Results from a Confirmatory Replication Study of Bem (2011): Precognitive Detection of Erotic Stimuli?

This companion study put Daryl Bem's headline-grabbing ESP claim to a rigorous test — and the results were a clean miss for precognition. Bem's original 2011 experiment suggested people could somehow sense erotic images hidden behind digital curtains before they were revealed, which understandably made a huge splash. Here, the researchers replicated that exact experiment with 100 female participants, each doing two sessions of 60 trials (15 with erotic pictures, 45 neutral). The crucial difference: everything was preregistered, meaning every method and statistical test was publicly posted online before a single participant walked through the door. No wiggle room, no after-the-fact tweaking. They ran six different Bayesian tests (a statistical approach that weighs evidence for one explanation against another) covering erotic versus neutral performance, whether erotic detection beat pure chance, personality correlations, and whether results held across sessions. Every single one favored the "nothing going on" explanation. The strongest result was about 17 times more likely under the no-precognition hypothesis. There was a tiny correlation between extraversion and performance, but even that evaporated under proper statistical scrutiny. It stands as one of the earliest and cleanest preregistered rebuttals in the ESP debate.