Commentary: intentional observer effects on quantum randomness: a bayesian analysis reveals evidence against micro-psychokinesis

In the article [Maier2018] the authors report on a mind-matter experiment comprising an impressive 12.571 subjects in a Micro-Psychokinesis (Micro-PK) task. The main result of that study, testing the aggregate sum of the data against its expectation value, is reported as strong evidence against Micro-PK. Despite this conclusion, the authors move ahead and interpret a post-hoc observed pattern in their data as possible evidence for Micro-PK, albeit of a different kind. The authors put forward the hypothesis that a higher frequency of slow data variations can be observed in their experiment data than in a single set of control data. They propose that Micro-PK-Effects show up not in the aggregate sum, but in fluctuations (i.e. in the time sequence) of their data: “Interestingly, there seems to be a pattern of repeated change.” The authors connect this possible observation with theories of von Lucadou and others (e.g.[Luc2006,Luc2007,Luc2015]), extended by their own thoughts about possible decline effects in Parapsychology experiments. As a smaller remark, it seems to this author that there is a confusion here about decline of the primary effect size and a decline as observed in a cumulative z-score representation of data, as used by the authors. A constant oscillation of an original effect size always leads to a decline of oscillations in a cumulative z-score plot, as more data goes into the z-score calculation. Likewise, this confusion is also evident in Figure 7 of [Maier2018]. The cumulative z-scores in those figures have a constant oscillation amplitude, which is only possible with an oscillating and exponentially growing effect size in the original data