In 2011, Cornell psychologist Daryl Bem published a peer-reviewed paper in one of psychology's top journals claiming to have found statistically significant evidence for precognition — the ability to perceive future events before they happen.

The Studies

Across nine experiments with over 1,000 participants, Bem reversed standard psychological paradigms — showing participants effects after they responded rather than before — and found consistent effects suggesting future events influenced past behavior. All nine studies produced p-values below the traditional 0.05 threshold.

The Crisis It Triggered

If precognition could be proven using standard methods, then either precognition is real, or standard methods were flawed. Multiple replication attempts failed to reproduce Bem's findings — leading researchers to examine why the original results appeared.

The Methodological Problems Exposed

• Flexible stopping rules: stopping data collection when results become significant
• HARKing: Hypothesizing After Results are Known
• Publication bias: positive results published; negative results filed away
• p-hacking: testing multiple analyses and reporting only significant ones

Legacy

Bem's paper inadvertently launched the replication crisis — a sweeping re-examination of psychology's most celebrated findings that continues today.

Reference:

Wikipedia: Replication Crisis

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis