a “ “ Approved For Release 2000/08/08 : CIA-RDP96-00789R002200620001-9 Distant Mental Influence of Hemolysis Rate 17 ward hitting, a single-mean ¢ test may be calculated for the nine ¢ values, comparing them with MCE = 0; such a test yields evidence for significant hitting (X = 1.63, SD = 2.23, ¢ [8] = 2.07, p = .035, one-tailed). In the overall (ANOVA) analysis, no effect was found for the Source variable: Scores for the ‘‘own’’ and ‘‘another’s’’ groups were virtually identical. The Source x Condition effect, which would have indicated a dependence of the protect versus control effect upon the source of the blood, was clearly nonsignificant. Therefore, we must conclude that blood source was not an important variable in this investigation. However, an interesting trend emerges when we examine the blood source for the nine independently significant subjects. For this subgroup (for which there was evidence for a psi effect), a comparison of the t scores of the five subjects who influenced their own blood with those of the four subjects who in- fluenced another person’s blood yields a trend of greater positive scoring (i.e., psi hitting) for the ‘‘own blood’’ subjects (see Table 4). Because of the small number of subjects involved in the comparison, this trend is not significant (¢ [7] = 1.73, p = .12, two-tailed). The large magnitude of the difference, however, suggests that blood source would be an inter- esting variable to explore in future studies of this type. An anonymous referee of this paper described the results of a post hoc analysis that he or she performed on the “‘own’’ versus ‘‘other’” scores; that analysis pointed to a possible true scoring pattern for the two blood source conditions. The referee reported that for the 14 subjects who worked with their own blood cells, a 2 x 2 table can be constructed that divides them by positive versus negative change score x significant versus nonsignificant change. Of the 7 with positive change, 5 were sig- nificant; of the other 7, none were significant (p < .02). The corre- sponding table for the 18 subjects working with someone else’s blood cells yields nonsignificant differences for these same classifications. The raw data collected in this experiment were sent to researchers at SRI International so that they might perform certain mathematical anal- yses of the scores to determine which of two models of psi, the RA model or the IDS model, would provide better predictions of the obtained re- sults for the 2-tube versus 8-tube conditions. Space limitations do not Table 4 COMPARISON OF OWN VS. ANOTHER’S ¢ SCORES POR INDEPENDENTLY SIGNIFICANT SUBJECTS ee—eETEeE—e—eEeEeeeeoooeeeeEee——e——————————————— Own Another’s 2.52 -2.17 2.14 2.96 3.39 -2.79 3.04 3.08 53 X = 2.72 X = 0.27 SD = 0.44 SD = 2.76 Approved For Release 2000/08/08 : CIA-RDP96-00789R002200620001-9
Approved For Release 2000/08/08 : CIA-RDP96-00789R002200620001-9 18 Journal of the American Society for Psxchical Research permit a detailed description of the rationale, nature, or specific results of those analyses. However, the gist of their conclusion was that the extreme heterogeneity of the data made it impossible to make an adequate determi- nation of which model provided a better fit of the obtained scores. They argued that psychic functioning, whatever its underlying mechanism, is highly individualized, making it difficult to test a specific theory using data combined across subjects; in the present experiment, insufficient data were collected for any one subject to allow tests of RA versus IDS predic- tions within individuals. Additional details regarding the IDS/RA analyses may be found in an SRI International technical report (Hubbard, Utts, & Braud, 1987). We conducted our own analyses of the tube number factor simply by comparing the differences between the mean change scores for the control and the protect periods for the 2-tube condition with the corresponding differences for the 8-tube condition. Matched f tests were used for these comparisons. One ¢ test was calculated using the ‘data from all 32 partic- ipants. A second t test was calculated using the data from only the 9 par- ticipants whose scoring rates had been independently significant. Neither analysis indicated a significant difference between the two tube conditions (X difference = 0.08, ¢ [31] = 0.25, p = .80, two-tailed, and X differ- ence = 0.41, ¢[8] = 0.74, p = .51, two-tailed, respectively). According to our understanding of the IDS model, psi scoring rate should be higher for the 2-tube than for the 8-tube condition (i.e., scoring rate should de- cline with ‘‘n length’’). According to a direct psychokinesis or RA model, psi scoring rate should not depend upon the number of tubes being mea- sured during a participant’s ‘‘effort’’ period (i.e., scoring rate should be independent of ‘‘n length’’).> Thus, the absence of a 2-tube versus 8-tube scoring difference is more consistent with a remote action than with an IDS interpretation. George Hansen (personal communication, May 28, 1988) raised an issue concerning the statistical analysis of the present study. The issue concerns the assumption of independence of measurements within a 15- minute period. He mentioned that substantial trial dependencies have been observed in some of the biological target systems used by other in- vestigators and wondered whether similar dependencies might be present in this hemolysis work. If the individual ‘trials’’ (i.e., tube measure- ments) are not independent, then the ¢ tests might not be appropriate. This independence issue may be addressed as follows: 1. Trial dependence would be more problematical in a situation in 3 Some models of PK or RA could predict a diminished psi effect at the level of the individual trial (or at the level of the individual tube, in the present study) for long as opposed to short ‘‘ lengths’* due to a kind of ‘watering down’’ or “‘spreading thin’’ effect of the increased number of targets at the greater n length. The total psi effect for the entire ensemble of large n events, however, should be comparable to that for the entire ensemble of small n events. Approved For Release 2000/08/08 : CIA-RDP96-00789R002200620001-9
Approved For Release 2000/08/08 : CIA-RDP96-00789R002200620001-9 Distant Mental Influence of Hemolysis Rate 19 which the very same target organism participated in all trials of an ex- tended measurement block— for example, placing a laboratory rat in a test apparatus for 15 minutes and measuring its activity 10 times (i.e., for 10 “trials’’) during that long period. In the present hemolysis experiment, a different tube of blood (with different target cells) was used for each of the ““trials’’ (i.e., tube measurements) within a 15-minute epoch. This is anal- ogous to making activity measurements in 10 different laboratory rats placed sequentially in the measuring apparatus throughout a 15-minute period, all rats being selected or sampled from a common group colony cage. 2. The target tubes could not be randomized on an individual basis in the present study due to the nature of one of the experimental questions (i.e., the ‘‘few-versus-many-tubes”’ IDS question), which required mul- tiple trials during a prolonged ‘effort’ period, and therefore a blocked design. The order of the blocks (PCCP or CPPC) was randomized in order to control for any time-correlated systematic error. 3. Factors (e.g., temperature changes, handling differences, etc.) that might influence hemolysis rate were identified during the pilot and inter- mediate phases of the study and were eliminated or controlled so that they were no longer present or active in the formal experiment. 4. Before the formal experiment began, numerous test runs were con- ducted that involved multiple tube measurements under conditions iden- tical to those of the experimental tests, but in the absence of psi influence attempts. Such tests indicated that the tubes displayed independent activi- ties over time periods as long as those required for the completion of 20 trials. Inspection revealed no obvious trends or dependencies in the tube data, Furthermore, autocorrelation coefficients were calculated for all tube sets of this preexperiment series for which at least 20 sequential tube mea- surements were available. None of these autocorrelation analyses, each carried out for lag numbers | through 10, provided evidence for trends or dependencies. 5. Jessica Utts (personal communication, June 1, 1988) indicated that a positive correlation of the hemolysis values across time would inflate the ¢ tests. Although indicating that there was no easy way to check for tube independence, she did calculate correlation coefficients of hemolysis rate versus the numbers 1 through 10, for each of the 64 sets of tubes (32 control sets and 32 protect sets) for which she was supplied the raw data. She reported that the results showed an average correlation of —.03 for the control sets and —.001 for the protect sets; this indicated that there was no obvious trend or dependency. Taken together, these various findings and considerations are more con- sistent with an assumption of trial (tube) independence than with one of trial (tube) dependency within time blocks. A different statistical issue was raised by a referee who inquired as to whether the data were sufficiently close to normality to justify the use of f tests. Utts (personal communication, June 1, 1988), in checking the he- Approved For Release 2000/08/08 : CIA-RDP96-00789R002200620001-9