Approved For Release 2003/09/16
: CIA-RDP96-00787R000500240022-9
STANFORD RESEARCH INSTITUTE
MENLO PARK, CALIFORNIA 9402b
(415) 326-6200
March 15,
1977
MEMO
SGI
I
TO:
FROM:
Dr.
H.E
.
Puthoff and R. Targ
SUBJECT:
Ornstein Book Review
1.
I wish
to bring
to your attention an unfavorable
review of our
book Mind-Reach written by Ornstein for the New York Times Book
Review
(Enc.
1),
and,
equally
important,
the conditions surrounding
that review that place
it
in perspective.
(Ornstein
is best known
as
a popularizer of
the hemispheric specialization and split-brain
research pioneered by
the laboratory work of Sperry,
Gazzaniga,
Bogen, Kimura,
and others.)
2.
His main point
is
that we oversell
the ease with which remote
viewing can be accomplished,
when,
according
to him,
no one else
has
replicated our work.
To the embarrassment of Ornstein
at
this
point,
the facts clearly show that he had not done his homework,
since six laboratories had replicated our experiments,
four published
well
in advance
of
his
review . 1-4
We score Ornstein heavily for
this
inexcusable
faux pas
in our Letter to
the Editor,
N.Y.
Times
Book Review,
to be published March 27
(Enc.
2).
As
far
as
the
accusation that we had "done more harm perhaps"
to our position and
the
field,
I only need cite
a letter written to us by Prof.
Schmeidler
of
the Psychology Department,
CCNY,
a leader
in the
field
and pre-
eminent among American parapsychologists
and well known to be one
of
the most conservative with respect to our work
(Enc.
3).
3.
Since we were ourselves shocked
at
the tone of
the review
(all
previous
reviews had been positive:
See Enc.
4 which includes
Kirkus Reviews,
Library Journal,
Publisher's Weekly,
and
a statement
from Charles
Panati,
Science Editor
at Newsweek),
we began checking
with Ornstein's associates
to ascertain what was going on.
We
found that
in the
last six months
there have been dramatic changes
in Ornstein's
life:
He has
abruptly disconnected with his long-term
research colleague
at Langley-Porter,
Dr.
David Galen;
he
left
California and moved
to New York;
and
is now completely separated
from
the research laboratory,
devoting his
full efforts
to starting
a popular psychology magazine on the basis
of
a three-million
dollar investment by the publisher Harcourt Brace,
all
following
a
ridiculing review
in the New York Times Book Review of his
latest
book
(Enc.
5).
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4.
Of more concern
to us— indeed
a very serious concern from an
ethical
and scientific viewpoint— (although
it
is
a minor point
in the review)
is Ornstein's statement concerning his
inability
to replicate
one
of our experiments
(an EEG strobelight experiment)
in which
the
tenor of his remarks would
lead one
to believe
that
perhaps we had exaggerated
the significance
of this experiment.
In
truth,
Ornstein,
who carried out
the experiment under
a subcontract
from us,
reported
a positive
result
to us and to our Navy contractor
(Enc.
6).
We
at SRI,
reanalyzing his data using our own FFT
facilities,
took exception to his claim of
a positive
result,
and
in our own paper summarizing his data
(Enc.
7)
we were the
ones who
took
a more conservative position,
labeling the result
as
lacking
definitiveness,
a position we informed Ornstein of before his review.
5.
.
A
true measure
of the response
to our work,
our protocols,
and our
contributions to
the
field by established scientists
of repute
is
summed up best by what Dr. Margaret Mead had to say
in her
intro-
duction
to our book
(Enc.
8).
Since publication of our
as
in Enc.
9.
book we
are deluged with individual
successes,
References
Arthur Hastings
and David Hurt,
A confirmatory remote viewing in a
group setting,"
Proc,
IEEE ,
Vol.
64,
October 1976.
2.
Thomas Whitson, David Bogart,
John Palmer,
and Charles Tart,
Pre-
liminary experiments
in group remote viewing,
Proc.
IEEE ,
Vol.
64,
October 1976.
3.
Jacques Vallee, Arthur Hastings,
and Gerold Askevold,
"Remote viewing
experiments
through computer conferencing,"
Proc.
IEEE ,
Vol.
64,
October 1976.
4.
John Bisaha and B.J.
Dunne,
"Precognitive remote viewing
in the
Chicago area,
a replication of the Stanford experiment,
Research
in Parapscyhology 1976.
Metuchen,
NJ
:
The Scarecrow Press
Inc.
(in
press). Presented
at
the annual Parapsychological Association conference
Utrecht, August
1976.
Approved For Release 2003/09/16
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