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Engineering professor Robert
Jahn laid his career on the
line to test the power of
the mind over machines. He
thinks he’s onto something.
John McCrone reports
IN THE lobby of the Flamingo Hilton, Las
Vegas,
slot
machines—one
armed
bandits—stretch in serried ranks to the
far horizon. Hanging over the machines
nearest the entrance stands a sign stating:
“97
. 4—the
hottest
slot
percentage
in
town”.
With
characteristic
American
bluntness, the Flamingo’s management
tell customers that the machines have
been adjusted
to cream
off “only”
2-6
cents of every dollar they spend.
This
promise
of
steady,
if
unspec-
tacular, loss
is supposed to draw in the
punters from the
gritty heat of the Las
Vegas strip. And attract them
it does. So
impatient are they to shed their money
at the
guaranteed
rate
that they feed
adjacent
machines
with
both
hands,
shovelling in coins and barely waiting for
the clacking reels to come to rest.
If ever proof were needed against the
existence
of
telepathy,
psychokinesis,
precognition or any other form of psychic
power, the gambling halls of Las Vegas
seem to provide the perfect place to find
it. The odds on every game of chance
from the slot machines and crap games to
the blackjack and roulette tables—have
been fine-tuned to fractions of a per cent.
Judging by the faces masked in concen-
tration,
it can hardly be said that the
gamblers are not exerting every psychic
effort to win. And yet still the cash flows
into the pockets of the casino owners in
an even, predictable stream.
Despite such everyday evidence, people
continue
to believe in the power of the
mind.
Public
opinion
polls, commonly
find
that
as many as a quarter of the
population are convinced that they per-
sonally have experienced premonitions or
moments
of
telepathic
understanding.
Belief in the psychic seems impossible to
shake. But what if someone could design
the perfect laboratory test? A test that
could settle the matter once and for all,
either revealing believers to be dupes or
forcing
sceptics
finally
to
start
taking
mental powers seriously? The dream of
such an experiment has led parapsychol-
ogy—the science of psychic research—to
experiments
which
mirror
the
very
games of chance which have made the
gambling industry so profitable.
Roll of a dice
Under tightly-controlled conditions, sub-
jects try to influence the outcome of a
random event such as the roll of a dice,
the radioactive decay of an atom, the
diffraction pattern of a beam of light, the
fall of a cascade of polystyrene balls, or
the “direction” taken by electrical noise.
What
is more, some parapsychologists
claim to be seeing an anomalous effect.
They
are
reporting
a
deviation
from
chance which
is vanishingly small—just
a tenth of a per cent—but when meas-
ured
over millions
of
trials,
this
faint
effect multiplies into a hugely significant
distortion of the apparent odds.
The
results of these
trials have
pro-
vided
inspiration
for some
apparently
wacky research
into
the
possibility
of
“thought-controlled”
household
appli-
ances. Dean Radin, a researcher at the
University of Nevada, in Las Vegas says:
“It may be a small difference, but
if we
can
find
a way
of
amplifying
it, we
could build thought-controlled switches.
Perhaps in
fifty years we will be using
psychokinesis to open our garage doors
or change channels on our TVs.”
If the
research grapevine
is to be believed, a
laboratory in one of the world’s biggest
electronics companies already has a team
thinking about these futuristic gadgets.
But
before we
get
carried away by
visions
of an
effortless,
thought-driven
world, what
is
the
scientific
status
of
micro-psychokinesis—supposed ability of
the mind to influence small events.
Psychic
experiments
with
random
systems date back to at least the 1930s.
But most of the early research relied on
dice or mechanical devices which, because
of
slight imperfections
of manufacture,
could never be truly random, and which
were
also
rather
susceptible
to
fraud.
Reviews
of
this work showed
that the
tighter
the
controls,
the
less
likely an
experimenter was to report an effect.
In the 1970s, Helmut Schmidt of the
Mind Science Foundation in San Antonio
made a major advance with the introduc-
tion of experiments
that used
a Geiger
counter
to
measure
radioactive
decay.
The
testers were asked
to speed up or
slow down the rate of decay as displayed
on the Geiger counter without touching
the instrument or the radioactive source.
Then
in
the
1980s,
Robert
Jahn,
an
engineering
professor
at
Princeton
University, New
Jersey,
began
studies
using the random white noise generated
by an electrical diode.
Demolition job
Jahn’s
work
is
currently
the
most
respected of PK studies because of its scale
and technical sophistication—although as
was made plain when Jahn featured in a
recent BBC2 TV series, Heretic, his move
into parapsychology has horrified Prince-
ton’s
authorities. When Jahn,
a
rocket
propulsion specialist, went public with his
research in 1986, he was demoted from
dean
of the
engineering
faculty
to an
associate
professorship
and
left
in
no
34 Approved For Release 2000/08/08
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26 November 1994
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'If ever proof were
telepathy, psychokinesis, precognition or any other form
of psvchic power, the gambling halls of Las Vegas
seem
doubt that he would have been booted
right off campus
if it were possible.
<
Even
in
the
safety
of
his
Princeton
i
Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR)
i
laboratory
funded
by
the
McDonnell
Foundation and the Fetzer
Institute,
in
'
the basement of the engineering depart-
ment, Jahn has had to face a barrage of
criticism
from
former
colleagues
and
other sceptics. Some dismissed his results
as
being
caused
by
faulty
laboratory
equipment, others have even suggested
that they could be the
result of fraud.
There is also a constant demand for Jahn
to
clearly
define
the mechanism
that
converts thought to action.
Despite this rough treatment by fellow
academics,
Jahn—like
most
parapsy-
chologists— is
surprisingly
open
and
helpful when questioned about
his
re-
search. His first remark is that common-
sense examples such as gambling are not
a
particularly good
argument
against
paranormal powers. Jahn points out
that in group situations, such as race
courses and roulette games, many
people would be
willing
different
outcomes and
these
are
likely
to
cancel
each
other
out.
Then,
of
course, there are the management’s
wishes to consider.
Another confounding
factor, he
believes,
is the
possibility of “psi-
missing” where some people might
consistently
get
the
opposite
of
what they try
to
will.
Finally,
the
size of the
effect being claimed
just
a
tenth
of
a per cent— is
so
small that
it could
easily be
built
into the odds on gambling devices
like slot machines.
Tossing a coin
Jahn has also gone out of his way to
counter
criticisms
of his
scientific
technique by running all his experi-
ments under the controlled condi-
tions
of
the
laboratory.
His
basic
experiment,
which
he
has
been
running for 14 years,
is simple. He
built a random event generator—
roughly, the electronic equivalent of
tossing a coin. A thousand times a
second, the white noise produced by
a diode
is sampled and
its phase
will produce either a positive or a
negative value. On average, there should
be an equal split. Jahn gets people to sit
in front of the generator and will
it to
produce either more “heads” or “tails”.
The
subjects—or
operators,
as
Jahn
calls them—can see how well they are
doing from a cumulative
line
rising or
The most common criticism of this kind
of experiment
is that either the machine
is probably not truly random in perform-
ance or that the recording of the results
leaves too much scope for mistakes and
even plain fraud. Jahn has gone to great
lengths to counter these possibilities.
The design of the random event gen-
erator does not seem to be in question.
Measured over many days and millions of
readings,
its output has been perfectly
well-behaved—even to the point where
it
throws up the occasional “excursion” into
apparently
significant
deviations
from
chance.
If
left
to run long enough,
a
properly random system should some-
times stray quite a way from the mean,
.
and
Jahn’s
generator
produced
the
expected
number
of
such
excursions
during its calibration trials.
The
generator
also
has
safeguards
against tampering. Subjects are normally
left alone during trials and sceptics have
‘Jahn lias
out of his wav to
w
counter criticisms
under the controlled
conditions of
laboratory
suggested
that
its
output
could
be
affected by something
as
crude
as
it
being given a kick, to more subde effects
like waving a magnet near it or even just
leaning towards the machine and creat-
ing some sort of weak capacitance effect
from the static on a subject's clothing.
To
guard
against
such
possibilities,
Jahn has
fitted the generator with vari-
ous
warning
bells
and
temperature
gauges. But more importandy, the sam-
pling method does not rely on the raw
output of the noise diode. Instead, the
definition of what counts as a head or tail
is alternated with each trial, so a positive
signal will be counted as a head on one
trial, but a tail the next. This added twist
would cancel out any inherent bias that
the
equipment
might
develop
during
the course of an experiment. Switching
the polarity criteria a thousand times a
second would
also
seem
to
rule
out
any
deliberate,
or
even
inadvertent,
tampering by subjects.
Controlling conditions
And as yet another precaution, the per-
formance of subjects is measured against
three conditions: subjects must move the
line up for half the time; down for half
the time; and, as a control, they must sit
by die box, leaving it to perform on
its own. Jahn says
it
is difficult to
think what kind of equipment failure
or environmental interference could
change
its direction as the subject
has to switch between each of the
three conditions.
The control over recording data
seem equally stringent. One com-
plaint against many earlier parapsy-
chology
experiments
was
that
subjects could begin and end trials
as they wanted. By recording trials
that seemed
to
be
going
in
the
desired
direction,
and
aborting
sessions once they began to produce
a downward turn using the excuse
of having a headache or suddenly
feeling
uninspired,
subjects
could
manipulate an experiment to create
a result. But Jahn guarded against
such perils by specifying the number
of trials to be completed in advance
and
insisting
that
all
results
be
recorded
in the
final database.
In
addition, the initiation of each ses-
sion and the logging of results was
controlled by computer
software.
Not only were results automatically
dumped onto tape, but the compu-
ter
printed
out
a
separate
paper
record and subjects wrote up their
scores in the laboratory’s logbook.
:
With an apparently watertight design,
[
Jahn
reported
his
first
major
batch
;
of
results
in 1986
after completing
a
t
quarter of a million experimental trials (a
-
trial consisting of 200 “coin-flips” in each
t
of the three conditions)
. This was already
several
hundred
times
more
data
than
collected by any other micro-PK
falling on a computer screen.
To
guard
against
such
possiomues,
man~
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researcher. Hut Jahn and the snail tean
he assembled kept on going, and by last
year Jahn had reached 14 million
trials
using over 100 different subjects.
In brief, the results he has found are
tiny but highly significant. The size of the
effect is about 0-1 per cent, meaning that
for every thousand electronic tosses, the
random
event
generator
is
producing
about one more head or
tail than
it should by chance
alone. How-
ever, while microscopic, the effect
is so constant that there is only a 1
in 5000 chance that Jahn’s results
are a statistical fluke rather than
some kind of anomaly.
So
it seems like game,
set and
match to the parapsychologists. An
experiment which was designed to
meet
all the standard criticisms of
psychic research has come up with
a steady, robust
result. Certainly
Jahn’s work appears to have put
sceptics,
such
as
James
Alcock
of York
University,
Ontario, and
Ray Hyman
of the University of
Oregon—both
members
of
the
self-appointed
policing
body,
the Committee
for the
Scientific
Investigation
of
Claims
of
the
Paranormal
(CSICOP)—on
the
defensive. Yet a closer look at the
detail of Jahn’s findings still raises
some worrying questions.
Since reporting his early results
in
1986, Jahn has extended the
scope of his experiments. What he
has found
is that the anomalous
effect appears astonishingly insen-
sitive to changing circumstances.
The size of the effect, for example,
remains much the same when instead of
testing
the
influence
of
subjects on
a
physical process—the random thermal
movement of electrons across a transistor
junction, for example—Jahn asks them
to disturb the output of a psuedo-random
source.
The
pseudo-random
number
generator
is just a repetitive mathemati-
cal calculation, so it would seem that the
mind is as good at influencing arithmetic
as real events.
The
size
of the
effect
also appeared
constant when Jahn tested subjects with
a
random
mechanical
cascade.
This
device
is
a
pinball
machine,
looking
rather like a giant version of the popular
Japanese
arcade
game,
pachenko, m
which
9000
polystyrene
balls
are
dropped through a grid of nylon pegs,
bouncing and skittering to collect in bins
at the bottom. In an unbiased system, the
balls
should
end
up
with
a
classic
Gaussian
bell-shaped
distribution.
But
Jahn claims
that when
subjects
sat
in
front of this three-metre-high “macro-PK”
device, they were able to produce slight
deviations to the side.
More implausibly still, the effects on all
three systems seemed impervious to dis-
tance and time. Over the past few years,
Jahn has reported the results of large-
scale trials in which 30 people attempted
focused on the fact
that one of the J
subjects—is almost
single-handedly
o
»
responsible for the
significant results of
the studies’
to influence the devices from as far away
as
Kenya, New Zealand,
England and
Russia. Each subject would
sit down for
an hour
at an agreed time and
try to
alter output according to a prearranged
pattern. The distance a subject was from
the experiment seemed to have no affect
on the end result.
In another batch
of
trials using the
same people, Jahn asked them to make
their efforts up to several days before or
after the running of the machine. If any-
thing, says Jahn, the effect was slightly
stronger under such extreme conditions.
Jahn is not perturbed by such a pattern
of results. He says that on the face of it,
if psychic powers
exist, they should be
strongest when subjects are closest to the
equipment.
Also
it
seems
likely
that
feedback on success rates and the kind of
device being used should have an effect.
But
Jahn
believes
that
micro-PK
is
misnamed
because
what
is
actuaUy
happening
is not a mental interference
with
a
physical
event
but
something
much
more
subtle—a
distortion
of
the laws
of
statistics themselves. Jahn
thinks that subjects somehow distort the
“probability envelope” of an outcome.
How they are supposed to do so is far
from clear. Jahn has written about how
such a view ties in with a quantum me-
chanical view
of consciousness
in
Margins of Reality, coauthored with
Brenda Dunne, who manages
the
laboratory.
Jahn
argues
that,
like
quantum
systems,
consciousness
appears to have both a “particle’ and
a “wave” aspect. Consciousness is at
its most concrete and
particle-like
when involved in ordinary rational
thought,
but
becomes
fluid
and
wave-like when thinking
is creative
and
holistic. Jahn
cites
the wave
aspect
of quantum
systems which
allows
the
systems
occasionally
to
penetrate physical barriers—a phe-
nomenon familiar to microelectronics
engineers who have seen this effect
with quantum tunnelling
in which
particles
can
be
made
to
“leap
across
insulated
junctions.
So, by
analogy, the mind might be able to
reach beyond
the
brain and have
a
faint
resonant
influence on
the
surrounding world.
Mumbo jumbo
Sceptics, however, treat such talk as
mumbo jumbo. They point out that,
for a
start,
statistics are something
that emerge from the behaviour of
random
processes,
not
something
that creates them. Instead, sceptics
see
the
surprising
insensitivity
of the
claimed PK effect as being rather fishy.
Suspicions have hardened as sceptics
have
looked more
closely
at
the
fine
detail
of Jahn’s
results.
Attention
has
focused on
the
fact
that
one
of
the
experimental subjects—believed to be a
member of the PEAR laboratory staff— is
almost
single-handedly responsible
for
the significant results of the studies.
This was noted as long ago as 1985 by
a fellow parapsychologist, John Palmer of
Durham University, North Carolina, who
wrote a report on Jahn’s work for the US
Army. One subject—known as operator
10—was by far the best performer, and
this trend has continued. On the most
recently
available
figures,
operator
has been involved in only 15 per cent of
the 14 million
trials but contributed a
full half of the total “successes”.
If this
person’s
figures
are
taken
out
of
the
data pool, scoring in the “low intention
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The luck of the draw
WHILE successful parapsychol-
ogy experiments grab attention,
failures
to find a result rarely
get any press. But one recent
experiment—modelled
closely
on
Robert
Jahn’s
micro-PK
studies— is worth mentioning.
Stan
Jeffers,
a
physicist
at
York
University,
Ontario,
says
his
curiosity was piqued
when
he
stumbled
upon
an
old report of Jahn’s research.
He
says
Jahn’s
methodology
sounded
impressively
solid,
which
inspired him
to mount
his own parapsychological
re-
search. Soon he discovered that
CSICOP member, James Alcock,
worked at the same university,
and this helped when producing
a strong experimental design.
Jeffers’s
idea
was
to
test
people’s ability to bend a beam
of
light
and
so
distort
the
interference pattern created as
it passed through a diffraction
slit. Jeffers says the experiment
was a straight optical equiva-
lent of Jahn’s polystyrene ball
cascade, except that because he
used
photons,
subjects
were
dealing with “zillions” of events
per second and so he expected
any effect to show up quickly.
After
testing
over 80
people
—including
self-proclaimed
psychics—Jeffers
found
only
chance results.
Jahn himself admits that he
expected
Jeffers’s
experiment
to work and was puzzled when
it did not. Jahn has since lent
Jeffers one
of his new mini-
ature random noise generators
and Jeffers
is planning further
investigations.
condition
falls
to
chance
while
“high
intention”
scoring
drops
close
to
the
•05
probability
boundary
considered
weakly significant in scientific results.
Sceptics
like Alcock and Hyman say
naturally it is a serious concern that staff
at PEAR have been acting as guinea pigs
in their own experiments. But it becomes
positively alarming
if one of the
staff
with
intimate
knowledge
of
the
data
recording and processing procedures— is
making such a huge contribution
to the
“successful” results.
Adding fuel to the controversy, sceptics
have pointed to the strange behaviour of
the baseline condition results. Theoreti-
cally, the baseline condition should show
the same
gently wandering pattern
as
the
calibration
trials which
separately
validated the
generator’s performance,
with occasional excursions into areas of
apparent significance. Instead, the base-
line result has stuck unnaturally dose to
a zero deviation from chance.
In noting these
results, Jahn himself
has remarked that what makes the situa-
tion even odder is that when the baseline
statistics and
the high and low scores
are
all added
together,
the
result
is
a
well-behaved Gaussian distribution.
It
is
almost as
if the extra
hits found in the
high and low scores had been taken from
what would otherwise have been oudiers
of the baseline condition.
Alcock says this is exactly the sort of
pattern that might be expected
if some
sort of data sorting had been going on.
Given an effect
size
of just one
in a
thousand,
it would not take much to
distort Jahn’s results.
Little
of
this speculation has been
discussed
openly
by CSICOP mem-
bers— to do so would be virtually to
accuse Jahn’s laboratory of fraud, and
sceptics admit they have no proof of
that. Alcock also stresses that Jahn
is
widely respected and such alterations
need
not
be
deliberate,
they
could
happen as the result of honest mix-ups.
Jahn, however, says he is well aware
there has been a whispering campaign
and he welcomes the chance to put the
record
straight. With
candour,
Jahn
says no
experimental
design
can
ever
rule out fraud. But he believes that the
recording procedures at PEAR are unu-
sually tight and any fiddling with results
would have to be systematic because
it
would have
to include the laboratory’s
computer database,
the
print-outs and
subjects’
entries
in
the
logbook. Jahn
adds
that
sceptics
have
had
a
long-
standing
invitation
to
check
his work
first-hand and the few that have dropped
by seem to have left relatively impressed.
Into the unknown
Jahn admits that operator 10—whom he
insists
must
remain
anonymous—has
been responsible for a large proportion of
the
significant findings.
But he makes
two
points.
First,
at
least four or
five
other of the 100 subjects show a more
powerful effect than operator 10. What is
different is that they have been involved
in
far fewer
trials. Jahn
says
if these
better performers had been able to do as
many runs
as operator 10—and
if the
strength of their effects persisted—then
operator 10’s results would have dropped
away into the background.
His
second
point
is
that when
the
contributions
of
all
the
operators
are
plotted, they form a smooth continuum.
Just as there are a few high performers
like
operator
at
one
end
of
the
spectrum, so there are an equal number
‘See ptics invited
to c icck his work
first-hand seem to
have left relatively
impressed’
of poor performers—even psi-missers
at the other end who drag the overall
numbers down. With over 100 subjects,
statistically speaking there would have to
be a few high-end scorers like operator
10, so no sinister conclusions should be
drawn from that fact alone.
As
to the “too perfect” baseline, Jahn
says this fits in neatly with his argument
that what subjects are doing
is bending
statistics
rather
than
having
a
direct
influence on physical
events.
It seems
that, in the short term, subjects can pull
the
scoring
in one
direction.
But
this
has to be balanced by a shortfall in later
extreme scores.
However,
in
the
end,
says
Jahn,
sceptics will always be able
to dismiss
positive
results from a parapsychology
experiment. Suspicions of fraud, faulty
machinery or plain mistaken recording of
data can never be completely countered.
Jahn says the only way forward is to have
the same experiment replicated by other
laboratories. This
is why he has recently
built a cheap, solid-state version of his
random event generator and over the
past year he has been farming them out
to other interested investigators.
Yet even replications may not be the
answer, given the strength of entrenched
views. Hardened sceptics are just as likely
to find reasons
to suspect a successful
replication. And,
of course,
the same
doubts
work
the
other
way.
If
a
scientist produces negative results (see
Box), then the parapsychologists may
be
the
ones
to
start
talking
about
incompetence and faulty procedures.
Recent
experience
suggests
there
may never be a simple, conclusive test
of the
existence
of psychic
powers.
However,
Jahn’s work does seem
to
narrow the boundaries somewhat, for if
such abilities
exists, then their effects
appear microscopically small. They also
seem quite
bizarrely
resistant
to
the
constraints of time,
place and
logic.
Knowing what science
is not looking
for, at least is knowing something.
John McCrone is a science writer specialising
in psychology and technology.
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Observer noise
The study of parapsychology
is disturbing because
it
challenges some of the
fundamental principles of the
scientific method. In the case
of the thought experiments
described in your article
“Psychic powers: what are the
odds?" (26 November), the
independence of the
experimenter from the
experiment is at issue.
The separation of the
observer from the observed
is of course nowhere absolute.
At the quantum level the limit
is defined by the Heisenberg
uncertainty principle, and
by the philosophical
speculations of the
Copenhagen school.
A different type of
interaction operates in the
“softer" social and medical
sciences. An anthropologist,
for example, cannot study a
cultural group without
influencing, and being
influenced by, that culture.
One day we may have a social-
scientific uncertainty principle
to define this effect.
In considering the attempts
to prove psychokinesis such as
Robert Jahn is doing, one can
speculate that the observable
effect may never exceed
experimental noise.
Conceptually, if such
phenomena are real they
could be influenced not only
by the individual actually
involved in the experiment but
by all interested parties who
are thinking about it at the
time: the designer of the
experiment and all the friends
who wish him or her success.
On the other hand, sceptics
who conduct the identical
experiment could equally
displace the outcome in
the opposite direction.
Parapsychology may
therefore always be impossible
to prove. This argument is not
new. The efficacy of miracles
has been debated for
centuries, and proof of their
validity has long relied on the
presence or absence of “faith”.
Another point: if psycho-
kinesis does exist
it must
be weak or the (honest)
influence of strong-willed
scientists on the outcome
of their work would by now
be evident, rather than lost
in a background of
experimental noise.
Graham Hagens
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
*
*
*
John McCrone’s otherwise
well-written article contains
one factual error that should
perhaps be corrected, namely
that when “Jahn
.
.
. went
public with his research in
1986, he was demoted from
dean of the engineering
faculty to an associate
professorship and left in no
doubt that he would have
been booted right off campus
if it were possible”.
In point of fact, we had been
publishing and speaking
publicly about our research for
several years prior to 1986,
during which period
I served
both as Dean of the School
of Engineering and Applied
Science, and as Professor
of Aerospace Sciences, as
is the Princeton custom.
While it is true that a
number of my faculty and
administrative colleagues
had expressed reservations
about the work, no explicit
threats to my retaining either
position were ever directly
voiced to me.
My decision not to seek
reappointment as Dean in
1986, after fifteen years in that
chair, was based on a number
of personal and professional
considerations, including my
desire to devote more effort to
my two research programmes.
At that time,
I simply returned
to a full-time role as (full)
professor in my home
department of mechanical and
aerospace engineering, which
position
I retain today.
No “demotion” was
explicitly or implicitly
involved; to the contrary,
this return has proven
professionally and personally
advantageous to me.
Robert Jahn
Princeton University
New Jersey
Battery blues
The limitations imposed on
the electric car by the present
battery technology (as
described in “All charged
up and nowhere to go”, 3
December), could be overcome
if a more systemic approach
were to be made to the design
of the car and its energy
supply system. Instead of
making the batteries an
integral part of the car and
recharging them on board,
it
would seem more sensible to
make them easily replaceable
on filling station forecourts.
Payment would be for the net
electric charge received.
Suitable battery handling
equipment could make battery
replacement as speedy as
refilling a fuel tank.
Recharging could be confined
to off-peak times and could be
carried out more safely and
cheaply at filling stations than
at home. Battery exchange
could be made at unmanned
sites, all round the clock;
something not really practical
with liquid or gaseous fuels.
To obtain the full economic
benefits of scale in the early
years of electric car
technology, the design of
batteries should be modular
and suitable for all makes and
sizes of vehicles, and
compatible with handling
equipment in all forecourts.
No significant “green” effect
will result if, as suggested in
the article, only rich customers
will be able to afford to buy
electric vehicles. Governments
and local authorities trying to
popularise the use of electric
vehicles could do so by
bearing the capital cost of the
batteries, by leasing them to
vehicle owners, and by
supporting the development of
battery exchange sites
throughout the country.
Priming the market pump
in order to reach the critical
sales levels needed for really
low cost vehicle production
should be needed for only a
few years.
Fenton Robb
Eyemouth, Berwickshire
Double whammy
As a retired BT engineer with
over 40 years experience of
street works, to me the most
disturbing aspect of the
damage to trees by TV cabling
is that in many cases the
excavations are unnecessary
(Forum, 3 December).
BT has had for decades in
most suburban areas an
extensive underground duct
system with plenty of space for
additional cable—but, as
Barry Fox points out in the
same issue (Technology), BT is
not allowed to compete.
Since, as Cyril Bracegirdle
says, the cable companies are
mainly American owned, this
puts the British public on the
receiving end of the double
whammy of unnecessary
environmental damage and
seeing the profits from it float
over the Atlantic.
G. E. Haines
Woodbridge, Suffolk
British opt-out
In brief reply to Bruce Reed’s
comments (Letters, 10
December) on my letter of
12 November, even when a
British contribution to the
European Union budget in
respect of research and
development is included, the
government’s spending on
R&D is now less, in real terms,
than in 1984/5 by about
£1 billion per annum—and
still falling
(Forward Look
1994, HMSO).
Bruce Reed is right to draw
attention to the British
Treasury’s insistence, unique in
the EU, that a proportion of
the EU funds returned to
Britain for support of R&D
should be counted against
and so reduce—Departmental
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Well clone, parties
Fred Pearce’s assessment of
the first Conference of the
Parties (CoP) to the
Convention on Biological
Diversity (CBD) (This Week,
17 December) was altogether
too gloomy. The political
process, far from being
paralysed, may be outpacing
the necessary scientific
cooperation.
In the 30 months since
the Earth Summit 103
nations have ratified the
convention. No other treaty
on biological resources has
progressed so fast.
Over 30 nations have been
preparing biodiversity country
studies and, surprisingly, a
handful of nations (including
Britain) have already
published action plans.
Over two dozen more are
in preparation, and this
is
before the draft UN
Environment Programme
(UNEP) guidelines have
been distributed.
The CoP’s subsidiary body
on scientific, technical and
technological advice (SBSTEA)
is the think-tank for the CBD.
It needs to work fast, but the
key question is whether it will
really be scientific and
technical. The Mexico meeting
of experts last February was
too political. SBSTTA must
be allowed to identify the
scientific backdrop to
reporting and priority-setting.
This clearing house for
scientific and technical
cooperation will pump life-
blood into the convention.
The Nassau decision to put off
for a year rather than spend
millions on computers for the
secretariat was prudent. Key
questions include how to
structure the clearing house,
and how to introduce the
north’s information and
technical resources.
The CBD
is a comprehensive
instrument covering all species
and ecosystems
. The work
plan may have deferred on
forests to the Commission
on Sustainable Development
(CSD), but gave welcome
emphasis to marine and
coastal work.
The CoP meets again in just
12 months. We must use that
time to support and steer the
process cooperatively, not
blow it off course or down
narrow channels.
Mark Collins
World Conservation
Monitoring Centre
Cambridge
k
-k
-k
As. the leader of the British
delegation to the meeting,
I
would like to set the record
straight on several issues.
First, the decisions which the
parties are criticised for
putting off are ones which
they never intended to take at
Nassau, namely the location of
the secretariat and the need
for and modalities of a
biosafety protocol.
Secondly, Pearce failed to
mention any of the important
decisions that were taken,
such as those on the spending
guidelines to the Global
Environment Facility, the
agreement of the medium-
term work programme
for the convention and the
designation of UNEP as
host of the secretariat.
Thirdly, while
it is true that
decisions on how to tackle
forests will be taken in the
light of next year’s CSD
meeting, it is certainly not true
that the CSD process is being
coordinated by Canada and
Malaysia. Theirs
is only one of
several initiatives feeding into
the CSD and working towards
building a consensus on
forestry, including one of our
own in partnership with India.
Finally, while few countries,
apart from Britain, have
produced formal national
plans, many countries are in
the process of doing so.
Conservation and
sustainable use of biodiversity
is a long-term process which
does not start with the
convention. Nor can the
convention be expected to halt
the decline of species in its
tracks. But the fact that 104
countries have ratified a
convention which has come
into force remarkably quickly
by the standard of major
international treaties is one
which should give us hope
in the fight to reverse the
trend of species loss.
Peter Unwin
Department of the Environment
London
Future leaks
John McCrone discusses the
experiments on possible
human influence on random
systems performed by Robert
Jahn at Princeton University
(“Psychic powers: what are the
odds?”, 26 November, and
Letters, 7 January). While it is
instructive to examine one
laboratory’s claim in isolation,
evidence for the existence of a
valid anomaly cannot rest on a
single group’s effort.
In the case of a putative
interaction between the
cognitive intent of an
individual and a hardware
random-number generator,
there is a substantial database
of laboratories that have
collectively conducted over
600 replications of the basic
experiment. D. L Radin and R.
D. Nelson conducted a careful
meta-analysis of this database
and concluded that there is
prima facie evidence for an
anomaly that cannot be
accounted for by selective
reporting, methodological
flaws or selected subjects
(Foundations of Physics, Vol 19
No 12, 1989).
In McCrone’s article, he
remarks on the possibility of
data selection. We, too, have
noticed that the sum of data
for high, low and no aims
yields a mean chance
expectation distribution. An
additional clue to what may be
happening is that Jahn’s Z
score statistic does not
increase with the number of
bits sampled in each trial.
If
the effects were due to a shift
in the probability of each bit
away from 0-5, the Z score on
each trial should increase as
the square root of the number
of bits sampled.
Assuming that Radin and
Nelson’s meta-analysis
is
correct, we provide a different
explanation for Jahn’s and
other results. We propose
that subjects are statistical
opportunists and initiate a trial
to capture a locally deviant
sub-sequence from an
otherwise unperturbed
physical system. This model
explains why the high, low
and control samples add to
mean chance expectation,
since they comprise sub-
samples of an unbiased
distribution. Furthermore,
with a given ability to select
sub-sequences meeting the
trial aim, the Z scores of the
samples will be independent of
the number of bits sampled:
just what the data show.
How are subjects able to
“select” when to initiate a
trial? We suspect that there
may be a statistical “leakage”
of information about the
upcoming sequence from the
future. This information allows
the subjects slightly, but
systematically, to bias their
decisions (for example, when
to initiate trials) to more
favourable outcomes.
C. Honerton and D. C. Ferrari
analysed all the so-called
precognition experiments from
1935 to 1987. Their analysis
included 309 separate studies
reported by 62 investigators.
Approximately two million
individual trials were
contributed by more than
50 000 subjects. After a careful
flaw analysis and a correction
for selective reporting, they
found a statistically robust
but tiny effect
(Journal of
Parapsychology, Vol 53, 1989).
We find this database as
compelling as any we have
seen in the social sciences.
With strong independent
evidence for the kind of
information leakage needed to
explain Jahn and others’ data
in terms of anomalous
selection, we view all these
experiments into anomalies
as pointing to a single
underlying mechanism of
information transfer.
McCrone is concerned about
the fact that most of the
“successful” data appear to be
contributed by a single subject,
operator 10. If one is trying to
understand the mechanism of
a phenomenon, as opposed to
studying its distribution in the
population, then one should
study talented individuals. If
one wanted to study violin
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