Experimenter Psi Effect in Precognition Tests with Planarians.

Two groups of 25 black planarians were allowed to crawl in a horizontal trough with one LED at each end, and the distance and direction of locomotion was recorded. Two blocks of trials were carried out. 1) The Active Experimenter block consisted of Experimental and Control trials. During the former, one of the two LEDs would be selected to be lit by an RNG and the experimenter would light it up. After one week the same subjects were submitted to the control trials, when exactly the same procedure was followed, although the two LEDs were disconnected from the electric source. 2) The Passive Experimenter block of trials followed the same procedure except that the computer directly lit up the LED randomly chosen by the RNG. The results of the Active Experimenter block showed that during the experimental trials, at the very moment of stimulation, the planarians were significantly more distant to the lit LED. During the control trials the subjects were also significantly more distant to the sham lit LED. The number of 5-sec periods (within the 1-min period) spent moving away from the LED to be lit was also higher. In both kinds of trials during the Active Experimenter block, the number of such periods significantly increased as the time point approached the moment of stimulation or sham stimulation. During the experimental and control sections of the Passive Experimenter block of trials, the planarians did not show any preference avoiding the LEDs to be lit or unlit, under the two criteria of distance values and number of 5-sec periods. From the results we may conclude that human activity had an Experimenter Psi Effect on the planarians or on the RNG device. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]