I just read an article from NIH.gov and it may as well been written in a foreign language. I have no idea what this is talking about. Not the nature of the test, who or what they are testing, and why they are testing it. Can someone please eli5 the nature and results of this experiment? Article copy/pasted below and link shared below that.
Correlations of random binary sequences with pre-stated operator intention: a review of a 12-year program
Abstract
Strong correlations between output distribution means of a variety of random binary processes and pre-stated intentions of some 100 individual human operators have been established over a 12-year experimental program. More than 1000 experimental series, employing four different categories of random devices and several distinctive protocols, show comparable magnitudes of anomalous mean shifts from chance expectation, with similar distribution structures. Although the absolute effect sizes are quite small, of the order of 10(-4) bits deviation per bit processed, over the huge databases accumulated, the composite effect exceeds 7sigma (p approximately 3.5 x 10(-13)). These data display significant disparities between female and male operator performances, and consistent serial position effects in individual and collective results. Data generated by operators far removed from the machines and exerting their efforts at times other than those of machine operation show similar effect sizes and structural details to those of the local, on-time experiments. Most other secondary parameters tested are found to have little effect on the scale and character of the results, with one important exception: studies performed using fully deterministic pseudorandom sources, either hard-wired or algorithmic, yield null overall mean shifts, and display no other anomalous features.
Comments
Nothing. It’s not endorsed or performed by the NIH.
This is an abstract of a paper published in a metaphysical/pseudoscience magazine about the ability of people’s intentions to influence the output of a computerized random number generator.
There’s a couple things that raise red flags here as to why this abstract is hard to decipher. The Journal of Scientific Exploration is one that deals in ‘fringe science’, not exactly the home of rigorous methods that we expect. The article itself (not the online version on pubmed or elsevier, but the 2007 reprint of 1997 original) says above the abstract “…The first, a summary of the human/machine portion of the work, was originally submitted to various segments of the Physical Review spectrum of journals in the hope of engaging more members of the physics community in similar research efforts. It was rejected, without any technical reviews, over a series of editorial appeals, on the ideological grounds that it was an “inappropriate” topic for that scholarly venue. It was subsequently dismissed a priori by the editorial board of Foundations of Physics. Ultimately, it was published intact by JSE…” This note admits that the original article did not meet the bar for peer review in more legitimate journals.
Essentially, you have found a near 30 year old article of junk science, published by an unserious journal.