In my experience, academics are lovable, thoughtful, delightful people…but some of them (us?) are also implicitly – and colossally – arrogant. They seem to suffer the same fate as pastors – because they are viewed by a portion of the population as having some kind of special power, they come to believe that they actually do have some special power. When in actual fact, they are just people like everyone else who have a little more training on one very narrow topic. An academic or pastor has no more right to tell you what to believe about the existential and spiritual questions that matter to you than you have to tell them about it. Yet, they often do not believe that. They buy into their own hype. No self-respecting plumber believes that their specialized and narrow knowledge base makes them more qualified to talk to you about whether or not life has any meaning. But academics and pastors seem uniquely afflicted with this arrogant belief about themselves.
One of my own peculiar character defects is that I thoroughly enjoy watching such people squirm uncomfortably in their elitist and arrogant pants. (Unless, of course, the arrogant person in question is me…but let’s not have any Uncomfortable Self-Analysis here. This is, after all, the internet! Hardly the place for critical self-reflection). And so I’ve been having fun the last year or so with a particular issue; and I want to tell you why.
Although it’s a misnomer that academics are universally atheists (and indeed recent evidence suggests, contrary to common opinion, academia is becoming more religious; for example, the younger generation of academics is more prone to believe in God than the older generation), in my own field, the stereotype holds true. Social psychologists are a notoriously atheistic, materialistic lot. They would never believe in something like Extra-Sensory Perception, because, well, that just doesn’t make sense in a materialistic worldview. By definition, something could not be sensed in an extra-sensory fashion.
Well, I can literally sense the blowing of narrow academic minds everywhere at the shocking and recent publication of a paper showing that maybe we do have ESP-like abilities after all. Now, I’m in touch with my field, and there has been this rumor floating on the wind for at least 15 years that some researchers were doing work on pre-cognition – that is, on how we perceive things that haven’t happened to us yet – but they could not get it published. It was never mainstream enough to qualify.
This changed suddenly when a very famous social psychologist published a nine-study package in the most influential journal in social psychology – the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. (Indeed, JPSP is one of the most influential journals in the whole world, and one of the hardest to get published in.) And this highly-influential and rigorous journal published this large and comprehensive set of studies that basically shows that stuff that is about to happen to you (but hasn’t happened to you yet) influences you right now. That is pre-cognition: You are somehow able to perceive what will happen to you in five minutes, and it influences you right now.
In case you don’t believe me, go read it for yourself. Here is the citation:
Bem, D. J. (2011). Feeling the Future: Experimental Evidence for Anomalous Retroactive Influences on Cognition and Affect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 100: 407-425.
Basically, what Bem did was take common effects in psychology and reverse the temporal order to see if those effects would still happen if the manipulation occurred after the key measurement. For example, consider the common effect that you are more likely to remember something if you have rehearsed it. Imagine that you were given 48 words, randomly assigned to rehearse 24 of them, and then given tasks to see if you could remember the 48 words on the original list. You would be more likely to remember the 24 words you rehearsed than the 24 you did not rehearse.
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Needless to say, this finding has caused no small amount of consternation in the buttoned-up, stuffy, dogmatically-materialistic world that I live in. And I for one have thoroughly and completely enjoyed watching it!
Now you may wonder if Bem is a spiritualist with some sort of agenda. Not apparently. Quite the contrary – his JPSP article basically says “look, I’ve no idea why this is happening, but science has often progressed without first having a material explanation for phenomena, and this phenomenon is real and therefore we should try to offer a scientific explanation for it.” Hardly the stuff of spiritualist legend.
You may also wonder what I, as a Christian, think about this finding? Well, if you don’t, too bad – it’s my blog and I’m gonna tell you anyway.
First, my worldview neither expects nor prohibits a belief in pre-cognition. As such, I’m philosophically agnostic about it – kind of like I am about aliens and the existence of Billy Ray Cyrus’ career. Christianity says God is, in some way, outside of time, or at least that He knows the future. It also suggests that some people are given prophecies about what is going to happen, and quite possibly that some people more generally have prophetic abilities. So it’s possible that some people are more likely to have a kind of natural ability to see the future – to have heightened pre-cognitive abilities, if you will. (If so, my wife is clearly one of them, but that’s another story). But that’s only one way to view prophecy in the Christian perspective – it’s possible that pre-cognition in the general sense happens, but it isn’t necessary to keep the idea of Christian prophecy in tact.
Second, while it’s fun to watch people squirm about this finding, it isn’t like it would be a clean win for Christianity if it’s true. I mean, one could argue that, say, evidence that the Bible has predicted future events is a point in favor of Christianity. But if science can ultimately establish a physical link to explain pre-cognition, it might eventually weaken this claim somewhat. Of course, it’s worth noting that this set of studies goes nowhere near that – it’s talking about 5 minute intervals (not 700-year intervals) and Bem admits up front that there really isn’t a currently-available physical explanation – but, still, one can’t just assume that no physical explanation exists. As someone who has studied the psychology of time a bit myself, I personally think time is a potentially-malleable and funny thing that’s hard to digest, and I would not rule out a physical explanation for these phenomena. Nor would my faith be troubled by such physical explanations: My point is not that it would really strongly matter one way or the other, but that, while in one sense this research validates that the universe is in fact broader than the average atheist thinks, it isn’t a clean “win” from a Christian point of view. It’s more in the “this is interesting but irrelevant” category of things.
Finally: It may surprise you to learn that I’d bet a lot of money that the finding is a fluke – I don’t trust it. I’ve read the paper myself, and I can’t really explain the set of findings away easily…but it’s worth noting that recent replication attempts have so far failed to replicate Bem’s findings. Our lab may attempt a replication, too, just for the fun of it. But I, too, share the general skepticism of other scientists about it.
See, I don’t have to believe a finding to enjoy watching arrogant academics squirm about it! I enjoy it in part because I myself am completely open-minded about the whole thing, whereas the materialist camp clearly is not. I mean, really, it doesn’t matter one whit to me – my belief system is broad enough to digest any possible outcome in this regard. But the tried-and-true materialist has a bit more of a quandary on their hands, if this finding turns out to be true. And the religious (there is no other word) fervor with which people fight against such findings amuses me. It’s as if someone walked into a Baptist Sunday school class and said “Jesus is NOT real”! I’m not recommending you personally attempt the experiment, but when it happens, there is no other phrase for it except…pure entertainment.
I’m going to assume it’s completely coincidental that the z-value is 6.66.
Here’s another thought which required a little bit more brain power. Bem talks a little about the file drawer effect, but certainly I can see a lot of situations in studies where the researcher would have done a ‘pre-cognition’ test of sorts as a control (that is, comparing pre-cognition with memory after exposure ot the words). Of course, when those results come up as non-significant (as they would 95% of the time if alpha = .05), then those would not typically be published. It’s notable that the significant effects (this is based on my 5-minute reading of it, by the way, so I might be wrong) allk seem to be studies with large n’s but effect sizes around .20 – .25 or so. In other words, just the level you’d expect to see where the null is true but the researcher gets lucky (or unlucky).
But perhaps he’s addressed that and I just didn’t read that far yet. Obviously he’s a smart guy, and one at a career stage where he could take a chance on publishing an article like this and not get booted. Which is cool.
Indeed it’s fun to watch arrogant academics squirm, and as a Possibilian I’ll remain open-minded; but it’s been two years since Dr. Bem’s paper was published and a number of objections have been lodged (the always valuable Wikipedia, which I learned to trust right here on this site, summarizes them pretty well). Moreover, no one seems to be able to replicate Bem’s results: for a recent failed attempt, see http://www.dailygrail.com/Mind-Mysteries/2012/8/Not-Feeling-the-Future-New-Bem-Replication-Fails-Find-Evidence-Psi“.
On the other hand, dark matter may raise even more difficult questions about the nature of reality: http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/dark-matter-through-a-glass-darkly/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=dark-matter-through-a-glass-darkly The late great Philip Dick wrote (though he was paraphrasing Heraclitus, I think) “It is in the nature of reality to keep itself hidden…”
Shawn,
Haha! Absolutely classic — I did not notice that z-value. Too funny! (I know I have some vague eschatological angst when I play the game “bunco”, because you can’t win unless you roll 666. Really, if that isn’t “Satan’s game,” I don’t know what is, haha).
On a more serious note, I certainly thought about the file drawer problem, and as I recall, Bem did some math to try and address it, too. But I would like to note something here — I would not be surpised in this instance if the file drawer problem actually went the other way. I say this b/c I know people — who know people — and those second set of people (that, I will remind you, I don’t know) have said they have found similar pre-cog effects for years. The file drawer problem also applies in reverse when a mainstream paradigm is being challenged by a set of findings and something cannot be published b/c it goes AGAINST the mainstream. (I myself think the very best work I have ever done could not get published — it is still unpublished — because it challenged the predominant attitudes paradigm. It is sitting in my file drawer).
My point is, there is reason in this case to expect that at least some of those things sitting in file drawers are actually supportive of pre-cognition, as opposed to the other way around. That’s not to say it isn’t a very real issue. Indeed, one would expect that those manuscripts would now be flying out of the file drawer, and I haven’t seen evidence of that yet, and it’s been a couple of years now. So I may be totally wrong here. Like I said, I think the finding is a fluke — a little too wacky for me to except personally, without a lot of evidence. As Jack has said, “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” I’ll hold off judgment for 10 years or so myself.
Jack,
Fabulous! A Wikipedia reference alongside a Heraclitus paraphrase — life does not get much better. (As you know, I am publicly committed to “trust Wikipedia,” so I definitely give that a lot of weight.)
I had read about a prior failed replication attempt, but that gave more information — thanks! It is a controversial issue right now, which is why (following my own epistemological principles to “trust my own experience”) I may run my own replication — I’m just darn curious, and I don’t trust other people very much unless it is everyone at the same time.
Ah, dark matter! Well, now I’m curious to go learn a little more about that — I admit my knowledge of the edge of physics is pretty much limited to the half-book I read on string theory about 10 years ago, and a talk I went to at AAAS a few years ago on how no one understands why mechanical physics and quantum physics essentially provide forces that do not ever seem to fit together. And all I remember from either is “wow, that seemed bizarre!”
(Well, ok, once I did read a book by Einstein on relativity, which I admit was one of the most fascinating things I’ve ever read — that theory is NOTHING like what I had been led to believe).
Anyway, thanks for the links, and the thoughtful comments as always!
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