[2] Taylor attended King Edward VI Grammar School, Chelmsford, and Mid-Essex Polytechnic, before gaining MA (Cantab) and PhD degrees from Christ's College, Cambridge (1950–1956).
From 2007 to 2012, Taylor led a unique research program at Commerzbank's Alternative Investment Strategies (COMAS) Group.
The company launched its first systematic fund of CTAs on Deutsche Bank's dbSelect platform based on Taylor's artificial intelligence models developed while he worked at COMAS.
According to Martin Gardner the controls were inadequate as the children would put paper clips in their pockets and later take one out twisted or be left with metal rods unobserved.
In other experiments two scientists from Bath University examined metal bending with children in a room which was secretly being videotaped through a one-way mirror.
In a four-year investigation into the paranormal, Taylor and his colleague Eduardo Balanovski searched for abnormal electromagnetic signals in parapsychological experiments.
[9] In his book Science and the Supernatural (1980), Taylor concluded that all the paranormal phenomena he investigated turned out to have a naturalistic scientific explanation or did not occur under careful controlled conditions.
The book received a positive review in the New Scientist, which concluded "he will not make any converts among believers in the paranormal, but at the same time, he probably will not alienate many of them either".