Discovery Lab Answers

Dean I. Radin, PhD

Dean I. Radin, PhD is Chief Scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) and an Associated Distinguished Professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies, whose experimental work centers on whether human consciousness interacts with physical systems — random number generators, water chemistry, optical apparatus, and physiological measures — in ways not accounted for by conventional models.

Coverage: this reflects the studies currently in the ESP-Nexus library, not the complete published literature on Radin’s work. We have not yet measured how much of that literature the library holds, so treat what follows as a summary of what we hold rather than a settled account of his full record or of the field.

One structural feature to note before the numbers: across the audited result rows for Radin’s work, the reported directions do not all agree. Most rows report positive (predicted-direction) effects, but several report null results and several report below-chance (“psi-missing”) outcomes — nine of the result rows are null or negative. The picture is not uniform.

Experiments

The studies retrieved and audited under Radin’s name span several distinct lines of work:

• Global Consciousness / New Year’s Eve. Radin (2025) analyzed Global Consciousness Project random-number-generator data across multiple New Year’s Eve celebrations, testing whether network output deviates from chance around midnight. A 2026 corrigendum revises a specific figure from that analysis.
• Excess correlation in water. Radin (2025) reported a preliminary independent replication of a claimed “excess correlation” effect in pH between magnetically stimulated, isolated beakers of water separated by up to 10 meters. Related water-based work appears in the evidence set (Yu 2024, Radin 2021).
• Mind-matter and intention. Rows attributed to Radin cover intention-vs-relax tests on physical sensors (2026) and human-vs-robot random-system sessions (2022).
• Double-slit / optical consciousness. The Kauffman (2023) row cumulates double-slit optical mind-matter experiments across multiple labs.
• Presentiment / electrodermal, dice-fall meta-analysis, and language-corpus slope studies appear in the site’s synthesis and the structured rows (Radin 2022, 2023).

Several studies in the set are led by collaborators rather than Radin himself (Wahbeh, Alibalaei, King, Yu), reflecting IONS group work.

Methodology

Radin’s designs in the retrieved sources emphasize automation, pre-registration, and archival network data:

• The New Year’s Eve study used continuous GCP RNG output from 1998 onward, smoothed with a 30-day moving window, with per-second Stouffer Z aggregation across time zones and a principal-components composite at the midnight segment. The 2026 corrigendum illustrates the site’s audit interest: Radin himself corrected a previously cited PCA composite figure.
• The water replication (2025) placed local, remote, and non-stimulated control beakers at fixed distances (1 m, up to 10 m), energized halos via an Arduino circuit, and Radin’s own discussion enumerates uncontrolled variables — field strength, magnetic sequence, water quantity/type, halo orientation, geomagnetic field — as factors that could bear on the effect.
• The 2026 intention study is described as a preregistered primary test.

Where a specific design detail is contested, the design is described here and the dispute left to the critiques section.

Data

The structured evidence for Radin’s work mixes non-comparable metrics — standardized effect sizes, raw hit rates, z-scores, correlation-type measures, and p-only rows. These cannot be averaged or pooled into a single overall effect size, so the figures below are grouped by what they measure, and the full table renders beneath this answer. A selection:

Note the direction column: alongside the many small-p positive rows sit clear nulls (Alibalaei 2025, Wahbeh 2021) and below-chance results (Radin 2023 Exp 1, Wahbeh 2022). This mixed distribution is the honest headline, not any single strongest result.

Skeptical critiques

The sources retrieved for this question do not include an external skeptic’s published critique of Radin’s work by name. What they do carry is Radin’s own recorded self-correction and his own enumeration of uncontrolled variables.

What the record shows. Radin (2026) is a corrigendum in which Radin corrects a principal-component-analysis composite figure he had cited in Radin (2025) for the New Year’s Eve / Global Consciousness analysis. In the water-correlation replication, Radin (2025) explicitly lists factors left uncontrolled or not fully specified — the halo field strength, the magnetic sequences, the quantity and type of water, a claimed “space memory” effect, halo orientation relative to magnetic north, and geomagnetic field strength — as bearing on whether the excess-correlation effect is stable.

Analysis. These are limitations the author himself put on the record: a published correction to a specific statistic in one paper, and an author-stated list of uncontrolled variables in another. An independently authored, externally published critique of these specific studies is not among the sources retrieved here. The evidence set’s own disagreement in direction — nine null or below-chance rows alongside the positive ones — sits in the Data section above.

For the fuller synthesis, including the presentiment, dice-fall meta-analysis, and double-slit lines, see Dean I. Radin, PhD.