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Metascientific replication project with the advanced meta-experimental protocol of the transparent psi project procedures for testing the precognitive effect claimed by Bem

Walleczek J, von Stillfried N, Schmidt S, Wittmann M, Kirmse KA, Moll J, Kekecs Z

PloS one, 2025

420,472 participants

Abstract

This metascientific project studied the replicability of Bem Experiment 1, which had claimed a precognitive effect, i.e., the ability to successfully guess the outcome of future random events (Bem. J Pers Soc Psychol. 2011;100: 407-25). The use of advanced methodologies-based on the advanced meta-experimental protocol (AMP) and transparent psi project (TPP) procedures-reduced the risk of false discoveries as a function of (i) confirmation bias, (ii) non-transparency, and (iii) intrinsic measurement bias. The combined AMP-TPP test strategy performed three replication studies with a total of 26,483 participants resulting in N = 420,472 critical trials. Study 1 failed to replicate the precognitive effect. An exploratory analysis of Study 1 suggested an effect in the opposite direction than was originally predicted (49.48% ± 0.26 SE; N = 37,836). Study 2 confirmed this exploratory result using a high-powered replication design (49.65% ± 0.14 SE; p = 0.013; N = 127,000). Study 3 was unable to replicate the result from Study 2 (50.07% ± 0.11 SE; p = 0.496; N = 217,800). The results of Study 2 represent a rare example in psi research of the successful replication of an exploratory result using a confirmatory protocol. The source of the one-time confirmed anomalous result in Study 2 remains to be identified. This result presents either (i) a psi-derived anomaly that defies known physical laws, or (ii) a method-derived anomaly, e.g., a false-positive statistical finding. Using…

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