fn yed For Release 2000/08/07 : CIA-RDP96-00788R001300090002-8> #2 July 1979 EXPERIMENTAL PSI RESEARCH: IMPLICATIONS FOR PHYSICS WIN C. MAY Ceo popes NP" see ot c Joc- Radio Physics Laboratory of SRI International poe a — 333 Ravenswood Avenue Menlo Park, California 940: By: HAROLD E. PUTHO, Presented at: Session on “The Role of Consciousness in the Physical World” 145th National Meeting American Association for the Advancement of Science Houston, Texas January 3-8, 1979
Approved For Release 2000/08/07 : CIA-RDP96-00788R001300090002-8 EXPERIMENTAL PSI RESEARCH: IMPLICATIONS FOR PHYSICS by H. E. Puthoff, R. Targ, E. C. May Radio Physics Laboratory SRI International Menlo Park, California I ABSTRACT Experimental laboratory work continues to provide evidence for the existence of so-called psi processes, a class of interactions between consciousness and the physical world as yet unexplained. These include (1) the acquisition of information not presented to any obvious sense, and (2) the production of physical effects not mediated by any obvious mechanism, At SRI we have concentrated primarily on the former, inves- tigating a phenomenon we call “remote viewing," the ability of certain individuals to access and describe, by means of mental processes, infor- mation blocked from ordinary perception by distance or shielding .*° Our data base consists of more than 100 experiments in the remote viewing of targets ranging from objects in nearby light-tight cannisters to geographic sites at transcontinental distances, viewed from locations which include shielded Faraday cages and a submerged submarine. Data from these observations indicate that models put forward to explain psi processes must account for bit rates on the order of 0.1 bits/s, resolu- tion of approximately 1 mm, apparent ineffectiveness of ordinary electrical shielding, and relative insensitivity to distance up to at least 10,000 km. Although such phenomena might appear to be in conflict with the laws of physics, we anticipate that with further work much of the data will be accounted for either within the framework of physics as presently understood, or on the basis of extrapolations that have been proposed to account for other (non-psi) data, and that, conversely, the psi data base may shed light on some of the current problems in physics, e€.g., with regards to the foundations of quantum theory. II INTRODUCTION For the past seven years we have been investigating aspects of human perception that appear to fall outside the range of well-understood Approved For Release 2000/08/07 : CIA-RDP96-00788R001300090002-8
Approved For Release 2000/08/07 : CIA-RDP96-00788R001300090002-8 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, remote geographical locations up to several thousand km distant from their physical location given only a known person on whom to target. These abilities are developed in several individuals sufficiently to allow them to describe--often in considerable detail--geographical or technical material such as buildings, roads, natural formations, interior laboratory apparatus, and sealed targets, along with the real-time activities of persons at the target site. The experimental evidence indicates that (1) although the information channel is imperfect, the data generated by the remote viewing process exceeds any reasonable bounds of chance correlation, and (2) the extent of physical distance separating the subject from the target site up to transcontinental distances does not appear to significantly affect the accuracy of perception, As observed in the laboratory, the basic phenomenon appears to cover a range of subjective experiences variously referred to in the literature as autoscopy (in the medical literature); exteriorization or disassociation (psychological literature); simple clairvoyance, traveling clairvoyance, or out-of-body experience (parapsychological literature); or astral pro- jection (occult literature). We choose the term "remote viewing" as a neutral descriptive term free from prior associations and bias as to mechanisms. Since the initial publication of our investigations of this remarkable phenomenon, a number of replication studies have been carried out in other laboratories, the bulk of which have been successful.’ + Thus, it appears that the remote viewing function can be elicited under a wide variety of laboratory conditions. III] REMOTE VIEWING OF LOCAL (SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA) TARGET SITES We begin with a synopsis of our basic data base of more than fifty local remote viewing trials with nine subjects.” The general protocol is to closet a subject with an experimenter at SRI, and at a prearranged time to obtain from the subject a description of an undisclosed, remote site being visited by a target team, one of whose members is known to the subject and who thereby constitutes a target person. Approved For Release 2000/08/07 : CIA-RDP96-00788R001300090002-8
Approved For Release 2000/08/07 : CIA-RDP96-00788R001300090002-8 A. Experimental Procedure At the beginning of a trial, a subject is closeted with an experimenter at SRI to await an agreed-upon start time, At the same time a target team is sent, without communication with the subject or experi- menter remaining at SRI, to a target location somewhere in the San Francisco Bay Area (~500 square km). The target is determined by random-number access to a target pool of sealed travelling orders previously prepared by an independent experimenter and kept locked in a secure safe, The target pool consists of more than 100 target locations chosen from a target-rich environment. During a predetermined viewing period, typically of 15 minutes duration, the subject is asked to render drawings and describe into a tape recorder his impressions of the target site being visited by the outbound target team, The experimenter with the subject is kept ignorant of the target, and is therefore free to question the subject to clarify his descriptions without fear of cueing, overt or subliminal. The experiment is thus of the double-blind type. When the target team returns to SRI following the remote viewing period, the subject is then taken to the target site so that he may obtain direct feedback, Following a series of such trials over a several-day period, a formal blind judging procedure (described below) is used to evaluate the data and quantify the results. B. Initial Experimental Series To give a concrete example, we summarize the results obtained with the first subject in the local remote viewing series. This subject (designated here as $1) participated in nine trials. Subject Sl came to our experiments with a reported history of spontaneous remote viewing experiences. In general, the subject's ability in these trials to describe correctly buildings, docks, roads, gardens, and the like, including structural materials, color, ambience, and activity--sometimes in great detail--indicated the functioning of a remote perceptual ability. A landmark Hoover Tower target, for example, was recognized and correctly named; a boat marina was described in a consistent narrative that began with "what I'm looking at is a little boat jetty or boat dock along the bay ...,' and so forth. Nonetheless, the descriptions generally contained inaccuracies as well as correct statements. A typical example is indicated by the Approved For Release 2000/08/07 : CIA-RDP96-00788R001300090002-8
Approved For Release 2000/08/07 : CIA-RDP96-00788R001300090002-8 drawing shown in Figure 1, First, the subject correctly described a park- like area containing two pools of water: one rectangular, 60 * 89 ft (actual dimensions 75 X 100 ft); the other circular, diameter 120 ft (actual diameter 110 ft). However, as can be seen from his drawing, the subject 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, Finally, the subject incorrectly indicated the function of the site as water purification rather than recreational swimming. Thus we observe essentially a correct description of certain basic elements and patterns coupled with incomplete or erroneous analysis of function, This latter theme emerged as a thread which continued throughout our work and eventually led to uncovering a possible relationship between paranormal perception and cerebral functioning, namely: that paranormal functioning may involve specialization characteristic of the nonanalytic part of the brain's cognitive apparatus, which predominates in spatial and other holistic processing, in contrast to that part which predominates in verbal and other analytical functioning .+” 7° Cc, Judging of Results 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 consultant not otherwise associated with this series. The response packets, which contained the nine typed unedited transcripts of the tape-recorded narratives and associated drawings, were unlabeled and presented to the judge in a randomly-numbered order, Working alone, the judge's task was to visit each target location in turn and to blind rank order, on a scale 1 to 9 (best to worst match), each of the nine transcripts against each target, generating a 9 X 9 matrix (see Table 1). As a first-order evaluation of the matrix we consider simply the number of direct matches (ones on the diagonal), in this case seven out of nine, The appropriate statistic is derived assuming nonindependent assign- ment of transcripts to target sites (as in guessing the order of a random sequence of the digits one through nine, each used once) .”° The result (seven out of nine correctly matched) is significant at p = 1074, A more precise measure of the statistical significance of the matrix of target/transcript ratings is given by a direct-count-of- permutations method of great generality.*+ It is an exact calculation method requiring no approximations such as normality assumptions. Further- more, the judging process that went into generating the matrix is not required to be independent transcript~to-transcript nor target-to-target. Finally, numerical estimates of target/transcript correspondences can be made on the basis of either rank-order or rating scales.(e.g., rank ordering 1 - n, best 4 Approved For Release 2000/08/07 : CIA-RDP96-00788R001300090002-8
Approved For Release 2000/08/07 : CIA-RDP96-00788R001300090002-8 (a) City map of target location 1b) Drawing by Subject S1 FIGURE 1 SWIMMING POOL COMPLEX AS REMOTE VIEWING TARGET Approved For Release 2000/08/07 : CIA-RDP96-00788R001300090002-8
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i Approved For Release 2000/08/07 : CIA-RDP96-00788R001300090002-8 to worst match; rating 0-100, zero to complete correspondence; arbitrary scale rating arrived at by some ‘complex procedure involving many factors such as occurs in multiple- judge voting, etc.) The argument is as follows. In the absence of knowledge as to which transcript was generated in response to which target, one observes that in setting up the matrix there are ni possible ways to label the columns (transcripts), given any particular order of the rows (targets), and vice versa. Thus, there are ni possible matrices which could be constructed from the raw judging data, all of them equally likely a priori. Each has its associated sum on the diagonal corresponding to a possible alignment of targets and transcripts. The significance level for the experiment is then determined by counting the number of possible matrices that would yield a result (diagonal sum) equal to or better (i.e., lower sum of ranks in the rank-order case, higher sum of scores in the correspondence-rating case, etc.) than that obtained for the matrix corresponding to the key, and dividing by ni This ratio gives the probability of obtaining by chance a result equal to or better than that obtained in the actual judging process. The calculation method just outlined has in common with the previous approach (the direct-match statistic) that the various judging steps are not required to be independent, It is more precise, however, in that it takes into account measures of transcript quality represented by the whole range of rank-order numbers, not just the number of direct matches. For the 9 X 9 matrix under consideration we have by direct count p = 32/9! = 8.8 * 107°, a result which in this case is essentially the same as that obtained by the direct-match statistic. Finally we note, as an item of interest to be discussed later, that in trials 3, 4, and 6 through 9, the subject was secured in a double-walled copper screen Faraday cage, which provides 120-dB attenua~- tion for plane-wave radio-frequency radiation over the range of 15 kHz to 1 GHz. The results of the judging indicate that the use of such shielding does not prevent high-quality descriptions from being obtained. D. Replication Series Having completed this jnitial series of trials with Sl, we concluded that remote viewing appeared to be both a real and a robust phenomenon. We then carried out replication experiments with other sub- jects (the results of which are given in detail in Reference 2) until we had established a data base of over 50 trials. A summary tabulation of the statistical evaluations of these trials (with nine subjects) is presented in Table 2. Of the six studies, involving remote viewing of natural targets or laboratory apparatus, five reached statistical sig- nificance. The overall results, evaluated conservatively on the basis 7 Approved For Release 2000/08/07 : CIA-RDP96-00788R001300090002-8
Approved For Release 2000/08/07 : CIA-RDP96-00788R001300090002-8 Table 2 SUMMARY: REMOTE VIEWING OF LOCAL TARGETS Number of p-Value, Rank Experiments Order Judging 8.8 X10° natural targets Sl §2 and $3 (four each) 5,2 x 1074 $4 1.7 X 1073 S85 and S6 (four each) 0.08 (NS) Vl and V2 (three; two) 0,033 With technology targets $2, 83, S4, V2, V3 Approved For Release 2000/08/07 : CIA-RDP96-00788R001300090002-8
Approved For Release 2000/08/07 : CIA-RDP96-00788R001300090002-8 12. 13, 14, 15, 16. 17. 18. 19, 20. 21. 22. 23, Research in Parapsychology 1975, pp. 46-48, Scarecrow Press, Metuchen, N.J, (1976). J. Bisaha and B, J. Dunne, "Precognitive Remote Viewing in the Chicago Area: A Replication of the Stanford Experiment," Research in Parapsychology 1976, pp. 84-86, Scarecrow Press, Metuchen, N.J. (1977). J. Bisaha and B, J. Dunne, "Multiple Subject and Long Distance Precognitive Remote Viewing of Geographical Locations," Technical Session on Research in Psychoenergetics, Proc. 1977 IEEE Intern'l Conf, on Cybernetics and Society, Washington, D.C. (September 20, 1977). B. J. Dunne and J. Bisaha, "Multiple Channels in Precognitive Remote Viewing," Research in Parapsychology 1977, pp. 146-51, Scarecrow Press, Metuchen, N.J. (1978). H, Chotas, "Remote Viewing in the Durham Area," Jour, of Parapsychology 42, pp. 61-62 (1978). B, J. Dunne and J, Bisaha, "Precognitive Remote Viewing in the Chicago Area: A Replication of the Stanford Experiment," Jour of Parapsychology 43, pp. 17-30 (March 1979). J, Ehrenwald, "Cerebral localization and the psi syndrome," J. of Nervous and Mental Disease, Vol. 161, No. 6, pp. 393-398. R. Ornstein, The nature of human consciousness, San Francisco, CA: Freeman, 1973, Ch, 7 and 8. R. W. Sperry, "Cerebral Organization and Behavior ," 133, pp. 1749-1757 (1961). Science, Vol. W. Feller, An Introduction to Probability Theory and Its Applications, Vol, 1, 2nd ed., p. 98, John Wiley and Sons, New York (1957). C, Scott, "On the Evaluation of Verbal Material in Parapsychology: A Discussion of Dr, Pratt's.monograph," Jour Soc, Psych, Res., Vol. 46, No, 752, pp. 79-90 (June 1972). , J. E. Kennedy, "Methodological Problems in Free-Response ESP Experiments ," Jour, Amer, Soc, Psychical Res., Vol. 73, No, 1, pp. 1-15 (January 1979). P, Diaconis, "Statistical Problems in ESP Research,’ Science, Vol. 201, No, 4351, pp. 131-136 (July 1978). 41 Approved For Release 2000/08/07 : CIA-RDP96-00788R001300090002-8