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This NPR article from 2009 states that Dean Radin conducted a Love study that claimed to show a scientifically meaningful correlation between a husband thinking about a wife and her sensing it within two seconds:

After running 36 couples through this test, the researchers found that when one person focused his thoughts on his partner, the partner's blood flow and perspiration dramatically changed within two seconds. The odds of this happening by chance were 1 in 11,000. Three dozen double blind, randomized studies by such institutions as the University of Washington and the University of Edinburgh have reported similar results.

Is this real science? Has the statistical analysis been properly conducted? Is it really confirmed by 3 dozen double blind randomized studies at reputable institutions?

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  • FWIW, here's the PDF of the original study: deanradin.com/evidence/Radin2008LoveStudy.pdf My money is on those confirmation results being a delusion.
    – Michael Borgwardt
    Jul 29, 2014 at 8:41
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    An important question is how many studies have disproved the effect. If a thousand reputable institutions all honestly conduct a study then a small proportion of them will confirm the result just by random chance (while a large number of unreported studys will disprove it)
    – Richard Tingle
    Jul 29, 2014 at 14:46
  • @MichaelBorgwardt do you know what publication that was published in? I tried to look it up and had trouble finding any information about the publication itself. Of course, that makes me even more skeptical about the quality of the study. The only information I did find that seemed useful is that it is copyright "Elsevier Inc.", and this wikipedia article which states "Elsevier's high profit margins and copyright practices have subjected it to much criticism."
    – Rob Watts
    Jul 29, 2014 at 16:34
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    @RobWatts: Don't know the publication, but I know that Elsevier ist one of the largest science publishers, definitely not a vanity press. It's widely criticized for abusing its quasi-monopoly arising from academic publication practices, but AFAIK not the quality of its publications.
    – Michael Borgwardt
    Jul 30, 2014 at 7:05
  • @RobWatts : The PDF does say that it's the Explore journal with has at the time of this writing an impact factor of 0.935.
    – Christian
    May 13, 2015 at 12:42

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