 1972–1995
Viewers were often asked to describe a target ‘at a future moment’ (hostage sites, new Soviet submarine launches), and the military judged some to have ‘information value’.
Verdict1995 AIR evaluation: statistical anomaly, no intelligence value.
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J. W. Dunne’s ‘An Experiment with Time’
📜 On record
British aeronautical engineer Dunne · UK · 1927
Recorded his own precognitive dreams (e.g. the 1902 Mont Pelée eruption) and proposed ‘serial time’, influencing many writers.
VerdictPersonal-diary evidence.
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The novel ‘Futility’ ‘predicts’ the Titanic
📜 On record
Morgan Robertson · USA · 1898
The novel’s ‘Titan’ eerily matches the Titanic 14 years later in tonnage, striking an iceberg and too few lifeboats.
VerdictThe author denied precognition, calling it nautical extrapolation.
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Sony’s ESPER Laboratory
📜 On record
Sony (backed by founder Masaru Ibuka) · Yoichiro Sako · Japan, Tokyo · 1991–1998
Sony set up an ‘ESP & Excitation Research’ lab studying qi, presentiment and the sixth sense; closed in 1998.
VerdictIts head said ‘ESP exists but has no commercial value’.
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