Online Psychic Experiments to Begin on Twitter
Investigating Psychic Abilities Using Social Networking Site
Jun 1, 2009
On June 2, 2009, University of Hertfordshire Professor Richard Wiseman begins the first psychic experiments ever conducted on the social networking site Twitter. The subject of his research? Wiseman's study investigates remote viewing to determine whether psychic abilities like remote viewing can exist in groups.
Remote Viewing Psychic Tests Via Twitter
The remote viewing study is simple in nature and open for anyone to participate.
From Tuesday, June 2, to Friday, June 5, 2009, Professor Wiseman will post daily, inviting people worldwide to "remote view" his location at 3:00 p.m. UK time (10:00 a.m. EST or 7:00 a.m. PST for those in North America); subjects are then asked to share their impressions of where he is.
Half an hour later, he will post five photos – randomly shuffled by a computer – and ask the same psychic participants to select the photo of his actual location.
The purpose of this research is to determine whether remote viewing and other psychic abilities – which are reputed to have been used by several world governments to locate wartime targets – deserve credence.
Remote Viewing Psychics and the Military
Richard Wiseman is the author of The Luck Factor and Quirkology, two books that explore (respectively) luck and the quirky "science of everyday life." No stranger to what he calls "mass participation experiments," Wiseman has conducted previous studies that gathered, in total, upwards of a million participants.
His interest in remote viewing psychics stems from the American military's use of mediums purporting to have such abilities. According to Wiseman, The Daily Telegraph reports, the CIA spent $20 million dollars during the cold war on psychic experiments and on remote viewing, but ended the project after ten years because results were so inconclusive.
"The Soviets were doing the same thing," Wiseman says. But does it work? The Twitter study aims to find out using what Wiseman calls "the wisdom of the crowds."
"If you have a jar full of jellybeans," says Wiseman, "and you want to know [how] many are in it, you get the most accurate estimate by averaging a number of different people's estimates." The Twitter psychic experiments will examine the reliability of a group of people as a whole, rather than on the psychic abilities of any one individual.
Flaws of the Psychic Twitter Study
Although the idea of psychic tests conducted over Twitter is innovative, and it sounds like fun, it's not necessarily good science.
Wiseman, an outspoken skeptic and critic of psychics, has set up an experiment that some say is almost certain to fail.
What's wrong with this experiment?
- The experiment depends on the accuracy of a large group of people, many of whom may not identify as "psychic" or have any previous experience of psychic abilities.
- It relies completely on the good intentions of those who participate – many of whom are probably skeptics like Wiseman, and some of whom could even being trying to skew the results against psychics.
- The project is flawed from the start: If — and only if — the "majority" of the popular vote selects the correct location three or more times out of four will the results "be seen as supporting the existence of extrasensory perception," according to Wiseman's blog.
- Twitter is a new and evolving medium, so the social rules and niceties are very much in development – and the response to Wiseman's Twitter experiment has been less than friendly thanks to the way he uses Twitter. Although he has nearly 6,000 "followers" at present, his account "follows" only 7 people – a social snub in the online world, and one that bloggers and online readers are pointing to as rudeness or lack of understanding of how to use Twitter. This alone could prevent Wiseman from achieving the momentum and numbers he'd like for his research.
Whether or not the experiment is a success for psychics (or for skeptics), it's a new and creative use of Twitter that will undoubtedly be replicated by other social scientists in the future.
Sources:
- Daily Telegraph, "Twitter's Psychic Experiment," Telegraph.co.uk, 31 May 2009.
- Wiseman, Richard, "Twitter Experiment Starts Today!" RichardWiseman.Wordpress.com, 1 June 2009.
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