Citation

Research on physiological measures of precognitive anticipation or presentiment is transitioning from exploratory to confirmatory methodology. Appropriate confirmatory practices include (a) using the physiological measures to predict the outcomes of random events with the prediction criteria developed from previous data, (b) prospectively developing and validating the programming for processing the physiological data, (c) using only data prior to the random stimulus on a trial and no data from subsequent trials when developing parameters for adjustments or artifact rejections, and (d) multiple experimenter designs that make misconduct by one experimenter difficult. The physiological measures in precognitive anticipation experiments can be expected to violate the assumption of independence between trials when used as the dependent variable and may produce counterintuitive, false positive

biases with standard statistical methods. The most convincing research strategy is to develop prediction criteria using an initial set of data and then apply the criteria to predict the random events on new trials. Other research strategies can be expected to be controversial. In addition, when the physiological values used for analysis are derived after trials with feedback have been completed, data processing must be handled very carefully to avoid bias from retrospective selection of data processing parameters.