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individuals “must touch the surface of the light-proof material”
or the effect
is not produced.
This
procedure seemed such an obvious potential source of artifact that we excluded touching entirely in
our investigations.
The PRC experiments also reported that the anomalous signals produced during
exceptional vision were principally large amplitude pulses which appeared rapidly
( ~1 sec rise time)
EXPERIMENTAL METHOD
HARDWARE
To test these reports, we devised a photomultiplier tube light detector system and a remote view-
ing procedure which paralleled the Chinese efforts. We selected 35mm slides of National Geographic
sites as our target material rather than symbolic characters.
A light-tight slide holder which could be opened and closed easily was fabricated and
fitted to
the end flange of the PM tube housing. The slide was positioned within approximately
1 cm of the
active surface of the tube.
The PM tube was selected to have an active area equal to or greater than the
film area of the
slide.
In addition, we required the tube to be sufficiently broadband and sensitive so as to equal or
surpass the device used by the Chinese. We also required the dark count (background) rate to be as
low as possible at or near room temperature.
(Very low background count rates can be achieved by
cooling PM tubes to -20 °C but the additional complexity, expense and deviation from the PRC ex-
periments prevented us from using cooling in this series of investigations.)
The output of the PM tube was processed and displayed by state-of-the-art instrumentation
used in nuclear radiation spectroscopy. We selected the multi-channel scaling (MCS) mode of signal
processing as the most appropriate for our experiment.
In this type of data acquisition, the amplified
pulses from the PM tube were counted for a specific length of time
(.9 secs) and the resulting total
was stored and displayed. A histogram was then built up showing the count rate of the tube over the
duration of a single session (~15 mins.).
Since the voltage output of a photomultiplier tube
is directly proportional to the intensity of the
incident light source we decided to set two "windows" on the PM tube signal.
One window displayed
the entire voltage range output which
is dominated by numerous small amplitude background pulses.
We designated this window Region
I.
The window for Region
II was adjusted to show only large volt-
age pulses.
In this fashion, we were able to monitor the system for either of two possible outcomes:
•
A significant increase in the number of small amplitude pulses.
•
An increase in the frequency of relatively rare large amplitude events.
The Chinese claim that an individual with “exceptional vision” produces an anomalous signal from
the PM tube consisting of mainly large amplitude pulses.
Since the PM tube was in total darkness and no light emitting materials were included in the
sample chamber,
all background counts were due to thermionic emission at the photocathode or
dynodes
(Knoll,
1979). A photon which strikes the photocathode will produce a signal which
is indis-
tinguishable from that resulting from thermionic emission.
Therefore, one could not say conclusively
in our experiment whether a
statistically significant increase in count rate (above background)
is due
to enhanced thermionic emission or photon production.
For simplicity in this report, we have refered
to the putative effect as “photon production”, and have calculated our results assuming that photons
are striking the photocathode in the PM tube.
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A multichannel analyzer (MCA) with three inputs received, sorted and stored the signals coming
from the two windows. A third input was connected to a signal generator which could be triggered by
a microswitch in the adjoining RV room.
That switch was used to mark the beginning and end of
data taking in the RV session.
Details of the session are contained in the methodology section. A
schematic of the equipment used
is shown in Figure
1.
Following an experimental session, the data collected by the MCA was transferred to cassette
tape.
The cassette was subsequently read into a computer for analysis (see Photomultiplier Tube
Analysis below)
.
The count rates during control periods in our two regions of interest were ap~
proximately 300 sec-1
and 10 secH
respectively.
Since a single photon can produce a count, we
were sensitive to an increase of approximately yfTZ photons, where N
is the count rate.
This figure
would correspond to about 50-60 excess counts in Region
I and as few as 3—4 excess counts in
Region
II.
We exercised considerable care in reducing the sources of experimental artifact.
The PM tube
housing and slide holder were light-tight and constructed of metal which was grounded and shielded
against RF, magnetic and electrostatic
fields. In at least one Chinese report, the light proofing of the
PM tube was accomplished by using only layers of black cloth.
Our entire PM tube housing was fur-
ther enclosed in a standard photographers film changing bag so that the slide selection and insertion
could be accomplished in the dark.
We found
it necessary to isolate and
filter the 110V AC power to the experimental set up.
Line
transients produced by nearby heavy machinery caused spurious peaks to appear in the PM tube out-
put until suitable
filters and surge suppressors were installed.
The slides which served as the targets during the session were prepared from a pool of 112 Na-
tional Geographic photographs.
Each slide was placed in a separate opaque envelope marked with an
identification number.
Prior to each session, four slides were selected from the target pool by a ran-
dom number generator.
All four slide envelopes were placed in the changing bag with the PM tube
housing and shuffled.
One envelope was selected, the slide removed and placed into the special hol-
der which covers the PM tube.
This procedure ensured that the slide selected was unknown to the
viewer and experimenter.
The photomultiplier tube and
its preamplifier were both positioned in the same room used for
the RV session.
Connecting cables for signals, high voltage,
etc., were run through a
utility access
space into an adjoining room.
Located in this adjacent area was the instrumentation for amplifying
and counting the PM tube
signals.
The viewer and experimenter always accompanied each other
when
it was necessary to enter the instrumentation room during the course of a session.
At
all other
times that room was locked.
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SWITCH
PULSER
TUBE HOUSING
PREAMPLIFIER
PHOTOMULTIPLIER
AMPLIFIER,
35 mm SLIDE
SINGLE
CHANNEL
ANALYZER
SINGLE
CHANNEL
ANALYZER
All Amplitude
Pulses
High Amplitude
Pulses
MULTICHANNEL
Session Marker
Pulses
ANALYZER AND DISPLAY
Figure
SCHEMATIC DIAGRAM FOR THE PHOTON PRODUCTION EXPERIMENT
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METHODOLOGY
Prior to the arrival of a viewer, the experimenter selected the four slides, checked the equip-
ment for proper functioning, shuffled the envelopes and loaded the target slide.
To achieve a rela-
tively constant background pulse rate, we always cooled the exterior of the PM housing and changing
bag with a plastic bag of ice.
This moderate form of cooling was necessary since the RV session room would get quite warm
during afternoon sessions. A rise in temperature to about 26 °C was sufficient to increase the back-
ground count rate a factor of two or three over that observed in the morning session.
Cooling with
ice allowed us to maintain the temperature of the PM tube near 20 °C for all sessions.
After the arrival of the viewer, three minutes of data were collected with no one in the RV
room.
(The
first minute was always discarded in subsequent analysis because of transients occurring
when voltage was again applied to the PM tube after installing a slide.)
The viewer and experimenter
then entered the RV room and carried out an RV session. Each time the viewer was ready to give a
response in the RV session, the experimenter marked that time with a press of a microswitch.
Closing
the switch briefly sent a series of TTL logic pulses which were registered in the MCA memory.
After
the response the experimenter again closed the switch for 1-2 secs.
These two bursts of pulses clearly
defined the period of psychic effort for future analysis of the PM tube output.
Following the session,
the viewer and experimenter once again returned to the instrumentation room where the accumulated
data was read out into a cassette tape.
Once this process was begun, the pair returned to the RV
room where the target slide was removed from
its holder and displayed to the viewer.
Following the departure of the viewer, the experimenter rechecked the apparatus and
left
it
ready for the next session.
Following the manufacturer’s recommendations
all the principal hardware
(PM tube,
amplifier, MCA,
etc.) remained on continuously.
The data tape remained in place until
filled (~15 sessions) then was removed for further analysis.
PHOTOMULTIPLIER TUBE DATA
Figure
2. shows typical data recorded from the photomultiplier (PM) tube during a 15 minute
RV session.
Three spectra are displayed concurrently.
The top spectrum displays
all pulses from the
PM tube, regardless of their amplitude, that were detected during each 0.9 second counting period.
The middle spectrum displays only those pulses, detected in the same 0.9 second interval, whose
amplitude exceeded a preset threshold which was adjusted to eliminate
all but the largest of pulses.
The remaining histogram represents RV session dependent timing markers.
Each spectrum has a
common x-axis of 1024 channels
(0.9 seconds/channel)
.
For the the
all amplitude pulse case, the
average counting rate was about 180 counts per channel
(0.9 second).
The deviation about the mean
(±15 counts)
is ordinarily due to random variations in thermionic emission within the PM tube and
is
a well understood phenomenon.
Average rates in the high-amplitude spectrum were about 5/channel.
The analysis of these data proceded as follows.
For each spectrum, a control (baseline) period
was designated to be the two minutes of data collected one minute prior to the
first RV time marker.
This period occured when the PM tube was unattended.
The data in this region were
fit with a
straight line by the least squares technique.
For each possible number of counts greater than or less
than that represented by the
fitted straight line,
a histogram of the number of channels was con-
structed.
For example, assume the straight line
fit has zero slope
(i.e. the same value regardless of
the channel number).
Further assume this value
is 100 counts.
First, we count the number of chan-
nels in the region of interest that contain 100 counts.
Next, we count the number of channels that
contain 101 counts.
We continue this process until
all observed channels have been evaluated.
The
resulting histogram approximates a normal distribution.
In the analysis of the base line region,
a nor-
mal distribution, with mean po and standard distribution
cr0 ,
is
fit to the base line histogram.
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FIGURE
TYPICAL PM TUBE OUTPUT DURING AN RV SESSION
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PM TUBE/RV CORRELATION RESULTS
For a single RV session the number of channels with significantly increased or decreased count
rates are summed over
all RV target access periods.
These summations were made for the
all
amplitude spectrum (A)
and for the high amplitude spectrum (H).
The final output from the
photomultiplier tube data analysis consists of the four summations described above normalized by the
total number of RV channels
(i.e. The length of time during the whole session that the viewer was in
“contact” with the target material.).
Table 5 shows the results of the RV figure of merit and
photomultiplier tube analysis for the
all—amplitude and high—amplitude cases for each viewer.
The PM results are shown in units of per-
cent number of significant channels.
The symbols A and H represent the all-amplitude and high-
amplitude data respectively, and the symbols + and - represent the increase or decrease from the ex-
pected number of pulses, respectively.
In order to analyze the combined RV and PM results, we chose to calculate the linear correla-
tion coefficient between the figure of merit and the normalized PM tube data.
This method was
chosen since the Chinese claim that “exceptional vision”
results in an increased count rate of mainly
large amplitude pulses.
Therefore we could expect a positive correlation between the FM and H+ and
a negative correlation between FM and H-.
(As the quality of the RV contact increases, there should
be fewer number of channels containing small count rates.)
Although the
PRC data does not specifi-
cally mention results for the
all amplitude PM data, we would expect that the far greater count rate of
small amplitude pulses in A+ and A— would tend to mask any increase in only high amplitude pulses.
Since the direction of the correlation could be specified, we calculated single tailed p-values for the
the correlation coefficients.
Table
6 shows these results.
Table
CORRELATION RESULTS
Analysis
Mean
Correlation
Coef.
(r)
p-value
(1-tailed)
FM
0.247
-
_
A+
4.674
-0.158
0.242
A-
3.746
-0.174
0.220
H +
7.998
0.393
0.035^
H~
1.981
-0.017
0.469
t Significant
We observe in Table 6 that there
is a weak,
statistically significant correlation of RV with in-
creased number of PM pulses of high amplitude.
Furthermore, the direction of the correlation
is as
expected although the difference in the correlations
is not significant.
This
is in direct agreement with
the PRC claims, with the exception that the magnitude of our observations
is considerably less than
theirs.
There are a number of possible explainations for this weak correlation:
1.
We have simply observed a statistical fluctuation in a noisy environment.
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2.
Since our target materials were photographic slides of natural (and existing) loca-
tions, our assumption that the slides were the target materals
(rather than the actual
sites) was
false.
3.
The PRC subjects with exceptional vision might be much more skilled than our
viewers.
4.
Closer proximity between viewer and PM tube might be required to enhance the
effect.
5.
The thermionic emission of the PM tube has been enhanced rather than photons
being produced.
By calculating the auto-correlation functions for lags of 0-20, we found that each of the all-
amplitude spectra was significant for most
all of the lags.
Secondly, there were significant correlations
between all- and high-amplitude spectra; an expected result since the high-amplitude information
is
completely contained in the all—amplitude spectra. Only a few of the high-amplitude spectra, however,
showed significant auto-correlations.
Thus we are able to say that we observed some small amplitude'
periodic signals in the output of the PM tube.*
The most likely source of periodic signals in the PM tube pulses
is from the AC power line.
During construction of the apparatus, we noticed occasional periods of highly regular signals in the
analyzer.
We found that our laboratory was across a hall from a machine shop. All of the observable
artifacts vanished when we utilized appropriate power conditioning hardware.
Nonetheless, the
sig-
nificant auto-correlations demonstrate that we were unsuccessful at eliminating
all the regular structure
from the signal.
Therefore explanation
1. above must remain as a likely possibility.
As of this report, there
is not enough data for us to determine the origin of the RV information
(i.e., from the slide in present time; precognitively from the slide at a future feedback time; or the
site
itself in present and/or feedback time.).
Thus item
2. above can not be eliminated as a
critical
distinction between our work and that of the Chinese.
Since we chose the resources available to us for the experiment, we chose viewers who had
demonstrated
ability at remote viewing natural scenes.
We do not have individuals with a history of
viewing abstract or alphabetic sympols.
Therefore, we attempted a conceptual replication of the PRC
experiments rather than an exact one.
Finally, we note that one of the best viewers (177) demonstrated significant positive correlations
between figures of merit and both all-amplitude measures
(p < 0.007 and p < 0.022 for A+ and A-
respectively)
.
Since this result
is not confirmed by the summed result (Only the positive high-
amplitude pulses showed significance.),
it
is difficult to interpret.
If the PRC claim proves ultimately
to be correct,
it
is tempting to say that viewer 177 “interacted” with the target system by increasing
the variance of the signal during the RV periods.
The above analysis, while
statistically suggestive of the PRC result, does not demonstrate that we
observed an overall effect
of the same magnitude.
The Chinese report signal-to-noise ratios of at
least 25:1, and usually 100:1 to 1000:1.
We did, however, observe two “anomalies” during the course of the experiment which are sug-
gestive of the PRC claims.
Those anomalies are shown in Figures 3 and
4.
In order to designate any
spectral feature as an anomaly, several
strict criteria had to be met:
* We thank D.
I. Radin for calculating the auto- and cross-correlations.
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COUNTS
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FIGURE
ANOMALY PRODUCED BY VIEWER 558
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FIGURE 4
ANOMALY PRODUCED BY VIEWER 807
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