Posts on Boing Boing are usually quite short. This one is l-o-n-g. In it, the writer tells the story of a Cornell psychologist, Daryl J. Bem, who a decade ago published a paper on an experiment that presented some startling evidence for precognition. But when skeptics reran his study, they failed to get the same results. Here, Mitch Horowitz, a former editor at Tarcher and the author of several books, takes on professional skeptic Michael Shermer and accuses him of not understanding the meta-analysis of the Bem precognition experiments. Turns out this post is an excerpt from a new book by Horowitz entitled Daydream Believer: Unlocking the Ultimate Power of Your Mind. Another controversial study led to a phenomenon now known as The Maharishi Effect, what happens a group of individuals work together in a meditative practice to benefit society in general. Ashley Knibb tended to dismiss the supposed effects of such “group consciousness” as “hippy spiritual fluff” until he read the evidence for it presented in David Vernon’s book, Dark Cognition: Evidence for Psi and its Implications for Consciousness. Knibb then runs with the idea and goes on to wonder what role the Maharishi Effect may play in ghost hunting. Is what happens a location-based ghost story or is it group consciousness? (PH)
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