[SWB]

A few statisticians and other researchers reviewed their work a few years back, I don't recall whether it was because they submitted findings to a scientific journal or if Skeptical Inquirer went out to take a look at them. At any rate, there were two major problems:

First, they do a lot of data-fitting, and not in a particularly consistent manner. Basically, when some event occurs, they go and see if there was some kind of spike around that time. Anywhere from a day before to a day after the event is counted as a hit. Obviously, that gives them a lot of leeway to play with.

Second, there are many spikes that are not associated with any particular event. There are spikes much larger than the 9/11 examples which don't correspond to anything in particular. The researchers hypothesize that these spikes represent events important to some smaller group of people and unknown to the masses, but then why would they have a bigger reaction in the "global conciousness" than 9/11?

So basically, it's junk science right now. Maybe there's something there, maybe they'll figure out enough to put it in publishable form and get their Nobel prizes... or maybe they won't. Right now there's nothing to get excited about.