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IV METHOD OF APPROACH (U)
A.
(U)
Analysis Domain
(S/NF)
The domain of this meta-analysis includes all government-sponsored intelligence
applications and psychoenergetic research conducted at SRI International, or under the auspices
of
its
subcontractors,
from
October
1973
to
September
1988.
A
priori
declared
demonstrations or other activities that were not under the control of SRI International were not
included
in
the
documentation,
All
other
forms
of experimentation were
included
in
SRI
International technical reports, unclassified journals, or publications, and thus were part of this
analysis.
This database comprises 117 documents with
a total of 5,025 pages.
(U)
By definition, there
is no
file drawer problem in this analysis;
all items that met the
above
criteria were included regardless of their
results.
Care was exercised to avoid multiple
entries of the same data.
(S/NF)
All psychoenergetic phenomena
fall broadly into two classes:
(1)
Information
Processes—those phenomena
that
involve
a
passive
transfer
of
information
(e.g., remote viewing, search),
(2)
Causal
Processes—those
putative
phenomena
that
involve
an
anomalous
interaction with matter
(e.g,, remote action).
The psychoenergetic effort has been divided into various categories within these processes.
The
various categories within this domain are defined as follows:
(1)
Forced-Choice—remote viewing where the
targets are drawn from
a
limited
(and known)
set of potential symbols
(e.g., the integers
0,
1).
(2)
RV-Lab—remote
viewing where
the
targets
are drawn from
a
large
set
of
potential
material
(e.g.,
photographs
of
natural
scenes,
natural
physical
locations),
and
the
experiments
are
conducted
under
strict
laboratory
conditions,
(3)
RV-Ops—remote viewing where the targets are drawn from specific targets of
interest to the intelligence community.
(4)
Search—remote
viewing
where
the
targets
are
generally
known
but
their
location
is unknown
(e.g.,
a
specific
military
aircraft
is
known
to
have
crashed—where
is
it?).
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(U) For
the
purpose
of
this
analysis,
all
putative
causal-process
experiments
are
considered under the general heading of remote action,
(U)
Figure
1 shows a schematic representation of these categories and the total number of
individual
trials that were conducted within each category.
Psychoenergetics
26,074
Informational
25,045
Causal
I
1,029
Forced Choice
RV-Lab
RV-Ops
If
Search
19,715
1,071
106
4,153
SECRET ^
»
FIGURE
(U) CATEGORIES AND NUMBER OF TRIALS
(S/NF)
The
total
number
of
psychoenergetic
trials
(26,074)
was
collected
in
154
different
experiments
involving 227
different
subjects.*
All
the
data
were
entered
into
a
computer database management system (DBMS).
B.
(U)
Database Management System
1.
(U)
Database Requirements
(U) One of the main purposes of performing a meta-analysis
is to be able to look at
data gathered from multiple studies conducted under a wide variety of circumstances.
In order
to
collect
and
store
the
data
in
a
meaningful
way,
one
must know
what
kind
of
data
manipulations
will
be
performed.
To
evaluate
the
effect
of
certain
parameters
on
psychoenergetic functioning, we needed to focus our attention on the conditions of a wide array
of potentially important variables.
As a result, the database design
is primarily determined by the
data
and
provides
for
the
selection
of
information,
by
experiment,
given
parameter
specifications.
(U) The number of subjects does not include the preliminary mass screening partici-
pants.
The formal screening participants were, however, included
in the
analysis.
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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.
UNCLASSIFIED
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Author
Person
Principal Investigator
Subject ID
Monitor ID
UNCLASSIFIED
FIGURE 2
(U) DATABASE SCHEMA DESIGN FOR META-ANALYSIS
(U) The Appendix contains examples of the DBMS input sheets that were used to
encode psychoenergetic data for the database, and the instructions that were given to analysts.
They are included in the Appendix for completeness; there is no further discussion about them in
this report.
C.
(U)
Statistical Methods
1.
(U)
Effect Size Calculations
(U)
Effect sizes were calculated for each experiment or condition using the formula
given by Rosenthal: 2
where n
is the number of trials and z is the usual normalized output score. If no z score was given
for an experiment, but a p value was, the z that would have given that p value was computed and
used
in
the
formula.
The
exception
to
this
procedure
was
for
experiments
based
on
a
sum-of-rank statistic.
For those, a more appropriate effect size formula was used and is given by
UNCLASSIFIED
Approved For Release 2000/08/08
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