oom mel me moval OO eR el re rinses, : | ‘ -00787R000100260003-2 Approved For Release 2000/08/10 <Spperee 0 If one assumes that the target person's desires and knowledge can influence the results, and further that the experimenter's desires and knowledge can also do so, then this experiment is strong evidence for a true double blind protocol, one in which both the target person and the experimenter are unaware of: (1) the target pool and any element therein, (2) the constraints on the target pool, (3) any possible nonselected targets, (4) any previous experiments involving the subjects, and (5) any hypothesized results expected from the experiment. These are difficult criteria to meet. They will be discussed in a subsequent section of this report. Summary. The negative results, coupled with the post hoe theorizing, make this experiment of little value in confirming the existence of remote viewing. However, the lessons learned from the methodology and results can be important. K. Vallee, J., Hastings, A. C., and Askevold, G. Remote viewing experiments through computer conferencing. Proceedings of the IEEE, October 1976, pp. 1551-1552. Purpose. The purpose of this research is to extend the work of Puthoff and Targ “to cases in which the participants were several thousand miles from each other, with control of sensory conditions automatically and " unobtrusively provided by the medium of communication ... » the computer network. Approved For Release 2000/08/1037 CIA-RDP96-00787R000100260003-2
I EI eae sane arenesense Approved For Release 2000/08/10 : CIA-RDP96-00787R000100260003-2 Experimental Design. Twelve persons had individual computer terminals and attempted to describe ten mineral samples held in a geologist's hand, one per day at a prespecified time. Five of the 10 samples were enclosed in larger envelopes and labeled a "double-blind" pool. Because all persons were not logged onto the computer each day, a total of 33 descriptions were contributed by. six persons for the 10 samples. Thirteen of the descriptions were "double blind" and the remaining 20 were "open." Subjects. .Twelve persons served as subjects. They were in New York, Florida, Quebec, and California. Each was supplied a computer terminal for his/her home or office. They all volunteered to participate. Nothing is known of the subjects; however, the four excerpted transcripts in the paper indicate some geological knowledge by at least two subjects. Of the 33 transcripts, 11 were contributed by "author" A. H. In the published table, the word " author" presumably means subject, although it is interesting to note the similarity of initials to one of the authors of the paper. Experimenter, Messrs. Hudson and Wilson are thanked for "carrying out and analyzing the experiments." They ate ‘not otherwise described, The _ role of the authors in this research is undefined. Target Person, “A geologist" sitting at his home terminal selected the sample (target) each day. He is not otherwise identified or described, Judges. These were five persons who had no prior knowledge of the correct pairings; they are identified as a sociologist, an editor, a physicist, a secretary, and a librarian. In no particular order, the following persons are (later in the paper) thanked for serving as judges: Ms. Amara, Ms. Chula, Dr. Johansen, Dr. Lipinski, and Ms. Spangler. Approved For Release asda CIA-RDP96-00787R000100260003-2
Approved For Release 2000108)" Dertihege P96-00787R000100260003-2 . Equipment. Each subject had a portable computer terminal in his/her home or office, linked to a computer teleconferencing system. Participants could type in comments at any time. "All comments are immediately printed by the computer on the terminals of any participants who are currently logged in (or are stored for later retrieval)." No mention is made of whether or not each subject's response was printed immediately on all other terminals. The security of the input information, the nature of the system software logic, and other pertinent details are absent from the paper. Targets. Ten mineral samples were selected from “geological collections." The samples were "the rare mineral bastnosite, a vein filling of galena and quartz, opal, gold ore, halite, cinnabar, magnetite, realgar, barite, and cobaltite. Subjects were told only that the targets were mineral samples from North America. The manner of. select and the person doing the selection are not described at all, nor is the storage place of the samples. Procedure. “Each day at 7:30 AM and 7:30 PM Pacific Daylight Time, a geologist sitting at his home terminal took one of the envelopes from the open pool, extracted the sample, and held it in his hand. Anyone logged into the conference at that time could volunteer a remote viewing description. Such descriptions were recorded and printed by the computer with a date and time stamp. After all descriptions were in, the geologist entered a brief description of the specimen to provide feedback for the participants. The sample was then removed from the open pool. "Similarly, each morning the envelope for the day was taken from the double blind pool and placed at a designated office location where it was a target for remote viewing for eight hours. Anyone logging into the ‘conference during that time could type in a description of the sample | 239 Approved For Release eae eee ene ec cnc nreres 2c 0Ne2
Approved For Release 2000/08) usage RD P26-00787R000100260003-2 contained in that envelope. At the end of the day, the envelope was taken to the geologist, who added the sample to the open pool. No feedback was given for the double blind targets." | Thirteen of the 33 responses were double blind, and 20 were open. Four of the 10 targets were run under both open and double blind conditions. (Which targets led to responses under each condition is not indicated in the paper.) The five judges were given transcripts of the responses (without time, date, or subject identification) and the geological specimens. They were instructed to assign one or more specimens to each response. "Each specimen assigned to a given [response] was allotted a percentage score which reflected the judge's certainty of the ‘mateh.! The total of 100 percent could be divided anong any or none of the [targets]. We then totaled all - five judges’ assignments for each [response] to find which [targets] scored the highest for each [response]." Data Analysis. The data were analyzed two ways. First, the likélihood that the correct target received the highest score by chance was calculated. Second, the percentage scores were evaluated by a one-tailed T [sic] test termine the probability that the assigned percentage scores for correct incorrect targets were due to chance." sults. The results are shown in Table 17. The correct target was led the highest score in 8 out of 33 responses. These were the ing responses, with subject's initials and target given in parentheses: ->F)3; 6 (R.B.,D); u (R.B.,1); 16 (1.S.,H); 18 (1.S.,F); 21 (R.B.,J); -,D)3; and 27 (A.H.,D). T e correct target was assigned the highest score in 8 of 33 cases. Since fhance is 3.3 cases, the outcome is stated by the authors to be Approved For Release 2000/08/40 : CIA-RDP96-00787R000100260003-2 ©
A proved For Release 2000/08 /SREAREERDP96 -00787R000100260003-2 TABLE 17. RESULTS OF -VALLEE, et aZ. (1976) OPEN (0) SCORES RESPONSE BLIND (B) SUBJECT BEST 2ND 3RD «ATH 5TH TARGET 1 0 I.S. J(134) F(60) C(50) G(44) D(30) c 2 0 A.H. A(100) 1(60) (52) H(50) C(45) C 3 B I.S. . F(212) G(50) C(10) D(10) H(10) F 4 0 I.S8. 3(100) E(76) #F(55) K(30) A(10) G 5 BB! A.H. K(70) ~—-H(62)-G (60) D 6 8B R.B.  D(284) (10) D 7 B R.T. A(205) 1(90) G(80) D 8 B I.S. 1(210) 3(40) D 9 0 A.H. (150) F(70) J(50). ¢(20) I 10 0 I.S.  D(50) J3(50) K(50) E(48) (30) I 11 0 R.B. 1(208) D(30) (20) H(20) I 12 0 A.H.  F(45) E(20) D(17) E 13 0 R.B. —-F(188) E 14 B R.B. (110) D(56) 3(30) H 15 B A.H.  A(180). D(10) . F(10) H 16 B 1.8. (166) H 17 Oo. -R.B. D(100) ¥F(90) F 18 0 I.S.  F(246) D(120). £(20) F 19 0 I.8.  G(104) (100) J(84) J 20 0 A.H.  F(30) K(20) D(6) J 21 0. R.B.  J(56) -2(50) D(30) A(10) (10) J 22 B R.B. H(62) K 23 B A.H.  D(52) +G(10) J(10) K 24 8B J.B. C(40)  D(14) K 25 0 R.B D(72) 510) D- 26 0 AWW. 3(80) (25) D 27 0 Aw. = (55) (5) (5). K(2) D 28 0 R.B D(126) Il 29 0 A.H. -D(222) -F(10) H 30 0. I.S. 3(58) (30) H(22) ACLO) 1(10) H 34 2B A.W H(32) §(30) G(10) (6) A 32 B R.B.  C(130)  G(124) A 33 0 R. A B. 1(60) D(16) JC15) K(6) Approved For Release 2000/08/10 : CIA-RDP96-00787R000100260003-2 effforr
Approved For Release 2000/08/18 9f@}fuspeaP 96-00787R000100260003-2 significant at p < .01. For verification, one can calculate the level of significance, using the binomial: Coy.” 0.99797] (1) A 0041 Thus p is just slightly better than .01. For the analysis of percentage scores, the authors use a one-tailed 7-test to compare assigned percentage scores for correct vs. incorrect targets. They report a p-value of 0.08; the value of 7 is not reported. They also state that the individual p-values for subjects I.S. and R.B. were equal to 0.04. | Conelustone. The authors conclude that "about two-thirds of the [responses] contained descriptive elements that corresponded with the correct target specimen, but often these were mixed with noncorresponding elements ...." Authors were encouraged by the "accurate and significant remote perception [up to] ... 2500 miles away from the targets, ... [and] that the double blind conditions provided equally correct descriptions cal | Critical Evaluatton. This experiment can be criticized on several methodological grounds, including at least the following: (1) Selection of the subjects, their backgrounds, their knowledge of remote viewing phenomena, and the like are all unknown. (2) Did they have communication with one another or with anyone else regarding the experiment? Since the teleconferencing system was available to them at all times, such communication is certainly possible. (3) Who selected the targets? Are they a representative "random" Approved For Release 2000/08/4€: CIA-RDP96-00787R000100260003-2 SEG
Approved For Release mae, miemeinennnmieenls . 20 hs , sample of North American minerals? Who else knew of the target pool? Where/ how were they stored during the experiment? If the observers could remotely view the double blind targets in envelopes over the distances involved, it seems reasonable that they could remotely view both open and double blind targets at all times. (4) The original five open targets were used once each; the original five double blind targets were used twice each, once double blind and once open, with the double blind viewing first. This confounding of frequency of usage with the double blind vs. open variable limits the sampling assumptions of the data. . Secondly, the experimental analysis of the data can be criticized as follows: (1) Subject 1.S. was.correct three times, subject R.B. four times, and subject A.H. once, out of 10 subjects. This allocation of the eight best match correct responses seems somewhat extreme. For any given subject, the likelihood of béing correct can be evaluated. For subject R.B., who contributed 11 responses (of the 33), the likelihood of being correct, by chance, four or more times is: ; | p(w>4=1-0£ 5 CY) @.a)” (0.99% | (8) 0028. For subject I.S., the similar probability is: fh mw p(m>3)=1-[ @) (.1)” (0.9997) (9) 3 +0083. Approved For Release 2000/08/10 : CIA-RDP96-00787R000100260003-2
Approved. For Release 2000/08/1 URGaRDP96-00787R0001 00260003-2 Subject A.H. responded 10 times, and was correct once. With an a priori probability of 1/10, little can be said for his performance, whether an author or not] Note, however, that these three persons contributed ll + 9 + 10 = 30 of the 33 transcripts. Subject R.T. contributed 1, subject J.B. contributed 1, and subject A.V. contributed 1, for a total of 33. Clearly, the overall positive results are due entirely to subjects R.B. and I.S. (2) The authors indicate that 8 correct out of 33 is significant at p< .01, yet the binomial calculation yields a value of p = .004. The authors do not state the test by which they calculated the p-value; it would have been more scientific had they done so. | (3) The selection of the ¢-test for correct vs. incorrect scores is awkward. The authors are not very explicit which correct and incorrect scores they used, nor what value of ¢ was obtained. One might reasonably assume that the 15 correct matches in Table 17 were used, and compared with the remaining 87 scores. If so, this should be evaluated by a non-correlated score t-test, even though the scores are clearly not independent. Nevertheless, following this approach: t= 3.36, df = 100. (10) The exact p-value for t = 3.36, df = 100 is .0011. The authors report ap = .08, but do not indicate their basis of calculation. For subject I.8., using the same approach, t= 2.98, df = 32. . (41) The exact. p-value for subject 1.8. is .0055. Approved For Release 2000/08/16* CIA-RDP96-00787R000100260003-2 ae
Approved For Release 2000/08/10 SeMMEIP96-00787R000100260003-2 Similarly, for subject R.B., $= 2.83, df= 25, p= .009. (12) All of the above p-values are two-tailed, but clearly very significant. It is unclear to use what ¢ calculation the authors could have used to obtain p = .08 for the entire experiment data set. The only other plausible possibility is to obtain a mean correct score and a mean incorrect score for each subject (V = 6), and to analyze the difference between these means by a paired-score t statistic. This analysis yields a mean, across subjects, score of 56.17 for correct responses and 64.17 for incorrect responses. While the difference of 8.00 is not statistically significant (¢ = -0.25, df = 5, p= .19), it is interesting to note that the scores were generally higher for incorrect responses! Summary. This experiment is interesting in that it uses a different task and different methodology. However, the lack of procedural detail, coupled with the imprecise and inexact statistical analyses, cause us to have less than complete faith in the results. Like many other experiments, it would be quite impressive if the reporting were more detailed and the methodology cleaner. As it is, it can only be considered suggestive of the existence of long distance remote viewing. L. Whitson, T: W., Bogart, D. N., Palmer, J., and Tart, C. T. Preliminary experiments in group "remote viewing". Proceedings of the IEEE, | October 1976, pp. 1550-1551. Purpose. The purposes were to check on the validity of remote viewing, as reported by Puthoff and Targ, and to test such in a group experiment. Approved For Release 2000/09/AHs GIA ROP86-00787R000100260003-2
' Approved For Release 200008 aR AOR 0-00787R000100260003-2 ‘ Bike Expertment One Bxepertmentat Design. Students in an art class remotely viewed one target site and attempted to select it from a set of 10 presented in color slide form. Subjects. Twenty-seven students in an art class at the University of California, Davis. Expertmenter. TT. Whitson. Target Person. D. Bogart. Judge. An employee of the university art department served as judge. No other information is given. Equipment. Sketching materials and color slides of the targets were used. Slides were made by Whitson and Bogart. Targets. "Thirty target locations were selected by the experimenters, all within ten minutes driving time from the Davis campus. Of these thirty, ten locations clearly differentiated from each other by visual criteria were chosen as the target pool. A few examples of the target pool are: a palm tree, a Hammond organ, a bike underpass tunnel, and a gravestone statue of an angel. Procedure. A color slide of each site was sealed in an envelope together with traveling instructions from the university to the site. The experimenter randomized the envelopes while the target person was not present. The experimenter introduced the nature of the experiment at the beginning of the class period and conducted the experiment after the class had been drawing for two hours, reasoning that the subjects' visual imagery would be more activated at this time. The experimenters described the SRI studies and emphasized to the subjects ‘that remote viewing might be a widely distributed perceptual ability. Approved For Release 20000 AEs CIA-RDP96-00787R000100260003-2
Approved For Release 2000/08/10 ARES -00787R000100260003-2 Targets should be used without replacement, essentially for the reasons stated in Appendix B. | The target person should proceed to the designated target and view the preselected elements of that target as specified on the target card. The target person should do only these prespecified activities, which should be uniquely meaningful interactions with that particular target. F, Subject Responses The subject should begin his/her description of the target at the predesignated viewing time. No prior viewing should be allowed. The description should be tape-recorded and should include all experimenter questions if an experimenter is present, although, again, we see no need for such. (An uninterrupted videotape should also be used to verify the absence of nonverbal experimenter cueing.) A subject should be allowed to sketch or model if he/she so desires, but this should also be predetermined by the subject and held constant for each experiment. A subject nay be encouraged to be as specific as possible, but not told what kinds of elements to include. Only one viewing should be allowed. G.. Feedback Feedback and no-feedback experiments should be conducted. In a feedback: situation, only the subject (not the experimenter) should receive the feedback. The contents of the target envelope can be transmitted to the subject. Neither the target person nor the experimenter with the subject need have any knowledge of the subject's response to the target or a description of the target. Approved For Release 2000/08/1 07°CIA-RDP96-00787R0001 00260003-2 bho