It is the responsibility of scientists never to suppress knowledge, no matter how awkward that knowledge is. . . . We are not smart enough to decide which pieces of knowledge are permissible and which are not . . .
—Carl Sagan, UCLA Commencement Speech, June 14, 1991

The year was 1971. The world watched as the Apollo 14 space mission completed the goal of reaching the moon that eluded the ill-fated Apollo 13 crew. During this historic journey into space, Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell conducted a daring experiment to see if thought could be transmitted across space.

"Every evening as the crew settled in for an attempt at sleep in zero gravity and the cabin grew quiet," Mitchell noted in his recent book Way of the Explorer. "I would take a moment and pull out my clipboard on which I had copied a table of random numbers along with the five Zener symbols made popular by Dr J. B. Rhine: a square, circle, star, cross, and wavy line.... Meanwhile, through tens of thousands of miles of empty space, my collaborators in Florida would attempt to jot down the symbols in the same sequence that I had arranged on my clipboard" (page 49). The results were significantly different from what chance would predict, thus lending support for a non-sensory or psi-type information transfer between planet Earth and the moon.

Of course, one can't draw firm conclusions from any one study, no matter how dramatic. Fortunately, many scientists across the world have collected data on psi phenomena (including telepathy and psychokinesis), and much has happened over the past two and a half decades to advance psi research as a serious area of scientific study. Such advances include: better methods, a growing body of experimental data, an expanding network of serious scientists, and innovative new techniques for evaluating the strength of the data across experiments.

In this article we will survey some of these advances and explore ways in which the IONS Research Program or Consciousness, Science, and Society builds upon the findings of psi research.

HOW PSI IS STUDIED

Early information about psi phenomena was based on anecdotal evidence—claims of individuals with direct experience of events, such as telepathy, for which there was no scientific explanation. But as with many other forms of exceptional experience—for example, spontaneous remission, or miraculous healing—this subjective evidence was less compelling to those who heard it only secondhand. A second line of evidence arose from laboratory-based experiments. These were designed with increasing rigor to eliminate any sensory input. While less exciting than many of the anecdotal reports, this experimental work provides strong evidence for the existence of a range of previously under-explored human abilities.

Throughout the history of psi research, scientists have developed statistical techniques for assessing the likelihood that a particular result could arise from chance alone. Recently, parapsychologisrs have been using an intriguing new tool called meta-analysis for assessing large bodies of data. It draws together all known studies that meet appropriate standards of content and quality, and applies a variety of statistical inference techniques in an attempt to draw general conclusions,

In an ordinary experiment the strength of the data depends on the number of trials—"data points"—as well as the rigor of the experimental conditions. In a meta-analysis, each experiment is considered a data point. Thus if four experiments—each of which may include dozens of observations— had been done on a particular question, a meta-analysis would view these as four data points in interpreting the strength of the evidence. Hence the term "meta-"analysis.

The meta-analysis is exciting because it introduces a new level at which to look at the data and begin to evaluate trends across experiments and across researchers. With these ideas in mind, let's turn to the evidence regarding psi.

IS PSI 'REAL'?

Extrasensory Perception (ESP)

The "passive" acquisition of information without the aid of the known senses is an operational definition of ESP. It includes telepathy (mind-to-mind communication), clairvoyance (perception of some object or event at a distance), and precognition (knowledge of the future). Experiments fall broadly into two categories:

The Forced-Choice Procedure
A "target" is chosen from a preselected set of options—such as the Zener cards used by Edgar Mitchell on the Apollo 14 journey mentioned earlier. An experimental participant who knows nothing about the target choice is asked to select from the given options what he or she believes the target to be. A statistically valid technique is applied over a series of trials to determine whether there was above-chance success in matching the participant's selection to the target.

Care is taken to ensure that there is no chance of "leakage" of information from the target to the participant via the recognized senses, including such safeguards as randomization procedures, and target and data security.

In almost 800,000 individual card trials of this type the effect size proved highly significant statistically. A meta-analysis technique on 309 separate studies yielded a similarly significant result.

Although the sizes of the effects in these studies are small, the results are statistically robust and stable across subjects and across studies.

The Free Response Testing Procedure
Falling predominantly into two categories—ganzfeld and remote viewing techniques—free response target material can be almost anything. It has included, for example, the Hoover Tower at Stanford University, animals roving the Serengeti plains and even a secret Soviet research site 10,000 miles away.

     • The ganzfeld technique (ganzfeld is German for "whole field") is designed to reduce "background noise." Like a radio signal—which is best heard when carefully tuned to eliminate static—researchers thought psi signals might be weak, thus potentially masked by internal somatic and external sensory factors; so they borrowed the ganzfeld technique from introspective psychologists.

In a typical ganzfeld experiment, the subject settles into a comfortable chair. Earphones provide a white noise environment and block out external sound. Translucent half-spheres are placed over each eye, and softly illumined with a red light. The mild sensory deprivation these conditions provide relaxes the subject and creates a uniform visual field—one where mental pictures can be seen more easily. Experiment participants report that after a few minutes in this arrangement, the red glow and static noise appear to vanish from conscious awareness.

This well-known technique was used to ask whether highly creative people are better at imagery and ESP. Students from the Juilliard School of the Performing Arts—all artistically gifted—participated in a study led by Marilyn Schlitz and her colleagues at the Psychophysical Research Laboratories, Princeton, New Jersey. While each student relaxed in the chair, a friend in a nearby room watched a short film clip and mentally encouraged the student subject to describe it. The subject relaxed and talked about the flow of images that formed in his or her mind. When the session was over, the subject compared his or her imagery with four film clips—the one the friend actually saw, and three decoys—and chose the one most like the mental experience.

By pure chance alone, a subject could expect to score correctly once in four guesses, or 25 percent of the time. The level of success in this study was a striking 50 percent— higher than in any other experiment of its type and, statistically, highly significant.

      • The remote viewing protocol differs from the ganzfeld procedure in two major ways. First, the subject is not in any overt altered state but simply sits across the table from a human monitor ("blind" to the target choice). The monitor's role is to help the viewer gain as much information about the target through psi as possible. The second change from the ganzfeld protocol is in the analysis, which uses an independent analyst, also blinded to the correct target, to assess the level of similarity between the imagery and the actual target.

A survey of this literature—including the ClA-sponsored investigations of remote viewing (see Noetic Sciences Review, Summer 1996) shows that of eight individual studies analyzed, five showed significant difference from chance expectations.

The combined free response (both ganzfeld and remote viewing) "hit rates" for 2,878 trials was on average 33 percent—again, well beyond the standards required by scientists to confirm an effect.

Psychokinesis (PK)

Psychokinesis, or "mind over matter," may be defined operationally as the interaction with the physical world by mental means alone. In the case of ESP, it is relatively straightforward to assure that no sensory leakage by traditional methods occurs. However, with psychophysical effects it is difficult and expensive to achieve the same assurance, and the more sensitive the physical apparatus, the more problematic this becomes.

PK studies generally are divided according to whether the target system is electromechanical—for example, a random event generator (REG)—or biological; and whether the effect is macroscopically visible (for example, a bent steel bar sealed inside a protective casing) or is at the micro-level, which requires statistical methods before it can be detected.

Micro-PK
The vast majority of published studies with micro-PK involve the use of random number generator devices—analogous to an electronic coin flipper. In a typical study, a carefully designed binary bit generator produces a binary data stream—derived, for example, from detection of radioactive particles. The subject attempts to modify the output by mental means alone, These attempts are interspersed with control periods in which the subject rests mentally, so as to provide a neutral baseline.

The person who laid the groundwork for an extensive program on micro-PK is quantum physicist Helmut Schmidt, For more than 30 years, Schmidt has worked to design experiments that seek both to develop state-of-the art testing procedures and to optimize the effect. In an effort to increase the effect size, Schmidt and his colleagues began working with special subject populations selected not for their ostensible psi abilities, but for their ability to focus attention on the task. In collaboration with IONS, his current research involves martial artists, athletes, meditative adepts, and artists.

Perhaps the best known series of experiments on micro-PK are those from Princeton's Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) laboratory. For well over a decade, PEAR researchers have studied the ability of ordinary subjects, with no special "gifts" for psi-mediated processes, to influence a stream of random events within a physical device. Their provocative finding is that human consciousness does interact with physical devices, information-gathering processes, and technological systems in a way that produces results significantly different from what would be expected on the basis of known scientific principles. While the effect size is small, the very large number of trials has built convincing evidence for an anomalous "mind-matter effect."

Furthermore, a careful meta-analysis of the historical database shows a highly significant effect size in more than 800 individual studies from 1959 to 1987, with the strongest effect coming from the work of Helmut Schmidt.

In recent years, several investigators have turned toward the study of "mass mind-matter" interactions. The logic involved is simple. A very small statistical effect can be seen with individuals attempting to affect a physical event. Therefore, it is postulated that the attention of a large number of individuals focused on a particular event or outcome would produce a cumulative effect.

Recent studies point in this direction. During a preliminary investigation of selected public events—the announcement of the first O.J. Simpson verdict, the Academy Awards, the Super Bowl—a "field" REG registered exceptional periods of statistical order instead of its usual random stream of information. We will continue to track this lead in future "Frontiers."

Direct Mental Interactions With Living Systems (DMILS)
The case for PK on biological targets is now developing with some vigor. The largest number of replications arise from a class of experiments using autonomic nervous system activity as the target system. In one version of this type of experiment, a subject in one room is perceived at a distance (via closed circuit television) by someone who attempts to influence the subject toward calmness or arousal. Across 25 experiments, results indicate that the average amount of electrodermal activity is statistically different when a remote individual is intending to calm or activate the distant person's physiology as compared with randomly selected and counterbalanced control periods.

Marilyn Schlitz has been very successful in detecting such an effect in experiments involving four laboratories and a variety of colleagues. In recent years, researcher Richard Wiseman—an experimental psychologist, a magician, and a member of the skeptical community—has found a different result—no more than chance expectation. To explore how this difference might arise, the two researchers collaborated to reproduce the experiments in a carefully controlled setting. With funds from Cambridge and Harvard Universities, they used a single laboratory at the University of Hertfordshire, a common protocol, and a single participant pool. Each confirmed their earlier experimental results: Schlitz found a significant difference in the physiological response of the participants when they were being stared at as compared to when they weren't being stared at; Wiseman found no effect. This intriguing finding suggests that the expectation of the experimenter may play a key role in experimental outcome. An extension of this work has recently been funded by the Society for Psychical Research in England, and the study will be conducted later this year.

In a related study, biologist and IONS Fellow Rupert Sheldrake is currently conducting a review of the mainstream scientific literature to see what evidence there is for an experimenter effect in biology, chemistry, and physics. If researchers confirm the experimenter effect, the findings will have profound implications for the conduct of experimental research throughout the scientific world.

Psi researchers have also taken an interest in determining whether PK may be a possible factor in the healing response. While many healers claim that their healing abilities transcend space and time, little formal research has accompanied these reports. To address this lack, IONS is currently sponsoring a series of projects which probe the possible efficacy of direct mental intention.

Working at California Pacific Medical Center (CPMC), molecular geneticist Garret Yount is studying the claims of qi gong masters and other healers that they can direct their "qi" energy outside their bodies in ways that create changes in the physical world. In the current research, Yount has designed an experimental protocol to measure a possible effect of subtle "energies" on the growth of malignant cells in tissue culture. Preliminary data led the researchers to undertake more detailed studies to focus the effect.

Psychiatrist Elisabeth Targ and colleague Fred Sicher, also of CPMC, have recently completed a pilot study on distant healing intention and health in a group of 20 seriously ill AIDS patients. Based on a very encouraging pilot study, the lONS-funded researchers continue this work with a larger sample population and with a design that addresses potentially confounding factors in the earlier study.

Another recent IONS project was conducted by an engineer from the Stanford University Linear Accelerator, Kenneth Eppley. Working in collaboration with psychologist William Braud at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, Eppley recently completed a confirmation study of a distant healing method called the Raimondi Technique. The study was designed to see if people treated by the Raimondi Technique would report less chronic pain than a randomized control group. The results of the experiment provided significant support for the alternative healing technique. We will report on this study in detail in a future "Frontiers" column.

To compare the DMILS effect with other areas of psi research, a formal meta-analysis of data from these experiments is now underway, cosponsored by the Office of Alternative Medicine of the National Institutes of Health and the Institute of Noetic Sciences. All of these projects contribute to our knowledge base regarding direct mental intention and its potential as a healing tool.

FUTURE DIRECTIONS IN PSI RESEARCH

Based on the meta-analyses of ESP and PK databases, it is clear that the statistical results are far beyond what is expected by mean chance expectation. With a high level of scientific consistency from different laboratories and with different types of protocols across studies, it is unlikely that the results are due to some systematic methodological flaws. It is with confidence, therefore, that many parapsychologists conclude that the reality of psi phenomena has been established. While the effect sizes are small, they are comparable to those reported in some recent medical studies that have been heralded as breakthroughs, such as the use of aspirin to prevent second heart attacks. With these data in hand, researchers can turn more of their attention to understanding the way psi works, how to increase the effect size, and the implications of these findings for our model of reality.

Evidence from psi research calls into question the dividing line between mind and matter, raising provocative empirical challenges. Indeed, the data suggest a faculty for perceiving and interacting with the physical world that lies beyond the reach of the ordinary senses. The data further offer links between the objective world of the senses and the inner world of human experience, providing strong support for an expanded scientific paradigm—one inclusive of consciousness as a causal factor in nature.

RESOURCE GUIDE

Professional organizations committed to the serious study of psi phenomena include the International Parapsychological Association, the Society for Scientific Exploration, the Society for Psychical Research in London, and the Scientific and Medical Network.

Leading research centers for psi research include the Rhine Institute in Durham, North Carolina; the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Laboratory, Princeton University; the Consciousness Research Laboratory at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas; the Department of Psychology, Edinburgh University, Scotland; and the University of Utrecht in Holland.

Upcoming conferences and meetings related to psi research include the Annual Meeting of the Society for Scientific Exploration, to be held June 5-7 in Las Vegas, Nevada; the Parapsychological Association Annual Convention, to be held August 7-10 in Brighton, England; and the Beyond the Brain Conference to be held August 21-24 in Cambridge, England.