Daryl Bem Proved ESP Is Real
Which means science is broken.
It seemed obvious, at first, that Jade Wu was getting punked. In the
fall of 2009, the Cornell University undergraduate had come across a
posting for a job in the lab of one of the world’s best-known social
psychologists. A short while later, she found herself in a conference
room, seated alongside several other undergraduate women. “Have you guys
heard of extrasensory perception?” Daryl Bem asked the students. They
shook their heads.
While most labs in the psych department were harshly lit with
fluorescent ceiling bulbs, Bem’s was set up for tranquility. A large
tasseled tapestry stretched across one wall, and a cubicle partition was
draped with soft, black fabric. It felt like the kind of place where
one might stage a séance.
“Well, extrasensory perception, also called ESP, is when you can
perceive things that are not immediately available in space or time,”
Bem said. “So, for example, when you can perceive something on the other
side of the world, or in a different room, or something that hasn’t
happened yet.”
It occurred to Wu that the flyer might have been a trick. What if she
and the other women were themselves the subjects of Bem’s experiment?
What if he were testing whether they’d go along with total nonsense?
“I know this sounds kind of out there,” Wu remembers Bem saying, “but
there is evidence for ESP, and I really believe it. But I don’t need you
to believe it. In fact, it’s better if you don’t. It’s better if I can
say, ‘Even my staff don’t believe in this.’ ”
