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Volume 11: Number 2: Article 1
Apparent Association Between Effect Size in Free Response Anomalous Cognition Experiments and Local Sidereal Time
S. James P. Spottiswoode, Cognitive Sciences Laboratory, 330 Cowper
St., Suite 200, Palo Alto, CA 94301
Nothing is known about the physical mechanism of anomalous cognition
(AC), or ESP. A first step towards generating focused hypotheses would
be the discovery of a physical parameter which clearly modulated AC
performance. In this paper, an association between the local sidereal
time (LST) at which a trial occurs and the resulting effect size is
described. In an existing database of 1,468 free response trials, the
effect size increased 340% for trials within 1 hour of 13.5 h LST (p
= 0.001). An independent database of 1,015 similar trials was subsequently
obtained in which trials within 1 hour of 13.5 h LST showed an effect
size increase of 450% (p = 0.05) providing confirmation of the effect.
Possible artifacts due to the non-uniform distribution of trials in
clock time and variations of effect size with experiment are discussed
and rejected as explanations. Assuming that some unknown systematic
bias is not present in the data, it appears that AC performance is strongly
dependent upon the LST at which the trial occurs. This is evidence of
a causal connection between performance and the orientation of the receiver
(i.e., a term for subject or participant), the earth and the fixed stars.
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