It's fair for Professor Richard Wiseman to propose psychological explanations for the mystery of prophetic dreams (Can dreams predict the future?, G2, 22 February). However, for all its fantastical nature, many parapsychologists argue that precognition is a real phenomenon – along with telepathy, clairvoyance and some other paranormal phenomena.
Wiseman elaborates on the "coincidence" theory that has been used to explain away precognitive dreams. We dream much more than we think, he points out, thus generating a jumble of different images. These are mostly forgotten, but one may be triggered by something we experience in the following days, leading us to suppose it "magically predicted the future". In reality it is just the laws of probability at work.
Dreams that foretell assassinations, accidents and earthquakes may be influenced by personal anxieties, Wiseman argues. If there is no record of the dream taking place before the event, the dreamers "could have inadvertently twisted the dream to better fit the unfortunate events that transpired".
Sometimes the dream is recorded before the event, but this too may be coincidence. It would not be surprising, Wiseman points out, given that "dreams tend to be somewhat surreal" and tragedies are constantly taking place around the world.
However, 20 years spent studying psychic research has convinced me that the parapsychologists are right. Wiseman's appeal to the Law of Large Numbers is arguably as subjective as the phenomena it attempts to explain. Where dreams are reported that match future events on a number of specific details – as is often the case – statistical probability is not particularly useful.
One such case, recorded in JW Dunne's 1930s bestseller An Experiment With Time, involves someone dreaming of meeting a woman wearing a striped blouse in a garden and suspecting her of being a German spy. Two days later the dreamer visits a country hotel where she is told of a woman staying there who other residents believe to be a spy. She later encounters the woman outside, and finds the garden and the pattern on the blouse exactly match her dream. Such reports – where the dream is recorded immediately afterwards and prior to the event it appears to foretell – cannot be dismissed as anecdotal.
In the 1960s, ESP experiments were carried out in the sleep laboratory of New York's Maimonides Medical Centre. Some of the studies investigated precognition, where the subject described dreams that occurred before the target picture had been selected. Five out of eight experiments were direct hits, and two more were close matches – with odds against of 5000-1.
Wiseman could doubtless find ways to fault the experimental methods. But to omit all such positive findings makes this look less like an objective assessment of precognitive dreaming than just another attempt to explain it away. I can accept that the case has not been proved either way. But accounts that exclude relevant data and credible scientific research should be treated with caution.
Robert McLuhan is a journalist and author of Randi's Prize: What sceptics say about the paranormal
robertmcluhan@gmail.com
