Statistical Analysis Finds “Anomalous Cognition” Proven

In Rob Brezsny’s latest newsletter, he had a link to “An Assessment of the Evidence for Psychic Functioning” by Jessica Utts, a professor of Statistics at UC Davis.  While I’ve heard of the research supporting the existence of psychic abilities of some sort, I’ve also heard that same research maligned as methodologically unsound or inconclusive.

Ms. Utts does us the favor of examining the results of a number of different experiements, not for proof of psychic function (they all had statistically significant results), but for replication of results across experiments and laboratories.  This is ostensibly the definition of a scientific reality: reproducibility.  Ms. Utts finds that the results are similar enough across the board to suggest that psychic function has been proven, and that further experimentation is unlikely to produce any stronger evidence than already exists.