It is puzzling and I guess until someone decides to do an in depth biography on Bem we won't know where this set of beliefs come from or why he holds them. One wonders if he is suffering from some sort of delusional disorder but I hate to psychopathologize this kind of situation. J.J. Gibson had very strong beliefs about the nature of perception and, though contrary to much of the field, I would not say that he was suffering from a delusion.
Something that is a little more troubling is to be found in the comments to the article. It is #78 (I don't know if the numbers to the comments change as new comments are added) and I reproduce it here: |Samuel Moulton, Cambridge, MA |January 5th, 2011, 11:43 pm | |With the support of Prof. Bem, I tried to exactly replicate this effect |with a N=200 and found no effect. In fact, the (null) effect I found |was significantly different than Bem's, so the discrepancy wasn't merely |the result of sampling error. Unfortunately, this noteworthy failure to |replicate the effect was not included in the published article, apparently |at the request of the Editor. As a reader evaluating this study specifically |and the evidence for ESP more generally, I would want to know about |these pertinent data. Their exclusion concerns me. I don't know who Samuel Moulton is or what his relationship to Bem is but what he says might cause concern to some. Unfortunately, I think a lot of media outlets will report on Bem's research much like the NY Times did (but probably in the form of sound bites on TV and radio) and will not review the problems (i.e., theoretical, conceptual, and methodological) with Bem's research nor will subsequent failures to replicate will be highlighted. If Bem's research can be reliably replicated, then I think that we have something to focus on. But I am not optimistic about this. In the meantime, I think that more science oriented psychologists will move away from identifying themselves as psychologists and self-identify as cognitive scientists, neuorscientists, or some other name that excludes psychology. -Mike Palij New York University [email protected] --------------------------Original Message------------------------------ On Thu, 06 Jan 2011 06:16:01 -0800, Scott O Lilienfeld wrote: Daryl Bem was my undergraduate mentor at Cornell (sigh....), and a very bright and creative fellow, so this stuff makes me deeply sad. In response to Mike P's question, I honestly don't know the answer. All I do know is that Daryl has been quite consistent in his beliefs in psi: Even back in the early 1980s, when I knew him fairly well and worked with him, he believed in ESP, or at least attached a high a priori likelihood to it. What always surprised me is that Daryl was an accomplished magician, and like many magicians, was/is well aware of the human capacity for self-deception. Ironically, he would give talks (that were quite remarkable - I saw one in front of an audience of over 1000 at Cornell) in which he would "punk" the audience for well over an hour, performing various mental illusions, sensational acts of cold reading, etc., and persuading just about everybody that he had ESP - before finally revealing at the end that he had been fooling them. The whole thing puzzles me. At least one scholar I greatly respect has (tongue only partly in cheek) raised the possibility that this is all part of an elaborate and skillfully crafted hoax - that Bem is actually a skeptic who is trying to show how easily the academic world can be taken in by sloppy methodology, confirmation bias, and the like. At this point, I regard this possibilty as exceedingly unlikely, especially given that Daryl has now invested decades in investigating this business. ...Scott ________________________________________ From: Mike Palij [[email protected]] Sent: Thursday, January 06, 2011 8:46 AM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: [tips] Don't Be Surprised If Your Physics Colleagues Snicker When They Pass You In the Hall The NY Times has an article on Daryl Bem's paper which is to appear in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. That paper is, of course, on PSI and how future events can reach back from the future to influence the past. The NYT article can be read here: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/06/science/06esp.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=all When I read what Bem has done I remind myself that though Sir Ronald Fisher was a strong believer in Eugenics (and could entertain other nutty ideas), he still made singificant contributions to statistics and genetics. I wonder if anyone has conducted a case study on Bem to understand why he believes in PSI? -Mike Palij New York University [email protected] --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=7709 or send a blank email to leave-7709-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
