Discovery Lab Answers

Dean I. Radin, PhD

Radin is a parapsychology researcher at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, profiled on ESP-Nexus at Dean I. Radin. His research spans random-number-generator / global-consciousness studies, optical double-slit “mind–matter” experiments, water-based “excess correlation” work, presentiment and physiological-anticipation designs, and telepathy/survival surveys.

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

Two points bind the numbers below before you read them. First, the studies in the structured evidence report different, non-comparable metrics — standardized effect sizes (Cohen’s d, Hedges’ g), raw hit rates, correlations, z-scores and bare p-values. These cannot be averaged into a single “overall Radin effect size,” and no such pooled figure exists in the data. Second, the directions disagree: some results are positive, several are null, and several are below-chance (“psi-missing”). A neutral pull-together has to carry all of that, not just the significant positives. The scatterplot below plots effect size against publication year for the subset of results on one comparable metric (z/√N), with a fitted trend whose slope and specification are given in its caption.

Experiments

The studies in the structured evidence, with named ones from the ESP-Nexus pages, cluster into several lines of work:

• Global Consciousness / New Year’s Eve RNG analyses — Radin (2025) and its Radin (2026) corrigendum, examining random-number-generator network behavior around midnight on New Year’s Eve.
• Optical double-slit “mind–matter” experiments — Radin et al. (2013) with Leena Michel, James Johnston and Arnaud Delorme, and Radin et al. (2015) with Michel, Alan Pierce and Delorme, testing whether directed attention affects a double-slit interference pattern. A related meditation/REG replication is Collesso et al. (2021).
• “Excess correlation” in water — Radin (2025), an independent replication of a claimed magnetically-stimulated pH shift between isolated beakers; related water studies appear (Yu 2024, Radin 2021).
• Presentiment / physiological-anticipation and language-corpus analyses — the 2022–2024 human-vs-robot session and multi-language “slope” studies in the evidence rows.
• Telepathy and survival surveys — co-authored with Helané Wahbeh (2021–2023).
• Bio-PK / distant mental influence — Bio-PK records a pilot replication of remote EDA influence by Radin with Taylor and William G. Braud.

Methodology

Where the sources describe design, the recurring features are preregistration and randomization/permutation controls. The 2026 primary intention-vs-relax test is described as a preregistered primary test (row 1). The New Year’s Eve work compares midnight transitions against every other day of the year and against randomized permutation techniques, and excludes arrays failing a sequential-randomness (runs) test. The water replication (Radin 2025) uses a linear mixed-effects model plus a bias-corrected-and-accelerated (BCa) nonparametric bootstrap over experimental and control runs, and reports a Durbin-Watson diagnostic flagging excess autocorrelation, which is why the bootstrap was applied. The double-slit audits characterize those studies as exploratory experiments with a pre-stated directional prediction plus secondary and post-hoc analyses — a design detail their audit pages address directly.

Data

Below are the figures carried by the structured evidence. Because the metrics differ, the table groups by what was reported; do not read down the “effect size” column as a single scale — a Cohen’s d and a correlation and a chi-square-derived Cramér’s V are not the same quantity. Nulls and below-chance rows are included alongside positives.

Note the two null results (Alibalaei 2025 precognition; Wahbeh 2021 remote viewing) and the two below-chance rows (Radin 2023 concentrate-vs-relax; Wahbeh 2022 extended-perception pre-post). Across the full set the evidence includes nine null or negative results, not only the highly significant positives. The 2026 corrigendum itself downgrades a New Year’s Eve figure: the corrected one-tailed midnight p is 0.0013 (z = −2.97), “not as significant as originally reported”.

Skeptical critiques

What critics argue. No published critique of this work appears in the sources retrieved for this question.

What the experimental data show. Radin’s own recent papers surface limitations directly. The 2025 water replication reports that after BCa bootstrap correction, the Phase × Condition interaction dropped to a nonsignificant p = 0.111, so “neither of the two main comparisons of interest showed significant results,” though the effect-size estimates remained in the predicted directions; the paper also flags excess autocorrelation via Durbin-Watson (D-W = 0.296). The 2026 corrigendum revises the New Year’s Eve midnight figure downward as noted above.

Analysis. In the water study Radin (2025) himself reports a positive primary result in one analysis and a nonsignificant interaction under the more conservative bootstrap. In the 2006 EDA study on the Bio-PK page, the proponent-run and Wiseman-run conditions of the same protocol produced different outcomes. Independent replication of the double-slit effect outside Radin’s group and its immediate collaborators is characterized in the Kauffman (2023) row as a cumulative result across five labs, but the audit pages do not report an adversarial independent replication of the specific IONS single-photon protocol.

For the fuller record — including the auditors’ verdicts on the individual studies — see the Radin hub and the linked study-audit pages.