Approved For Rele^sp 2001/03/26
: CIA-RDP96-0078^t000200080037-4
PSYCHICS AND SCIENTISTS:
"MIND-REACH" AND REMOTE VIEWING
Ray Hyman
rphe dust jacket of Mind-Reach (New York: Delacorte, 1977)
T informs us that "this book is a lucid and fascmafmg reco d
of historic experiments— historic because they put the seal
'hard' physical science upon evidence that some degree or
osvchic ability
is universal-a phenomenon straight out of
science fiction that actually happened, and can be m “j}® t0
happen again
in any laboratory! The scientists even offer a
'recipe' for developing your own ESP 'information channel^
Z two scientists in question are Russell Targ.and^Harold
Puthoff, both laser physicists at the
S^J^.
sSSs5.r.!S
i m trnd helievers who set out to use science to
passionately held beliefs," neither author
is a novice
in psy-
C^
C
a
a
rU
e
Tn
a
terest
in
psychic phenomena
goes
back some
twenty years. Prior to the time covered by this
,
e\e
sss 2CJ
described
in this book began
in 1972 when
both Tara and Puthoff came to the Stanford Research
Insti-
.
The maior portion of their work involves remole viewing.
rarm thrSeM refer to phenomena that cover "a range of
retered “ ^ thS
li'1ratU
Hah
astral projection (occult); simple clairvoyance, traveling c _
Ray Hyman,
professor
of
psy-
chology at the University of Or-
egon and author of The Nature
of Psychological
Inquiry,
is on
the
executive
council
of
the
Committee for the Scientific In-
vestigation of Claims of the Para-
normal and participated in "The
Psychics," a TV program m the
"Ethics
in America
series.
„
nr
out-of-body
experience
(parapsychological)
Nation
or ^association
materializing objects, seeing thes face of
a> h dd
-
duplicating drawings from which he was
shield
The authors present us with both "hard" and
"soft" &
T
,
tu„ "hard" evidence
consists
of outcomes
th
** rr,-,
e ,eas
graphical o, technic »1
'“Slhy'ttycl.
wmm
patterns than in interpretation and also because E
seem
to indicate this. They also claim that anyone ca
this
Thev have succeeded with both experienced and
perienced subjects. Indeed, they Calm that no sub.eci
fa
Tteyalsod
,
aZhard"evidence for at least some sut
showing success on the electronic random generator.
Se oTud
Geller, they claim scientific evidence for
normal perceptual abilities in divining the uppermos
elease 2001/03/26
: CIA-RDP96-00787R000200080037-4
fjhejhnn
Approved For Rele^p 2001/03/26
: CIA-RDP96-0078^000200080037-4
a die in a closed box and in duplicating drawings made under
conditions that precluded sensory contact.
The book is replete with accounts of striking and seemingly
persuasive phenomena that the authors admit occurred under
conditions that do not meet the standards
for. "hard"
evi-
dence. Geller was seemingly able to affect the magnetom-
eter, affect a scale under a bell
jar, move a TV picture
in
various directions, cause a compass needle to move, dema-
terialize part of a camera, and trigger off a number of "coinci-
dences." The
last chapter
deals' with
anecdotes
involving
prophetic
dreams,
psychic
cats,
sympathetic
magic,
and
exploring outer space via remote viewing.
W
hat are we to make of all this? What is
it that makes this
work "historic"? Certainly it is not the fact that physicists
are investigating and apparently finding evidence for psychic
phenomena.
In spite of implications to the contrary on the
dust jacket and in Margaret Mead's introduction (she claims
that one advantage of these experiments
is that
' they come
out of physics, popularly believed to be the hardest of the
hard sciences"), physicists have a history going back over a
hundred years of investigating and endorsing psychic phe-
nomena. In the nineteenth century there were such big names
as Crookes, Lodge, Barrett, and Zoellner. Other well-known
scientists who plunged
into psychical research were Alfred
Russel Wallace,
Robert
Hare, Charles
Richet, and
Claude
Flammarion. Nor
is
it the
general approach
of
Targ and
Puthoff, which treats the subject as a full-fledged collaborator
rather than a guinea pig. All of the previously mentioned sci-
entists also went out of their way to make the investigative
conditions "safe" and sympathetic for the alleged psychics.
What
is new,
if
it stands up to further scrutiny,
is the un-
precedented consistency of the findings. They simply have no
failures in their remote-viewing experiments. Experienced and
inexperienced subjects succeed. Even skeptical
visitors suc-
ceed when put through the protocols.. (The authors slip into
another meaning of "succeed" in this latter case.
Success
in
the
regular experiments
is measured by
the agreement
of
reports with actual target sites as obtained by a neutral judge;
"success"
in the case of visitors
is measured by subjective-
judgment that a given description does seem to match,
in
part, the given
site.)
If Targ and Puthoff have actually hit upon a formula for
getting results with
all subjects, and
if these results can be
replicated
in independent
laboratories
as they
claim, then
indeed their work represents a major breakthrough in psychi-
cal
research. Up
to now,
this
field
of endeavor
has been
plagued by inconsistencies, hidden
pitfalls, and nonrepeat-
ability.
It has caused
its most dedicated workers nothing but
frustration. Here is what William James had to say
in his last
article on psychical research
in 1909
( William James on Psy-
chical Research
,
ed. by G. Murphy and
R. O.
Ballou [New
York:
Viking,
1969]).
For twenty-five years
I have been in touch with the literature of
psychical research, and have had acquaintance with numerous
"researchers."
I have also spent a good many hours ...
in wit-
nessing (or trying to witness) phenomena. Yet
I am theoretical-
ly no "further" than
I was at the beginning; and
I confess that
at times
I have been tempted to believe that the Creator has
eternally intended
this department of nature to remain baf-
fling, to prompt our curiosities and hopes and suspicions all in
equal measure so that, although ghosts and clairvoyances, and
raps and messages from spirits, are always seeming to exist and
can never be fully explained away, they also can never be
,
susceptible of
full corroboration.
Some
sixty-six years
after William
James
penned
these
words, the philosopher Antony Flew,
after twenty years
in
psychical research, in an article
in the November 1975 New
Humanist, had
this to say:
It seemed to me that the situation
in
this_ misbegotten area
could be summed up by saying that there was too much evi-
dence for one just to dismiss
it as
all a lot of nonsense, and
enough to require that one should maintain a continuing inter-
est in the field, even
if a distant interest. On the other hand,
it
seemed to me then that, though there was too much for one
just to
reject the whole business out of hand
as
a
lot
of
superstition, nevertheless there was no such thing as a reliably
repeatable phenomenon
in
the
area, and
there was
really
almost nothing positive that you could point to with assur-
ance; there were some bits of negative work you could point to
with assurance, but that was
all. The depressing thing about
the subsequent twenty-two years
is that, though people have
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May/June 1977