Approved For Release 2000/08/07 : CIA-RDP96-00788R001100010002-8 A PERCEPTUAL CHANNEL FOR INFORMATION TRANSFER OVER KILOMETER DISTANCES: HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE AND RECENT RESEARCH H. E, Puthoff and R. Targ _ Copyright © 1976 by The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. Printed in U.S.A. Annals No. 603PR004 Approved For Release 2000/08/07 : CIA-RDP96-00788R001100010002-8
Approved For Release 2000/08/07 : CIA-RDP96-00788R001100010002-8 PROCEEDINGS OF THE IEEE, VOL. 64, NO. 3, MARCH 1976 329 A Perceptual Channel for Information Transfer over Kilometer Distances: Historical Perspective and Recent Research HAROLD E. PUTHOFF, memprr, IEEE, AND RUSSELL TARG, SENIOR MEMBER, IEEE Abstract —For more than 100 years, scientists have attempted to determine the truth or falsity of claims for the existence of a perceptual channel whereby certain individuals are able to perceive and describe remote data not presented to any known sense. This paper presents an outline of the history of scientific inquiry into such so-called paranor- mal perception and surveys the current state of the art in parapsycho- logical research in the United States and abroad. The nature of this perceptual channel is examined in a series of experiments carried out in the Electronics and Bioengineering Laboratory of Stanford Research Institute. The perceptual modality most extensively investigated is the ability of both experienced subjects and inexperienced volunteers to view, by innate mental processes, remote geographical or technical targets including buildings, roads, and laboratory apparatus. The ac- cumulated data indicate that the phenomenon is not a sensitive func- tion of distance, and Faraday cage shielding does not in any apparent way degrade the quality and accuracy of perception. On the basis of this research, some areas of physics are suggested from which a descrip- tion or explanation of the phenomenon could be forthcoming. I. INTRODUCTION “TT IS THE PROVINCE of natural science to investigate | Fe impartially and without prejudice” [1]. Nowhere in scientific inquiry has this dictum met as great a chal- lenge as in the area of so-called extrasensory perception (ESP), the detection of remote stimuli not mediated by the usual sensory processes. Such phenomena, although under scientific consideration for over a century, have historically been fraught with unreliability and controversy, and validation of the phe- nomena by accepted scientific methodology has been slow in coming. Even so, a recent survey conducted by the British publication New Scientist revealed that 67 percent of nearly 1500 responding readers (the majority of whom are working scientists and technologists) considered ESP to be an estab- lished fact or a likely possibility, and 88 percent held the investigation of ESP to be a legitimate scientific undertaking (2). A review of the literature reveals that although experiments by reputable researchers yielding positive results were begun over a century ago (c.g., Sir William Crookes’ study of D. D. Home, 1860’s) [3], many consider the study of these phe- nomena as only recently emerging from the realm of quasi- science. One reason for this is that, despite experimental results, no satisfactory theoretical construct had been advance 1 to correlate data or to predict new experimental outcomes. Consequently, the area in question remained for a long time in the recipe stage reminiscent of electrodynamics before the Manuscript received July 25, 1975; revised November 7, 1975. The submission of this paper was encouraged after review of an advance proposal, This work was supported by the Foundation for Parasensory Investigation and the Parapsychology Foundation, New York, NY; the Institute of Noetic Sciences, Palo Alto, CA; and the National Aero- nautics and Space Administration, under Contract NAS 7-160. The authors are with the Electronics and Bioengineering Laboratory, Stanford Research Institute, Menlo Park, CA 94025. Copyright © 1976 by The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. unification brought about by the work of Ampere, Faraday, and Maxwell. Since the early work, however, we have seen the development of information theory, quantum theory, and neurophysiological research, and these disciplines provide powerful conceptual tools that appear to bear directly on the issue. In fact, several physicists (Section V) are now of the opinion that these phenomena are not.at all inconsistent with the framework of modern physics: the often-held view that observations of this type are a priori incompatible with known laws is erroneous in that such a concept is based on the naive realism prevalent before the development of quantum theory. In the emerging view, it is accepted that research in this area can be conducted so as to uncover not just a catalog of inter- esting events, but rather patterns of cause-effect relatignships of the type that lend themselves to analysis and hypothesis in the forms with which we are familiar in the physical sciences. One hypothesis is that information transfer under conditions of sensory shielding is mediated by extremely low-frequency (ELF) electromagnetic waves, a proposal that does not seem to be ruled out by any obvious physical or biological facts. Further, the development of information theory makes it possible to characterize and quantify the performance of a communications channel regardless of the underlying mechanism. For the past three years, we have had a program in the Electronics and Bioengineering Laboratory of the Stan- ford Research Institute (SRI) to investigate those facets of human perception that appear to fall outside the range of well- understood perceptual/processing capabilities. Of particular interest is a human information-accessing capability that we call “remote viewing.” This phenomenon pertains to the ability of certain individuals to access and describe, by means of mental processes, information sources blocked from ordi- nary perception, and generally accepted as secure against such access, , In particular, the phenomenon we have investigated most extensively is the ability of a subject to view remote geograph- ical locations up to several thousand kilometers distant from his physical location (given only a known person on whom to target).! We have carried out more than fifty experiments under controlled laboratory conditions with several individuals whose remote perceptual abilities have been developed suf- ficiently to allow them at times to describe correctly—often in great detail—geographical or technical material such as build- ings, roads, laboratory apparatus, and the like. As observed in the laboratory, the basic phenomenon appears to cover a range of subjective experiences variously referred to ‘Our initial work in this area was reported in Nature [4], and re- printed in the IEEE Commun. Soc. Newsletter, vol. 13, Jan. 1975 Printed in U.S.A. Annals No. 603PR004 Approved For Release 2000/08/07 : CIA-RDP96-00788R001100010002-8
Approved For Release 2000/08/07 : CIA-RDP96-00788R001100010002-8 330 PROCEEDINGS OF THE IEEE, MARCH 1976 44/7 4725-40 Fig. 1. Airport in San Andres, Colombia, used as remote-viewing target, along with sketch produced by subject in California. in the literature as autoscopy (in the medical literature); exteri- orization or disassociation (psychological literature); simple clairvoyance, traveling clairvoyance, or out-of-body experience (parapsychological literature); or astral projection (occult liter- ature), We choose the term “remote viewing’’ as a neutral descriptive term free from prior associations and bias as to mechanisms. The development at SRI of a successful experimental pro- cedure to elicit this capability has evolved to the point where persons such as visiting government scientists and contract monitors, with no previous exposure to such concepts, have learned to perform well; and subjects who have trained over a one-year. period have performed excellently under a variety of experimental conditions. Our accumulated data thus indicate that both specially selected and unselected persons can be a m developing remote perceptual abilities up to a level of useful information transfer. In experiments of this type, we have three principal findings. First, we have established that it is possible to obtain signifi- cant amounts of accurate descriptive information about remote locations. Second, an increase in the distance from a few meters up to 4000 km separating the subject from the scene to be perceived does not in any apparent way degrade the quality or accuracy of perception. Finally, the use of Faraday cage electrical shielding does not prevent high-quality descrip- tions from being obtained. To build a coherent theory for the explanation of these phenomena, it is necessary to have a clear understanding of what constitutes the phenomena. In this paper, we first briefly summarize previous efforts in this field in Section II. We then present in Sections III and IV the results of a series of more than fifty experiments with nine subjects carried out in our own laboratory, which represent a sufficiently stable data base to permit testing of various hypotheses concerning the func- tioning of this channel, Finally, in Section V, we indicate those areas of physics and information theory that appear to be relevant to an understanding of certain aspects of the phenomena. First, however, we present an illustrative example generated in an early pilot experiment. As will be clear from our later discussion, this is not a “best-ever” example, but rather a typical sample of the level of proficiency that can be reached and that we have come to expect in our research. Three subjects participated in a long-distance experiment focusing on a series of targets in Costa Rica. These subjects said they had never been to Costa Rica. In this experiment, one of the experimenters (Dr. Puthoff) spent ten days traveling through Costa Rica on a combination business/pleasure trip. This information was all that was known to the subjects about the traveler’s itinerary. The experiment called for Dr. Puthoff to keep a detailed record of his location and activities, includ- ing photographs of each of seven target days at 1330 PDT. A total of twelve daily descriptions were collected before the traveler’s return: six responses from one subject, five from another, and one from a third. The third subject who submitted the single response supplied a drawing for a day in the middle of the series. (The subject’s response, together with the photographs taken at the site, are shown in Fig. 1). Although Costa Rica is a mountainous country, the subject unexpectedly perceived the traveler at a beach and ocean setting. With some misgiving, he described an airport on a sandy beach and an airstrip with the ocean at the Approved For Release 2000/08/07 : CIA-RDP96-00788R001100010002-8 a a,
Approved For Release 2000/08/07 : CIA-RDP96-00788R001100010002-8 PUTHOFF AND TARG: PERCEPTUAL CHANNEL FOR INFORMATION TRANSFER end (correct). An airport building also was drawn, and shown to have a large rectangular overhang (correct). The traveler had taken an unplanned one-day side trip to an offshore island and at the time of the experiment had just disembarked from a plane at a small island airport as described by the subject 4000 km away. The sole discrepancy was that the subject’s drawing showed a Quonset-hut type of building in place of the rectangular structure. . The above description was chosen as an example to illustrate a major point observed a number of times throughout the program to be described. Contrary to what may be expected, a subject’s description does not necessarily portray what may reasonably be expected to be correct (an educated or “‘safe” guess), but often runs counter even to the subject’s own expectations. We wish to stress again that a result such as the above is not unusual. The remaining submissions in this experiment pro- vided further examples of excellent correspondences between target and response. (A target period of poolside relaxation was identified; a drive through a tropical forest at the base of a truncated volcano was described as a drive through a jungle below a large bare table mountain; a hotel-room target descrip- tion, including such details as rug color, was correct; and so on.) So as to determine whether such matches were simply fortuitous—that is, could reasonably be expected on the basis of chance alone—Dr, Puthoff was asked after he had returned to blind match the twelve descriptions to his seven target locations. On the basis of this conservative evaluation proce- dure, which vastly underestimates the statistical significance of the individual descriptions, five correct matches were ob- tained. This number of matches is significant at p = 0.02 by exact binomial calculation.” The observation of such unexpectedly high-quality descrip- tions early in our program led to a large-scale study of the phenomenon at SRI under secure double-blind conditions (i.e., target unknown to experimenters as well as subjects), with independent random target selection and blind judging. The results, presented in Sections III and IV, provide strong evi- dence for the robustness of this phenomenon whereby a human perceptual modality of extreme sensitivity can detect complex remote stimuli. IJ. BACKGROUND Although we are approaching the study of these phenomena as physicists, it is not yet possible to separate ourselves entirely from the language of the nineteenth century when the labora- tory study of the paranormal was begun. Consequently, we continue to use terms such as “paranormal,” “telepathy,” and the like. However, we intend only to indicate a process of information transfer under conditions generally accepted as secure against such transfer and with no prejudice or occult assumptions as to the mechanisms involved. As in any other scientific pursuit, the purpose is to collect the observables that result from experiments and to try to determine the functional relationships between these observables and the laws of physics as they are currently understood. *The probability of a correct daily match by chance for any given transcript is p = +. Therefore, the probability of at least five correct matches by chance out of twelve tries can be calculated from 12 421 1\! /6\Q2-) ee aces (7) (*) = 0.02, 331 Organized research into so-called psychic functioning began roughly in the time of J. J. Thomson, Sir Oliver Lodge, and Sir William Crookes, all of whom took part in the founding of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) in 1882 in England. Crookes, for example, carried out his principal investigations with D. D. Home, a Scotsman who grew up in America and returned to England in 1855 [3]. According to the notebooks and published reports of Crookes, Home had demonstrated the ability to cause objects to move without touching them. We should note in passing that, Home, unlike most subjects, worked only in the light and spoke out in the strongest pos- sible terms against the darkened seance rooms popular at the time [5]. , Sir William Crookes was a pioneer in the study of electrical discharge in gases and in the development of vacuum tubes, some types of which still bear his name. Although everything Crookes said about electron beams and plasmas was accepted, nothing he said about the achievements of D. D. Home ever achieved that status. Many of his colleagues, who had not observed the experiments with Home, stated publicly that they © thought Crookes had been deceived, to which Crookes angrily responded: Will not my critics give me credit for some amount of common sense? Do they. not imagine that the obvious precautions, which occur to them as soon as they sit down to pick holes in my experiments, have occurred to me also in the course of my pro- longed and patient investigation? The answer to this, as to all other objections is, prove it to be an error, by showing where the error lies, or if a trick, by showing how the trick is per- formed. Try the experiment fully and fairly. If then fraud be found, expose it; if it be a truth, proclaim it. This is the only scientific procedure, and it is that I propose steadily to pursue [3]. In the United States, scientific interest in the paranormal was centered in the universities. In 1912, John Coover [6] was eStablished in the endowed Chair of Psychical Research at Stanford University. In the 1920’s, Harvard University set up research programs with George Estabrooks and L. T. Troland (7], [8]. It was in this framework that, in 1930, William McDougall invited Dr. J. B. Rhine and Dr. Louisa Rhine to join the Psychology Department at Duke University [9]. For more than 30 years, significant work was carried out at Rhine’s Duke University Laboratory. To examine the existence of paranormal perception, he used the now-famous ESP cards containing a boldly printed picture of a star, cross, square, circle, or wavy lines. Subjects were asked to name the order of these cards in a freshly shuffled deck of twenty-five such . cards. To test for telepathy, an experimenter would look at the cards one at a time, and a subject suitably separated from the sender would attempt to determine which card was being - viewed. Dr. J. B. Rhine together with Dr. J. G, Pratt carried out thousands of experiments of this type under widely varying conditions [10]. The statistical results from these experiments indicated that some individuals did indeed possess a paranor- mal perceptual ability in that it was possible to obtain an arbitrarily high degree of improbability by continued testing of a gifted subject. The work of Rhine has been challenged on many grounds, however, including accusations of improper handling of statis- tics, error, and fraud. With regard to the statistics, the general consensus of statisticians today is that if fault is to be found in Rhine’s work, it would have to be on other than statistical grounds [11]. With regard to the accusations of fraud, the Approved For Release 2000/08/07 : CIA-RDP96-00788R001100010002-8
332 most celebrated case of criticism of Rhine’s work, that of G. R. Price [12], ended 17 years after it began when the accusation of fraud was retracted by its author in an article entitled “Apology to Rhine and Soal,” published in the same journal in which it was first put forward [13]. It should also be noted that parapsychological researchers themselves re- cently exposed fraud in their own laboratory when they encountered it [14]. At the end of the 1940's, Prof. S. G. Soal, an English mathe- matician working with the SPR, had carried out hundreds of card guessing experiments involving tens of ‘thousands of calls {15]. Many of these experiments were carried out over ex- tended distances. One of the most notable experiments was conducted with Mrs. Gloria Stewart between London and Antwerp. This experiment gave results whose probability of occurring by chance were less than 107°. With' the publication of Modern Experiments in Telepathy by Soal and Bateman (both of whom were statisticians), it appeared that card guess- ing experiments produced significant results, on the average.? The most severe criticism of all this work, a criticism diffi- cult to defend against in principle, is that leveled by the well- known British parapsychological critic C. E. M. Hansel [17], who began his examination of the ESP hypothesis with the stated assumption, ‘‘In view of the a priori arguments against it we Know in advance that telepathy, etc., cannot occur.” Therefore, based on the “a priori unlikelihood” of ESP, Hansel’s examination of the literature centered primarily on the possibility of fraud, by subjects or investigators. He reviewed in depth four experiments which he regarded as providing the best evidence of ESP: the Pearce-Pratt distance — series [18]; the Pratt-Woodruff [19] series, both conducted at Duke; and Soal’s work with Mrs. Stewart and Basil Shackle- ton [15], as well as a more recent series by Soal and Bowden [20]. Hansel showed, in each case, how fraud could have been committed (by the experimenters in the Pratt-Woodruff and Soal-Bateman series, or by the subjects in the Pearce-Pratt and Soal-Bowden experiments). He gave no direct evidence that fraud was committed in these experiments, but said, “If the result could have arisen through a trick, the experiment must be considered unsatisfactory proof of ESP, whether or not it is finally decided that such a trick was in fact used” [17, p. 18]. As discussed by Honorton in a review of the field [21], Hansel’s conclusion after 241 pages of careful scrutiny therefore was that these experiments were not “fraud-proof” and therefore in principle could not serve as conclusive proof of ESP. Even among the supporters of ESP research and its results, there remained the consistent problem that many successful subjects eventually lost their ability and their scores gradually drifted toward chance results. This decline effect in no way erased their previous astronomical success; but it was a disap- pointment since if paranormal perception is a natural ability, one would like to see subjects improving with practice rather than getting worse. One of the first successful attempts to overcome the decline effect was in Czechoslovakia in the work of Dr. Milan Ryzl, a chemist with the Institute of Biology of the Czechoslovakian Academy of Science and: also an amateur hypnotist [22]. Through the use of hypnosis, together with feedback and 3Recently, some of the early Soal experiments have been criticized [16]. However, his long-distance experiments cited here were judged in a double-blind fashion of the type that escaped the criticism of the early experiments. . Approved For Release 2000/08/07 : CIA-RDP96-00788R001100010002-8 PROCEEDINGS OF THE IEEE, MARCH 1976: reinforcement, he developed several outstanding subjects, one of whom, Pavel Stepanek, has worked with experimenters around the world for more than 10 years. Ryzl’s pioneering work came as an answer to the questions raised by the 1956 CIBA Foundation conference on extra- sensory perception. The CIBA Chemical Company has annual meetings on topics of biological and chemical interest, and that same year they assembled several prominent parapsy- chologists to have a state-of-the-art conference on ESP [23]. The conference concluded that little progress would be made in parapsychology research until a repeatable experiment could be found; namely, an experiment that different experi- menters could repeat at will and that would reliably yield a statistically significant result, Ryzl had by 1962 accomplished that goal. His primary con- tribution was a decision to interact with the subject as a per- son, to try to build up his confidence and ability. His protocol depended on “working with” rather than “running” his sub- jects. Ryzl’s star subject, Pavel Stepanek, has produced highly significant results with many contemporary researchers [24]- [29]. In these experiments, he was able to tell with 60-percent reliability whether a hidden card was green side or white side up, yielding statistics of a million to one with only a thousand trials. As significant as such results are statistically, the information channel is imperfect, containing noise along with the signal. When considering how best to use such a channel, one is led to the communication theory concept of the introduction of redundancy as a means of coding a message to combat the effects of a noisy channel [30]. A prototype experiment by Ryzl using such techniques has proved to be successful. Ryzl had an assistant select randomly five groups of three digits each. These 15 digits were then encoded into binary form and translated into a sequence of green and white cards in sealed envelopes. By means of repeated calling and an elaborate majority vote protocol, Ryzl was able after 19 350 calls by Stepanek (averaging 9s per call) to correctly identify all 15 numbers, a result significant at p=10°'® The hit rate for individual calls was 61.9 percent, 11 978 hits, and 7372 misses [31]. Note Added in Proof: It has been brought to our attention that a similar procedure was recently used to transmit without error the word “peace” in International Morse Code (J. C. Carpenter, “Toward the effective utilization of enhanced weak-signal ESP effects,” presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, New York, NY, Jan. 27, 1975). The characteristics of such a channel can be specified in accordance with the precepts of communication theory. The bit rate associated with the information channel is calculated from [30] R= H(x)- Hy(x) (1) where (x) is the uncertainty of the source message containing symbols with a priori probability p;: 2 H(x)=- >> p; logs pj (2) i=1 and H, (%) is the conditional entropy based on the a posteriori probabilities that a received signal was actually transmitted: 2 Hy(x)=- S° pli, 7) logs pj (i). (3) ijl Approved For Release 2000/08/07 : CIA-RDP96-00788R001100010002-8 DOO Oe
purnore PRET Ned. Fe RON ae 33 Soy wn o IN =) =) =) end IS © —n iS ba | For Stepanek’s run, with p; = 5, p; (7) = 0.619, and an average time of 9s per choice, we have a source uncertainty H(x) = 1 bit and a calculated bit rate R 0.041 bit/symbol OT R/T © 0.0046 bit/s. (Since the 15-digit number (49.8 bits) actually was transmitted at the rate of 2.9 X 1074 bit/s, an increase in bit rate by a factor of about 20 could be expected on the basis of a coding scheme more optimum than that used in the experiments. See, for example, Appendix A.) Dr. Charles Tart at the University of California has written extensively on the so-called decline effect. He considers that having subjects attempt to guess cards, or perform any other repetitious task for which they receive no feedback, follows the classical technique for deconditioning any response. He thus considers card guessing “a technique for extinguishing psychic functioning in the laboratory” [32]. Tart’s injunctions of the mid-sixties were being heeded at Maimonides Hospital, Brooklyn, NY, by a team of researchers that included Dr. Montague Uliman, who was director of research for the hospital; Dr. Stanley Krippner; and, later, Charles Honorton. These three worked together for several years on experiments on the occurrence of telepathy in dreams. In the course of a half-dozen experimental series, they found in their week-long sessions a number of subjects who had dreams that consistently were highly descriptive of pictorial material that a remote sender was looking at throughout the night. This work is described in detail in the experimenters’ book Dream Telepathy [33]. Honorton is continuing work of this free-response type in which the subject has no precon- ceived idea as to what the target may be. In his more recent work with subjects in the waking state, Honorton is providing homogeneous stimulation to the subject who is to describe color slides viewed by another person in a remote room. In this new work, the subject listens to white noise via earphones and views an homogeneous visual field imposed through the use of Ping-Pong ball halves to cover the subject’s eyes in conjunction with diffuse ambient illumina- tion. In this so-called Ganzfeld setting, subjects are again able, now in the waking state, to give correct and often highly accurate descriptions of the material being viewed by the sender [34]. In Honorton’s work and elsewhere, it apparently has been the step away from the repetitive forced-choice experiment that has opened the way for a wide variety of ordinary people to demonstrate significant functioning in the laboratory, with- out being bored into a decline effect. This survey would be incomplete if we did not indicate certain aspects of the current state of research in the USSR. It is clear from translated documents and other sources [35] that many laboratories in the USSR are engaged in paranormal research. . Since the 1930's, in the laboratory of L. Vasiliev (Leningrad Institute for Brain Research), there has been an interest in the use of telepathy as a method of influencing the behavior of a person at a distance. In Vasiliev’s book Experiments in Mental Suggestion, he makes it very clear that the bulk of his labora- tory’s experiments were aimed at long-distance communica- tion combined with a form of behavior modification; for example, putting people at a distance to sleep through hyp- nosis [36]. : CIA-RDP96-00788R001100010002- 8 ORMATION TRANSFE 333 Similar behavior modification types of experiments have been carried out in recent times by I. M. Kogan, Chairman of the Bioinformation Section of the Moscow Board of the Popov Society. He is a Soviet engineer who, until 1969, published extensively on the theory of telepathic communication [37]- {40]. He was concerned with three principal kinds of experi- ments: mental suggestion without hypnosis over short dis- tances, in which the percipient attempts to identify an object; mental awakening over short distances, in which a subject is awakened from a hypnotic sleep at the “beamed” suggestion from the hypnotist; and long-range (intercity) telepathic com- munication. Kogan’s main interest has been to quantify the channel capacity of the paranormal channel. He finds that the bit rate decreases from 0.1 bit/s for laboratory experiments to 0.005 bit/s for his 1000-km intercity experiments. In the USSR, serious consideration is given to the hypothesis that telepathy is mediated by extremely low-frequency (ELF) electromagnetic propagation. (The pros and cons of this hypothesis are discussed in Section V of this paper.) In general, the entire field of paranormal research in the USSR is part of a larger one concerned with the interaction between electromagnetic fields and living organisms [41], [42]. At the First International Congress on Parapsychology and Psychotronics in Prague, Czechoslovakia, in 1973, for example, Kholodov spoke at length about the susceptibility of living systems to extremely low-level ac and dc fields. He described conditioning effects on the behavior of fish resulting from the application of 10 to 100 pW of RF to their tank [43]. The USSR take these data seriously in that the Soviet safety re- quirements for steady-state microwave exposure set limits at 10 pW/cm?, whereas the United States has set a steady-state limit of 10 mW/cm? [44]. Kholodov spoke also about the nonthermal effects of microwaves on animals’ central nervous systems. His experiments were very carefully carried out and are characteristic of a new dimension in paranormal research. The increasing importance of this area in Soviet research was indicated recently when the Soviet Psychological Association issued an unprecedented position paper calling on the Soviet Academy of Sciences to step up efforts in this area [45]. They recommended that the newly formed Psychological Institute within the Soviet Academy of Sciences and the Psychological Institute of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences review the area and consider the creation of a new laboratory within one of the institutes to study persons with unusual abilities. They also recommended a comprehensive evaluation of experiments and theory by the Academy of Sciences’ Insti- tute of Biophysics and Institute for the Problems of Informa- tion Transmission. . The Soviet research, along with other behavioristically oriented work, suggests that in addition to obtaining overt responses such as verbalizations or key presses from a subject, it should be possible to obtain objective evidence of informa- tion transfer by direct measurement of physiological parame- ters of a subject. Kamiya, Lindsley, Pribram, Silverman, Walter, and others brought together to discuss physiological methods to detect ESP functioning, have suggested that a whole range of electroencephalogram (EEG) responses such as evoked potentials (EP’s), spontaneous EEG, and the contingent negative variation (CNV) might be sensitive indicators of the detection of remote stimuli not mediated by usual sensory processes [46]. Early experimentation of this type was carried out by Douglas Dean at the Newark College of Engineering. In his Approved For Release 2000/08/07 : CIA-RDP96-00788R001100010002-8
334 search for physiological correlates of information transfer, he used the plethysmograph to measure changes in the blood volume in a finger, a sensitive indicator of autonomic nervous system functioning [47]. A plethysmographic measurement was made on the finger of a subject during telepathy expeti- ments. <A sender looked at randomly selected target cards consisting of names known to the subject, together with names unknown to him (selected at random from a telephone book). The names of the known people were contributed by the sub- - ject and were to be of emotional significance to him. Dean found significant changes in the chart recording of finger blood volume when the remote sender was looking at those names known to the subject as compared with those names randomly chosen. Three other experiments using the physiological approach have now been published. The first work by Tart [48], a later work by Lloyd [49], and most recently the work by the authors [4] all follow a similar procedure. Basically, a subject is closeted in an electrically shielded room while his EEG is recorded. Meanwhile, in another laboratory, a second person is stimulated from time to time, and the time of that stimulus is marked on the magnetic-tape recording of the subject’s EEG. The subject does not know when the remote stimulus periods are as compared with the nonstimulus periods. With regard to choice of stimulus for our own experimenta- tion, we noted that in previous work others had attempted, without success, to detect evoked potential changes in a sub- ject’s EEG in response to a single stroboscopic flash stimulus observed by another subject [50]. In a discussion of that experiment, Kamiya suggested that because of the unknown temporal characteristics of the information channel, it might be more appropriate to use repetitive bursts of light to increase the probability of detecting information transfer [51]. There- fore, in our study we chose to use a stroboscopic flash train of 10-s duration as the remote stimulus. In the design of the study, we assumed that the application of the remote stimulus would result in responses similar to those obtained under conditions of direct stimulation. For example, when an individual is stimulated with a low- frequency (< 30 Hz) flashing light, the EEG typically shows a decrease in the amplitude of the resting rhythm and a driving of the brain waves at the frequency of the flashes [52]. We hypothesized that if we stimulated one subject in this manner (a putative sender), the EEG of another subject in a remote room with no flash present (a receiver) might show changes in ‘alpha (9-11 Hz) activity and possibly an EEG driving similar to that of the sender, or other coupling to the sender’s EEG [53]. The receiver was seated in a visually Opaque, acoustically and electrically shielded, double-walled steel room about 7m from the sender. The details of the experiment, consisting of seven runs of thirty-six 10-s trials each (twelve periods each for 0-Hz, 6-Hz, and 16-Hz stimuli, randomly intermixed), are presented in [4]. This experiment proved to be successful. The receiver’s alpha activity (9-11 Hz) showed a significant reduction in average power (- 24 percent, p < 0.04) and peak power (-28 percent, p < 0.03) during 16-Hz flash stimuli as compared with periods of no-flash stimulus. [A similar response was observed for 6-Hz stimuli (-12 percent in average power, ~21 percent in peak power), but the latter result did not reach statistical significance.] Fig, 2 shows an overlay of three averaged EEG spectra from one of the subject’s 36 trial runs, displaying differences in alpha activity during the three stimulus conditions. Extensive control procedures were undertaken to determine if these Approved For Release 2000/08/07 : CIA-RDP96-00788R001100010002-8 OF THE IEEE, MARCH 1976 oO tT 1 z 0 Cc 3 c £ = 6 = a 16 ‘| go <L E a Oo > . . . j 5 Hz 10 Hz 15 Hz Fig. 2. Occipital EEG frequency spectra, 0-20 Hz, of one subject (H.H.) acting as receiver showing amplitude changes in the 9-11-Hz band asa function of strobe frequency. Three cases: 0-, 6-, and 16-Hz flashes (twelve trial averages). results were produced by system artifacts, electromagnetic pickup (EMI), or subtle cueing; the results were negative [4]. As part of the experimental protocol, the subject was asked to indicate a conscious assessment for each trial (via telegraph Key) as to the nature of the stimulus; analysis showed these guesses to be at chance. Thus arousal as evidenced by signifi- cant alpha blocking occurred only at the noncognitive level of physiological response. Hence the experiment provided direct physiological (EEG) evidence of perception of remote stimuli even in the absence of overt cognitive response. Whereas in our experiments we used a remote light flash as a stimulus, Tart [48] in his work used an electrical shock to himself as sender, and Lloyd [49] simply told the sender to think of a red triangle each time a red warning light was illuminated within his view. . Lloyd observed a consistent evoked potential in his subjects; whereas in our experiments and in Tart’s, a reduction in amplitude and a desynchroniza- tion of alpha was observed—an arousal response. (If a subject is resting in an alpha-dominant condition and he is then stimulated, for example in any direct manner, one will observe a desynchronization and decrease in alpha power.) We con- sider that these combined results are evidence for the existence of noncognitive awareness of remote happenings and that they have a profound implication for paranormal research. III. SRI INVESTIGATIONS OF REMOTE VIEWING Experimentation in remote viewing began during studies carried out to investigate the abilities of a New York artist, Ingo Swann, when he expressed the opinion that the insights gained during experiments at SRI had strengthened his ability (verified in other research before he joined the SRI program) to view remote locations [54]. To test Mr. Swann’s asser- tion, a pilot study was set up in which a series of targets from around the globe were supplied by SRI personnel to the ex- perimenters on a double-blind basis. Mr. Swann’s apparent ability to describe correctly details of buildings, roads, bridges, and the like indicated that it may be possible for a subject by means of mental imagery to access and describe randomly chosen geographical sites located several miles from the subject’s position and demarcated by some appro- priate means. Therefore, we set up a research program to test the remote-viewing hypothesis under rigidly controlled scientific conditions. In carrying out this program, we concentrated on what we considered to be our principal responsibility —to resolve under unambiguous conditions the basic issue of whether or not this Approved For Release 2000/08/07 : CIA-RDP96-00788R001100010002-8 et
Approved For Release 2000/08/07 : CIA-RDP96-00788R001 100010002-8 PUTHOFF AND TARG: PERCEPTUAL CHANNEL FOR INFORMATION TRANSFER 338 class of paranormal perception phenomenon exists. At all times, we and others responsible for the overall program took measures to prevent sensory leakage and subliminal cueing and to prevent deception, whether intentional or unintentional. To ensure evaluations independent of belief structures of both experimenters and judges, all experiments were carried out under a protocol, described below, in which target selection at the beginning of experiments and blind judging of results at the end of experiments were handled independently of the researchers engaged in carrying out the experiments. Six subjects, designated $1 through S6, were chosen for the study. Three were considered as gifted or experienced subjects (S1 through $3), and three were considered as learners (S4 through S6). The a priori dichotomy between gifted and learners. was based on the experienced group having been successful in other studies conducted before this program and the learners group being inexperienced with regard to paranormal experimentation. The study consisted of a series of double-blind tests with local targets in the San Francisco Bay Area so that several in- dependent judges could visit the sites to establish documenta- tion. The protocol was to closet the subject with an experi- menter at SRI and at an agreed-on time to obtain from the subject a description of an undisclosed remote site being visited by a target team. In each of the experiments, one of the six program subjects served as remote-viewing subject, and SRI experimenters served as a target demarcation team at the remote location chosen in a double-blind protocol as follows. : In each experiment, SRI management randomly chose a target location from a list of targets within a 30-min driving time from SRI; the target location selected was kept blind to subject and experiinenters. The target pool consisted of more than 100 target locations chosen from a target-rich environ- ment. (Before the experimental series began, the Director of the Information Science and Engineering Division, not other- wise associated with the experiment, established the set of lo- cations as the target pool which remained known only to him. The target locations were printed on cards sealed in envelopes and kept in the SRI Division office safe. They were available only with the personal assistance of the Division Director who issued a single random-number selected target card that con- stituted the traveling orders for that experiment.) In detail: To begin the experiment, the subject was closeted with an experimenter at SRI to wait 30 min before beginning a narrative description of the remote location. A second ex- perimenter then obtained from the Division Director a target location from a set of traveling orders previously prepared and randomized by the Director and kept under his control. The target demarcation team, consisting of two to four SRI experi- menters, then proceeded by automobile directly to the target without any communication with the subject or experimenter remaining behind. The experimenter remaining with the sub- ject at SRI was kept ignorant of both the particular target and the target pool so as to eliminate the possibility of cueing (overt or subliminal) and to allow him freedom in questioning the subject to clarify his descriptions. The demarcation team remained at the target site for an agreed-on 15-min period following the 30 min allotted for travel.4 During the observa- *The first subject (S1) was allowed 30 min for his descriptions, but it was found that he fatigued and had little comment after the first 15 min. The viewing time was therefore reduced to 15 min for subjects S2 through 56. tion period, the remote-viewing subject was asked to describe his impressions of the target site into a tape recorder and to make any drawings he thought appropriate. An informal com- parison was then made when the demarcation team returned, and the subject was taken to the site to provide feedback. A, Subject S1: Experienced To begin the series, Pat Price, a former California police com- missioner and city councilman, participated as a subject in nine experiments. In general, Price’s ability to describe correctly buildings, docks, roads, gardens, and the like, includ- ing structural materials, color, ambience, and activity—often in great detail—indicated the functioning of a remote per- ceptual ability. A Hoover Tower target, for example, was recognized and named by name. Nonetheless, in general, the descriptions contained inaccuracies as well as correct state- .ments. A typical example is indicated by the subject’s drawing shown in Fig. 3 in which he correctly described a park-like area containing two pools of water: one rectangular, 60 by 89 ft (actual dimensions 75 by 100 ft); the other circular, diameter 120 ft (actual diameter 110 ft). He incorrectly indi- cated the function, however, as water filtration rather than recreational swimming. (We often observe essentially correct descriptions of basic elements and patterns coupled with in- complete or erroneous analysis of function.) As can be seen from his drawing, he also included some elements, such as the tanks shown in the upper right, that are not present at the target site. We also note an apparent left-right reversal, often observed in paranormal perception experiments. To obtain a numerical evaluation of the accuracy of the remote-viewing experiment, the experimental results were subjected to independent judging on a blind basis by an SRI research analyst not otherwise associated with the research. The subject’s response packets, which contained the nine typed unedited transcripts of the tape-recorded narratives along with any associated drawings, were unlabeled and pre- sented in random order. While standing at each target loca- tion, visited in turn, the judge was required to blind rank order the nine packets on a scale 1 to 9 (best to worst match). The statistic of interest is the sum of ranks assigned to the target- associated transcripts, lower values indicating better matches. For nine targets, the sum of ranks could range from nine to eighty-one. The probability that a given sum of ranks s or less will occur by chance is given by [55] Pr (s or less) = 3 3 co(") (“ ) i=n 1=0 n where s is obtained sum of ranks, N is number of assignable ranks, 2 is number of occasions on which rankings were made, and / takes on values from zero to the least positive integer k in (i- n)/n. (Table I is a table to enable easy application of the above formula to those cases in which N =n.) The sum in this case, which included seven direct hits out of the nine, was 16 (see Table II), a result significant at p= 2.9X 107° by exact calculation. In Experiments 3, 4, and 6 through 9, the subject was se- cured in a double-walled copper-screen Faraday cage. The Faraday cage provides 120-dB attenuation for plane-wave radio-frequency radiation over a range of 15 kHz to 1 GHz. For magnetic fields, the attenuation is 68 dB at 15 kHz and decreases to 3 dB at 60 Hz. The results of rank order judging (Table II) indicate that the use of Faraday cage electrical Approved For Release 2000/08/07 : CIA-RDP96-00788R001100010002-8
ELECT. DIST. tJ Lbtlists TENNIS COURTS | ‘TA CIC) | ae = PLAY ore GROUNDS om HOUSE if SERVICE CONCRETE BLOCK YARD “ Mewe FIRE =< STATION on f \ wf ‘PICNIC AREAS \ ~ New aX (a) Approved For Release 2000/08/07 : CIA-RDP96-00788R001400010002:8) 5 rum IEEE, MARCH 1976 Fig. 3. Swimming pool complex as remote-viewing target. (a) City map of target location. (b) Drawing by Price (S1). TABLE I CRITICAL VALUES OF SUMS OF RANKS FOR PREFERENTIAL MATCHING Number of Probability (one-tailed) that the Indicated Sum of Ranks or Less Would Occur by Chance Assignable Ranks (N) 0.20 | 0.10 | 0.05 | 0.04 | 0.025] 0.01 0.005 | 0.002 | 0,001 0.0005 | 10°* | 10° | 10-® | 10°” Note: This table applies only to those special cases in which the number of occasions on which objects are being ranked (7) is equal to the number of assignable ranks (V/). Each entry represents the largest number that is significant at the indicated p-level. Source: R. L. Morris [55]. shielding does not prevent high-quality descriptions from being obtained. As a backup judging procedure, a panel of five additional SRI scientists not otherwise associated with the research were asked simply to blind match the unedited typed transcripts (with associated drawings) generated by the remote viewer against the nine target locations which they independently visited in turn. The transcripts were unlabeled and presented in random order. A correct match consisted of a transcript of a given date being matched to the target of that date. In- stead of the expected number of 1 match each per judge, the number of correct matches obtained by the five judges was 7, 6, 5, 3, and 3, respectively. Thus, rather than the expected total number of 5 correct matches from the judges, 24 such matches were obtained. B. Subject $4: Learner This experiment was designed to be a replication of our pre- vious experiment with Price, the first replication attempted. The subject for this experiment was Mrs, Hella Hammid, a gifted professional photographer. She was selected for this series on the basis of her successful performance as a per- cipient in the EEG experiment described earlier. Outside of that interaction, she had no previous experience with apparent paranormal functioning. At the time we began working with Mrs. Hammid, she had no, strong feelings about the likelihood of her ability to suc- ceed in this task. This was in contrast to both Ingo Swann who had come to our laboratory fresh from a lengthy and apparently successful series of experiments with Dr. Gertrude Schmeidler at City College of New York [56] and Pat Price Approved For Release 2000/08/07 : CIA-RDP96-00788R001100010002-8
PUTHOF FARR e Kad: ForReleasec20O008/OR 1OdRRDRI600788R001100010002-8 337 Q) Ce OC. CC. ~~ Fig. 4. Subject Hammid (S4) drawing, described as ‘some kind of diagonal trough up in the air.” TABLE DIsTRIBUTION OF RANKINGS ASSIGNED TO TRANSCRIPTS ASSOCIATED WITH EACH TARGET LOCATION FOR EXPERIENCED SupyecT Price (SI) : Distance Target Location km Hoover Tower, Stanford Rank of Associated Transcript Saylands Nature Preserve, Palo Alto Radio telescope, Portola Valley Marina, Redwood City Bridge toll plaza, Fremont Drive-in theater, Palo Alto Arts and Crafts Plaza, Menlo Park Catholic Church, Portola Valley YP WPF BP OF Pe Fe Swimming pool complex, Palo Alto 16 (p=2..9x10°° ) Total sum of ranks who felt that he used his remote-viewing ability in his every- day life. In comparison with the latter two, many people are more influenced by their environment and are reluctant under public scrutiny to attempt activities that are generally thought to be impossible. Society often provides inhibition and nega- tive feedback to the individual who might otherwise have explored his own nonregular perceptual ability. We all share an historical tradition of “the stoning of prophets and the burning of witches” and, in more modern times, thé hospitaliza- tion of those who claim to perceive things that the majority do not admit to seeing. Therefore, in addition to maintaining scientific rigor, one of our primary tasks as researchers is to provide an environment in which the subject feels safe to explore the possibility of paranormal perception. With a new subject, we also try to stress the nonuniqueness of the ability because from our experience paranormal functioning appears to be a latent ability that all subjects can articulate to some degree. . Because of Mrs. Hammid’s artistic background, she was ca- pable of drawing and describing visual images that she could not identify in any cognitive or analytic sense. When the target demarcation team went to a target location which was a pedestrian overpass, the subject said that she saw “a kind of trough up in the air,” which she indicated in the upper part of her drawing in Fig. 4. She went on to explain, “If you stand where they are standing you will see something like this,” indicating the nested squares at the bottom of Fig. 4. As it turned out, a judge standing where she indicated would have a view closely resembling what she had drawn, as can be seen from the accompanying photographs of the target loca- tion. It needs to be emphasized, however, that judges did not have access to our photographs of the site, used here for illustrative purposes only, but rather they proceeded to each of the target locations by list. In another experiment, the subject described seeing “an open barnlike structure with a pitched roof.” She also saw a “kind of slatted side to the structure making light and dark bars on the wall.” Her drawing and a photograph of the associated bicycle shed target are shown in Fig. 5. (Subjects are encouraged to make drawings of anything they visualize and associate with the remote location because drawings they make are in general more accurate than their verbal description.) As in the original series with Price, the results of the nine- Approved For Release 2000/08/07 : CIA-RDP96-00788R001100010002-8