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Geomagnetic Fluctuations and Free-Response Anomalous Cognition: A New Understanding

For some years there has been speculation that anomalous cognition (AC) performance may be correlated with global geomagnetic field (GMF) fluctuations. This idea arose from the work of Persinger (e.g., Persinger & Schout, 1988), who found that anecdotal cases of putative AC occurred on days when GMF fluctuations were significantly lower than on the preceding and following days. Many workers have investigated whether or not this interesting observation could be extended to laboratory anomalous cognition, but with mixed results. Tart (1988) and Persinger and Krippner (1989) found an association between high-scoring AC trials and low GMF fluctuations, while Haraldsson and Gissurarson (1987) and Nelson and Dunne (1986) did not. In an unpublished meta-analysis, this author collected 1,468 free-response trials from 21 studies, reasoning that the effect, if it existed, would be most easily detected in a large database with high effect size; in fact, the overall correlation was a disappointing -0.0002 (Spearman's [Rho], N = 1,468, ns). The first step to understanding the physics of anomalous cognition will probably be the discovery of physical variables that unambiguously modulate the effect. In searching for a new approach to the problem of finding such physical variables, the author was led to consider whether or not the orientation in space of the subject might be a factor. Recently it has been shown that there is a relationship between free-response effect size and the Local Sidereal Time (LST) at which a trial occurs (Spottiswoode, 1997). In a database of 2,483 free-response trials with a mean effect size of 0.122 overall, those trials that occurred within [+ or -]1 h of 13.5 h LST showed a 380% increase in effect size. In light of this, it was considered worthwhile revisiting the correlation between anomalous cognition performance and geomagnetic fluctuations, but including LST as a filtering variable. METHOD Data Sets The data consisted of 51 free-response studies comprising 2,879 trials, with a mean effect size of 0.140 and resulting Stouffer's Z of 7.503 (p = 3.1 x [10.sup.-14]). These records were elicited in response to a request for formal experiments (i.e., excluding exploratory trials) which were of free-response design and for which trial time, date, location, and score were available. The data falls into two broad groups of protocols. The first includes most of the ganzfeld work done since the 1980's: the complete data from the Psychophysical Research Laboratories, and partial data from the Institute for Parapsychology, the Amsterdam Psychology Department, the Utrecht Institute for Parapsychology and the Koestler Chair at Edinburgh University. The other major grouping consists of remote viewing trials: the work of the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research, a partial set of data from SRI International and Science Applications International Corporation, experiments by M. S. Schlitz and remote viewing experiments by the author. An exception to this division by protocol is Carpenter's work, which was obtained in a psychotherapeutic setting. The PEAR remote viewing experiments have been subjected to some methodological criticism (Hansen et al., 1992; Dobyns, et al., 1992), but they are included here since the effect size observed is comparable to that seen in other laboratories using a similar protocol. This data set is not exhaustive of free-response experimentation, though it likely comprises more than 80% of all such work done in the U.S. and Europe during the last two decades. Rather, the data collection effort is part of an ongoing research effort to elucidate physical factors in AC and it is expected that more trials will be added as they are excavated from archives. Analysis Technique Each trial's time was corrected for daylight savings time, where appropriate, and converted to Universal Time Coordinated (UTC). Geographical coordinates for the trials were obtained from the gazetteer of the Rand McNally International Atlas, and this data, with the UTC timings, were used to compute the local sidereal time of each trial. …