Citation

In 1990, William Braud reported an experiment in which 9 of 32 participants demonstrated remote mental influence on the hemolysis of red blood cells to a statistically significant degree, but not all in the same direction. Each participant completed 4 trials, 2 while attempting influence (experimental) and 2 without such attempts (control). Because the process of hemolysis follows a decelerating curve as a function of time, the experimenter could have unintentionally created this bidirectional result artifactually by consistently commencing the measurement process slightly earlier or later on pairs of trials he might have guessed were experimental than on pairs he might have guessed were control, even though he was blind as to the actual status of the trials and even if the guesses were no better than chance. The fact that 7 of the 9 “successful” efforts were in the predicted direction of hemolysis retardation (p = .09), plus evidence of a positive correlation between hemolysis retardation and the earth’s geomagnetic field the day before testing, indicate a genuine directional effect in Braud’s data, but only suggestively.