Psychic professor proves the time spent on Twitter is useful!

If your family is anything like mine, there are certain people (*cough* HUSBAND! *cough*) who have cast aspersions on Twitter, and the time you've spent on it. I mean, come on, we know how valuable it is. Those 8,631 updates don't write themselves! Actually, make that 8,632. I had to tweet about writing this post.

If you're a psychic, or if you follow me, you already know what this post is about: proving how useful Twitter is. Because this week, University of Hertfordshire psychology professor Richard Wiseman is conducting an experiment via Twitter to determine whether paranormal phenomena are real.

I know! Take that, Twoubters! Here's how the experiment will work: Wiseman has already chosen and photographed four sets of five possible target locations. A bit before 3 p.m. on the day of the first trial, he'll randomly select one of the five locations, travel to it, and once he gets there hit "send" on a pre-written (to eliminate bias) Tweet: "OK, at target location NOW. Post the thoughts, feelings, impressions, and images in your mind. You have 30 mins. Everyone GO!"

All we important research Twassistants will respond, telling him whatever pops into our head about this location. As far as I can tell, nothing will be done with this data, but it will be good paranormal fun and perhaps it will increase our psychic connection.

Then, 30 minutes later, we'll be asked to vote among the five photographs to tell which we believe was his location.

At the end of the four trials, Wiseman says, if three of them have been correctly identified by Twitterers, psychics are real. (Actually, what he really says is "I would consider the experiment significant, and suggestive that something strange is going on. This would not prove remote viewing exists. As with any new scientific procedure, the result would have to be replicated for that to be the case," but that's not nearly as much fun, now is it?)