On Daryl Bem's Feeling the Future Paper

TL;DR

This paper critiques Daryl Bem's 2011 experiments on psi effects, suggesting that their results can be explained by standard statistical concepts like confidence levels and standard errors.

Contribution

It offers a statistical critique of Bem's findings, highlighting alternative explanations based on well-known statistical principles.

Findings

Many of Bem's results can be explained by confidence levels.

Standard errors provide alternative explanations for the findings.

The paper discusses implications for interpreting polling results.

Abstract

It has been argued by Daryl Bem in his 2011 paper that 8 out of 9 experiments yielded statistically significant results in favour of the psi effect. It is pointed out in this short communication that many of the results in the above mentioned paper could be explained by using well known concepts in statistics such as Confidence Level and Standard Error of the Sample Mean. This short communication also discusses implied confidence level and confidence intervals in polling results.