Global Consciousness Project
The Global Consciousness Project (Eng. " Global Consciousness Project", abbreviation GCP) is a long-term scientific experiment in which participate around 100 researchers and engineers worldwide. Applying a method developed at Princeton Technology and random data are collected since 1998 by a worldwide network that allegedly prove the existence of a " global consciousness ". According to the theory of the GCP generate events such as terrorist attacks that trigger strong emotions in many people, measurable deflections of to suitable instruments. The data is transmitted over the Internet to a server in Princeton, where they are archived and analyzed.
Methods
As measuring instruments currently serve about 50 globally distributed diodes that generate white noise. This noise is evaluated, and should vary depending on mood of the people who live in the area, have different properties. Be such as using digitized noise values of the " state" of the " global consciousness " can be determined.
For example, the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001
The website of the project, numerous analyzes have been published of significant events, which should make the functionality of the " global consciousness " clearly. Thus, a remarkable rash in the measurement data would have been recorded as already some hours before the attacks on September 11. In an examination of the allegations EC May and S. James P. Spottiswoode came to the conclusion that the alleged rashes were a product of arbitrary process and parameter selection.
Criticism
A major shortcoming of this field study is the lack of real control experiments. For control purposes, no true random data from the GCP network are used, but pseudo-random data. The Global Consciousness Project presents on his site, but the results and the significance level for special media events. But it lacks comparative data from other time periods in which it gave no special events or not predictions. Only a comparison between the " event data " and real " control data " from the random number in the "idle" would allow a judgment as to whether the observed effects here are really striking.