Stanford Research Institute (now
SRI International
SRI International (SRI) is an American nonprofit scientific research institute and organization headquartered in Menlo Park, California. The trustees of Stanford University established SRI in 1946 as a center of innovation to support economic ...
) in
Menlo Park, California
Menlo Park is a city at the eastern edge of San Mateo County within the San Francisco Bay Area of California in the United States. It is bordered by San Francisco Bay on the north and east; East Palo Alto, Palo Alto, and Stanford to the south ...
carried out research on various phenomena characterized by the term
parapsychology
Parapsychology is the study of alleged psychic phenomena (extrasensory perception, telepathy, precognition, clairvoyance, psychokinesis (also called telekinesis), and psychometry) and other paranormal claims, for example, those related to near ...
from 1972 until 1991. Early studies indicating that phenomena such as
remote viewing
Remote viewing (RV) is the practice of seeking impressions about a distant or unseen subject, purportedly sensing with the mind. Typically a remote viewer is expected to give information about an object, event, person or location that is hidden ...
and
psychokinesis
Psychokinesis (from grc, ψυχή, , soul and grc, κίνησις, , movement, label=ㅤ), or telekinesis (from grc, τηλε, , far off and grc, κίνησις, , movement, label=ㅤ), is a hypothetical psychic ability allowing a person ...
could be scientifically studied were published in such mainstream journals as ''
Proceedings of the IEEE'' and ''
Nature
Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. Although humans are ...
''. This attracted the sponsorship of such groups as
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil List of government space agencies, space program ...
(by way of
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is a federally funded research and development center and NASA field center in the City of La Cañada Flintridge, California, United States.
Founded in the 1930s by Caltech researchers, JPL is owned by NASA an ...
) and
The Central Intelligence Agency.
In 1991, the research program was transferred to
SAIC as part of the
Stargate Project
Stargate Project was a secret U.S. Army unit established in 1978 at Fort Meade, Maryland, by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and SRI International (a California contractor) to investigate the potential for psychic phenomena in military and ...
. While the SRI projects were
classified at the time, the research materials were subsequently made public in 1995, and a summary of the early history of SRI and the origins of Stargate was published the following year. Scientists and
skeptical
Skepticism, also spelled scepticism, is a questioning attitude or doubt toward knowledge claims that are seen as mere belief or dogma. For example, if a person is skeptical about claims made by their government about an ongoing war then the p ...
writers would later find serious flaws in the methodology used at SRI, leaving the work largely discredited.
Areas of research
Harold Puthoff
Harold E. Puthoff (born June 20, 1936) is an American parapsychologist and electrical engineer. In the 2010s, he co-founded the company To the Stars with Tom DeLonge.
Biography
Puthoff was born in Chicago, Illinois. He receive his BA and MSc i ...
and
Russell Targ
Russell Targ (born April 11, 1934) is an American physicist, parapsychologist and author who is best known for his work on remote viewing.
Targ joined Stanford Research Institute (SRI) in 1972 where he and Harold E. Puthoff coined the term "rem ...
were the most widely known of the researchers involved with SRI. Originally known for their work with lasers, their work with
parapsychology
Parapsychology is the study of alleged psychic phenomena (extrasensory perception, telepathy, precognition, clairvoyance, psychokinesis (also called telekinesis), and psychometry) and other paranormal claims, for example, those related to near ...
centered around the phenomena of
remote viewing
Remote viewing (RV) is the practice of seeking impressions about a distant or unseen subject, purportedly sensing with the mind. Typically a remote viewer is expected to give information about an object, event, person or location that is hidden ...
and
psychokinesis
Psychokinesis (from grc, ψυχή, , soul and grc, κίνησις, , movement, label=ㅤ), or telekinesis (from grc, τηλε, , far off and grc, κίνησις, , movement, label=ㅤ), is a hypothetical psychic ability allowing a person ...
.
Remote viewing
Early experiments in remote viewing involved one subject in the laboratory, the "percipient", attempting to draw or describe a scene, known as the "target", observed by a "sender" from a remote location outside of the laboratory. Protocol stipulated that an independent panel of judges was to determine how close each percipient's description or drawing was to the actual target. Reports that the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...
had successfully used technological devices to augment such psychic communication
moved the
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...
in the
USA
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...
to attempt to keep pace with their
Cold War rivals.
Puthoff and Targ went on to explore the effect devices such as the
Faraday cage and
magnetometer would have on the accuracy of the images received by their percipients.
Psychokinesis
Support for the study of
psychokinesis
Psychokinesis (from grc, ψυχή, , soul and grc, κίνησις, , movement, label=ㅤ), or telekinesis (from grc, τηλε, , far off and grc, κίνησις, , movement, label=ㅤ), is a hypothetical psychic ability allowing a person ...
came from
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil List of government space agencies, space program ...
on a contract administered by
JPL in the early 1970s. Protocol called for an automated system that would display images of random objects to an individual. Prior to the image being displayed, the subject would predict what object would appear and then attempt to bias the outcome in favor of the chosen object. However, these protocols were not consistently observed and support was discontinued. Other experiments with psychokinesis included attempts by
Ingo Swann to psychically influence the readouts of a magnetometer.
Celebrity test subjects
Ingo Swann
New York artist
Ingo Swann met with Puthoff and Targ in 1972 and participated in their remote viewing experiments. In June of that same year, Puthoff and Targ took Swann to a large magnetometer to see what changes Swann could make in the readouts of the machine. While the readouts did show some fluctuations, there was no evidence that this was due to any efforts on the part of Swann. Nevertheless, Puthoff and Targ announced to a gathering in
Geneva
, neighboring_municipalities= Carouge, Chêne-Bougeries, Cologny, Lancy, Grand-Saconnex, Pregny-Chambésy, Vernier, Veyrier
, website = https://www.geneve.ch/
Geneva ( ; french: Genève ) frp, Genèva ; german: link=no, Genf ; it, Ginevr ...
,
Switzerland that they had indeed definitively established psychokinesis as a real phenomenon.
The builder of the machine, who had been present during Swann's visit, would later report that while there had been fluctuations these were in no way unexpected or outside the normal parameters.
Uri Geller
Uri Geller
Uri Geller ( ; he, אורי גלר; born 20 December 1946) is an Israeli-British illusionist, magician, television personality, and self-proclaimed psychic. He is known for his trademark television performances of spoon bending and other i ...
began work with SRI in the early 1970s and was the primary focus of Puthoff and Targ's 1974 article in the journal ''Nature''. This article described numerous remote viewing trials undertaken by Geller and the extraordinary results they had gotten during the six weeks he spent at the laboratories.
Geller quickly gained notoriety with his apparent gifts for remote viewing and psychokinesis—the latter usually in the form of the bending or otherwise altering the form of metal objects.
This attracted other scientists to SRI to see if his abilities lived up to the claims. One of these researchers was skeptic
Ray Hyman
Ray Hyman (born June 23, 1928) is a Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Oregon in Eugene, Oregon, and a noted critic of parapsychology. Hyman, along with James Randi, Martin Gardner and Paul Kurtz, is one of the founders of the ...
, who has written extensively on both Geller and the field of parapsychological research. He summed up his observations in an address given at
Simon Fraser University
Simon Fraser University (SFU) is a public research university in British Columbia, Canada, with three campuses, all in Greater Vancouver: Burnaby (main campus), Surrey, and Vancouver. The main Burnaby campus on Burnaby Mountain, located ...
in 2007. "It turned out that no one, none of the scientists there had ever witnessed Geller bending anything without getting his hands on it first. And typically, from what I could figure out, he not only had his hands on it but he was able to disappear into the bathroom for a while, . . . They simply took his word for it." It seemed that no one, excepting Puthoff and Targ, had actually witnessed Geller successfully exhibiting his abilities under controlled conditions. Geller's reputation rested largely on hearsay rather than direct observation.
Geller would go on to worldwide fame for performing acts such as
spoon bending
Spoon bending is the deformation of objects, especially metal cutlery, purportedly by paranormal means. It is a common theme for magic tricks, which use a variety of methods to produce the effect. Performers commonly use misdirection to draw t ...
, and
aportations for both television and live audiences, at times offering Puthoff and Targ's evaluation as substantiation of his abilities.
Publication in ''Nature''
Published in 1974 in the journal
''Nature'', the article "Information transmission under conditions of sensory shielding"
had been circulating among scientific journals since 1972. Although it had been rejected multiple times by other journals, the editor of Nature accepted the paper simply as an example of the type of work currently being done in the field of parapsychology. Far from endorsing the conclusions reached by the SRI researchers, the editor stated plainly in a lengthy opinion piece that ran at the beginning of the publishing issue: "Publishing in a scientific journal is not a process of receiving a seal of approval from the establishment".
The editor then enumerated the objections against publication voiced by the referees. These objections included references to the lack of substantive evidence, problematic data collection, weak statistical calculations and relationships, and many others.
The paper was problematic even among Puthoff and Targ's colleagues at SRI. Two other scientists also worked on tests that involved Geller and other remote viewing subjects. Charles Rebert, an expert on
electroencephalography (EEG), and Leon Otis, a psychologist, held much more strictly to rigid scientific methods during the tests with which they were associated. Rebert and Otis went so far as to document their objections to what they termed as "fraudulent and slipshod" work and to demand that any experiments they had been involved in be stricken from the paper before publication.
Despite the editorial disclaimers published in the same issue as Puthoff and Targ's paper, their most famous test subject,
Uri Geller
Uri Geller ( ; he, אורי גלר; born 20 December 1946) is an Israeli-British illusionist, magician, television personality, and self-proclaimed psychic. He is known for his trademark television performances of spoon bending and other i ...
, continues to tout the publication of these experiments in the respected journal as evidence of his claims of psychic powers.
Replication studies
Various attempts to replicate the remote viewing findings were carried out from the mid-1970s until the 1990s. Several of these follow-up studies, which involved viewing in group settings, reported some limited success. They included the use of face-to-face groups,
and remotely linked groups using computer conferencing.
One well-documented attempt at replication of the remote viewing experiments was conducted by Ray Hyman and James McClenon in 1980. Hyman and McClenon were not only interested in remote viewing as a phenomenon in itself, but also in how the methods used by the researchers could affect the outcomes of the trials. This study found no evidence for the efficacy of remote viewing. It did, however, highlight methods and practices, both incidental and by design, that had the potential to produce false positives.
The various debates in the mainstream scientific literature prompted the editors of ''
Proceedings of the IEEE'' to invite
Robert Jahn, then Dean of the School of Engineering at
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...
, to write a comprehensive review of psychic phenomena from an engineering perspective. His paper, published in February 1982, includes numerous references to remote viewing replication studies at the time. Subsequently, flaws and mistakes in Jahn's reasoning were exposed by Ray Hyman in a critical appraisal published several years later in the same journal.
[Hyman R., "Parapsychological Research: A Tutorial Review and Critical Appraisal", Proceedings of the IEEE, Vol 74 No 6, pp. 823–849, June 1986.]
Criticism: methodological flaws
The descriptions of a large number of psychic studies and their results were published in March 1976, in the journal ''Proceedings of the IEEE''.
Together with the earlier papers, this provoked intense scrutiny in the mainstream scientific literature. Numerous problems in the overall design of the remote viewing studies were identified, with problems noted in all three of the remote viewing steps (target selection, target viewing, and results judging). A particular problem was the failure to follow the standard procedures that are used in
experimental psychology.
Several external researchers expressed concerns about the reliability of the judging process. Independent examination of some of the sketches and transcripts from the viewing process revealed flaws in the original procedures and analyses. In particular, the presence of sensory cues being available to the judges was noted. A lengthy exchange ensued, with the external researchers finally concluding that the failure of Puthoff and Targ to address their concerns meant that the claim of remote viewing "can no longer be regarded as falling within the scientific domain". Procedural problems and researcher conflicts of interest in the psychokinesis experiments were noted by science writer
Martin Gardner
Martin Gardner (October 21, 1914May 22, 2010) was an American popular mathematics and popular science writer with interests also encompassing scientific skepticism, micromagic, philosophy, religion, and literatureespecially the writings of Lew ...
in a detailed analysis of the NASA final report.
Also, sloppy procedures in the conduct of the EEG study were reported by a visiting observer during another series of exchanges in the scientific literature.
Peepholes through walls, overly helpful laboratory assistants, and incautious conversations between researchers were common occurrences in Puthoff and Targ's laboratories. Randi also contacted the builder of the magnetometer used in the Swann experiments and established that the phenomena claimed as psychokinetic were no more than the normal fluctuations of the machine.
Ray Hyman
Ray Hyman (born June 23, 1928) is a Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Oregon in Eugene, Oregon, and a noted critic of parapsychology. Hyman, along with James Randi, Martin Gardner and Paul Kurtz, is one of the founders of the ...
and James McClenon's 1980 replication study identified many of the same problems in methodology as James Randi had, particularly in the area of researchers giving subjects in remote viewing trials verbal cues that hinted at what the target images were. Although this was a small study with only eight participants, Hyman was particularly interested in how cuing from researchers affected both the subjects' answers during the trial and their attitudes toward psychic phenomena at the end of the trial. After reviewing the literature generated by researchers at SRI and conducting his own replication study, Hyman summed up his findings as, "The bottom line here is that there is no scientifically convincing case for remote viewing."
Publication in scientific journals is often viewed by both the scientific community and by the public at large as a mark of legitimacy for researchers. Proponents of Puthoff and Targ claim 28 published papers, 15 of which showed positive results. An in-depth review of these papers showed that only 13 of the 28 total papers were published under commonly accepted standards of peer review. Of these 13, nine showed positive results. Three of these nine, however, were "retrospective experiments"; meaning that they were "experiments not specifically planned in advance, but apparently reconstructed from separate trials". These retrospective experiments appeared to suffer from the
sharpshooter fallacy—the creation of the target after the answers have been given. Of the remaining six studies, only two were found to show actual
statistical significance due to the use of inappropriate statistical analyses. Those remaining two studies have yet to be fully replicated.
References
{{Parapsychology
Parapsychology
SRI International