Implausible paraneuroscience

D. Samuel Schwarzkopf
School of Optometry & Vision Science, University of Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand

A recent study (Freedman et al., 2023) claims that repetitive transcranial magnetic
stimulation (rTMS) over the frontal cortex enables paranormal “Psi” abilities in human
participants. They could apparently influence the output of an external random number
generator by focusing their mind, effectively willing an arrow shown on a screen to move. I
was initially surprised to see this study published in Cortex, the very journal that first
brought the world the Registered Reports format (Chambers, 2013) and which is widely
regarded as a pioneer of rigorous open science practices. But in the interest of academic
freedom, researchers should have space to pursue seemingly crazy hypotheses, provided the
research is ethical. Blocking research simply because it doesn’t conform to our current
understanding would be committing the same hubris that led past scholars to reject tectonic
plates or germ theory. That said, irrespective of its parapsychological nature, there are
considerable problems with the scientific validity of this study.
For one thing, the authors’ interpretation hinges on selectively disregarding data points
using a procedure “aligned with [the] overarching hypothesis.” They further state their
“hypothesis is about the existence of an effect rather than its duration.” Both comments
suggest considerable methodological flexibility (Simmons et al., 2011). And despite a
robustness test for it, the procedure obviously appears to have been informed by the results.
A Registered Report might have helped to clarify this further, but the authors certainly don’t
hide the fact that this procedure was post-hoc. A lack of transparency is therefore not the
issue here. The authors also emphasise that their data reweighting procedure was
“scientifically valid.” This statement itself should have raised some red flags. Such an appeal
to the conceptual authority of science seems superfluous in a scientific journal.
Above and beyond these procedural problems, there are bigger conceptual questions about
this study. The authors state that a “major barrier to acceptance of Psi is that effects are
small and hard to replicate.” Instead, I’d argue what impedes acceptance of paranormal
phenomena is that most scientists don’t believe they exist. The authors’ motivation for this
study is that by inducing “reversible brain lesions” these minute effects should become
larger and easier to replicate. This aim clearly failed: the psychokinetic effect this procedure
purportedly created is a fraction of a single bit after averaging 1.8 million bits (18
participants x 500 trials x 200 bits). This is just as miniscule and precarious as most other Psi
effects, such as accurately predicting future events on a fraction of a trial (Bem, 2011).
Perhaps most importantly, the underlying logic here is nebulous: the authors posit that brain
lesions in left frontal cortex enable the participant to influence the random number
generator in such a way that the target arrow moves right, presumably due to the
contralateral organisation of the brain. However, even if that were possible, why should this
translate into more 1s than 0s in the sequence of bits produced by the generator? This is not
like a conventional neurofeedback experiment where participants learn to upregulate a brain
signal. According to the authors’ rationale, there should be more 1s than 0s because this

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means the arrow will move to the right – the random events somehow know the
participant’s intention. One critical test here would therefore be to counterbalance this,
swapping how 1s and 0s affect the movement of the arrow on the screen. A just-so
hypothesis that depends on such specific and complicated predictions is highly implausible.
Rather than testing a real hypothesis, this suggests chasing statistical phantoms.
Lastly, the evolutionary argument for the assumed inhibition of paranormal abilities by the
frontal cortex is similarly convoluted: the authors start with the premise that Psi exists, our
brains have evolved to harness it, even though it is detrimental to survival, which then
caused us to evolve a way to filter out its effects. Isn’t the more parsimonious explanation
here that Psi does not exist, and no amount of brain zapping can conjure it into being real?

Author Disclosure Note

Sam Schwarzkopf is an editor at Cortex and on the Registered Reports team there and at
several other outlets/platforms.

References
Bem, D. J. (2011). Feeling the future: Experimental evidence for anomalous retroactive
influences on cognition and affect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,
100(3), 407–425. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0021524
Chambers, C. D. (2013). Registered reports: A new publishing initiative at Cortex. Cortex,
49(3), 609–610. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2012.12.016
Freedman, M., Binns, M. A., Meltzer, J. A., Hashimi, R., & Chen, R. (2023). Enhanced Mind-
Matter Interactions Following rTMS Induced Frontal Lobe Inhibition. Cortex.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2023.10.016
Simmons, J. P., Nelson, L. D., & Simonsohn, U. (2011). False-positive psychology: Undisclosed
flexibility in data collection and analysis allows presenting anything as significant.
Psychological Science, 22(11), 1359–1366.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797611417632