 In 1985 , University of Lethbridge psychologists John Vokey and J. Don Read conducted a study using Psalm 23 from the Bible , Queen 's " Another One Bites the Dust " , and other sound passages made up for the experiment . Vokey and Read concluded that if backmasking does exist , it is ineffective . Participants had trouble noticing backmasked phrases when the samples were played forwards , were unable to judge the types of messages ( Christian , Satanic , or commercial ) , and were not led to behave in a certain way as a result of being exposed to the backmasked phrases . Vokey concluded that " we could find no effect of the meaning of engineered , backward messages on listeners ' behaviour , either consciously or unconsciously . " Similar results to Vokey and Read 's were obtained by D. Averill in 1982 . A 1988 experiment by T.E. Moore found " no evidence that listeners were influenced , consciously or unconsciously , by the content of the backward messages . " In 1992 , an experiment found that exposure to backward messages did not lead to significant changes in attitude . Psychology professor Mark D. Allen says that " delivering subliminal messages via backward masking is totally and ridiculously impossible " . 
