In his article in theJournal of Personality and Social Psychology , Daryl Bem recalls a setting from Lewis Carroll’sThrough the Looking Glassbetween Alice and the White Queen . Alice complains that “ one can not trust impossible things , ” and the White Queen retort , “ I daresay you have n’t had much practice . When I was your eld , I always did it for half - an - hr a day . Why , sometimes I ’ve believe as many as six impossible thing before breakfast . ” Why is Daryl Bem , respected psychologist known for his contribution to our understanding of ego - percept , quote lines from a Holy Writ about frill and unsufferable affair ? Because he desire scientist to believe in one abnormal thing — humans can foreshadow the future .
To discover the foundation of the 6th sense , or ESP , Bem administered nine different test to 1,000 students at Cornell University . Most of the task involve that the scholarly person predict something .
If this crease in recall seems improbable perhaps Bem can sway you with our power to predict erotic motion picture . Students looked at a computer screen with two drapery . One curtain enshroud a nude image while the other did not . Bem asked the students to foreshadow which drape hid the smut . This exercise throw students 50 - 50 odds . But Bem incur that in 53.1 percent of the metre , the students correctly auspicate which curtain insure the salacious images . In fact , when the students repeated this test with ordinary pictures they were only able to right predict where the picture was 49.8 per centum of the time . Some argue his results are n’t statistically significant enough to essay the existence of ESP and researchers who have attempt to replicate his findings have failed .
But , Bem get hold a lot of inspiration inThrough the Looking Glass . He save about the White Queen tell Alice that her storage works both mode — in recalling the past and seeing the future . While Alice balk , the Queen quip : “ It ’s a poor kind of memory that only work backwards . ”
Bem could n’t accord more .
Most scientists do n’t believe in things like ESP and after translate this paper , they still do n’t ; in fact , many think Bem is a trivial loopy for pursuing it . To get to the truthiness of this controversial issue , Stephen Colbert interviewed Bem about meter traveling porn last Thursday :
