An Evaluation of Remote Viewing: Research and Applications, full transcription

Studies of paranormal phenomena have nearly always been associated with controversy. Despite the controversy concerning their nature and existence, many individuals and organizations continue to be avidly interested in these phenomena. The intelligence community is no exception: beginning in the 1970s, it has conducted a program intended to investigate the application of one paranormal phenomenon, remote viewing, or the ability to describe locations one has not visited.

Conceptually, remote viewing would seem to have tremendous potential utility for the intelligence community. Accordingly, a three component program involving basic research, operations, and foreign assessment has been in place for some time. Prior to transferring this program to a new sponsoring organization within the intelligence community, a thorough program review was initiated.

The part of the program review conducted by the American Institutes for Research (AIR), a nonprofit, private research organization, consisted of two main components. The first component was a review of the research program. The second component was a review of the operational application of the remote viewing phenomenon in intelligence gathering. Evaluation of the foreign assessment component of the program was not within the scope of the present effort.

Research Evaluation. To evaluate the research program, a "blue ribbon" panel was assembled. The panel included two noted experts in the area of parapsychology: Dr. Jessica Utts, a Professor of Statistics at the University of California, Davis, and Dr. Raymond Hyman, a Professor of Psychology at the University of Oregon. In addition to their extensive credentials, they were selected to represent both sides of the paranormal controversy: Dr. Utts has published articles that view paranormal interpretations positively, while Dr. Hyman was selected to represent a more skeptical position. Both, however, are viewed as fair and open minded scientists. In addition to these experts, this panel included two Senior Scientists from AIR; both have recognized methodological expertise, and both had no prior background in parapsychological research. Dr. Lincoln Moses, an Emeritus Professor at Stanford University, provided statistical advice, while Dr. David A. Goslin, President of AIR, served as coordinator of the research effort.

Panel members were asked to review all laboratory experiments and meta analytic reviews conducted as part of the research program; this consisted of approximately 80 separate publications, many of which are summary reports of multiple experiments. In the course of this review, special attention was given to those studies that (a) provided the strongest evidence for the remote viewing phenomenon, and (b) represented new experiments controlling for methodological artifacts identified in earlier reviews. Separate written reviews were prepared by Dr. Utts and Dr. Hyman.

In the typical remote viewing experiment in the laboratory, a remote viewer is asked to visualize a place, location, or object being viewed by a "beacon" or sender. A judge then examines the viewer's report and determines if this report matches the target or, alternatively, a set of decoys. In most recent laboratory experiments reviewed for the present evaluation, National Geographic photographs provided the target pool. If the viewer's reports match the target, as opposed to the decoys, a hit is said to have occurred.

In evaluating the various laboratory studies conducted to date, the reviewers reached the following conclusions:

A statistically significant laboratory effort has been demonstrated in the sense that hits occur more often than chance.

It is unclear whether the observed effects can unambiguously be attributed to the paranormal ability of the remote viewers as opposed to characteristics of the judges or of the target or some other characteristic of the methods used. Use of the same remote viewers, the same judge, and the same target photographs makes it impossible to identify their independent effects.

Evidence has not been provided that clearly demonstrates that the causes of hits are due to the operation of paranormal phenomena; the laboratory experiments have not identified the origins or nature of the remote viewing phenomenon, if, indeed, it exists at all.

Operational Evaluation. The second component of the program involved the use of remote viewing in gathering intelligence information. Here, representatives of various intelligence groups, the "end users" of intelligence information, presented targets to remote viewers, who were asked to describe the target. Typically, the remote viewers described the results of their experiences in written reports, which were forwarded to the end users for evaluation and, if warranted, action.

This multifaceted evaluation effort led to the following conclusions:

The conditions under which the remote viewing phenomenon is observed in laboratory settings do not apply in intelligence gathering situations. For example, viewers cannot be provided with feedback and targets may not display the characteristics needed to produce hits.

The end users indicated that, although some accuracy was observed with regard to broad background characteristics, the remote viewing reports failed to produce the concrete, specific information valued in intelligence gathering.

The information provided was inconsistent, inaccurate with regard to specifics, and required substantial subjective interpretation.

In no case had the information provided ever been used to guide intelligence operations. Thus, remote viewing failed to produce actionable intelligence.

Conclusions. The foregoing observations provide a compelling argument against continuation of the program within the intelligence community. Even though a statistically significant effect has been observed in the laboratory, it remains unclear whether the existence of a paranormal phenomenon, remote viewing, has been demonstrated. The laboratory studies do not provide evidence regarding the origins or nature of the phenomenon, assuming it exists, nor do they address an important methodological issue of inter judge reliability.

Further, even if it could be demonstrated unequivocally that a paranormal phenomenon occurs under the conditions present in the laboratory paradigm, these conditions have limited applicability and utility for intelligence gathering operations. Most importantly, the information provided by remote viewing is vague and ambiguous, making it difficult, if not impossible, for the technique to yield information of sufficient quality and accuracy for actionable intelligence. Thus, we conclude that continued use of remote viewing in intelligence gathering operations is not warranted.

In the mid 1980s, at the request of the Army Research Institute, the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences established a blue ribbon panel charged with evaluating the evidence bearing on the effectiveness of a wide variety of techniques for enhancing human performance. This review was conducted under the overall direction of David A. Goslin, then Executive Director of the Commission on Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education, and now President of the American Institutes for Research. The review panel's report, Enhancing Human Performance: Issues, Theories, and Techniques, was published by the National Academy Press in 1988. Although the panel found some support for certain alternative performance enhancement techniques, for example guided imagery, little or no support was found for the usefulness of many other techniques, such as learning during sleep and remote viewing.

Although the findings of the National Research Council were predominantly negative with regard to a range of paranormal phenomena, work on remote viewing has continued under the auspices of various government programs. Since 1986, perhaps 50 to 100 additional studies of remote viewing have been conducted.

At the request of Congress, the Central Intelligence Agency is considering assuming responsibility for the remote viewing program. As part of its decision making process, the CIA was asked to evaluate the research conducted since the NRC report. This evaluation was intended to determine: (a) whether this research has any long term practical value for the intelligence community, and (b) if it does, what changes should be made in methods and approach to enhance the value of remote viewing research.

Program History. "Star Gate" is a Defense Intelligence Agency program which involved the use of paranormal phenomena, primarily remote viewing, for intelligence collection. During Star Gate's history, DIA pursued three basic program objectives: "Operations," using remote viewing to collect intelligence against foreign targets; "Research and Development," using laboratory studies to find new ways to improve remote viewing for use in the intelligence world; and "Foreign Assessment," the analysis of foreign activities to develop or exploit the paranormal for any uses which might affect our national security.

Prior to the advent of Star Gate in the early 1990s, the DIA, the CIA, and other government organizations conducted various other programs pursuing some or all of these objectives. CIA's program began in 1972, but was discontinued in 1977. DIA's direct involvement began about 1985 and has continued up to the time of this review. During the last twenty years, all government programs involving parapsychology have been viewed as highly controversial, high risk, and have been subjected to various reviews.

In 1995, the CIA declassified its past parapsychology program efforts in order to facilitate a new, external review. In addition, CIA worked with DIA to continue declassification of Star Gate program documents, a process which had already begun at DIA. All relevant CIA and DIA program documents were collected and inventoried. In June of 1995, CIA's Office of Research and Development then contracted with AIR for this external review, based on our long standing expertise in carrying out studies relating to behavioral science issues and our neutrality with respect to the subject matter.

The Review Panel. Two of the reviewers were scientists noted for their interest, expertise, and experience in parapsychological research. The first of these two expert reviewers, Dr. Jessica Utts, a Professor of Statistics at the University of California, Davis, is a nationally recognized scholar who has made major contributions to the development and application of new statistical methods and techniques. She has published several articles on the application of statistical methods to parapsychological research and has direct experience with the remote viewing research program.

The second expert reviewer, Dr. Raymond Hyman, is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Oregon. Dr. Hyman has published over 200 articles in professional journals on perception, pattern recognition, creativity, problem solving, and critiques of the paranormal. He served on the original NRC Committee on Techniques for the Enhancement of Human Performance. He is recognized as one of the most important and fair minded skeptics working in this area.

The operational program. In the early 1970s, the CIA experimented with applications of remote viewing in intelligence gathering. Later in the decade, they abandoned the program. However, other government agencies, including the Department of Defense, used remote viewers to obtain intelligence information. The viewers were tasked with providing answers to questions posed by various intelligence agencies. These operations continued until the Spring of 1995, when the program was suspended.

Although procedures varied somewhat during the history of the program, viewers typically were presented with a request for information about a target of interest to a particular agency. Multiple viewings were then obtained for the target. The results of the viewings then were summarized in a three or four page report and sent to the agency that had posed the original question. Starting in 1994, members of the agencies receiving the viewing reports were formally asked to evaluate their accuracy and value.

Information about operational applications was gathered in a series of interviews conducted during July and August of 1995. The team interviewed seven representatives of end user groups, three remote viewers, and the incumbent Program Manager. The relevant user groups were involved in operations ranging from counterintelligence and drug interdiction to search and rescue operations.

Abstract. Research on psychic functioning, conducted over a two decade period, is examined to determine whether or not the phenomenon has been scientifically established. A secondary question is whether or not it is useful for government purposes. The primary work examined in this report was government sponsored research conducted at Stanford Research Institute, later known as SRI International, and at Science Applications International Corporation, known as SAIC.

Using the standards applied to any other area of science, it is concluded that psychic functioning has been well established. The statistical results of the studies examined are far beyond what is expected by chance. Arguments that these results could be due to methodological flaws in the experiments are soundly refuted. Effects of similar magnitude to those found in government sponsored research at SRI and SAIC have been replicated at a number of laboratories across the world. Such consistency cannot be readily explained by claims of flaws or fraud.

The magnitude of psychic functioning exhibited appears to be in the range between what social scientists call a small and medium effect. That means that it is reliable enough to be replicated in properly conducted experiments, with sufficient trials to achieve the long run statistical results needed for replicability.

A number of other patterns have been found, suggestive of how to conduct more productive experiments and applied psychic functioning. For instance, it doesn't appear that a sender is needed. Precognition, in which the answer is known to no one until a future time, appears to work quite well. Recent experiments suggest that if there is a psychic sense then it works much like our other five senses, by detecting change.

It is recommended that future experiments focus on understanding how this phenomenon works, and on how to make it as useful as possible. There is little benefit to continuing experiments designed to offer proof, since there is little more to be offered to anyone who does not accept the current collection of data.

On replication. Utts drew an analogy to baseball. Even the best hitters in the major leagues cannot hit on demand, and no one can predict whether a home run will occur in a particular game. That does not mean home runs don't exist. Scientific evidence in the statistical realm, she argued, is based on replication of the same average performance over the long run, not on a result reproducible at will. By that standard, she wrote, replicability had been achieved in the remote viewing data.

On prima facie evidence. Utts noted a few applied, non laboratory remote viewings that appeared to exceed anything seen in the lab. In one case analyzed after the fact by Dr. Edwin May, a viewer was judged to have described a microwave generator with about 80 percent accuracy, of which almost 70 percent was assessed as reliable. Laboratory remote viewings, she noted, rarely show that level of correspondence.

Hyman reviewed the same body of work as Utts and accepted a key part of her case. He agreed that the SAIC experiments showed statistical effects that could not be dismissed as chance, and that the better recent studies were not obviously explained by the methodological flaws that had plagued the early SRI work. On the existence of a real statistical anomaly, the two reviewers were closer than the public controversy suggested.

The disagreement was about cause. Hyman's position was that a statistical anomaly is not the same thing as a demonstrated paranormal ability. An effect that departs from chance establishes that something other than chance is at work. It does not establish what that something is. He argued that the remote viewing program had not identified any mechanism, had not produced a theory that predicted when the effect would appear and when it would not, and had not ruled out subtle methodological and statistical explanations that did not require any paranormal cause. In his view, the appropriate scientific response to an unexplained anomaly is continued caution, not the conclusion that the paranormal has been proven.

Hyman also raised the problem of replication by independent investigators. Much of the strongest evidence came from a small number of laboratories and a small number of investigators. Until the effect could be produced reliably by neutral parties following a fixed protocol, he argued, the case remained open rather than closed.

The report recorded where the two experts agreed and where they did not. They agreed that the statistical results in the better experiments were significant and were not readily attributable to the obvious flaws of the early studies. They disagreed on whether that significance demonstrated a paranormal phenomenon. Utts held that, judged by the standards applied to any other science, the phenomenon was established and research should move on to understanding it. Hyman held that an unexplained anomaly, however robust, does not by itself prove the paranormal, and that the absence of a mechanism and of broad independent replication left the central claim unproven.

The AIR methodologists, who had no prior stake in parapsychology, were asked to weigh the remaining dispute. Their reading aligned more closely with the cautious position: a real and replicated statistical effect, but not a demonstrated paranormal cause, and not a phenomenon understood well enough to be relied upon.

The operational chapter reported the findings from the interviews and the user feedback. The conditions that produced laboratory hits, a fixed target pool, feedback to the viewer, and controlled judging, did not exist in real intelligence tasks. End users reported that viewings sometimes captured broad background impressions but failed on the specifics that intelligence work requires. The information was inconsistent and needed heavy interpretation. The report stated that in no case had a remote viewing report been used to guide an intelligence operation.

The final chapter drew the program's conclusion. A statistically significant laboratory effect existed but remained unexplained and could not be confidently called paranormal. Even granting the effect, the laboratory conditions did not transfer to intelligence gathering, and the product was too vague to act on. AIR concluded that continued use of remote viewing in intelligence operations was not warranted. The program was terminated later in 1995.