Dick Jan Bierman

Dick Jan Bierman
University of Groningen | RUG · Department of Psychology

PhD

About

126
Publications
28,146
Reads
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1,426
Citations
Introduction
Dick J Bierman currently works at the Department of Psychology, University of Groningen. Dick started his acedemic career with research in Atomic and Molecular Physics and then became engaged in Consciousness research. He currently combines his physics background and his experience with experimental psychology research by formulating and testing theories (CIRTS) that assume some form of limited restore-causality and could possibly account for anomalous (and highly controversial) phenomena like telepathy. He focusses also on improving stringent scientific methods that are applied in his current experiments on presentiment using single trial analysis of EEG signals in a face detection paradigm. He is also involved in testing the Generalized Quantum Theory.
Additional affiliations
October 2015 - present
University of Groningen
Position
  • Senior Researcher
Description
  • phone: +31641037297 mail: d.j.bierman@rug.nl
August 1971 - July 2015
University of Amsterdam
Position
  • Senior Researcher

Publications

Publications (126)
Preprint
1 The big data that we analyzed consists of ~ 1,5 M trials from about 80000 subjects. These subjects tried to describe a random picture that would be shown to them in the future. Tiny effect sizes in this amount of data tend to give very significant effects but tiny errors do also result in statistically giant effects. Thus small anomalous effects...
Preprint
Full-text available
1 The big data that we analyzed consists of ~ 1,5 M trials from about 80000 subjects. These subjects tried to describe a random picture that would be shown to them in the future. Tiny effect sizes in this amount of data tend to give very significant effects but tiny errors do also result in statistically giant effects. Thus small anomalous effects...
Article
Full-text available
Two experiments involving an international collaboration of experimenters sought to replicate and extend a previously published psi experiment on precognition by Daryl Bem that has been the focus of extensive research. The experiment reverses the usual cause–effect sequence of a standard psychology experiment using priming and reaction times. The p...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
The relations between the 5 personality factors, extraversion, neuroticism, agreeableness, conscientiousness and openness to experience and scoring in the Ganzfeld were analysed for the two Utrecht novice series. Two personality measurement instruments were used, the NEO-PI and the 4DPT. It was found that subjects who had a hit (N=22) were marginal...
Article
Full-text available
Methods in experimental science assume objective facts, and those effects are generally independent of the observer or experimenter. This objectivity assumption is not warranted in the field of human studies. Results of psychological experiments tend to be dependent on among other things the expectations of the experimenter. The experimenter effect...
Article
Full-text available
We report a theory-relevant post hoc analysis of 2 Dutch retro-priming experiments that were part of a large replication project of the retro-priming experiment by Bem and colleagues. This replication project sought to investigate the role of the experimenter in psi studies. The results of the retro-priming experiments performed by student research...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
In this paper it is proposed that, in dealing with special subjects, it is not necessary to have control over all factors that might allow for a normal explanation of ostensible paranormal data. It is argued that strong emphasis on this issue has hindered progress in parapsychological research. An alternative approach is advocated where 'sloppy' co...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
A methodology is proposed to elicit (intuitive) knowledge used by expert-judges of free response materials. This methodology is an extension of the knowledge elicitation procedure which has been developed for classification (1) tasks like Psychodiagnostic classification. The normal judging procedure, which is a matching task (2), is modelled as a d...
Method
Full-text available
We have tested the feasibility of a method to prevent the occurrence of Questionable Research Practices. We outline the method, discuss the drop-out treatment and compare it to the Born-open data method, and report on our preliminary experiences. The major source of QRP's is selection of data biased by the hypotheses rather than using all data. The...
Preprint
Full-text available
We have tested the feasibility of a method to prevent the occurrence of so-called Questionable Research Practices (QRP). A part from embedded pre-registration the major aspect of the system is real-time uploading of data on a secure server. We outline the method, discuss the drop-out treatment and compare it to the Born-open data method, and report...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Discussions with regard to potential paradoxes arising from “retrocausal” phenomena have been purely theoretical because so far no empirical effects had been established that allowed for empirical exploration of these potential paradoxes. In this article we describe three human experiments that showed clear “retrocausal” effects. In these neuropsyc...
Article
Full-text available
We describe a method of quantifying the effect of Questionable Research Practices (QRPs) on the results of meta-analyses. As an example we simulated a meta-analysis of a controversial telepathy protocol to assess the extent to which these experimental results could be explained by QRPs. Our simulations used the same numbers of studies and trials as...
Data
Supporting Information. (DOCX)
Research
Full-text available
Research proposal for a photon-echo experiment on human rhodopsin in order to look for coherent states in the retina (as an outcropping of the nervous system). To be performed at Starlab NV/SA Brussels.
Article
Full-text available
Retroactive effects were investigated in the context of a Go/ NoGo task. Performance differences between rational and intuitive thinkers also were investigated. Participants were presented with a shape and instructed to either respond or not respond, depending on the shape. In the first Go/NoGo task, the subject had to respond to two shapes that we...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Retroactive effects were investigated in the context of a Master thesis on the effect of instruction on intuitive and rational thinkers in a Go-NoGo task. During the first phase of the task subjects were instructed to respond to two randomly chosen symbols and to ignore two other symbols. In the second phase of the task half of the subjects got the...
Article
Full-text available
Psychophysiological research has shown anomalous correlations between unconscious states reflected by physiological fluctuations and random future conditions. Where the future conditions concerned emotional and neutral events, this anomalous effect has been called presentiment. In the present research, the domain of interest regarding apparent retr...
Article
The literature regarding research into alexithymia and sympathetic responses is far from consistent. An explanation might be on the way subjects are classified. Generally, subjects are diagnosed as either alexithymic or non-alexithymic on the basis of questionnaires focusing on the cognitive aspects of alexithymia. However, alexithymia, as original...
Article
Full-text available
A theoretical framework is proposed that starts from the assumption that information processing by a brain, while it is sustaining consciousness, is restoring the break in time symmetry in physics. No specifics are given with regard to which physical formalism, either quantum or classical, is the basis of the subsequent apparently anomalous consequ...
Article
Full-text available
Opinion piece in the Dutch Journal of Physics (2008). We made a plea that further research into the question whether the fields produced by cell phones and its base stations is justified, based on research published so far (in Dutch). Opiniestuk in het Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Natuurkunde (2008). Het was een reactie op een redactioneel stuk van...
Article
Full-text available
This is a discussion of the article ''Finding and correcting flawed research literatures".(Delgado-Romero & Howard, 2005). A number of weaknesses in the evaluation method that was proposed are pointed out and an improved more quantitative evaluation method based upon Bayesian statistics is proposed.
Article
Full-text available
In a number of experimental studies we explored the so‐called ‘radical subjective’, and rather controversial, solution of the measurement problem. This solution posits that an interaction with a conscious entity is required to complete the measurement. Thus the collapse of the wave packet is assumed to be causally linked to a conscious observation....
Chapter
Full-text available
There are two major theoretical perspectives on the relation between quantum physics and consciousness. The first one is the proposal by Hameroff and Penrose CHEXX[16] that consciousness arises from the collapse of the statevector describing nonconscious brainstates. The second perspective is the proposition that consciousness acts as the ultimate...
Article
Full-text available
Schrodinger's Cat: Empirical research into the radical subjective solution of the measurement problem Dick J. Bierman & Stephen Whitmarsh The most controversial of all solutions of the measurement problem holds that a measurement is not completed until a conscious observation is made. In other words quantum physics is a science of potentialiti...
Article
Full-text available
Abstract Thirty-two subjects participated in a 128 trial slot machine task. The task was initiated by the subjects. With intervals of one second the three windows of the slot machine froze. There were three types of events: three subsequent different fruits (XYZ), two equal fruits followed by a different one (XXY) and three equal fruits (XXX). The...
Article
Full-text available
In this article, we explore the extent to which implicit learning is subtended by somatic markers, as evidenced by skin conductance measures. On each trial, subjects were asked to decide which "word" from a pair of "words" was the "correct" one. Unknown to the subjects, each "word" of a pair was constructed using a different set of rules (Grammar A...
Article
Full-text available
Placebo response rates in clinical trials vary considerably and are observed frequently. For new drugs it can be difficult to prove effectiveness superior to placebo. It is unclear what contributes to improvement in the placebo groups. We wanted to clarify, what elements of clinical trials determine placebo variability. We analysed a representative...
Article
Full-text available
A conceptual replication of the Hall-experiment to test the 'subjective reduction' interpretation of the measurement problem in Quantum Physics is reported. Two improvements are introduced. First the delay between pre-observation and final observation of the same quantum event is increased from a few microseconds in the original experiment to 1 sec...
Article
Full-text available
Sheldrake has reported a large number of studies on the feeling of being stared at from behind, mostly conducted in school settings with children aged between 8 and 18. Almost all these studies show that people guess consistently above chance. We did three studies to attempt to replicate Sheldrake's staring studies under conditions of sensory shiel...
Article
Full-text available
Can we guess who is calling us on the phone before picking up, and does local sidereal time (LST) affect how often we guess right? Reviews of anomalous cognition studies have shown that effect sizes are highest around 13.30 LST (Spottiswoode, 1997). A post-hoc analysis of telephone telepathy data of Sheldrake (2003) also showed a peak at that time....
Article
Full-text available
A new method is described for the assessment of several factors contributing to intuitive decisions. Technically, the method monitors the pupil dilation preceding choices made in an artificial grammar task. The analysis focuses on the acquirement of implicit knowledge related to a some somatic marker. Results indicate that with the new method we ca...
Article
Full-text available
The 'subjective reduction' interpretation of measurement in quantum physics proposes that the collapse of the wave-packet, associated with measurement, is due to the consciousness of human observers. A refined conceptual replication of an earlier experiment, designed and carried out to test this interpretation in the 1970s, is reported. Two improve...
Article
Full-text available
The goal of this study was to see whether anomalies observed in physiological baseline measurements could be found in data from previously published studies. Three datasets were reanalyzed. The first dataset was from a study on the speed with which fear arises in animal phobic participants vs. controls. The second study was concerned with the diffe...
Article
Full-text available
Using computer simulations, it is shown that experiments aimed at demonstrating "presentiment" by showing arousal to be higher prior to arousing stimuli than prior to calm stimuli presented in a randomised (with replacement) order run the risk of being afflicted with a computational bias. The bias is based on the (false) expectation that the likeli...
Article
Full-text available
The goal of this study was to see whether anomalies observed in physiological baseline measurements could be found in data from previously published studies. Three datasets were reanalyzed. The first dataset was from a study on the speed with which fear arises in animal phobic participants vs. controls. The second study was concerned with the diffe...
Article
Full-text available
Internal patterns in the PRL AutoGanzfeld database may shed some light on the plausability of that hypotheis. This hypothesis would predict stronger effects for sessions where the subject is not sure about his ratings because in those sessions the experimenter may be able to influnece him/her into another direction. A secodary analysis where the sc...
Article
Full-text available
We distinguish between a random target selection procedure which, in principle, excludes sequential dependencies, and a resulting random target sequence that may contain pecullarities-especially in terms of target frequency distribution, which may correspond to a subject's response biases. Post-hoc corrections that adjust the hit probability are av...
Article
Full-text available
Summary For the last 5 years students, taking the course 'Instrumentation in Psychology', were tested on-line for their final grading. On-line examinations pose stringent criteria to the software used. It is mandatory that the student has the feeling that the on-line aspect does not hinder the expression of the student's knowledge. At any time the...
Article
The aim of the study was to clarify whether fear in children is related to a distorted cognitive processing of fear-related information. In anxious children, only a few studies of this bias were performed which yielded inconsistent results. Martin, Horder, and Jones (1992. Cognition and Emotion, 6(6), 479-486) found a bias for spider words in spide...
Article
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Physiological baseline conditions preceding stimulus presentation are shown to depend on emotionality of stimulus content.
Article
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A probable case of RSPK phenomena is reported, that took place in the Dutch village of D ruten, in the spring of 1995. Presented is an analysis of reliable testimonies of neighbours , friends and police officers; the latter in particular give relative strong evidence to the reali ty of these phenomena. Other supporting evidence is provided by the o...
Article
Full-text available
The physiological behaviour of subjects to whom a visual stimulus is presented is dependent on the emotional content of the stimulus. The anticipation preceding the stimulus is also reflected in the physiology. Even when stimuli are adequately randomised it turns out that the anticipatory response (also called 'presponse') to emotional pictures is...
Article
Full-text available
This study investigates the claim that photic stimulation with a specific frequency between 8 and 12 Herz has a positive effect on aspects of alcohol addiction. Twenty one subjects, all participants in a detoxification program of the Amsterdam Jellinek clinic, were administered 8 treatments of 25 minutes of intermittent monochromatic light with a f...
Article
The card format and the single-trial format of the Stroop task are used alternately for the same purposes in general cognitive studies and in emotion studies. However, no convergent validity or testretest reliability has ever been shown. In the present study, a card format and a single-trial format of a standard color-word Stroop and an emotional S...
Article
Full-text available
In the very first issue of the Journal of Consciousness Studies, dualist John Beloff discusses the problem of how interactions may occur between the supposedly different realms of mind and matter. It is indeed the case that meta-analyses covering many years of research give very strong support to the reality of psi phenomena (Utts, 1991). Historica...
Article
Full-text available
During the period from May 11, 1995 to May 21, 1995 disturbing events, like apparent anomalous movements of objects were reported at the home of a family in Druten (The Netherlands)1. A few days after the phenomena started, a hardware random number generator connected to a computer was installed on the premises. As measures for the non-randomness o...
Article
Full-text available
Sixteen subjects did two sessions of 16 runs of micro-PK. There were 8 high trial-rate and 8 low trial-rate runs randomly mixed in one session. It was expected on theoretical grounds that the scoring rate on the low speed runs would exceed the scoring rates on the high speed runs. The two sessions, 'a' and 'b', were done about a week apart so that...
Method
Full-text available
The experiment consists of four series of attempts A1, A2, A3 and A4 to influence a number of random events. A subject while attempting to influence the random events can be characterized by two parameters.psi-strength P and psi-sink S. (see Houtkooper's thesis) Both parameters might be expressed in terms of bits/timeunit. P may be seen as the numb...
Chapter
The paper discusses the status of student models and it is proposed that in order to infer more subtle and complex student models from student’s behaviour, an electronic scratchpad or note-pad might be a valuable tool. A design methodology for these scratch-pads is explored. The method consists of a primary task analysis followed by a analysis of n...
Chapter
The relation between intellectual ability, working method and learning was investigated in two different simulation-based learning environments. By conducting experiments, students had to discover principles of physics theory. A structured condition offered the students guided experimentation and a structured learning sequence. An unstructured cond...
Article
Full-text available
—In this study the hypothesis, put forward elsewhere, that dreams are functional through the erasure of 'incidental' and weakly represented information was indirectly explored. 12 subjects were presented paired-associate word lists during each Stage-2 period of their sleep. According to the erasure-hypothesis these associations are destroyed during...
Article
Full-text available
A methodology for the elicitation of global and in-depth knowledge which is based upon the use of old cases presented to learning systems is described. The basic idea is that knowledge that has been used by an Expert in the past is embedded in the database of old (classification) problems that he solved. It has been shown that some of this knowledg...
Article
Full-text available
Observational theories predict that the results of psi tests can be influenced by multiple observers of the data including future observers. This experiment tested a modification of these theories here called the potential-observer theory, which states that the degree of a future observer's influence is related to the probability that he or she wil...
Article
Measurements are presented of inelastic energies dissipated during small-; angle scattering of Ar/sup +/ ions by Ar and Ne/sup /+/ by Ne. The primary ; energies range from 3.5 to 90 keV. In the secondaryenergy spectrum of the ; projectiles typical structures are observed which are contributed to different ; possible excitation channels. An elastic...
Article
Measurements are presented of inelastic energy losses, Q, dissipated in scattering events between a range of elements as projectiles and the noble-gas atoms neon and argon as target particles. Scattering angles are in the range between 10' and 140'. The velocity of all the projectiles is 4.38 × 107cm/s. Oscillations in Q as a function of the atomic...
Article
Full-text available
Inelastic energy-loss values have been measured from gas-phase collisions and are applied to derive values of the electronic stopping powers in solids using a computer simulation model. The specific cases investigated have been 19.4 keV Ne+ in copper, 21.0 keV Ne+ in nickel and 45.5 keV Ne+ in aluminium, both for random incidence and for perfect al...
Article
Full-text available
Recent experimental results on X-ray production in ion-atom collisions are discussed. It is suggested that the state of the outer-shell strongly influences the X-ray emission cross sections, particularly if one applies solid targets.
Article
Inelastic energy-loss measurements for small-angle scattering in Ne+→Ne and Ar+→Ar collisions are reported. The resulting energy-loss spectra display a structure which may be explained in terms of curve crossing and preionization.
Article
Full-text available
The energy spectrum of electrons ejected after an inelastic heavy-particle collision is calculated on the assumption that the inelastic energy is statistically distributed among the outer-shell electrons. Together with the measured differential cross section for the inelastic energy this gives an absolute value of the cross section for the producti...
Article
A method is described to determine simultaneously the cross sections for capture of electrons by ions of charge 1 to 8. The initial charge states are obtained by large angle scattering of keV single charged ions in the target gas.
Article
Full-text available
The results of the first 2 novice series are reported which precede a planned research programme of 4 series which is expected to stretch over a period of 2 years. In each of the two series 50 volunteers participated in a single standard Ganzfeld session with static targets. The over-all direct hit scoring rate was exactly at chance: 25%. Two facto...
Article
Full-text available
Two experiments are reported dealing with the effect of psychoactive drugs on paranormal phenomena. In the first experiment 40 subjects did two Ganzfeld ESP sessions in which they tried to get impressions of a remote target. One session while being, and one session while not-being intoxicated by Marijuana intake. When asked to select the actual tar...
Article
Full-text available
Cumulating evidence suggests that anomalous correlations occur between mental (conscious and non-conscious) states and apparently unrelated physical or mental phenomena at a distance in space and time. In spite of the fact that the evidence is very strong, these correlations are difficult to replicate. Several examples are given of 'failures' to em...
Article
Full-text available
In a 16-trial Ganzfeld experiment the hypothesis was tested that subjects not only mention elements of the target-picture but also of other pictures of the target set as can be predicted on the basis of the Observational Theories. There were 8 trials with and 8 trials without a 'sender'. The direct hit rate of the Ss was 37.5 % (N=16, MCE=25%, p <...
Article
A methodology is proposed to elicit (intuitive) knowledge used by expert-judges of free response materials. This methodology is an extension of the knowledge elicitation procedure which has been developed for classification (1) tasks like Psychodiagnostic classification. The normal judging procedure, which is a matching task (2) , is modelled as a...
Article
Full-text available
It has been suggested that so-called psychokinesis or 'mind over matter' phenomena would support a dualistic perspective on the relation between consciousness and the material world. At first sight these psi-phenomena, if real, seem to indicate that mental states may play an independent causal role in nature and thus falsify the commonly held mecha...
Article
One of the basic ingredients of the Observational Theory, the collapse of the state vector by means of observation is tested. The experiment amounts to a conceptual replication of the Hall-experiment published in the seventies in Foundations of Physics. In that experiment, final observers of a quantum event had to guess if a pre-observation had tak...
Article
Full-text available
It will be argued that ITS's are not primarily of practical use but that they rather are instrumental in bringing about advances in the understanding of learning and hence in the design of optimal teaching strategies. The basic assumption underlying the idea that ITS might be a better vehicle for instruction than traditional teaching is, that for e...
Article
Full-text available
Human physiology changes in predictable ways in anticipation of and after exposure to emotional visual stimuli. In a series of experiments reported by Radin (1997), it was found that even when stimuli were adequately randomized, so that the upcoming stimuli could not be inferred, that anticipatory responses (as measured by changes in skin conductan...
Article
The results of two new autoganzfeld series, called Amsterdam-III and Amsterdam-IV, of in total 76 sessions are presented. The combined results show a strong over-all deviation from chance expectation (38.2 %, p

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