Remote viewing
Encyclopedia
Remote viewing is the practice of seeking impressions about a distant or unseen target using paranormal means, in particular, extra-sensory perception
(ESP) or "sensing with mind". Scientific studies have been conducted, and although some earlier, less sophisticated experiments produced positive results, none of the newer experiments concluded with such results when under properly controlled conditions
. The scientific community rejects remote viewing due to the absence of an evidence base, the lack of a theory which would explain remote viewing, and the lack of experimental techniques which can provide reliably positive results.* Obtained from listing of research papers on Wiseman's website It is also considered a pseudoscience
.
Typically a remote viewer is expected to give information about an object that is hidden from physical view and separated at some distance. The term was introduced by parapsychologists Russell Targ
and Harold Puthoff in 1974.
Remote viewing was popularized in the 1990s, following the declassification of documents related to the Stargate Project
, a $20 million research program sponsored by the U.S. Federal Government to determine any potential military application of psychic phenomena. Although one Stargate viewer had been awarded in 1984 a legion of merit
for determining "150 essential elements of information (...) unavailable from any other source", the program was eventually terminated in 1995, citing a lack of documented evidence that the program had any value to the intelligence community.
, Alfred Russel Wallace
, Rufus Osgood Mason
and William Crookes
. Their work predominantly involved carrying out focused experimental tests on specific individuals who were thought to be psychically gifted. Reports of apparently successful tests were met with much skepticism from the scientific community.
Later, in the 1930s, J. B. Rhine expanded the study of paranormal performance into larger populations, by using standard experimental protocols with unselected human subjects. But, as with the earlier studies, Rhine was reluctant to publicize this work too early, because of the fear of criticism from mainstream scientists.
This continuing skepticism, with its consequences for peer review and research funding, ensured that paranormal studies remained a fringe area of scientific exploration. However, by the 1960s, the countercultural attitudes of the time muted some of the prior hostility. The emergence of New Age
thinking and the popularity of the human potential movement
provoked a "mini-renaissance" that renewed public interest in consciousness studies and psychic phenomena, and helped to make financial support more available for research into such topics.
In the early 1970s, Harold E. Puthoff
and Russell Targ
joined the Electronics and Bioengineering Laboratory at Stanford Research Institute
(SRI). In addition to their mainstream scientific research work on quantum mechanics
and laser physics
, they initiated several studies of the paranormal. These were supported with funding from the Parapsychology Foundation and the newly-formed Institute of Noetic Sciences.
One of the early experiments, lauded by proponents as having improved the methodology of remote viewing testing and as raising future experimental standards, was criticized as leaking information to the participants by inadvertently leaving clues.* Obtained from listing of research papers on Wiseman's website Some later experiments had negative results when these clues were eliminated.
research program. (Schnabel 1997)
In 1972, Puthoff tested remote viewer Ingo Swann
at SRI, and the experiment led to a visit from two employees of the CIA's Directorate of Science and Technology. The result was a $50,000 CIA-sponsored project. (Schnabel 1997, Puthoff 1996, Kress 1977/1999, Smith 2005) As research continued, the SRI team published papers in Nature, in Proceedings of the IEEE (Puthoff & Targ, 1976), and in the proceedings of a symposium on consciousness for the American Association for the Advancement of Science
(Puthoff, et al., 1981).
The initial CIA-funded project was later renewed and expanded. A number of CIA officials, including John N. McMahon
(then the head of the Office of Technical Service and later the Agency's deputy director), became strong supporters of the program.
In the mid 1970s sponsorship by the CIA was terminated and picked up by the Air Force. In 1979, the Army's Intelligence and Security Command, which had been providing some taskings to the SRI investigators, was ordered to develop its own program by the Army's chief intelligence officer, General Ed Thompson. CIA operations officers, working from McMahon's office and other offices, also continued to provide taskings to SRI's subjects. (Schnabel 1997, Smith 2005, Atwater 2001)
Under the banner "Stargate project
", SRI managed a number of "natural" psychics. The most famous results from these years were the description of "a big crane" at a Soviet nuclear research facility by Pat Price's (Kress 1977/1999, Targ 1996) and Joseph McMoneagle
, a description of a new class of Soviet strategic submarine by a team of three viewers including McMoneagle,(Smith 2005, McMoneagle 2002) and Rosemary Smith's location of a downed Soviet bomber in Africa (which former President Carter later referred to in speeches). By the early 1980s numerous offices throughout the intelligence community were providing taskings to SRI's psychics. (Schnabel 1997, Smith 2005) In 1984 viewer McMoneagle was awarded a legion of merit
for determining "150 essential elements of information...producing crucial and vital
intelligence unavailable from any other source".
In 1995, the CIA hired the American Institutes for Research (AIR) to perform a retrospective evaluation of the results generated by the Stargate project. Reviewers included Ray Hyman
and Jessica Utts
. Utts maintained that there had been a statistically significant positive effect, with some subjects scoring 5%-15% above chance. Hyman argued that Utts' conclusion that ESP had been proven to exist, "is premature, to say the least." Hyman said the findings had yet to be replicated independently, and that more investigation would be necessary to "legitimately claim the existence of paranormal functioning." Based upon both of their studies, which recommended a higher level of critical research and tighter controls, the CIA terminated the 20 million dollar project in 1995. Time magazine stated in 1995 three full-time psychics were still working on a $500,000-a-year budget out of Fort Meade, Maryland, which would soon be shut down.
The AIR report concluded that there was insufficient evidence of the utility of the intelligence data produced. David Goslin, of the American Institute for Research said, "There's no documented evidence it had any value to the intelligence community."
and H field
around each viewer to see if the cerebral activity of successful viewings caused higher-than-usual fields to be emitted from the brain. However, the experimenters did not find any evidence that the viewers had accessed the targets in the data collection phase, the project was abandoned, and the data was never analyzed since no RV activity had happened. Some "narrow-band" E-fields were detected during the viewings, but they were attributed to external causes. The experiment was disclosed in 2007 after a Freedom of Information request
.
conducted several hundred trials to see if they could replicate the SAIC
and SRI experiments. They created an analytical judgment methodology to replace the human judging process that was criticized in past experiments, and they released a report in 1996. They felt the results of the experiments were consistent with the SRI experiments.
In 2007 the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Lab laboratory was closed.
in experiments conducted in the 1970s at the Stanford Research Institute, the notes given to the judges contained clues as to which order they were carried out, such as referring to yesterday's two targets, or they had the date of the session written at the top of the page. Dr. Marks concluded that these clues were the reason for the experiment's high hit rates.
Marks has also suggested that the participants of remote viewing experiments are influenced by subjective validation
, a process through which correspondences are perceived between stimuli that are in fact associated purely randomly.
Details and transcripts of the SRI remote viewing experiments themselves were found to be edited and even unattainable.
Others have said that the information from remote viewing sessions can be vague and include a lot of erroneous data. A 1995 report for the American Institute for Research contains a section of anonymous reports describing how remote viewing was tentatively used in a number of operational situations. The three reports conclude that the data was too vague to be of any use, and in the report that offers the most positive results the writer notes that the viewers "had some knowledge of the target organizations and their operations but not the background of the particular tasking at hand."
According to James Randi
, controlled tests by several other researchers, eliminating several sources of cuing and extraneous evidence present in the original tests, produced negative results. Students were also able to solve Puthoff and Targ's locations from the clues that had inadvertently been included in the transcripts.
Professor Richard Wiseman
, a psychologist at the University of Hertfordshire and a fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI) has said that he agrees remote viewing has been proven using the normal standards of science, but that the bar of evidence needs to be much higher for outlandish claims that will revolutionize the world, and thus he remains unconvinced:
Wiseman also pointed at several problems with one of the early experiments at SAIC, like information leakage. However, he indicated the importance of its process-oriented approach and of its refining of remote viewing methodology, which meant that researchers replicating their work could avoid these problems. Wiseman later insisted there were multiple opportunities for participants on that experiment to be influenced by inadvertent cues and that these cues can influence the results when they appear.
Psychologist Ray Hyman
says that, even if the results were reproduced under specified conditions, they would still not be a conclusive demonstration of the existence of psychic functioning. He blames this on the reliance on a negative outcome—the claims on ESP are based on the results of experiments not being explained by normal means. He says that the experiments lack a positive theory that guides as to what to control on them and what to ignore, and that "Parapsychologists have not come close to (having a positive theory) as yet". Ray Hyman also says that the amount and quality of the experiments on RV are way too low to convince the scientific community to "abandon its fundamental ideas about causality, time, and other principles", due to its findings still not having been replicated successfully under careful scrutiny.
Science writer Martin Gardner
, and others, describe the topic of remote viewing as pseudoscience
. Gardner says that founding researcher Harold Puthoff was an active Scientologist prior to his work at Stanford University
, and that this influenced his research at SRI. In 1970, the Church of Scientology
published a notarized letter that had been written by Puthoff while he was conducting research on remote viewing at Stanford. The letter read, in part: "Although critics viewing the system Scientology
from the outside may form the impression that Scientology is just another of many quasi-educational quasi-religious 'schemes,' it is in fact a highly sophistical and highly technological system more characteristic of modern corporate planning and applied technology." Among some of the ideas that Puthoff supported regarding remote viewing was the claim in the book Occult Chemistry
that two followers of Madame Blavatsky
, founder of theosophy
, were able to remote-view the inner structure of atoms.
Various skeptic organization
s have conducted experiments for remote viewing and other alleged paranormal abilities, with no positive results under properly controlled conditions. Some of the organizations would provide large monetary rewards to anyone who could demonstrate a supernatural power under fraud-proof and fool-proof conditions. For the largest paranormal research institution, the James Randi Educational Foundation
, out of all of the applicants who applied for the One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge, nobody has even passed the preliminary tests.
Extra-sensory perception
Extrasensory perception involves reception of information not gained through the recognized physical senses but sensed with the mind. The term was coined by Frederic Myers, and adopted by Duke University psychologist J. B. Rhine to denote psychic abilities such as telepathy, clairaudience, and...
(ESP) or "sensing with mind". Scientific studies have been conducted, and although some earlier, less sophisticated experiments produced positive results, none of the newer experiments concluded with such results when under properly controlled conditions
Scientific control
Scientific control allows for comparisons of concepts. It is a part of the scientific method. Scientific control is often used in discussion of natural experiments. For instance, during drug testing, scientists will try to control two groups to keep them as identical and normal as possible, then...
. The scientific community rejects remote viewing due to the absence of an evidence base, the lack of a theory which would explain remote viewing, and the lack of experimental techniques which can provide reliably positive results.* Obtained from listing of research papers on Wiseman's website It is also considered a pseudoscience
Pseudoscience
Pseudoscience is a claim, belief, or practice which is presented as scientific, but which does not adhere to a valid scientific method, lacks supporting evidence or plausibility, cannot be reliably tested, or otherwise lacks scientific status...
.
Typically a remote viewer is expected to give information about an object that is hidden from physical view and separated at some distance. The term was introduced by parapsychologists Russell Targ
Russell Targ
Russell Targ is an American physicist and author, an ESP researcher, and pioneer in the earliest development of the laser....
and Harold Puthoff in 1974.
Remote viewing was popularized in the 1990s, following the declassification of documents related to the Stargate Project
Stargate Project
The Stargate Project was the umbrella code name of one of several sub-projects established by the U.S. Federal Government to investigate claims of psychic phenomena with potential military and domestic applications, particularly "remote viewing": the purported ability to psychically "see" events,...
, a $20 million research program sponsored by the U.S. Federal Government to determine any potential military application of psychic phenomena. Although one Stargate viewer had been awarded in 1984 a legion of merit
Legion of Merit
The Legion of Merit is a military decoration of the United States armed forces that is awarded for exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding services and achievements...
for determining "150 essential elements of information (...) unavailable from any other source", the program was eventually terminated in 1995, citing a lack of documented evidence that the program had any value to the intelligence community.
Early background
The study of psychic phenomena by major scientists started in the mid-nineteenth century; early researchers included Michael FaradayMichael Faraday
Michael Faraday, FRS was an English chemist and physicist who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry....
, Alfred Russel Wallace
Alfred Russel Wallace
Alfred Russel Wallace, OM, FRS was a British naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist and biologist...
, Rufus Osgood Mason
Rufus Osgood Mason
Rufus Osgood Mason was a physician, surgeon, teacher, and an early researcher in parapsychology and hypnotherapy...
and William Crookes
William Crookes
Sir William Crookes, OM, FRS was a British chemist and physicist who attended the Royal College of Chemistry, London, and worked on spectroscopy...
. Their work predominantly involved carrying out focused experimental tests on specific individuals who were thought to be psychically gifted. Reports of apparently successful tests were met with much skepticism from the scientific community.
Later, in the 1930s, J. B. Rhine expanded the study of paranormal performance into larger populations, by using standard experimental protocols with unselected human subjects. But, as with the earlier studies, Rhine was reluctant to publicize this work too early, because of the fear of criticism from mainstream scientists.
This continuing skepticism, with its consequences for peer review and research funding, ensured that paranormal studies remained a fringe area of scientific exploration. However, by the 1960s, the countercultural attitudes of the time muted some of the prior hostility. The emergence of New Age
New Age
The New Age movement is a Western spiritual movement that developed in the second half of the 20th century. Its central precepts have been described as "drawing on both Eastern and Western spiritual and metaphysical traditions and then infusing them with influences from self-help and motivational...
thinking and the popularity of the human potential movement
Human Potential Movement
The Human Potential Movement arose out of the social and intellectual milieu of the 1960s and formed around the concept of cultivating extraordinary potential that its advocates believed to lie largely untapped in all people...
provoked a "mini-renaissance" that renewed public interest in consciousness studies and psychic phenomena, and helped to make financial support more available for research into such topics.
In the early 1970s, Harold E. Puthoff
Harold E. Puthoff
Harold E. Puthoff is an American physicist who, earlier in his career was involved in research on paranormal topics. In 1967, Puthoff earned a Ph.D. from Stanford University...
and Russell Targ
Russell Targ
Russell Targ is an American physicist and author, an ESP researcher, and pioneer in the earliest development of the laser....
joined the Electronics and Bioengineering Laboratory at Stanford Research Institute
SRI International
SRI International , founded as Stanford Research Institute, is one of the world's largest contract research institutes. Based in Menlo Park, California, the trustees of Stanford University established it in 1946 as a center of innovation to support economic development in the region. It was later...
(SRI). In addition to their mainstream scientific research work on quantum mechanics
Quantum mechanics
Quantum mechanics, also known as quantum physics or quantum theory, is a branch of physics providing a mathematical description of much of the dual particle-like and wave-like behavior and interactions of energy and matter. It departs from classical mechanics primarily at the atomic and subatomic...
and laser physics
Laser Physics
Laser Physics is an international scientific journal published by Nauka/Interperiodica. It is distributed through the Springer.-Topics covered:The journal specializes in laser physics, but also publishes papers about:...
, they initiated several studies of the paranormal. These were supported with funding from the Parapsychology Foundation and the newly-formed Institute of Noetic Sciences.
One of the early experiments, lauded by proponents as having improved the methodology of remote viewing testing and as raising future experimental standards, was criticized as leaking information to the participants by inadvertently leaving clues.* Obtained from listing of research papers on Wiseman's website Some later experiments had negative results when these clues were eliminated.
US government-funded research
From World War II until the 1970s the US government occasionally funded ESP research. When the US intelligence community learned that the USSR and China were conducting ESP research, it became receptive to the idea of having its own competing psiPsi (parapsychology)
Psi is a term from parapsychology derived from the Greek, ψ psi, 23rd letter of the Greek alphabet; from the Greek ψυχή psyche, "mind, soul".-Etymology:...
research program. (Schnabel 1997)
In 1972, Puthoff tested remote viewer Ingo Swann
Ingo Swann
Ingo Swann is an artist and author, best known for his work as a co-creator of the discipline of remote viewing, specifically the Stargate Project...
at SRI, and the experiment led to a visit from two employees of the CIA's Directorate of Science and Technology. The result was a $50,000 CIA-sponsored project. (Schnabel 1997, Puthoff 1996, Kress 1977/1999, Smith 2005) As research continued, the SRI team published papers in Nature, in Proceedings of the IEEE (Puthoff & Targ, 1976), and in the proceedings of a symposium on consciousness for the American Association for the Advancement of Science
American Association for the Advancement of Science
The American Association for the Advancement of Science is an international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific responsibility, and supporting scientific education and science outreach for the...
(Puthoff, et al., 1981).
The initial CIA-funded project was later renewed and expanded. A number of CIA officials, including John N. McMahon
John N. McMahon
John N. McMahon is a former senior U.S. official of the Central Intelligence Agency. He joined the CIA in 1951, and served as Deputy Director for Operations from 1978-81 and later as Deputy Director of Central Intelligence from 1982 to 1986....
(then the head of the Office of Technical Service and later the Agency's deputy director), became strong supporters of the program.
In the mid 1970s sponsorship by the CIA was terminated and picked up by the Air Force. In 1979, the Army's Intelligence and Security Command, which had been providing some taskings to the SRI investigators, was ordered to develop its own program by the Army's chief intelligence officer, General Ed Thompson. CIA operations officers, working from McMahon's office and other offices, also continued to provide taskings to SRI's subjects. (Schnabel 1997, Smith 2005, Atwater 2001)
Under the banner "Stargate project
Stargate Project
The Stargate Project was the umbrella code name of one of several sub-projects established by the U.S. Federal Government to investigate claims of psychic phenomena with potential military and domestic applications, particularly "remote viewing": the purported ability to psychically "see" events,...
", SRI managed a number of "natural" psychics. The most famous results from these years were the description of "a big crane" at a Soviet nuclear research facility by Pat Price's (Kress 1977/1999, Targ 1996) and Joseph McMoneagle
Joseph McMoneagle
Joseph McMoneagle was involved in remote viewing experiments conducted by U.S. Army Intelligence and the Stanford Research Institute. He was one of the original officers recruited for the top-secret program now known as the Stargate Project...
, a description of a new class of Soviet strategic submarine by a team of three viewers including McMoneagle,(Smith 2005, McMoneagle 2002) and Rosemary Smith's location of a downed Soviet bomber in Africa (which former President Carter later referred to in speeches). By the early 1980s numerous offices throughout the intelligence community were providing taskings to SRI's psychics. (Schnabel 1997, Smith 2005) In 1984 viewer McMoneagle was awarded a legion of merit
Legion of Merit
The Legion of Merit is a military decoration of the United States armed forces that is awarded for exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding services and achievements...
for determining "150 essential elements of information...producing crucial and vital
intelligence unavailable from any other source".
Decline and termination
In the early 1990s the Military Intelligence Board, chaired by DIA chief Soyster, appointed an Army Colonel, William Johnson, to manage the remote viewing unit and evaluate its objective usefulness. Funding dissipated in late 1994 and the program went into decline. The project was transferred out of DIA to the CIA in 1995.In 1995, the CIA hired the American Institutes for Research (AIR) to perform a retrospective evaluation of the results generated by the Stargate project. Reviewers included Ray Hyman
Ray Hyman
Ray Hyman is a Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Oregon in Eugene, Oregon, and a noted critic of parapsychology.-Career:...
and Jessica Utts
Jessica Utts
Jessica Utts is a statistics professor at the University of California, Irvine and an author of textbooks on statistics.- Statistics education :...
. Utts maintained that there had been a statistically significant positive effect, with some subjects scoring 5%-15% above chance. Hyman argued that Utts' conclusion that ESP had been proven to exist, "is premature, to say the least." Hyman said the findings had yet to be replicated independently, and that more investigation would be necessary to "legitimately claim the existence of paranormal functioning." Based upon both of their studies, which recommended a higher level of critical research and tighter controls, the CIA terminated the 20 million dollar project in 1995. Time magazine stated in 1995 three full-time psychics were still working on a $500,000-a-year budget out of Fort Meade, Maryland, which would soon be shut down.
The AIR report concluded that there was insufficient evidence of the utility of the intelligence data produced. David Goslin, of the American Institute for Research said, "There's no documented evidence it had any value to the intelligence community."
UK government research
In 2001–2002 the UK Government performed a study on 18 untrained subjects. The experimenters recorded the E fieldElectric field
In physics, an electric field surrounds electrically charged particles and time-varying magnetic fields. The electric field depicts the force exerted on other electrically charged objects by the electrically charged particle the field is surrounding...
and H field
Magnetic field
A magnetic field is a mathematical description of the magnetic influence of electric currents and magnetic materials. The magnetic field at any given point is specified by both a direction and a magnitude ; as such it is a vector field.Technically, a magnetic field is a pseudo vector;...
around each viewer to see if the cerebral activity of successful viewings caused higher-than-usual fields to be emitted from the brain. However, the experimenters did not find any evidence that the viewers had accessed the targets in the data collection phase, the project was abandoned, and the data was never analyzed since no RV activity had happened. Some "narrow-band" E-fields were detected during the viewings, but they were attributed to external causes. The experiment was disclosed in 2007 after a Freedom of Information request
Freedom of Information Act 2000
The Freedom of Information Act 2000 is an Act of Parliament of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that creates a public "right of access" to information held by public authorities. It is the implementation of freedom of information legislation in the United Kingdom on a national level...
.
PEAR's Remote Perception program
Following Utts' emphasis on replication and Hyman's challenge on interlaboratory consistency in the AIR report, the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research LabPrinceton Engineering Anomalies Research Lab
The Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research program was established at Princeton University in 1979 by Robert G. Jahn, then Dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science, to pursue rigorous scientific study of the interaction of human consciousness with physical devices, systems, and...
conducted several hundred trials to see if they could replicate the SAIC
Science Applications International Corporation
SAIC is a FORTUNE 500 scientific, engineering and technology applications company headquartered in the United States with numerous federal, state, and private sector clients...
and SRI experiments. They created an analytical judgment methodology to replace the human judging process that was criticized in past experiments, and they released a report in 1996. They felt the results of the experiments were consistent with the SRI experiments.
In 2007 the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Lab laboratory was closed.
Scientific studies and claims
According to psychologist David MarksDavid Marks (psychologist)
David F. Marks is a psychologist who is largely concerned with four areas of psychological research - health psychology, cognitive psychology, parapsychology and IQ score variations...
in experiments conducted in the 1970s at the Stanford Research Institute, the notes given to the judges contained clues as to which order they were carried out, such as referring to yesterday's two targets, or they had the date of the session written at the top of the page. Dr. Marks concluded that these clues were the reason for the experiment's high hit rates.
Marks has also suggested that the participants of remote viewing experiments are influenced by subjective validation
Subjective validation
Subjective validation, sometimes called personal validation effect, is a cognitive bias by which a person will consider a statement or another piece of information to be correct if it has any personal meaning or significance to them...
, a process through which correspondences are perceived between stimuli that are in fact associated purely randomly.
Details and transcripts of the SRI remote viewing experiments themselves were found to be edited and even unattainable.
Others have said that the information from remote viewing sessions can be vague and include a lot of erroneous data. A 1995 report for the American Institute for Research contains a section of anonymous reports describing how remote viewing was tentatively used in a number of operational situations. The three reports conclude that the data was too vague to be of any use, and in the report that offers the most positive results the writer notes that the viewers "had some knowledge of the target organizations and their operations but not the background of the particular tasking at hand."
According to James Randi
James Randi
James Randi is a Canadian-American stage magician and scientific skeptic best known as a challenger of paranormal claims and pseudoscience. Randi is the founder of the James Randi Educational Foundation...
, controlled tests by several other researchers, eliminating several sources of cuing and extraneous evidence present in the original tests, produced negative results. Students were also able to solve Puthoff and Targ's locations from the clues that had inadvertently been included in the transcripts.
Professor Richard Wiseman
Richard Wiseman
Richard Wiseman is Professor of the Public Understanding of Psychology at the University of Hertfordshire in the United Kingdom.Wiseman started his professional life as a magician, before graduating in Psychology from University College London and obtaining a Ph.D...
, a psychologist at the University of Hertfordshire and a fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI) has said that he agrees remote viewing has been proven using the normal standards of science, but that the bar of evidence needs to be much higher for outlandish claims that will revolutionize the world, and thus he remains unconvinced:
Wiseman also pointed at several problems with one of the early experiments at SAIC, like information leakage. However, he indicated the importance of its process-oriented approach and of its refining of remote viewing methodology, which meant that researchers replicating their work could avoid these problems. Wiseman later insisted there were multiple opportunities for participants on that experiment to be influenced by inadvertent cues and that these cues can influence the results when they appear.
Psychologist Ray Hyman
Ray Hyman
Ray Hyman is a Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Oregon in Eugene, Oregon, and a noted critic of parapsychology.-Career:...
says that, even if the results were reproduced under specified conditions, they would still not be a conclusive demonstration of the existence of psychic functioning. He blames this on the reliance on a negative outcome—the claims on ESP are based on the results of experiments not being explained by normal means. He says that the experiments lack a positive theory that guides as to what to control on them and what to ignore, and that "Parapsychologists have not come close to (having a positive theory) as yet". Ray Hyman also says that the amount and quality of the experiments on RV are way too low to convince the scientific community to "abandon its fundamental ideas about causality, time, and other principles", due to its findings still not having been replicated successfully under careful scrutiny.
Science writer Martin Gardner
Martin Gardner
Martin Gardner was an American mathematics and science writer specializing in recreational mathematics, but with interests encompassing micromagic, stage magic, literature , philosophy, scientific skepticism, and religion...
, and others, describe the topic of remote viewing as pseudoscience
Pseudoscience
Pseudoscience is a claim, belief, or practice which is presented as scientific, but which does not adhere to a valid scientific method, lacks supporting evidence or plausibility, cannot be reliably tested, or otherwise lacks scientific status...
. Gardner says that founding researcher Harold Puthoff was an active Scientologist prior to his work at Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
, and that this influenced his research at SRI. In 1970, the Church of Scientology
Church of Scientology
The Church of Scientology is an organization devoted to the practice and the promotion of the Scientology belief system. The Church of Scientology International is the Church of Scientology's parent organization, and is responsible for the overall ecclesiastical management, dissemination and...
published a notarized letter that had been written by Puthoff while he was conducting research on remote viewing at Stanford. The letter read, in part: "Although critics viewing the system Scientology
Scientology
Scientology is a body of beliefs and related practices created by science fiction and fantasy author L. Ron Hubbard , starting in 1952, as a successor to his earlier self-help system, Dianetics...
from the outside may form the impression that Scientology is just another of many quasi-educational quasi-religious 'schemes,' it is in fact a highly sophistical and highly technological system more characteristic of modern corporate planning and applied technology." Among some of the ideas that Puthoff supported regarding remote viewing was the claim in the book Occult Chemistry
Occult Chemistry (book)
Occult Chemistry: Investigations by Clairvoyant Magnification into the Structure of the Atoms of the Periodic Table and Some Compounds is a book written by Annie Besant, C.W. Leadbeater and Curuppumullage Jinarajadasa, who were all members of the Theosophical Society...
that two followers of Madame Blavatsky
Madame Blavatsky
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky , was a theosophist, writer and traveler. Between 1848 and 1875 Blavatsky had gone around the world three times. In 1875, Blavatsky together with Colonel H. S. Olcott established the Theosophical Society...
, founder of theosophy
Theosophy
Theosophy, in its modern presentation, is a spiritual philosophy developed since the late 19th century. Its major themes were originally described mainly by Helena Blavatsky , co-founder of the Theosophical Society...
, were able to remote-view the inner structure of atoms.
Various skeptic organization
Scientific skepticism
Scientific skepticism is the practice of questioning the veracity of claims lacking empirical evidence or reproducibility, as part of a methodological norm pursuing "the extension of certified knowledge". For example, Robert K...
s have conducted experiments for remote viewing and other alleged paranormal abilities, with no positive results under properly controlled conditions. Some of the organizations would provide large monetary rewards to anyone who could demonstrate a supernatural power under fraud-proof and fool-proof conditions. For the largest paranormal research institution, the James Randi Educational Foundation
James Randi Educational Foundation
The James Randi Educational Foundation is a non-profit organization founded in 1996 by magician and skeptic James Randi. The JREF's mission includes educating the public and the media on the dangers of accepting unproven claims, and to support research into paranormal claims in controlled...
, out of all of the applicants who applied for the One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge, nobody has even passed the preliminary tests.
Selected RV study participants
- Ingo SwannIngo SwannIngo Swann is an artist and author, best known for his work as a co-creator of the discipline of remote viewing, specifically the Stargate Project...
, one of the prominent research participants of remote viewing - Pat Price, one of the early remote viewers
- Russell TargRussell TargRussell Targ is an American physicist and author, an ESP researcher, and pioneer in the earliest development of the laser....
, cofounder of the investigation at Stanford Research Institute into psychic abilities in the 1970s and 1980s - Joseph McMoneagleJoseph McMoneagleJoseph McMoneagle was involved in remote viewing experiments conducted by U.S. Army Intelligence and the Stanford Research Institute. He was one of the original officers recruited for the top-secret program now known as the Stargate Project...
, one of the early remote viewers. See: Stargate ProjectStargate ProjectThe Stargate Project was the umbrella code name of one of several sub-projects established by the U.S. Federal Government to investigate claims of psychic phenomena with potential military and domestic applications, particularly "remote viewing": the purported ability to psychically "see" events,... - Courtney Brown, founder of the Farsight Institute
- David MarksDavid Marks (psychologist)David F. Marks is a psychologist who is largely concerned with four areas of psychological research - health psychology, cognitive psychology, parapsychology and IQ score variations...
, the critic of remote viewing, after finding sensory cues and editing in the original transcripts generated by Russell Targ and Hal Puthoff at Stanford Research Institute in the 1970s
External links
- http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4044Skeptoid: Critical Analysis of Pop PhenomenaSkeptoidSkeptoid is a weekly podcast created and hosted by American skeptic and author Brian Dunning. The show follows an audio essay format, and is dedicated to the critical examination of pseudoscience and the paranormal....
The Truth About Remote Viewing: The psychic technique of remote viewing is consistent with simple, well known magic tricks.] - "Seeing is Believing", Fortean TimesFortean TimesFortean Times is a British monthly magazine devoted to the anomalous phenomena popularised by Charles Fort. Previously published by John Brown Publishing and then I Feel Good Publishing , it is now published by Dennis Publishing Ltd. As of December 2010, its circulation was approximately 18,000...
visits the Monroe Institute, a remote viewing laboratory - "Scientific Remote Viewing", article at CSICOP
- "Remote Viewing", entry on Skeptics Dictionary.
- "Remote viewing" Study for U.K. Ministry of Defence 2001–2002, obtained through Freedom of Information ActFreedom of information in the United KingdomFreedom of information legislation in the United Kingdom is controlled by two Acts of the United Kingdom and Scottish Parliaments respectively, which both came into force on 1 January 2005.* Freedom of Information Act 2000...
- "Visual History Map" A complete visual map of remote viewing History and its participants]