Michael Daw is a research scientist at the University of Northampton, where he is investigating a relationship between dietary practices and psi abilities.
Career
Michael Daw worked in software engineering and in professional and managerial roles to support scientific research at the Universities of Manchester, Leeds, and Manchester Metropolitan University. In 2021 he retired from paid work to focus on parapsychology research and environmental activism. Daw has been a vegan since 2016. He is currently working towards a PhD at the University of Northampton, examining the potential link between psi/spiritual experiences and dietary practices – especially veganism and vegetarianism, but also fasting.
Diet and Psi
Spiritual traditions contain frequent accounts of psi abilities attributed to fasting and vegetarian practices. Interviews carried out by Daw together with Chris Roe and Callum Cooper found that seven psi adepts believed that these practices led to improved psi abilities through improved cognitive abilities, health, and/or subtle energies that may be present in food.1 A subsequent survey, again with Roe and Cooper, confirmed that individuals who fast or reduce meat and dairy consumption tend to report more spiritual and paranormal experiences.2 However, it remained unclear whether these practices directly enhance psi abilities, as opposed to people who tend to have these experiences being drawn to such diets.
Daw, again with Roe and Cooper, conducted a ganzfeld remote viewing experiment to explore the impact of diet on psi abilities directly by comparing vegetarians to meat eaters. The results did not reach statistical significance because the study was relatively small (40 participants, 20 meat eaters and 20 vegetarians). However, vegetarians displayed a trend of improved performance and vegans notably achieved a 47% hit rate compared with a mean chance expectation of 25%.3 As a direct result of these findings, items related to dietary practices have been included in an ongoing international multi-site ganzfeld study that aims to disambiguate the various different factors that might affect ESP hitting.4
Michael Duggan
Literature
Daw, M.J., Roe, C.A., & Cooper, C.E (2022). A Survey of Fasting, Vegetarianism, and Paranormal Experiences. Accessed from Researchgate: 27th April, 2024.
Daw, M.J. (2022). An evaluation of the effect of the habitual abstinence from consumption of meat and dairy in a quasi-experimental ganzfeld precognitive task (E). Koestler Parapsychology Unit.
Daw, M.J., Roe, C.A., & Cooper, C.E. (2023). How fasting and vegetarianism is perceived to support psi among adepts. Journal of Transpersonal Psychology 55/1, 111-33.
Daw, M.J., Roe, C., & Cooper, C.E. (2023). Proceedings of the 65th Annual Convention of the Parapsychological Association. Fanehallen, Oslo, Norway.
Marcusson-Clavertz, D., Simmonds-Moore, C., Cardeña, E., Roe, C., Wittmann, M., Dechamps, M., Wahbeh, H. (ongoing). Trait x state predictors of performance in Ganzfeld: An international multisite study. Bial Foundation grant 2022/208.