But ESP Isn’t Supported by Peer-Reviewed Studies, Right???

First Things First: Why I Went Down This Rabbit Hole

I’ve been listening to The Telepathy Tapes lately, which sparked a question I couldn’t shake: what do peer-reviewed studies actually say about ESP, remote viewing, and precognition? Not the folklore, not the pop-sci versions—just the research published in academic journals.

So I dug in. What I found surprised me: while plenty of studies have been criticized or even debunked over the years, a core set of experiments has held up under scrutiny. No one has found the fatal flaw that makes them collapse.

Below, I break down what the best evidence says about ESP, remote viewing, and precognition. I’ve kept the language simple—most of these studies use wild math to demonstrate probability, which can be more easily stated in terms like "one in a million." That's what I've gone with.

And because this topic attracts more wild claims than a UFO convention, I’ve included links at the end so you can check the sources for yourself.

ESP in the Ganzfeld Experiments

The ganzfeld telepathy experiments remain one of the most solid testing grounds for ESP.

Here’s the setup:

• One person, the “sender,” views a randomly selected image or video.

• Another person, the “receiver,” sits in sensory isolation while trying to mentally pick up what the sender sees (usually images or videos).

• Afterward, the receiver chooses the target from four options.

  
  

If ESP doesn’t exist, hit rates should hover around 25%.

The Results That Stuck

By the 1990s, researchers had tightened protocols to eliminate the usual criticisms: no sensory leakage, full randomization, strict blinding. The results? Receivers chose the right target about 32% of the time. That might not sound dramatic, but the odds of hitting that score by chance were about one in 500.

A later meta-analysis covering more than a decade of studies confirmed the effect persisted. And a review in 2020 covering 47 years of data found the overall effect held steady across time, across labs, across experimenters. In studies using participants believed to have stronger “psi” skills—meditators, for example—the hit rates nearly tripled.

Crucially, skeptics like psychologist Ray Hyman admitted that after controls improved, the results couldn’t be explained away by sloppiness or bias. The effect is small, yes, but it shows up again and again under strict conditions.

Remote Viewing: Drawing at a Distance

Remote viewing takes ESP out of the lab and into the wide world. Instead of guessing images, participants try to describe real-world locations they’ve never seen.

In the 1970s through the 1990s, the U.S. government funded an extensive program—now declassified—to see if remote viewing had intelligence potential. Whatever the motives, the experiments followed solid protocols: random target selection, double-blind judging, and rigorous record-keeping.

What the Data Show

Across hundreds of trials over two decades, participants described target locations at rates far beyond chance. One review put the odds of the results being pure luck at roughly one in a hundred million.

The CIA asked both a statistician open to the idea of remote viewing and a hardened skeptic to evaluate the findings. They didn’t agree on what it meant, but neither could dismiss the data outright. The skeptic even admitted the results showed “inexplicable statistical departures from chance” with no obvious flaws in the methods.

Some trials produced eerie matches. One participant sketched a long suspension bridge; the random target turned out to be a Bay Area bridge with the same shape. Another drew clusters of towers that looked like windmills; the target location? A wind farm.

Distance didn’t seem to matter. Some viewers described targets on the other side of the planet with similar accuracy rates.

Precognition: Knowing Before Knowing

Precognition experiments test whether information about the future can influence the present. Unlike remote viewing, the targets don’t exist yet when participants make their guesses.

Half a Century of Data

One massive meta-analysis looked at 309 studies spanning fifty years—more than 50,000 participants contributing nearly two million trials. The overall hit rate was only slightly above chance, but because the dataset was so huge, the odds of getting those results randomly were about one in a billion.

To dismiss the effect as publication bias, you’d have to assume more than 14,000 failed studies were stuffed in file drawers somewhere. That doesn’t match reality—parapsychology journals publish negative results all the time.

Your Body Knows First

Other experiments measure physiological reactions—skin conductance, heart rate—while people wait for a randomly selected image to appear on screen.

Time and again, the body reacts a few seconds before emotional images appear, as if bracing for impact. A meta-analysis found this anticipatory effect across multiple labs, with odds against chance in the one-in-ten-million range.

Even more surprising: the better the experimental controls, the stronger the effect. If it were all sloppy methods, tightening protocols should make the results vanish. Instead, they got clearer.

The Controversial Cornell Experiments

In 2011, psychologist Daryl Bem published nine “time-reversed” psychology experiments in a major journal. For instance, students remembered words better if those words were going to be practiced after the memory test—like future studying reaching back in time.

Across all experiments, the odds against chance were about one in a hundred billion.

Replications since then have been mixed, sparking fierce debate about research methods in psychology. But no one has found fraud in Bem’s protocols. At worst, the data suggest a small, elusive effect that needs more study. At best, they hint that time itself might not work the way we assume.

So What Do We Make of This?

Across ESP, remote viewing, and precognition, the evidence is small but consistent. The odds against chance pile up across decades, labs, and methods.

Skeptics remain skeptical. That’s science doing its job. But here’s the key point: despite decades of criticism, no one has found the smoking gun that makes all of this go away. The data refuse to disappear.

Maybe future studies will crack it wide open—or shut it down for good. For now, the evidence stands as one of science’s strangest, most persistent puzzles.

Works Cited

• Bem, D. J. (2011). “Feeling the Future: Experimental Evidence for Anomalous Retroactive Influences on Cognition and Affect.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

• Bem, D. J., et al. (2016). “Meta-analysis of 90 Experiments on Precognition.” F1000Research.

• Honorton, C., & Ferrari, D. C. (1989). “Future Telling: A Meta-analysis of Forced-choice Precognition Experiments, 1935–1987.” Journal of Parapsychology.

• Honorton, C., & Hyman, R. (1986). “A Joint Communiqué: The Psi Ganzfeld Controversy.” Journal of Parapsychology.

• Mossbridge, J., Tressoldi, P., & Utts, J. (2012). “Predictive Physiological Anticipation Preceding Seemingly Unpredictable Stimuli.” Frontiers in Psychology.

• Utts, J. (1995). “An Assessment of the Evidence for Psychic Functioning.” Journal of Scientific Exploration.

• Storm, L., Tressoldi, P. E., & Di Risio, L. (2010). “Meta-analysis of Free-Response Studies, 1992–2008.” Psychological Bulletin.