Independent re-analysis of alleged mind-matter interaction in double-slit experimental data

• Published in: PloS one Vol. 14; no. 2; p. e0211511
• Main Author: Tremblay, Nicolas
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Public Library of Science 07.02.2019; Public Library of Science (PLoS)
• Subjects: Analysis; Anomalies; Attention - physiology; Biology and Life Sciences; Choice Behavior; Computer and Information Sciences; Consciousness; Datasets; Engineering and Technology; Experiments; Human subjects; Humans; Hypotheses; Intention (Psychology); Null hypothesis; People and Places; Philosophy; Physical Sciences; Physicists; Physics; Quantum physics; Quantum theory; Science Policy; Statistical analysis; Statistical tests
• ISSN: 1932-6203; 1932-6203
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0211511

A two year long experimental dataset in which authors of [1] claim to find evidence of mind-matter interaction is independently re-analyzed. In this experiment, participants are asked to periodically shift their attention towards or away from a double-slit optical apparatus. Shifts in fringe visibility of the interference pattern are monitored and tested against the common sense null hypothesis that such shifts should not correlate with the participant’s attention state. We i/ show that the original statistical test used in [1] contains an erroneous trimming procedure leading to uncontrolled false positives and underestimated p -values, ii/ propose a deeper analysis of the dataset, identifying several preprocessing parameters and carefully assessing the results’ robustness regarding the choice of these parameters. We observe, as in [1], shifts in fringe visibility in the direction expected by the mind-matter interaction hypothesis. However, these shifts are not deemed significant ( p > 0.05). Our re-analysis concludes that this particular dataset does not contain evidence of mind-matter interaction.