Twitter Experiment Seeks Out Psychics

Psychology professor Richard Wiseman (@RichardWiseman) has teamed up with the New Scientist magazine to conduct what is believed to be the first large scale psychic experiment on Twitter.

The test involves what’s known as remote viewing. Wiseman will visit a target location and send a tweet asking followers to try and get an impression of his location. Twenty minutes later a website address will be given showing a photo of the actual location as well as photos of four “decoys”. Participants will then vote on which location they believe to be the target. The test will be repeated a total of four times.

Wiseman says in the Telegraph:

Personally, I’m sceptical, but three hits would be against odds of one in 125, which would be quite impressive

It’s an interesting experiment but could be undermined by Wiseman’s confessed scepticism. Arguably the sender should be someone who (rightly or wrongly) believes the experiment will succeed.

(PS: My probabiliy theory is very rusty but I can’t help thinking the chance of hitting three of four at p=.2 is 16/625 Feel free to correct me.)