The God helmet was a device created by Michael Persinger which sought to stimulate the temporal lobes to induce a religious experience. Persinger used a modified snowmobile helmet that incorporated an electromagnet placed over the temporal lobes. Persinger’s device produced magnetic fields roughly the same strength as a computer monitor.
Persinger hypothesized that mystical experiences are evoked by transient, electrical microseizures within the temporal lobe. Under the influence of the magnetic fields, Persinger reported that 2/3 of his subjects sensed a presence. Some of his research participants described that the presence was a deceased family member or spirit guide. His findings received widespread media coverage until they were discredited by a Swedish research team from Uppsala University in 2004. Using Persinger’s equipment, the Uppsala team did not reproduce similar results of provoking religious experiences.
The major critique of the Swedish team was that Persinger’s experiments were not carried out using the double-blind standard. In a double-blind experiment, neither the research subject or experimenter can know what the study is about or whether the test subject is part of the experimental or control group.
Persinger’s team administered an inventory of participants’ religious and spiritual beliefs prior to the experiment with the helmet. Persinger’s participants were asked questions such as whether they believed in the second coming of Christ or if aliens are responsible for UFO reports. Because his research subjects must have known these concepts interested the team, suggestibility was a major factor of the God helmet effects.
Persinger disputed the 2004 results of the Swedish team, but since that time, the scientific validity of the God helmet has been deeply deflated.