Daryl Bem



Daryl J. Bem, a respected social psychologist, is more well known among skeptics for his investigations of the paranormal. His most famous study is titled "Feeling the Future: Experimental Evidence for Anomalous Retroactive Influences on Cognition and Affect", and the most famous subset of these is the "porn" experiment. When provided two hidden images, participants were able to correctly select the "arousing" image 53.1% of the time (more than the 50% predicted by chance). Afterwards, participants were shown which image was porn and which was not. Bem argues that this (and various other tests) constitutes evidence for "retroactive facilitation of recall" &mdash; or, people recalling events before they have happened.

However, replication has proven Bem's hypothesis wrong:

Regardless of whether Bem's original study was designed well (and there are some indeed problems ), it has not stood the test of time.