Discovery Lab Answers

Dick J. Bierman is a parapsychology researcher at the University of Amsterdam and University of Utrecht (Netherlands) whose work has centered on anomalous physiological anticipation and retrocausal effects.

Research program

Bierman’s published research has focused on three main areas:

Presentiment and baseline anomalies. Bierman investigated whether human physiology shows anomalous anticipatory changes before emotional events — what he calls “baseline effects.” His re-analyses of mainstream emotion research datasets (including work by Bechara and colleagues on decision-making under risk) found that skin conductance levels preceding emotionally significant stimuli were elevated relative to baselines preceding neutral stimuli in directions consistent with foreknowledge ^[1][2]. He framed this as a potential anomaly in standard psychophysiological interpretation, since baseline calculation methods assume no dependence on forthcoming stimuli.

Retrocausal and retro-priming effects. In later work with Aron Bijl, Bierman reported anomalous response-time differences in a Go/NoGo task, interpreted as retroactive effects — faster responses to target shapes when those shapes were designated retrospectively as targets after the response phase had concluded ^[4]. A subsequent replication attempt with Jacob Jolij, published in the Journal of Scientific Exploration, reported mean psi scores (differences in reaction time between incongruent and congruent conditions) that differed from zero, though the authors noted procedural variations and individual differences in outcomes across conditions ^[3].

Collaborative audit work

Bierman collaborated with Rick E. Berger and Richard S. Broughton on a forensic re-examination of the Psychophysical Research Laboratories (PRL) autoganzfeld target-selection records. Their 1998 analysis in the Journal of Parapsychology identified non-random distributional properties in the target sequences — an over-representation of certain target numbers — though they did not conclude this anomaly accounted for the overall hit excess reported in the autoganzfeld series [source: ESP-Nexus page on Rick E. Berger — Forensic critique of psi datasets].

For a fuller overview of Bierman’s work and its reception, see the Dick J. Bierman scientist page on ESP-Nexus.