Tested, replication failed

Precognition

Precognition is the claimed ability of knowing an event before it occurs. It has been tested — Daryl Bem, "Feeling the Future", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2011. Eight of nine reported effects at p < .01. Ritchie, Wiseman and French then ran three direct replications in 2012 and found nothing; journals initially declined to publish the null results.

The experiment

Daryl Bem, "Feeling the Future", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2011

How it was run Nine experiments that ran standard psychology tasks backwards — for instance, students were tested on a word list and only afterwards told which words to rehearse.
Sample Over 1,000 participants across nine studies
Result Eight of nine reported effects at p < .01. Ritchie, Wiseman and French then ran three direct replications in 2012 and found nothing; journals initially declined to publish the null results.

This episode did more for psychology than for parapsychology: it became a standard example in the replication crisis, and helped push the field toward pre-registration.

Claim Knowing an event before it occurs
Word from Latin prae "before" + cognitio "knowing"
Status Tested, replication failed
Searched 2,100/mo

Where the word comes from

In use since the 1880s in psychical research.

Terms in this field are younger than they sound. Most were coined between 1840 and 1930, in the Spiritualist and Theosophical revivals, and then presented as ancient. Dating them is the cheapest reality check available.

The other 10

Mediumship Clairvoyance Telepathy Clairsentience Clairaudience Psychometry Psychic empathy Astral projection Psychic healing Aura reading

All eleven, with what was tested →