Figure 1 - Sketch of target by
V1
Figure 2 - Target
(merry-go-round)
by H. E. Puthoff, Ph.D.
Institute for Advanced Studies at
Austin
4030 Braker Lane W., #300
Austin, Texas 78759-5329
On April 17, 1995, President Clinton issued Executive Order Nr. 1995-4-17,
entitled Classified National Security Information. Although in one sense the
order simply reaffirmed much of what has been long-standing policy, in another
sense there was a clear shift toward more openness. In the opening paragraph,
for example, we read: "In recent years, however, dramatic changes have altered,
although not eliminated, the national security threats that we confront. These
changes provide a greater opportunity to emphasize our commitment to open
Government." In the Classification Standards section of the Order this
commitment is operationalized by phrases such as "If there is significant doubt
about the need to classify information, it shall not be classified." Later in
the document, in reference to information that requires continued protection,
there even appears the remarkable phrase "In some exceptional cases, however,
the need to protect such information may be outweighed by the public interest in
disclosure of the information, and in these cases the information should be
declassified."
A major fallout of this reframing of attitude toward
classification is that there is enormous pressure on those charged with
maintaining security to work hard at being responsive to reasonable requests for
disclosure. One of the results is that FOIA (Freedom of Information Act)
requests that have languished for months to years are suddenly being acted
upon.1
One outcome of this change in policy is the government's recent
admission of its two-decade-plus involvement in funding highly-classified,
special access programs in remote viewing (RV) and related psi phenomena, first
at Stanford Research Institute (SRI) and then at Science Applications
International Corporation (SAIC), both in Menlo Park, CA, supplemented by
various in-house government programs. Although almost all of the documentation
remains yet classified, in July 1995 270 pages of SRI reports were declassified
and released by the CIA, the program's first sponsor [2]. Thus, although through
the years columns by Jack Anderson and others had claimed leaks of "psychic spy"
programs with such exotic names as Grill Flame, Center Lane, Sunstreak and Star
Gate, CIA's release of the SRI reports constitutes the first documented public
admission of significant intelligence community involvement in the psi area.
As a consequence of the above, although I had founded the program in
early 1972, and had acted as its Director until I left in 1985 to head up the
Institute for Advanced Studies at Austin (at which point my colleague Ed May
assumed responsibility as Director), it was not until 1995 that I found myself
for the first time able to utter in a single sentence the connected acronyms
CIA/SRI/RV. In this report I discuss the genesis of the program, report on some
of the early, now declassified, results that drove early interest, and outline
the general direction the program took as it expanded into a multi-year,
multi-site, multi-million-dollar effort to determine whether such phenomena as
remote viewing "might have any utility for intelligence collection" [1].
In early 1972 I was involved in laser research at Stanford Research Institute
(now called SRI International) in Menlo Park, CA. At that time I was also
circulating a proposal to obtain a small grant for some research in quantum
biology. In that proposal I had raised the issue whether physical theory as we
knew it was capable of describing life processes, and had suggested some
measurements involving plants and lower organisms [3]. This proposal was widely
circulated, and a copy was sent to Cleve Backster in New York City who was
involved in measuring the electrical activity of plants with standard polygraph
equipment. New York artist Ingo Swann chanced to see my proposal during a visit
to Backster's lab, and wrote me suggesting that if I were interested in
investigating the boundary between the physics of the animate and inanimate, I
should consider experiments of the parapsychological type. Swann then went on to
describe some apparently successful experiments in psychokinesis in which he had
participated at Prof. Gertrude Schmeidler's laboratory at the City College of
New York. As a result of this correspondence I invited him to visit SRI for a
week in June 1972 to demonstrate such effects, frankly, as much out of personal
scientific curiosity as anything else.
Prior to Swann's visit I arranged
for access to a well-shielded magnetometer used in a quark-detection experiment
in the Physics Department at Stanford University. During our visit to this
laboratory, sprung as a surprise to Swann, he appeared to perturb the operation
of the magnetometer, located in a vault below the floor of the building and
shielded by mu-metal shielding, an aluminum container, copper shielding and a
superconducting shield. As if to add insult to injury, he then went on to
"remote view" the interior of the apparatus, rendering by drawing a reasonable
facsimile of its rather complex (and heretofore unpublished) construction. It
was this latter feat that impressed me perhaps even more than the former, as it
also eventually did representatives of the intelligence community. I wrote up
these observations and circulated it among my scientific colleagues in draft
form of what was eventually published as part of a conference proceedings
[4].
In a few short weeks a pair of visitors showed up at SRI with the
above report in hand. Their credentials showed them to be from the CIA. They
knew of my previous background as a Naval Intelligence Officer and then civilian
employee at the National Security Agency (NSA) several years earlier, and felt
they could discuss their concerns with me openly. There was, they told me,
increasing concern in the intelligence community about the level of effort in
Soviet parapsychology being funded by the Soviet security services [5]; by
Western scientific standards the field was considered nonsense by most working
scientists. As a result they had been on the lookout for a research laboratory
outside of academia that could handle a quiet, low-profile classified
investigation, and SRI appeared to fit the bill. They asked if I could arrange
an opportunity for them to carry out some simple experiments with Swann, and, if
the tests proved satisfactory, would I consider a pilot program along these
lines? I agreed to consider this, and arranged for the requested tests.2
The
tests were simple, the visitors simply hiding objects in a box and asking Swann
to attempt to describe the contents. The results generated in these experiments
are perhaps captured most eloquently by the following example. In one test Swann
said "I see something small, brown and irregular, sort of like a leaf or
something that resembles it, except that it seems very much alive, like it's
even moving!" The target chosen by one of the visitors turned out to be a small
live moth, which indeed did look like a leaf. Although not all responses were
quite so precise, nonetheless the integrated results were sufficiently
impressive that in short order an eight-month, $49,909 Biofield Measurements
Program was negotiated as a pilot study, a laser colleague Russell Targ who had
had a long-time interest and involvement in parapsychology joined the program,
and the experimental effort was begun in earnest.
During the eight-month pilot study of remote viewing the effort gradually
evolved from the remote viewing of symbols and objects in envelopes and boxes,
to the remote viewing of local target sites in the San Francisco Bay area,
demarked by outbound experimenters sent to the site under strict protocols
devised to prevent artifactual results. Later judging of the results were
similarly handled by double-blind protocols designed to foil artifactual
matching. Since these results have been presented in detail elsewhere, both in
the scientific literature [6-8] and in popular book format [9], I direct the
interested reader to these sources. To summarize, over the years the
back-and-forth criticism of protocols, refinement of methods, and successful
replication of this type of remote viewing in independent laboratories [10-14],
has yielded considerable scientific evidence for the reality of the phenomenon.
Adding to the strength of these results was the discovery that a growing number
of individuals could be found to demonstrate high-quality remote viewing, often
to their own surprise, such as the talented Hella Hammid. As a separate issue,
however, most convincing to our early program monitors were the results now to
be described, generated under their own control.
First, during the
collection of data for a formal remote viewing series targeting indoor
laboratory apparatus and outdoor locations (a series eventually published in
toto in the Proc. IEEE [7]), the CIA contract monitors, ever watchful for
possible chicanery, participated as remote viewers themselves in order to
critique the protocols. In this role three separate viewers, designated visitors
V1 - V3 in the IEEE paper, contributed seven of the 55 viewings, several of
striking quality. Reference to the IEEE paper for a comparison of
descriptions/drawings to pictures of the associated targets, generated by the
contract monitors in their own viewings, leaves little doubt as to why the
contract monitors came to the conclusion that there was something to remote
viewing (see, for example, Figure 1 herein). As summarized in the Executive
Summary of the now-released Final Report [2] of the second year of the program,
"The development of this capability at SRI has evolved to the point where
visiting CIA personnel with no previous exposure to such concepts have performed
well under controlled laboratory conditions (that is, generated target
descriptions of sufficiently high quality to permit blind matching of
descriptions to targets by independent judges)." What happened next, however,
made even these results pale in comparison.
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To determine whether it was necessary to have a "beacon" individual at the
target site, Swann suggested carrying out an experiment to remote view the
planet Jupiter before the upcoming NASA Pioneer 10 flyby. In that case, much to
his chagrin (and ours) he found a ring around Jupiter, and wondered if perhaps
he had remote viewed Saturn by mistake. Our colleagues in astronomy were quite
unimpressed as well, until the flyby revealed that an unanticipated ring did in
fact exist.3
Expanding
the protocols yet further, Swann proposed a series of experiments in which the
target was designated not by sending a "beacon" person to the target site, but
rather by the use of geographical coordinates, latitude and longitude in
degrees, minutes and seconds. Needless to say, this proposal seemed even more
outrageous than "ordinary" remote viewing. The difficulties in taking this
proposal seriously, designing protocols to eliminate the possibility of a
combination of globe memorization and eidetic or photographic memory, and so
forth, are discussed in considerable detail in Reference [9]. Suffice it to say
that investigation of this approach, which we designated Scanate (scanning by
coordinate), eventually provided us with sufficient evidence to bring it up to
the contract monitors and suggest a test under their control. A description of
that test and its results, carried out in mid-1973 during the initial pilot
study, are best presented by quoting directly from the Executive Summary of the
Final Report of the second year's followup program [2]. The remote viewers were
Ingo Swann and Pat Price, and the entire transcripts are available in the
released documents [2].
"In order to subject the remote viewing phenomena
to a rigorous long-distance test under external control, a request for
geographical coordinates of a site unknown to subject and experimenters was
forwarded to the OSI group responsible for threat analysis in this area. In
response, SRI personnel received a set of geographical coordinates (latitude and
longitude in degrees, minutes, and seconds) of a facility, hereafter referred to
as the West Virginia Site. The experimenters then carried out a remote viewing
experiment on a double-blind basis, that is, blind to experimenters as well as
subject. The experiment had as its goal the determination of the utility of
remote viewing under conditions approximating an operational scenario. Two
subjects targeted on the site, a sensitive installation. One subject drew a
detailed map of the building and grounds layout, the other provided information
about the interior including codewords, data subsequently verified by sponsor
sources (report available from COTR)."4
Since
details concerning the site's mission in general,5
and evaluation of the remote viewing test in particular, remain highly
classified to this day, all that can be said is that interest in the client
community was heightened considerably following this exercise.
Because
Price found the above exercise so interesting, as a personal challenge he went
on to scan the other side of the globe for a Communist Bloc equivalent and found
one located in the Urals, the detailed description of which is also included in
Ref. [2]. As with the West Virginia Site, the report for the Urals Site was also
verified by personnel in the sponsor organization as being substantially
correct.
What makes the West Virginia/Urals Sites viewings so remarkable
is that these are not best-ever examples culled out of a longer list; these are
literally the first two site-viewings carried out in a simulated
operational-type scenario. In fact, for Price these were the very first two
remote viewings in our program altogether, and he was invited to participate in
yet further experimentation.
Midway through the second year of the program (July 1974) our CIA sponsor
decided to challenge us to provide data on a Soviet site of ongoing operational
significance. Pat Price was the remote viewer. A description of the remote
viewing, taken from our declassified final report [2], reads as given below. I
cite this level of detail to indicate the thought that goes into such an
"experiment" to minimize cueing while at the same time being responsive to the
requirements of an operational situation. Again, this is not a "best-ever"
example from a series of such viewings, but rather the very first operational
Soviet target concerning which we were officially tasked.
"To determine
the utility of remote viewing under operational conditions, a long-distance
remote viewing experiment was carried out on a sponsor-designated target of
current interest, an unidentified research center at Semipalatinsk,
USSR.
This experiment, carried out in three phases, was under direct
control of the COTR. To begin the experiment, the COTR furnished map coordinates
in degrees, minutes and seconds. The only additional information provided was
the designation of the target as an R&D test facility. The experimenters
then closeted themselves with Subject S1, gave him the map coordinates and
indicated the designation of the target as an R&D test facility. A
remote-viewing experiment was then carried out. This activity constituted Phase
I of the experiment.
 Figure 3 - Subject effort at building layout |
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Figure 3 shows the subject's graphic effort for building layout; Figure 4
shows the subject's particular attention to a multistory gantry crane he
observed at the site. Both results were obtained by the experimenters on a
double-blind basis before exposure to any additional COTR-held information, thus
eliminating the possibility of cueing. These results were turned over to the
client representatives for evaluation. For comparison an artist's rendering of
the site as known to the COTR (but not to the experimenters until later) is
shown in Figure 5.....
Figure 5 - Actual COTR rendering of Semipalatinsk,
USSR target site
Were the results not promising, the experiment would have stopped at this
point. Description of the multistory crane, however, a relatively unusual target
item, was taken as indicative of possible target acquisition. Therefore, Phase
II was begun, defined by the subject being made "witting" (of the client) by
client representatives who introduced themselves to the subject at that point;
Phase II also included a second round of experimentation on the Semipalatinsk
site with direct participation of client representatives in which further data
were obtained and evaluated. As preparation for this phase, client
representatives purposely kept themselves blind to all but general knowledge of
the target site to minimize the possibility of cueing. The Phase II effort was
focused on the generation of physical data that could be independently verified
by other client sources, thus providing a calibration of the process.
The
end of Phase II gradually evolved into the first part of Phase III, the
generation of unverifiable data concerning the Semipalatinsk site not available
to the client, but of operational interest nonetheless. Several hours of tape
transcript and a notebook of drawings were generated over a two-week
period.
The data describing the Semipalatinsk site were evaluated by the
sponsor, and are contained in a separate report. In general, several details
concerning the salient technology of the Semipalatinsk site appeared to dovetail
with data from other sources, and a number of specific large structural elements
were correctly described. The results contained noise along with the signal, but
were nonetheless clearly differentiated from the chance results that were
generated by control subjects in comparison experiments carried out by the
COTR."
For discussion of the ambiance and personal factors involved in
carrying out this experiment, along with further detail generated as Price (see
Figure 6) "roamed" the facility, including detailed comparison of Price's
RV-generated information with later-determined "ground-truth reality," see the
accompanying article by Russell Targ in the Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 10, No.
1. Click
here to read the abstract.
Figure 6 - Left to right: Christopher Green, Pat
Price, and Hal Puthoff.
Picture taken following a successful experiment
involving glider-ground RV.
Additional experiments having implications for intelligence concerns were
carried out, such as the remote viewing of cipher-machine type apparatus, and
the RV-sorting of sealed envelopes to differentiate those that contained letters
with secret writing from those that did not. To discuss these here in detail
would take us too far afield, but the interested reader can follow up by
referring to the now-declassified project documents [2].
The above discussion brings us up to the end of 1975. As a result of the
material being generated by both SRI and CIA remote viewers, interest in the
program in government circles, especially within the intelligence community,
intensified considerably and led to an ever-increasing briefing schedule. This
in turn led to an ever-increasing number of clients, contracts and tasking, and
therefore expansion of the program to a multi-client base, and eventually to an
integrated joint-services program under single-agency (DIA)6
leadership. To meet the demand for the increased level of effort we first
increased our professional staff by inviting Ed May to join the program in 1976,
then screened and added to the program a cadre of remote viewers as consultants,
and let subcontracts to increase our scope of activity.
As the program
expanded, in only a very few cases could the clients' identities and program
tasking be revealed. Examples include a NASA-funded study negotiated early in
the program by Russ Targ to determine whether the internal state of an
electronic random-number-generator could be detected by RV processes [16], and a
study funded by the Naval Electronics Systems Command to determine whether
attempted remote viewing of distant light flashes would induce correlated
changes in the viewer's brainwave (EEG) production [17]. For essentially all
other projects during my 14-yr. tenure at SRI, however, the identity of the
clients and most of the tasking were classified and remain so today. (The
exception was the occasional privately-funded study.) We are told, however, that
further declassification and release of much of this material is almost certain
to occur.
What can be said, then, about further development of the
program in the two decades following 1975?7
In broad terms it can be said that much of the SRI effort was directed not so
much toward developing an operational U.S. capability, but rather toward
assessing the threat potential of its use against the U.S. by others. The words
threat assessment were often used to describe the program's purpose during its
development, especially during the early years. As a result much of the
remote-viewing activity was carried out under conditions where ground-truth
reality was a priori known or could be determined, such as the description of
U.S. facilities and technological developments, the timing of rocket test
firings and underground nuclear tests, and the location of individuals and
mobile units. And, of course, we were responsive to requests to provide
assistance during such events as the loss of an airplane or the taking of
hostages, relying on the talents of an increasing cadre of
remote-viewer/consultants, some well-known in the field such as Keith Harary,
and many who have not surfaced publicly until recently, such as Joe
McMoneagle.
One might ask whether in this program RV-generated
information was ever of sufficient significance as to influence decisions at a
policy level. This is of course impossible to determine unless policymakers were
to come forward with a statement in the affirmative. One example of a possible
candidate is a study we performed at SRI during the Carter-administration
debates concerning proposed deployment of the mobile MX missile system. In that
scenario missiles were to be randomly shuffled from silo to silo in a silo
field, in a form of high-tech shell game. In a computer simulation of a
twenty-silo field with randomly-assigned (hidden) missile locations, we were
able, using RV-generated data, to show rather forcefully that the application of
a sophisticated statistical averaging technique (sequential sampling) could in
principle permit an adversary to defeat the system. I briefed these results to
the appropriate offices at their request, and a written report with the
technical details was widely circulated among groups responsible for threat
analysis [18], and with some impact. What role, if any, our small contribution
played in the mix of factors behind the enormously complex decision to cancel
the program will probably never be known, and must of course a priori be
considered in all likelihood negligible. Nonetheless, this is a prototypical
example of the kind of tasking that by its nature potentially had policy
implications.
Even though the details of the broad range of experiments,
some brilliant successes, many total failures, have not yet been released, we
have nonetheless been able to publish summaries of what was learned in these
studies about the overall characteristics of remote viewing, as in Table 5 of
Reference [8]. Furthermore, over the years we were able to address certain
questions of scientific interest in a rigorous way and to publish the results in
the open literature. Examples include the apparent lack of attenuation of remote
viewing due to seawater shielding (submersible experiments) [8], the
amplification of RV performance by use of error-correcting coding techniques
[19,20], and the utility of a technique we call associational remote viewing
(ARV) to generate useful predictive information [21].8
As
a sociological aside, we note that the overall efficacy of remote viewing in a
program like this was not just a scientific issue. For example, when the
Semipalatinsk data described earlier was forwarded for analysis, one group
declined to get involved because the whole concept was unscientific nonsense,
while a second group declined because, even though it might be real, it was
possibly demonic; a third group had to be found. And, as in the case of public
debate about such phenomena, the program's image was on occasion as likely to be
damaged by an overenthusiastic supporter as by a detractor. Personalities,
politics and personal biases were always factors to be dealt with.
With regard to admission by the government of its use of remote viewers under
operational conditions, officials have on occasion been relatively forthcoming.
President Carter, in a speech to college students in Atlanta in September 1995,
is quoted by Reuters as saying that during his administration a plane went down
in Zaire, and a meticulous sweep of the African terrain by American spy
satellites failed to locate any sign of the wreckage. It was then "without my
knowledge" that the head of the CIA (Adm. Stansfield Turner) turned to a woman
reputed to have psychic powers. As told by Carter, "she gave some latitude and
longitude figures. We focused our satellite cameras on that point and the plane
was there." Independently, Turner himself also has admitted the Agency's use of
a remote viewer (in this case, Pat Price).9
And recently, in a segment taped for the British television series Equinox [22],
Maj. Gen. Ed Thompson, Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence, U.S. Army
(1977-1981), volunteered "I had one or more briefings by SRI and was
impressed.... The decision I made was to set up a small, in-house, low-cost
effort in remote viewing...."
Finally, a recent unclassified report [23]
prepared for the CIA by the American Institutes for Research (AIR), concerning a
remote viewing effort carried out under a DIA program called Star Gate
(discussed in detail elsewhere in this volume), cites the roles of the CIA and
DIA in the history of the program, including acknowledgment that a cadre of
full-time government employees used remote viewing techniques to respond to
tasking from operational military organizations.10
As
information concerning the various programs spawned by intelligence-community
interest is released, and the dialog concerning their scientific and social
significance is joined, the results are certain to be hotly debated. Bearing
witness to this fact are the companion articles in this volume by Ed May,
Director of the SRI and SAIC programs since 1985, and by Jessica Utts and Ray
Hyman, consultants on the AIR evaluation cited above. These articles address in
part the AIR study. That study, limited in scope to a small fragment of the
overall program effort, resulted in a conclusion that although laboratory
research showed statistically significant results, use of remote viewing in
intelligence gathering was not warranted.
Regardless of one's a priori
position, however, an unimpassioned observer cannot help but attest to the
following fact. Despite the ambiguities inherent in the type of exploration
covered in these programs, the integrated results appear to provide unequivocal
evidence of a human capacity to access events remote in space and time, however
falteringly, by some cognitive process not yet understood. My years of
involvement as a research manager in these programs have left me with the
conviction that this fact must be taken into account in any attempt to develop
an unbiased picture of the structure of reality.
[1] "CIA Statement on 'Remote Viewing'," CIA Public Affairs Office, 6
September 1995.
[2] Harold E. Puthoff and Russell Targ, "Perceptual
Augmentation Techniques," SRI Progress Report No. 3 (31 Oct. 1974) and Final
Report (1 Dec. 1975) to the CIA, covering the period January 1974 through
February 1975, the second year of the program. This effort was funded at the
level of $149,555.
[3] H. E. Puthoff, "Toward a Quantum Theory of Life
Process," unpubl. proposal, Stanford Research Institute (1972).
[4] H. E.
Puthoff and R. Targ, "Physics, Entropy and Psychokinesis," in Proc. Conf.
Quantum Physics and Parapsychology (Geneva, Switzerland); (New York:
Parapsychology Foundation, 1975).
[5] Documented in "Paraphysics R&D
- Warsaw Pact (U)," DST-1810S-202-78, Defense Intelligence Agency (30 March
1978).
[6] R. Targ and H. E. Puthoff, "Information Transfer under
Conditions of Sensory Shielding," Nature 252, 602 (1974).
[7] H. E.
Puthoff and R. Targ, "A Perceptual Channel for Information Transfer over
Kilometer Distances: Historical Perspective and Recent Research," Proc. IEEE 64,
329 (1976).
[8] H. E. Puthoff, R. Targ and E. C. May, "Experimental Psi
Research: Implications for Physics," in The Role of Consciousness in the
Physical World, edited by R. G. Jahn (AAAS Selected Symposium 57, Westview
Press, Boulder, 1981).
[9] R. Targ and H. E. Puthoff, Mind Reach
(Delacorte Press, New York, 1977).
[10] J. P. Bisaha and B. J. Dunne,
"Multiple Subject and Long-Distance Precognitive Remote Viewing of Geographical
Locations," in Mind at Large, edited by C. T. Tart, H. E. Puthoff and R. Targ
(Praeger, New York, 1979), p. 107.
[11] B. J. Dunne and J. P. Bisaha,
"Precognitive Remote Viewing in the Chicago Area: a Replication of the Stanford
Experiment," J. Parapsychology 43, 17 (1979).
[12] R. G. Jahn, "The
Persistent Paradox of Psychic Phenomena: An Engineering Perspective," Proc. IEEE
70, 136 (1982).
[13] R. G. Jahn and B. J. Dunne, "On the Quantum
Mechanics of Consciousness with Application to Anomalous Phenomena," Found.
Phys. 16, 721 (1986).
[14] R. G. Jahn and B. J. Dunne, Margins of Reality
(Harcourt, Brace and Jovanovich, New York, 1987).
[15] J. Bamford, The
Puzzle Palace (Penguin Books, New York, 1983) pp. 218-222.
[16] R. Targ,
P. Cole and H. E. Puthoff, "Techniques to Enhance Man/Machine Communication,"
Stanford Research Institute Final Report on NASA Project NAS7-100 (August
1974).
[17] R. Targ, E. C. May, H. E. Puthoff, D. Galin and R. Ornstein,
"Sensing of Remote EM Sources (Physiological Correlates)," SRI Intern'l Final
Report on Naval Electronics Systems Command Project N00039-76-C-0077, covering
the period November 1975 - to October 1976 (April 1978).
[18] H. E.
Puthoff, "Feasibility Study on the Vulnerability of the MPS System to RV
Detection Techniques," SRI Internal Report, 15 April 1979; revised 2 May
1979.
[19] H. E. Puthoff, "Calculator-Assisted Psi Amplification,"
Research in Parapsychology 1984, edited by Rhea White and J. Solfvin (Scarecrow
Press, Metuchen, NJ, 1985), p. 48.
[20] H. E. Puthoff,
"Calculator-Assisted Psi Amplification II: Use of the Sequential-Sampling
Technique as a Variable-Length Majority-Vote Code," Research in Parapsychology
1985, edited by D. Weiner and D. Radin (Scarecrow Press, Metuchen, NJ, 1986), p.
73.
[21] H. E. Puthoff, "ARV (Associational Remote Viewing)
Applications," Research in Parapsychology 1984, edited by Rhea White and J.
Solfvin (Scarecrow Press, Metuchen, NJ, 1985), p. 121.
[22] "The Real
X-Files," Independent Channel 4, England (shown 27 August 1995); to be shown in
the U.S. on the Discovery Channel.
[23] M. D. Mumford, A. M. Rose and D.
Goslin, "An Evaluation of Remote Viewing: Research and Applications," American
Institutes for Research (September 29, 1995).
Copyright 1996 by H.E. Puthoff.
Permission to redistribute granted, but only in complete and unaltered form.
Following are abstracts from the Journal of Scientific Exploration,
Volume 10, Number 1, in which this article first appeared... To read articles
from past issues, and/or for subscription information, click here to visit their Website.
An Assessment of the Evidence for Psychic Functioning
by Jessica Utts
Division of Statistics, University of California, Davis,
CA 95616
Volume 10 Number 1: Page 3.
Research on psychic functioning, conducted
over a two decade period, is examined to determine whether or not the phenomenon
has been scientifically established. A secondary question is whether or not it
is useful for government purposes. The primary work examined in this report was
government sponsored research conducted at Stanford Research Institute, later
known as SRI International, and at Science Applications International
Corporation, known as SAIC. Using the standards applied to any other area of
science, it is concluded that psychic functioning has been well established. The
statistical results of the studies examined are far beyond what is expected by
chance. Arguments that these results could be due to methodological flaws in the
experiments are soundly refuted. Effects of similar magnitude to those found in
government-sponsored research at SRI and SAIC have been replicated at a number
of laboratories across the world. Such consistency cannot be readily explained
by claims of flaws or fraud. The magnitude of psychic functioning exhibited
appears to be in the range between what social scientists call a small and
medium effect. That means that it is reliable enough to be replicated in
properly conducted experiments, with sufficient trials to achieve the long-run
statistical results needed for replicability. A number of other patterns have
been found, suggestive of how to conduct more productive experiments and applied
psychic functioning. For instance, it doesn't appear that a sender is needed.
Precognition, in which the answer is known to no one until a future time,
appears to work quite well. Recent experiments suggest that if there is a
psychic sense then it works much like our other five senses, by detecting
change. Given that physicists are currently grappling with an understanding of
time, it may be that a psychic sense exists that scans the future for major
change, much as our eyes scan the environment for visual change or our ears
allow us to respond to sudden changes in sound. It is recommended that future
experiments focus on understanding how this phenomenon works, and on how to make
it as useful as possible. There is little benefit to continuing experiments
designed to offer proof, since there is little more to be offered to anyone who
does not accept the current collection of data.
Evaluation of a Program on Anomalous Mental Phenomena
by Ray Hyman
1227 University of Oregon, Department of Psychology,
Eugene, OR 97403
Volume 10 Number 1: Page 31.
Jessica Utts and I were commissioned to
evaluate the research on remote viewing and related phenomena which was carried
out at Stanford Research Institute (SRI) and Scientific Applications
International Corporation (SAIC) during the years from 1973 through 1994. We
focussed on the ten most recent experiments which were conducted at SAIC from
1992 through 1994. These were not only the most recent but also the most
methodologically sound. We evaluated these experiments in the context of
contemporary parapsychological research. Professor Utts concluded that the SAIC
results, taken in conjunction with other parapsychological research, proved the
existence of ESP, especially precognition. My report argues that Professor Utts'
conclusion is premature, to say the least. The reports of the SAIC experiments
have become accessible for public scrutiny too recently for adequate evaluation.
Moreover, their findings have yet to be independently replicated. My report also
argues that the apparent consistencies between the SAIC results and those of
other parapsychological experiments may be illusory. Many important
inconsistencies are emphasized. Even if the observed effects can be
independently replicated, much more theoretical and empirical investigation
would be needed before one could legitimately claim the existence of paranormal
functioning. Note: This article is followed by a response from Jessica Utts.
Remote Viewing at Stanford Research Institute in the
1970s: A Memoir
by Russell Targ
Bay
Research Institute, 1010 Harriet Street, Palo Alto, CA 94301
Volume 10 Number 1: Page 77.
Hundreds of remote viewing experiments were
carried out at Stanford Research Institute (SRI) from 1972 to 1986. The purpose
of some of these trials was to elucidate the physical and psychological
properties of psi abilities, while others were conducted to provide information
for our CIA sponsor about current events in far off places. We learned that the
accuracy and reliability of remote viewing was not in any way affected by
distance, size, or electromagnetic shielding, and we discovered that the more
exciting or demanding the task, the more likely we were to be successful. Above
all, we became utterly convinced of the reality of psi abilities. This article
focuses on two outstanding examples: One is an exceptional, map-like drawing of
a Palo Alto swimming pool complex, and the other is an architecturally accurate
drawing of a gantry crane located at a Soviet weapons laboratory, and verified
by satellite photography. The percipient for both of these experiments was Pat
Price, a retired police commissioner who was one of the most outstanding remote
viewers to walk through the doors of SRI.
The American Institutes for Research Review of the
Department of Defense's STAR GATE Program: A
Commentary
by Edwin C. May
Cognitive Sciences Laboratory, 330 Cowper
Street, Suite 200, Palo Alto, CA 94301
Volume 10 Number 1: Page 89.
As a result of a Congressionally Directed
Activity, the Central Intelligence Agency conducted an evaluation of a 24-year,
government-sponsored program to investigate ESP and its potential use within the
Intelligence Community. The American Institutes for Research was contracted to
conduct the review of both research and operations. Their 29 September 1995
final report was released to the public 28 November 1995. As a result of AIR's
assessment, the CIA concluded that a statistically significant effect had been
demonstrated in the laboratory, but that there was no case in which ESP had
provided data that had ever been used to guide intelligence operations. This
paper is a critical review of AIR's methodology and conclusions. It will be
shown that there is compelling evidence that the CIA set the outcome with regard
to intelligence usage before the evaluation had begun. This was accomplished by
limiting the research and operations data sets to exclude positive findings, by
purposefully not interviewing historically significant participants, by ignoring
previous DOD extensive program reviews, and by using the discredited National
Research Council's investigation of parapsychology as the starting point for
their review. While there may have been political and administrative
justification for the CIA not to accept the government's in-house program for
the operational use of anomalous cognition, this appeared to drive the outcome
of the evaluation. As a result, they have come to the wrong conclusion with
regard to the use of anomalous cognition in intelligence operations and
significantly underestimated the robustness of the basic phenomenon.
FieldREG Anomalies in Group Situations
by R.
D. Nelson, G. J. Bradish, Y. H. Dobyns, B. J. Dunne, and R. G. Jahn
Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research, School of Engineering/Applied
Science,
Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544
Volume 10 Number 1: Page 111.
Portable random event generators with
software to record and index continuous sequences of binary data in field
situations are found to produce anomalous outputs when deployed in various group
environments. These "FieldREG" systems have been operated under formal protocols
in ten separate venues, all of which subdivide naturally into temporal segments,
such as sessions, presentations, or days. The most extreme data segments from
each of the ten applications, after appropriate correction for multiple
sampling, compound to a collective probability against chance expectation of 2 X
10^-4. Interpretation remains speculative at this point, but logbook notes and
anecdotal reports from participants suggest that high degrees of attention,
intellectual cohesiveness, shared emotion, or other coherent qualities of the
groups tend to correlate with the statistically unusual deviations from
theoretical expectation in the FieldREG sequences. If sustained over more
extensive experiments, such effects could add credence to the concept of a
consciousness "field" as an agency for creating order in random physical
processes.
Anomalous Organization of Random Events by Group
Consciousness:
Two Exploratory Experiments
by Dean I. Radin, Jannine
M. Rebman, and Maikwe P. Cross
Consciousness Research Laboratory, Harry Reid
Center,
University of Nevada, Las Vegas, NV 89154-4009
Volume 10 Number 1: Page 143.
Two experiments explored the hypothesis
that when a group of people focus their attention on a common object of
interest, order will arise in the environment. An electronic random number
generator was used to detect these changes in order. Events judged to be
interesting to the group were called periods of high coherence and were
predicted to cause corresponding moments of order in the random samples
collected during those events; uninteresting events were predicted to cause
chance levels of order in the random samples. The first experiment was conducted
during an all-day Holotropic Breathwork workshop. The predictions were
confirmed, with a significant degree of order observed in the random samples
during high group coherence periods (p = 0.002), and chance order observed
during low group coherence periods (p = 0.43). The second experiment was
conducted during the live television broadcast of the 67th Annual Academy
Awards. Two random binary generators, located 12 miles apart, were used to
independently measure order. The predictions were confirmed for about half of
the broadcast period, but the terminal cumulative probabilities were not
significant. A post-hoc analysis showed that the strength of the correlation
between the output of the two random generators was significantly related (r =
0.94) to the decline in the television viewing audience.
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