ArticlePloS one2012
Failing the future: three unsuccessful attempts to replicate Bem's 'retroactive facilitation of recall' effect.
Article in PloS one, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 33 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
33 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Robust Bayesian meta-analysis: Model-averaging across complementary publication bias adjustment methods.Research synthesis methods · 2023Pooled it
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- International initiatives to enhance awareness and uptake of open research in psychology: a systematic mapping review.Royal Society open science · 2025Review
- Concerns About Replicability Across Two Crises in Social Psychology.International review of social psychology · 2025Article
- Follow-up on the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) remote viewing experimentsBrain and behavior · 2023Article
- A discipline-wide investigation of the replicability of Psychology papers over the past two decades.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Neuroanatomy of the Will.NeuroSci · 2022Article
- Remarkably reproducible psychological (memory) phenomena in the classroom: some evidence for generality from small-N research.BMC psychology · 2022Article
- "What We Have Here, Is a Failure to [Replicate]": Ways to Solve a Replication Crisis in Implementation Science.Prevention science : the official journal of the Society for Prevention Research · 2022Review
- Developing an open science 'mindset'.Health psychology and behavioral medicine · 2022Review
- Statistical Assumptions and Reproducibility in Psychology: Data Mining Based on Open Science.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
- Objectivity for the research worker.European journal for philosophy of science · 2021Article
- Science is not a signal detection problem.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2020Article
- Why Most Research Findings About Psi Are False: The Replicability Crisis, the Psi Paradox and the Myth of Sisyphus.Frontiers in psychology · 2020Review
- A preregistered multi-lab replication of Maier et al. (2014, Exp. 4) testing retroactive avoidance.PloS one · 2020Article
- Can You Repeat That? Exploring the Definition of a Successful Model Replication in Health Economics.PharmacoEconomics · 2019Review
- Grounds for Ambiguity: Justifiable Bases for Engaging in Questionable Research Practices.Science and engineering ethics · 2019Article
- Who Believes in ESP: Cognitive and Motivational Determinants of the Belief in Extra-Sensory Perception.Europe's journal of psychology · 2019Article
- Article
- Modelling science trustworthiness under publish or perish pressure.Royal Society open science · 2018Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Nine recently reported parapsychological experiments appear to support the existence of precognition. We describe three pre-registered independent attempts to exactly replicate one of these experiments, 'retroactive facilitation of recall', which examines whether performance on a memory test can be influenced by a post-test exercise. All three replication attempts failed to produce significant effects (combined n = 150; combined p = .83, one-tailed) and thus do not support the existence of psychic ability.
Indexed as
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.