Daryl Bem and the Replication Crisis
If you can get past the linkbait title and some questionable word choices on the part of the author, this is actually an excellent article.  The article is not trying to convince you that ESP is real, at least not in the sense of in-the-world reality. Rather, it&#x27;s an article about the standards of scientific proof, showing that there are cases where standard statistical practices can &quot;prove&quot; apparently absurd results.<p>The issue is that in general, it&#x27;s hard to tell the difference between &quot;absurd&quot; and &quot;unexpected&quot;.   In theory, the scientific method is about designing experiments that produce replicable results that cannot be explained by current theory, and then refining (or replacing) the theory until the can explain the new results, while still making correct predictions about all cases covered by the old theory.<p>But what do you do when results are obtained that violate the foundations of science, such as the time order of cause and effect?  Naturally, one should start by being skeptical of the experiment.  Was the data accidentally recorded wrong?  Was the data inappropriately filtered before being analyzed?  Is the experimenter lying about the data that was obtained?<p>Usually, thinking about these issues yields some apparent cause of error that would explain the unexpected results without violating one&#x27;s basic beliefs.  Unfortunately, an apparent reason for disbelief can often be found even if the results truly are impeccable.  Often, the result is that doubters continue their disbelief, and the believers continue believing, until one faction or the other retires from the field and the other belief becomes &quot;consensus&quot;.<p>What Bem has done is to design an experiment that surpasses the statistical standards of many fields, yet &quot;proves&quot; a result that on the surface seems impossible.  Most of the usual scientific errors have been avoided, and his methodology and analysis are better than most. One possibility is that our current conceptions of causality are wrong:  we think that for A to cause B, A must happen before B, but in fact this is not a requirement.<p>Another possibility is that something is grossly wrong with our current interpretation of scientific results, and many longstanding theories which are considered &quot;scientifically&quot; proven may in fact be mistakes, or at least have no more &quot;proof&quot; than Bem has managed to show for ESP. For most scientists, both of these answers are problematic, yet it would seem that at least one of them must be true. One twist is that some believe that Bem&#x27;s goal is not actually to prove that ESP is correct, rather to show that the foundations of science are faulty: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;andrewgelman.com&#x2F;2013&#x2F;08&#x2F;25&#x2F;a-new-bem-theory&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;andrewgelman.com&#x2F;2013&#x2F;08&#x2F;25&#x2F;a-new-bem-theory&#x2F;</a>.