Approved For Release 2001/03/07
: CIA-RDP96-00789R002200640001-7
j
>7
/£*** -
SO Z
fl-
/ 5 2^1
y
? 4 "
Approved For Release 2001/03/07
: CIA-RDP96-00789R002200640001-7
PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE
Approved For Release 2001/03/07
Enhancing Human Performance
C IA-RDP96-00789R00220064000 1 -7
pared for the Army Research Institute by John Palmer
and from a review of the same studies that
it commis-
sioned Alcock to make. The committee also reviewed the
other main body of experimental research, namely, on
Ganzfeld experiments,
in which a homogeneous visual
field
is used
to
alter states of mind
in the
interest of
receiving psi signals. A paper on intuitive judgment and
the evaluation of evidence was prepared for the commit-
tee by Griffin (see footnote 2).
With particular attention to the three sets of experi-
mental studies, but including its other reviews and expe-
riences, the committee found no scientific warrant for the
existence of parapsychological phenomena. (“No scien-
tific justification” was the phrase agreed on with NRC
editors for the committee’s report, but “warrant” cap-
tures better the intended sense.) Though the committee
therefore saw no reason for direct army involvement,
it
felt that monitoring by the army of the main, current,
experimental work would be prudent and suitable. If that
monitoring led
to the proposal of specific
studies,
the
recommendations were that army and outside scientists
arrive at an agreed-upon research protocol, that the re-
search be conducted by proponents and
skeptics, and
that attention be given to the manipulability and practical
application of any effects found to exist.
GENERAL CONCLUSIONS
AND RECOMMENDATIONS
The committee observed a pervasive army tendency to
accept and implement enhancement techniques on the
basis of personal or clinical experience and marketplace
popularity instead of on the basis of research evidence
that could establish the existence and usefulness of an
enhancement effect. In expressing its concern about this
practice, the committee issued a list of questions about
presumed enhancement techniques
that had been
pre-
pared by scientists at the Walter Reed Army Institute for
Research: What changes
will
the technique produce?
What evidence supports the claims for the technique?
What theories stand behind it? Who will be able to use it?
What are its implications for army operations? How does
it
fit with army philosophy? What are the cost-benefit
factors? (Hegge, Tyner, & Genser,
1983).
Because strong claims of support from basic research
have been made for some of the techniques the commit-
tee examined, the committee reviewed in its report what
it takes to justify a scientific claim. Specifically,
it high-
lighted the need to conduct basic research so that infer-
ences could be drawn in accordance with scientific stan-
dards—inferences about novel concepts,
causation,
alternative explanations of causal relations, and the gen-
eralizability of causal relations. Standards for evaluating
field tests of enhancement programs were also reviewed,
including such factors as immediate effects, side effects,
assigning merit and meeting needs, likelihood of tram
and contrast with alternatives.
%
The committee acknowledged the differences betw*
rational decision making in science and in practical
texts, for example, differences in the benefits of con*
decisions and the costs of incorrect decisions and in w/
is viewed as a timely decision.
It recommended that a
army acknowledge such differences explicitly in conn/
tion with decisions about particular techniques,
ft /
forth an analysis of the
unreliability of testimonies
*
evidence for enhancement effects. And it stipulated
Hai
it thought would be useful mechanisms for advice to
(jjf
ferent parts of the army as well as bidding procedures
)
felt would
facilitate informed choices of programs
J.,
vendors.
The committee recommended that the army contir^
to examine vigorously enhancement techniques that ap.
pear promising. It added the advice that the examinati
0l|
should be
systematic and
should include
technique
drawn from mainstream research as well as packages pro.
moted by vendors. A main concern of the committee was
to link more closely the army’s great interest in enhanc.
ing human performance and its substantial resources for
conducting tests to evaluate techniques. The committee
remarked on the potential for transfer to the civilian sec
tor.
@
COMMITTEE PUBLICATIONS
The committee’s final report was published as a boot
by the National Academy Press
in early
1988,
entitled
Enhancing human performance; Issu es^
theories^ajji
techniques, edited by Druckman and Swets. (A second
,
printing was made a year later.) With preliminary copies
available, a briefing was given army officials and a press
conference was held
in December
1987, with
Swets,
Bjork, Hyman, Singer, and Druckman representing the
committee. The press conference was attended by some
fifty reporters who heard a 15-minute prepared statement
,
and then raised questions for an hour or so. Primary
ar-
ticles appeared
in the New
York Times (Leary,
1987),
Washington Post (Squires,
1987a,
1987b),
Washington
Times
(Price,
1987), and Los Angeles Times
(Gillette,
1987), and articles based on them appeared in many other
local and regional newspapers. Other news articles were
i
published
in Science (Holden,
1987), Science News
(Greenberg,
1988), Science and Government
Report
(Greenberg, 1987), APA Monitor (Hostetler,
1988), Psf
'
chology Today (Roberts, 1988), The Chronicle ofHighet
Education (Wheeler, 1987), Beijing’s Science and Tech
nology Daily for June 29,
1988, and the NRC’s Newst
Report (Jarmal, 1988). Swets and Druckman co-authored
an op-ed article that was printed in 25 daily newspapers.
The press conference was videotaped by NBC, CNN,;
and
the United States Information Agency. CNN
re-
Approved For Release 2001/03/07
: CIA-RDP96-OO789ROO220O040O0WRCH 19901
PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE
P
f
IjO*
mall segments for a few days. NBC’s camera did
^
erate properly
so Tom Brew's
ftvp.nine news
file footage representing som
-
-a oast
interests,
for example
,urW P
he commerited in kind. National Public Radio
vv'i^s '
j for a few days an interview with Robert Bjork
otcsetl
techniques.
on
learning
PUBLIC REACTION
The committee’s book was reviewed descriptively un-
?he heading “Briefly Noted” by Sheldon Zedeck
in Contemporary Psychology. It was reviewed ex-
*
'vely by Philip Morrison (1988) in Scientific Ameri-
iellSl We appreciated
his summary: “Among the most
It lessons in science is how not to deceive yourself.
W
patient and judicious overview offers genuine help”
T
109). Irwin Child (1988), in a review for Choice, com-
(
rmented
the exposition of general principles of evalua-
•
but noted what he called the report’s “bias against
duration of apparent anomalies not yet well attested”
eXP
536). Kendrick Frazier (1988) reviewed the book ex-
iensively for the Skeptical Inquirer, with emphasis on
‘
ranortnal phenomena.
" pruckman and Swets received several phone calls and
I tters, many of them complimentary (wanting more in-
formation and making suggestions), for example, from
the Los Angeles Police Department, and many of them
expressing concern over negative treatment of particular
techniques.
In an interchange of several
letters, Wilse
Webb argued that we had been too generous to one tech-
nique,
that
sleep
learning was not worth a “second
look.”
The strongest reactions came as expected from propo-
nents of the paranormal and these tended to be in letters
addressed to Frank Press, Chairman of the National Re-
search Council. Robert Jahn, former Dean of Princeton’s
School of Engineering and Applied Science, wrote that a
biased committee made factual errors
in reviewing his
experiments on mental biasing of random number gener-
ators. A copy from Jahn to Senator Claiborne Pell was
followed by a letter from Pell to Press. The>senator was
concerned, among other things, about the possible im-
pact of the committee’s report on the National Science
Foundation, which was said to be reconsidering support
of parapsychological research, and he no doubt had
in
mind his plans to sponsor a bill to create a commission
to study parapsychology and other performance-
enhancement techniques, a bill co-sponsored by Senators
Gore and Kassebaum and now in committee (e.g., News-
week, June 26, 1989, p.
8). Not satisfied by the commit-
tee’s detailed replies to Jahn’s letters, Jahn and Pell car-
ried their case to the undersecretary of the army, who
responded that
it would be improper for the army to in-
sert itself in this argument and that failing direct resolu-
tion with the NRC, resolution could be pursued through
scientific forums and journals.
The President of the Parapsychological Association,
Inc., Richard
S. Broughton,
also wrote
to chairman
Press, emphasizing what he and
his associates saw as
bias in the selection of the committee and an attempt by
the committee’s chair to suppress a positive evaluation of
a set of parapsychology studies. Upon what it considered
an inadequate response from the NRC, the association
published a lengthy report as a “Reply to the National
Research Council Study on Parapsychology.” That reply
was reviewed in the The Chronicle of Higher Education
(Wheeler, 1988) and in Omni magazine (Huyghe,
1989).
Similarly, R.A. McConnell of the University of Pitts-
burgh wrote Druckman and Swets and then mailed ex-
tensively a set of his materials, including his correspon-
dence with
the NRC and an
earlier
article by him.
Colonel John Alexander (Ret.), one of the briefers at the
committee’s first meeting, challenged the validity of its
report in the periodical New Realities (Alexander, 1989).
We should add that the NRC’s executive office consis-
tently supported the committee’s conclusions (and, we
understand, put off a potential donor as a result).
THE ARMY’S REACTION
Army leadership was
initially concerned about the
early publicity, primarily the negative treatment by NBC
News. Concern was expressed to and within the army by
advocates of specific techniques that had received nega-
tive evaluations. Field leaders at first showed limited in-
terest,
largely through
calls by
users or opponents of
specific techniques. As time went on, the army received
favorable comments from several sources about the com-
mittee’s report and the interest of field leaders increased.
One apparently influential event was Druckman s brief-
ing of the army’s Human Factors Technical Group
in
May 1988; another was the favorable mention of the re-
port in the chief of staffs monthly newsletter.
In September 1988, Bjork, Druckman, Johnson, and
Swets went to General Thurman’s headquarters at Fort
Monroe, Virginia, to brief him on the study and to pro-
5. Colonel Alexander, who co-hosted the committee at Cleve Back-
ster’s laboratory test of the emotional response of Posner’s leukocytes,
wrote that the committee denigrated such scientific research by men-
tioning also the scientifically unsupported ideas of psychic warfare and
psychotronic weapons. Meanwhile, R.A. McConnell wrote
that the
committee’s mention of Backster’s research was an attempt to taint
legitimate research on parapsychology. We noticed that the Parapsy-
chological Association, Inc., did not collaborate with McConnell in its
complaint about the committee’s report and that Robert Jahn chose to
keep his adverse reaction separate from that of the Parapsychological
I
Association, Inc.
vol.
i, no App«5¥etfoFor Release 2001/03/07
: CIA-RDP96-00789R002200640001-7
f