The biggest story in this is not that they failed to replicate the study, but that they couldn't get the studies
published.Given that the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology was responsible for publishing the controversial claims in the first and that Bem's paper included an explicit appeal to other psychologists to attempt replications, we figured that this journal was the obvious choice to target in terms of publishing our own findings. The editor of the journal, however, did not agree and rejected our paper without even sending it out for peer review on the grounds that his journal "does not publish replications".
We then submitted it to Science Brevia and received the same response. The same thing happened when we submitted it to Psychological Science. Our failure to even get our paper sent for peer review became something of a story in itself. It was covered, for example, by Ben Goldacre in his Bad Science column, as well as by New Scientist and The Psychologist.
When we submitted it to the British Journal of Psychology, it was finally sent for peer review. One referee was very positive about it but the second had reservations and the editor rejected the paper. We were pretty sure that the second referee was, in fact, none other than Daryl Bem himself, a suspicion that the good professor kindly confirmed for us. It struck us that he might possibly have a conflict of interest with respect to our submission. Furthermore, we did not agree with the criticisms and suggested that a third referee be brought in to adjudicate. The editor rejected our appeal.
Considering science is supposed to about replicating results, this is worrying.
