I heard Ariely speak in Arizona around 2010. He described an experiment which implied precognition. Folks supposedly pressed a button in reaction to a random sensation before it had time to reach their brains. Even assuming a direct extracorporeal path between the point and the lower brain and the speed of light in a vacuum.
It was raised with a "we don't know what we don't know" smile and shrug. It discredited him, at least partly, as a scientist in my eyes.
Thank you. Ariely started by describing chronostasis, the subjective temporal muddling of sensations. Then he dropped the "and one more thing" shtick to disclose this other experiment as externally validating the precognition. (À la Chiang's "What's expected of us" [1].)
He was suggesting to a lay audience the plausibility of superluminal causation on the basis of a single psychology experiment. That's not lying. But it's without scientific integrity.
"In the libet Experiment, Libet asked subjects when they felt the intention to move, he asked them to watch the second hand of a clock and report its position when they felt that they had felt the conscious will to move.
Libet found that the unconscious brain activity leading up to the conscious decision by the subject to flick their wrist began approximately half a second before the subject consciously felt that they had decided to move."
<--- the bug could be chronostasis. They subjects perception of time is warped when looking at the clock.
> he asked them to watch the second hand of a clock and report its position
This is chronostasis. It's requesting a subjective read. Ariely claimed folks pushed the button before the event. That's objective foresight. That's superluminal causation.
It was raised with a "we don't know what we don't know" smile and shrug. It discredited him, at least partly, as a scientist in my eyes.