. * Approved For Release 20g0N<itB ASS RBFE €00789R002200460001-7 I OBJECTIVE (U) (U) The objective of Task 6.0.1 of the FY 1989 Statement of Work (SOW) is to assess, where possible, the experimental results of the research at SRI International since 1973." (U) This report constitutes the deliverable for Statement of Work, Task 6.0.1. 1 UNCLASSIFIED Approved For Release 2000/08/08 : CIA-RDP96-00789R002200460001-7
. Approved For Release 2000/08/08 : CIA-RDP96-00789R002200460001-7 II EXECUTIVE SUMMARY (UV) se wv. have conducted a review and analysis of the psychoenergetic research conducted at SRI International from 1 October 1973 to 30 September 1988. The database comprises 117 documents with a total of 5,025 pages. Wa total of 25,449 trials were conducted under a variety of protocols. Analysis indicates that the odds that our results are not due to simpie statistical fluctuations alone are better than 2 x 10?°to 1 (i.e., 2 followed by 20 zeros). Using accepted criteria set forth in the standard behavioral sciences, we conclude that this constitutes convincing, if not conclusive, evidence for the existence of psychoenergetic functioning. Wa The main results are summarized below: - @ Remote viewing (RV) can provide useful Qi information. @ Laboratory and operational remote viewing show the greatest potential for practical applications. Experienced viewers are significantly better than the general population. Approximately 1% of the general population possess a natural remote viewing ability. @ Remote viewing ability does not degrade over time. @ Ai this time, there is no quantitative evidence to support a training hypothesis. © Natural scenes are significantly better than symbols as targets for remote viewing. « Remote viewing quality is independent of target distance and/or size. There is no evidence to support that a psychoenergetic interaction with the physical world exists. Electromagnetic shielding is not effective against psychoenergetic acquisition of information. A potential central nervous system correlate to remote viewing has recently been identified. _ Approved For Release 2000/0 96:00789R002200460001-7
Approved For Release 2009/0905: A'S SPE PE BP 789R002200460001 -f TIT INTRODUCTION (U) (U) Until recently, the task of assessing any general body of published knowledge was formidable. Most of the attempts included review articles that were based primarily upon the informed opinions of the reviewers. It was recognized, however, that in the behavioral sciences specific problems arose that were unique to those disciplines. For example, many of the behavioral results are based on a statistical rejection of a null hypothesis, and, using accepted practices," a successful outcome is declared if the odds that the result is not due to a chance statistical fluctuation are better than 20 to 1. A major problem for reviewers is created when the behavioral sciences’ technical journals refuse to publish results that fail to meet this statistical criterion. For example, if only one-in-20 studies is published, then the literature may appear to provide evidence for a phenomenon, but taken with the 19 unpublished studies for every published one, there is no evidence for a phenomenon. This particular difficulty is called “the file drawer problem.” (U) This and other problems resulting from the diversity and difficulty of the behavioral sciences have been addressed in a new review technique known as meta~analysis.2-4 Meta-analytical procedures are most useful when a large number of diverse studies is under consideration. Meta-analysis provides techniques to clarify the impact of the file drawer problem and to enable us to combine diverse experiments in a meaningful manner. (U) The results of SRI’s psychoenergetic research encompass a wide variety of experiments and thus can be addressed with these techniques. The analysis of the SRI data, however, is simplified because there is no file drawer problem. All experiments that were conducted have been reported, and thus are included in the analysis. (U) This report describes the database, the analysis techniques, and the results of 16 years of psychoenergetic research conducted at SRI International. * (U) References may be found at the end of this report. UNCLASSIFIED Approved For Release 2000/08/08 : CIA-RDP96-00789R002200460001-7
Approved For Release 4gdslG@bA\ S61 R EB -00789R002200460001-7 2. (U) Database Design (U) The database schema that was used consists of four basic tables (people, documents, experiments, and units), and two basic relationships (author and parameter). See Figure 2 for an illustration of this schema. The units-table contains information about the lowest level of statistical analysis in a given experiment. For example, if 6 viewers participated in 20 trials each, the database would contain 6 unit entries—one for the overall result for each viewer. (U) Although our database management system is a relational database, our requirements were inherently hierarchical. That is, each of the documents contains several experiments, and each of our experiments contain several trials. In order to minimize the redundancy within the database, we attempted to include all pertinent information as high in the hierarchy as possible. That is, if a parameter or condition applied to an entire experiment, we would record that data at the experiment level. If, on the other hand, the parameter varied across units within a given experiment, we made provision to record those data as a function of unit instead. (U) The analyses of most of our experiments contain both individual and group statistics. In order to prevent any trial from being “counted” multiple times, we required that all experiments be broken up into the “units” which represent the basic grouping of trials upon which a hypothesis was being tested. Thus, any given trial appears only once in the database yet we can reconstitute the group statistics at a later time. (U) This approach offers two advantages. First, any arbitrary parameter which does not have an explicit slot in the database can be stored, thus providing flexibility. Second, we can distinguish between “independent variables” and “incidental variables.” The former are variables which are intentionally manipulated by the experimenter, and the latter are actually parameters which the experimenter either could not control or treated as insignificant. (U) Some of the documents detail multiple analyses for a given experiment in order to compare and evaluate standard and new analytic techniques. For this effort, however, we required that only one analysis be recorded for each experiment, since our primary focus was to evaluate the parameters that effect psychoenergetic functioning and not to compare different evaluation techniques. In determining which analysis to enter into the database, we always chose a blind method over a post hoc method. If a choice still remained, we then always chose the technique that had been developed first. 6 UNCLASSIFIED Approved For Release 2000/08/08 : CIA-RDP96-00789R002200460001-7