Approved For Release 2003/09/10 : CIA-RDP96-00788R001200230033-9 AMSAA RV Experiment (1) Independent replication of SRI experiments in RV with targeting by coordinates, is in advanced planning stages at AMSAA. Initial assessment of the AMSAA experimental plan is reported here. In general, the integrity of the experiment appears good. Also an improved means of providing assurance of unequivocal experimental results is being attempted. In spite of such an attempt, however, the initial assessment is that maintaining the SRI protocol in evaluating the raw trial results will present a severe limit to the credibility of the ultimate results. (2) The contribution to confidence in the results of these tests should be high as regards the integrity of the experiment. Different viewers and experimenters and a new target. pool,. together with double blind control executed by an independent group (AMSAA management) should provide certitude that the tests represent an unbiased independent replication of RV testing. (3) Two aspects of the experiment cause some concern, and are discussed below: the target characteristics, and the continued use of the basic SRI trial judging technique (or "protocol"). (4) Target Characteristics: The utilization of a large area (100 mile radius) for selection of some forty targets provides an opportunity, being exploited by AMSAA, for a target pool of fairly distinct and different target characteristics. However, the uniqueness of each of the targets is an order of magnitude less than that obtainable by utilizing simpler artificial targets, such as alphanumerics, geometric shapes, etc. The impediment to the use of such artificially created targets is the often cited deleterious effect on the viewer of simplistic "non-interesting" target objects. The success rate of remote viewer "hits" is averred to be greatly degraded when. boredom is induced by attempting to view such simple targets. This effect is apparently repeatedly observed in parapsychology experiments and presents the scientific experi- mentalist with a psychological analogue to Heisenberg's Principle: The more precise is the measurement of the quality of an RV performance, the less likely is the probability of an RV occurrence. Unless this effect is, indeed, a natural principle, other means of measurement of RV performance quality should be created, to permit unequivocal RV evaluation. (One suggested set of "interesting targets" which are well defined, are moon topographical features. These are well defined photographically, and unexamined in the experience of most of the population). It is to be observed that the AMSAA target selection criteria are specifically aimed at choosing each individual target with features, or combinations of features (geometry, color, action, materials, etc.) which are unique: i.e.— any given "state vector" is "orthogonal" to all others. Unfortunately, the features that are selected as the uniqueness—defining elements are subjectively Approved For Release 2003/09/10 : CIA-RDP96-00788R001200230033-9
Approved For Release 2003/09/10 : CIA-RDP96-00788R001200230033-9 arrived at. The viewer ("subject") may well define a target ("state vector") without using many of the uniqueness-defining elements selected a priori. Thus complete orthogonality of targets is lost, requiring a posteriori subjective judgment to be employed to evaluate the RV performance, (and deciding from amongst all targets that one which most closely matches the viewer's des- cription). Comments concerning the judging procedure follow inthe next section. The observation to be emphasized here concerns the doubt expressed by the committee about. the attempt by the AMSAA target selection/description group to orthogonalize the targets in the face of a measuring device (the viewer, or "subject''). that doesn't use the same target parameters to render a description (measurement) as the "target describers". Putting numerical weighting factors on each of the target features, as is being planned by AMSAA, is regarded as a doubtful means to orthogonalize what is probably a non-orthogonal set of targets as discerned by the remote viewer. We just don't know the transfer function that characterizes the viewer well enough to be sure that heavily weighted features are not regarded by the viewer as unimportant--and conversely. Thus, in spite of a thoughtful and creative attempt to provide a set of unambigious, and unambiguously describable, unique targets, the committee presently feels that the authentication of Remote Viewing will depend on post trial subjective judgment. (5) Judging Procedure: There is little planned departure from the SRI post trial judging procedure. The principal difference is the employment of several target descriptors to be utilized in comparing the remote viewer's "state vector" description with a priori descriptors ("state vector coordinates"). The appropriateness of heavy dependence on descriptor matching (and weighting) is questioned, as elucidated in section (4), above. In a pretrial exercise this problem was illustrated by failure of the judge to match any of the targets (in a limited trial pool) to the remote viewer's description. By dissecting the viewer's description and subjectively arriving at specific descriptors, the judge was able to arrive at a match based on a sum of very low correlations of each individual descriptor with characteristics of the true target. (The correlation of these descriptors with the other targets were lower). This matching success was regarded by the judge as an achievement. The committee, on the other hand, felt that this means of pulling the signal out of the noise may well have demonstrated that an apparent high numerical correlation was produced that did not in fact exist. Thus we are concerned that the praiseworthy effort to devise an objective and quantitative measure of RV performance quality may well generate apparent high correlations, reported with a precision which the subjective raw input does not justify. Approved For Release 2003/09/10 : CIA-RDP96-00788R001200230033-9
Approved For Release 2003/09/10 : CIA-RDP96-00788R001200230033-9 In any case, if the experiment proceeds as presently planned, the committee suggests that the (subjective) raw as well as derived "quantitative" data and analyses be reported for each trial and its subsequent evaluation. (6) Quantitative Analysis Techniques The quantization, weighting, and statistical treatment of the target features and remote viewer descriptions contain some techniques which should be further scrutinized. One is the target feature weighting approach, which although structured to provide consistency, is highly subjective. The ~ other is the excessive resolution expected of human judges in deciding the degree of agreement between target features and viewer descriptions of target features. A scale of seven is a clinically demonstrated limit of human resolution. The planned resolution has a scale of ten. As subjective as the evaluation procedure is, a scale of 5 levels or less is probably as large as is justified. Approved For Release 2003/09/10 : CIA-RDP96-00788R001200230033-9