Apparent Association between Effect Size in Free Response Anomalous Cognition Experiments and Local Sidereal Time

Nothing is known about the physical mechanism of anomalous cognition (AC), or ESP. A first step towards generating focused hypotheses would be the discovery of a physical parameter which clearly modulated AC performance. In this paper, an association between the local sidereal time (LST) at which a trial occurs and the resulting effect size is described. In an existing database of 1,468 free response trials, the effect size increased 340% for trials within 1 hour of 13.5 h LST (p = 0.001). A independent database of 1,015 similar trials was subsequently obtained in which trials within 1 hour of 13.5 h LST showed an effect size increase of 450% (p = 0.05) providing confirmation of the effect. Possible artifacts due to the non-uniform distribution of trials in clock time and variations of effect size with experiment are discussed and rejected as explanations. Assuming that some unknown systematic bias is not present in the data, it appears that AC performance is strongly dependent upon the LST at which the trial occurs. This is evidence of a causal connection between performance and the orientation of the receiver (i.e., a term for subject or participant), the earth and the fixed stars. Apparent Association between anomalous cognition effect size and sidereal time. Published in The Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol, 11, No. 2, 1997. Page 2 Introduction Over the last decade of research into anomalous cognition (AC), a new term for extrasensory perception or ESP, considerable progress has been made toward understanding the experimental factors needed to ensure that the effect is observed. In fact the question of existence can now reasonably be said to have been answered positively (Utts, 1996a) In contrast, little headway has been made in understanding the mechanism of the information transfer in physical terms. Currently there are no known physical parameters which unambiguously modify AC performance, and the discovery of such a variable would be a first step to elucidating the physical mechanisms involved. From a physics point of view, a puzzling feature of anomalous cognition is that there is no evidence that performance falls off with the distance between receiver and target over separations up to several thousand kilometers (Puthoff and Targ, 1976; Dunne et al. (1989). More problematic still, the evidence for precognitive AC is strong and performance in this situation is comparable to that in real-time protocols; Dunne et al. (1989) show that effect size in their database is independent of the interval between remote viewing session and target definition over a range of ±150 h. Recently, a theory has been developed by May et al. (1995), which explains another class of parapsychological experiments involving attempts to "influence" random systems, in socalled micro-PK experiments. Their model proposes that the results of these experiments are due to a weak precognitive information channel as opposed to a force-like interaction. Thus in looking for some underlying mechanism that might explain all these data, it appears that precognition is a good possibility: the notion encompasses micro-PK effects and precognitive AC results. Data from real time protocols can also be explained by precognition if it is assumed that the signal source is the eventual observation of the correct answer. Given these properties of the putative physical carrier responsible for anomalous cognition, it is not obvious where one would look amongst known physics for a model or for an extension of fundamental theory that would allow for these effects. It has been suggested that the non-local correlations of quantum mechanics might be used to explain AC (Walker, 1975), but the fact that these correlations do not permit causal signaling rules them out as a mechanism. In searching for a model, knowledge of a physical variable which modified the performance of the AC channel would be extremely useful. It is outside the scope of this paper to review the research on physical modulators of AC, but mention will be made of the two most prevalent in the literature. There is weak evidence that performance is enhanced by screening electrical fields with Faraday Apparent Association between anomalous cognition effect size and sidereal time. Published in The Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol, 11, No. 2, 1997. Page 3 cages (Tart, 1988) and that it is improved during periods when the geomagnetic field is relatively quiescent (Spottiswoode, 1993). More attention has been paid to the latter effect, but the correlation of AC with the geomagnetic field fluctuations, if it exists at all in laboratory data, is very small. For instance, in the extensive collection of trials examined in this paper the correlation between the ap geomagnetic index and AC effect size is small (Spearman’s ρ = -0.05, n = 2,483, p = 0.01) though in the hypothesized direction. The possibility that performance is affected by a globally averaged parameter like the geomagnetic indices suggests that it might be fruitful to broaden the search for a physical variable describing the environment of the receiver, such as electric or magnetic fields, to the larger scale. Consider how the data of anomalous cognition might have been approached if, instead of emerging from a protocol based in the psychological sciences, these signals had appeared as sporadic bursts of information from a complex physical experiment. In that case, the effort to find the source of the unexpected signals would have progressed from local sources of noise to an examination of whether the noise were correlated with activity outside the laboratory. A useful technique for achieving this would be to examine whether the sporadic noise were correlated with local time, which might indicate that power fluctuations, ground vibration or other human activity tied to local time were responsible. Failing that, it would be natural to see if the noise were correlated with sidereal time, indicating a cosmic origin. Pulsars were in fact discovered in just this manner. This paper asks this latter question of the AC data and thereby takes a first step in addressing the question of whether performance is dependent upon the receiver's orientation relative to the fixed star background. The Anomalous Cognition Data To search for a potential physical correlate of AC functioning requires either large numbers of prospective studies or the retrospective examination of existing data which was collected for other reasons. As collecting high quality anomalous cognition trials is time consuming and expensive, there is a motivation for using existing data where possible. The author had already assembled a database of free response data for another purpose and a subset of these data were suitable for this study; from now on, this will be referred to as the original data set. This original data set comprised results from 22 different studies, which utilized either remote viewing or the ganzfeld protocol and for which exact times, dates and locations of the trials were known. The 1,524 trials in these studies were collected in various laboratories by different experimenters over the last 20 years and are shown in Table 1. Most of these studies have been published in peer Apparent Association between anomalous cognition effect size and sidereal time. Published in The Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol, 11, No. 2, 1997. Page 4 reviewed journals, conference proceedings, or laboratory reports. It should be emphasized however, that this collection is not exhaustive of remote viewing and ganzfeld experimentation. The criteria for inclusion in the original data set were merely that the laboratory was able to provide data at the trial level with time, location and score, and that the experiment was of a free response design. The criterion of free response was established in order to collect data with the highest possible effect size and thus maximize the efficiency of the search for a physical correlate. It should be noted that the division into studies was based purely upon the way the experimenter presented the data. In several cases data from a single protocol was presented as a number of experiment series, or studies, while in fact in publication they may have been presented as a single experiment. In some cases the division into series may correspond to a division by receiver, in others to a division by time period. Table 1. Original Data Set STUDY Start Year End Year N Effect Size Z P PEAR 76 84 330 0.33 6.05 7,1 x 10 Schlitz & Gruber 79 79 10 0.56 1.76 0.04 Schlitz & Haight 80 80 10 0.15 0.46 0.3 Carpenter 86 90 90 0.08 0.73 0.2 Edinburgh. Pilot 90 90 69 -0.05 -0.41 0.66 Edinburgh. Training Study 91 91 174 0.07 0.88 0.2 IfP Manual ganzfeld Series 003 86 86 31 -0.28 -1.54 0.9 IfP Manual ganzfeld Series 004 89 89 37 0.12 0.74 0.23 IfP Manual ganzfeld Series 101 86 87 40 0.06 0.36 0.3 IfP Manual ganzfeld Series 987 87 88 48 0.007 0.05 0.5 PRL A 89 89 20 0.68 3.02 0.001 PRL B 87 89 24 0.91 4.45 4.21 x 10 SJPS GMF Study 91 91 101 0.00 0.00 0.5 SJPS PRV 83 83 19 0.66 2.89 0.002 SJPS RAB 84 84 40 0.08 0.51 0.3 SRI Tachistoscope 87 87 160 0.2 2.53 0.006 SRI Precognitive vs Real-Time 87 87 81 -0.07 -0.61 0.7 SRI Hypnosis 87 88 44 -0.07 -0.47 0.6 SRI Fax 87 90 40 0.41 2.57 0.005 Utrecht S1 92 92 50 0.015 0.11 0.4 Utrecht S2 92 93 50 -0.092 -0.65 0.7 Notes: 1. PEAR Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research, Dept. of Engineering, Princeton University; IfP Institute for Parapsychology, formerly Foundation for Research on the Nature of Man; PRL Psychophysical Research Laboratories; SRI SRI International; SJPS the author; Utrecht Parapsychological Institute, Utrecht. 2. Published study Z scores may differ from those shown here due to alternative methods of calculating overall Z. Apparent Association between anomalous cognition effect size and sidereal time. Published in The Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol, 11, No. 2, 1997. Page 5 The contributing laboratories included most of the major centers where free response AC work has occurred. One of the data sets used here, that from the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) group, has been subjected to some methodological criticism (Hansen et al., 1992; Dobyns, Y., 1992). However the effect size and associated 95% confidence interval of the PEAR data fall within the range reported by other free-response investigations (Utts, 1996b; Radin, 1996 ). Therefore, their data were included in the original data set. This paper examines a relationship between AC performance and the receiver's orientation relative to the celestial sphere and therefore the appropriate celestial coordinate system is briefly reviewed. Directions in the sky are conventionally measured with respect to a coordinate system defined by the earth's rotational axis and equatorial plane. The celestial equator is the projection of the earth's equator onto the sky and the declination of an object is defined as the angle north, or south, of this great circle. An object's right ascension, or RA, is defined as the angle around the celestial equator between the great circle passing through the object and the celestial poles and a fixed point on the celestial equator, the vernal equinox. Thus, declination and RA comprise a coordinate system for the celestial sphere in the same way that latitude and longitude do for the earth's surface. At any given point on the earth's surface the stars return to their same positions after one sidereal day has elapsed, this day being approximately 3' 56" shorter than a solar day. At any location and time, the local sidereal time (LST) is defined as the RA of the meridian, that is the great circle which passes through the zenith and celestial poles. Thus at a same value of LST for any observer, the same strip of sky will be directly overhead. The trials comprising the AC database occurred at locations in North America and Europe at times and dates determined by the scheduling of those experiments and entirely unconnected with the purpose of this study. As such they occurred mostly during normal working hours, at various times of the year and therefore covered the whole range of LST values. However, the range of latitudes at which these experiments occurred was quite limited, nearly all the data being taken between 32 and 55 degrees North. Thus the range of declination was similarly restricted. This study therefore sought to examine whether there was any relationship between LST and AC performance. 1 The ordinary 24-hour solar day is slightly longer than the sidereal day owing to the revolution of the earth around the Sun in the same direction as the daily rotation of the earth. The Earth must rotate a little more to bring the Sun back overhead from one noon to the next since the Sun has advanced slightly with respect to the stars in the course of a day. In the course of a year there is one extra rotation os the Earth with respect to the stars compensating for the single yearly revolution around the Sun. Apparent Association between anomalous cognition effect size and sidereal time. Published in The Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol, 11, No. 2, 1997. Page 6 Method The received data was first filtered to eliminate cases where the local time was omitted or location information was either absent or very approximate. One entire experiment was removed from the original data set since reliable time information for each trial was not available. This winnowing reduced the data to 1,468 trials from 21 studies for the original data set. LST values for all trials were calculated from the longitude and given local time of each trial. It should be noted that the time data given by the various experimenters is probably that of the start of each AC trial and may differ from the time of the actual mentation by a few minutes to as much as a quarter of an hour. The majority of trials occurred in laboratories in cities and towns and the longitude for these trials was taken from the values for the city given in an atlas. Local times were corrected for daylight savings time and used to calculate LST by means of the program Xephem version 2.9. As a check, LST values for several randomly chosen points were hand calculated to confirm the accuracy of the software. The AC score data for the trials was delivered from the various experiments in one of two forms. In some cases an effect size for each trial had been calculated from a quasicontinuous measure used in the experiment. These values were used in this analysis without further processing. In other cases, the trials had been assessed by a ranking procedure in which either the receiver, in the ganzfeld experiments, or an analyst, in the remote viewing experiments, had rated the receiver's description against the actual target and a number of decoy targets in a blind judging procedure. These trials therefore were scored as a rank, where a value of 1 indicated that the actual target was rated as the closest fit to the receiver’s description, 2 as the second closest fit, and so on. These ranks were converted to trial effect sizes by means of the formula: