Enhancing Human Performance Issues, Theories, and Techniques (1988) / Chapter Skim
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9 Paranormal Phenomena
9 Paranormal Phenomena
Pages 169-208
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From page 169... ...
Despite the growing scientific tradition in some of these areas, many people continue to rely on qualitative or experiential evidence to support their beliefs; we discuss the problems associated with qualitative evidence in conjunction with the research on cognitive and emotional biases, which is reviewed in the paper by Dale Griffin (Appendix B)
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From page 170... ...
Popularly called mind over matter, PK refers to the influence of thoughts upon objects without the intervention of known physical proc ENHANCING HUMAN PERFORMANCE esses. A presentation to the committee by several military officers described in some detail the results of experiments in remote viewing carried out at both SRI International and the Engineering Anomalies Research Laboratory at Princeton University.
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From page 171... ...
POTENTIAL MILITARY APPLICATIONS Some people, including some military decision makers, can imagine potential military applications of the two broad categories of psychic phenomena. In their view, ESP, if real and controllable, could be used for intelligence gathering and, because it includes "precognition," ESP could also be used to anticipate the actions of an enemy.
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From page 172... ...
The other major argument is that we have no choice but to get involved because the Soviet Union already has a program to develop military applications of psychic phenomena. Several proponents, including some scientists, firmly believe that paranormal phenomena have been scientifically demonstrated several times over.
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From page 173... ...
One essential question confronts the committee: What does an impartial examination of the scientific evidence reveal about the existence of psi? Such an examination assumes that clear standards exist for judging the adequacy of the evidence, which, in turn, raises the issue of what constitutes sufficient evidence.
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From page 174... ...
Experiments with electronic number generators, for example, rarely have problems with data recording, but they do require special methods such as tests of randomness and attention to the immediate physical environment that are unnecessary with more traditional parapsychological experiments. One requirement for assessing the adequacy of a given experiment is that its procedures and methods of analysis be adequately documented.
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From page 175... ...
EVALUATION OF THE SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE To evaluate the best scientific evidence on the existence of psi, and with the advice of proponents and our sponsors, we conducted site visits to some of the most notable parapsychological laboratories. The parapsychology subcommittee (see Appendix C)
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From page 176... ...
Once the experimenter and the subject are closeted in the laboratory, they wait for 30 minutes before the subject begins to describe his or her impressions of the target site. Meanwhile the target team, consisting of two to four members of the SRI staff, obtains instructions for going to a randomly chosen target site from another SRI staff member.
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From page 177... ...
When the target team returns to the laboratory, all the participants listen to the tape recording of the subject's impressions. Then all the participants go to the target site, where the subject is allowed to see how closely his or her impressions agreed with the actual target.
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From page 178... ...
Neither space nor time, its proponents assert, is a barrier. The percipient can pick up information from the surface of Jupiter as well as from target sites that can be visited at some future time.
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From page 179... ...
In other words, we deal with two randomly chosen target sites. For the first trial, the target team goes to the first target site and remains there while the subject produces his or her first description.
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From page 181... ...
In this illustration, the subject has a probability of 1 in 4 of having the actual target site ranked 1 on each trial, or a probability of 1 in 16 of being correct on both trials. This second procedure, which is typically used in most free-response parapsychological experiments (such as the Ganzfeld experiments discussed below)
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From page 182... ...
As we add sessions, this effect of immediate feedback should continue to make the correlation between the viewer's descriptions and the target sites better and better. No amount of editing for overt clues can overcome this defect of remote viewing experiments that follow the SRI pattern of dependent trials and immediate feedback.
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From page 183... ...
Indeed, as the parapsychologists themselves have asserted, unless this were so, there would be no possibility of the transcripts' being uniquely associated with a given target site. In every one of the remote viewing experiments that allows the possibility of subtle cueing, the possibility of the judges' being able to make completely successful matchings because of this artifact is highly plausible; and as long as a highly plausible, normal alternative to ESP can account for the apparent success of the outcomes the parapsychologists, by their own standards, cannot claim evidence for paranormal transmission of information.
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From page 184... ...
By both scientific and parapsychological standards, then, the case for remote viewing is not just very weak, but virtually nonexistent. It seems that the preeminent position that remote viewing occupies in the minds of many proponents results from the highly exaggerated claims made for the early experiments, as well as the subjectively compelling, but illusory, correspondences that experimenters and participants find between components of the descriptions and the target sites.
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From page 185... ...
If, during the time the output of the RNG was coupled with the shock apparatus, the proportion of shocks decreased below 50 percent, this would be taken as evidence of a psychokinetic effect of the cockroach on the output of the RNG. The RNG experiments have been of interest to some military and governmental personnel because of the possibility, if such micro-PK is demonstrable, of psychically affecting equipment and computers that depend on the output of electronic symbols.
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From page 186... ...
Although the Princeton experiments now contain a number of features that would make it extremely difficult for a naive subject to bias the results, it is not clear that this has always been so. It would make good scientific sense to conduct some trials during which the subject is carefully monitored to see if successful outcomes are still obtained.
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From page 187... ...
Palmer also correctly points out that such criticism is somewhat blunted by the fact that the critics have not specified any plausible mechanisms that would account for the obtained differences between the experimental and control trials. He is correct in pointing out that the Princeton experiments provide more adequate controls; however, he has probably assumed that the baseline controls in the Princeton experiments were run at the same time as the two experimental conditions of hitting and missing.
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From page 188... ...
This one individual was not only the most experienced subject, but also, presumably, familiar with the equipment. When combined with the fact, as Palmer points out, that the Princeton experiments provide inadequate documentation on precautions to prevent tampering by subjects, it becomes even more important to see if the same degree of success can be achieved when the sessions are adequately monitored.
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From page 189... ...
Alcock focuses on the fact that the successful results have been obtained under conditions that fall short of the experimental ideals that parapsychologists themselves profess. He emphasizes that the parapsychologists have no right to claim to have demonstrated psi from experiments that have been conducted with '~dirty test tubes." Such a revolutionary conclusion as the existence of psi demands justification from experiments that have clearly used "clean test tubes." What would it take to conduct an adequate RNG experiment?
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From page 190... ...
As far as we can tell, the same four points can be made with respect to the RNG experiments that have been conducted since 1980. The situation for the RNG experiments thus seems to be the same as that for remote viewing: over a period of approximately 15 years of research, only one successful experiment can be found that appears to meet most of the minimal criteria of scientific acceptability, and that one successful experiment yielded results that are just marginally significant.
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From page 191... ...
If the number of hits significantly exceeds the expected 25 percent, then the result is considered to be evidence for the existence of psi. Critique of the Ganzfeld Experiments In a careful and systematic review of the Ganzfeld experiments undertaken in 1981 and published in the March 1985 issue of the Journal of Parapsychology, Hyman concluded that the data base exhibited flaws involving multiple testing, inadequate controls for sensory leakage, inadequate randomization, statistical errors, and inadequate documentation.
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From page 192... ...
They agree that the current data base is insufficient to support either the conclusion that psi exists or the conclusion that the results are due to artifacts. They further agree that the issue can be settled only by future experiments conducted according to the stated standards of parapsychology, which are also the accepted standards of psychological research.
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From page 193... ...
When all 54 experiments are considered, it can be stated that the research methods are too weak to establish the existence of a paranormal phenomenon. RESEARCH ON ELECTRICAL ACTIVITY AND EMOTIONAL STATES The Backster Laboratory In addition to examining parapsychological research in areas that have produced large literatures, the committee witnessed an example of experimental work at a far less developed stage.
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From page 194... ...
During our demonstration, the polygraph record produced several strong deflections in both the control and the experimental series, but they did not obviously correlate with any corresponding thoughts or emotional states of the subject as various stimuli were presented. Backster suggested that this was probably because so many people were crowded into the laboratory that the leukocytes were respond
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From page 195... ...
Backster's intent, apparently, is to elicit spontaneous emotional responses from a subject during the session. He believes that a stimulus that evokes an emotional response in one subject will not necessarily do so in another subject.
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From page 196... ...
Here we encounter very serious problems as to what constitutes an emotional response on this behavioral record. Backster believes he can identify categories of potentially emotionally arousing stimuli in the nonstandardized, qualitative, ongoing record of conversation.
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From page 197... ...
In particular, intuitive judgments of covariation tend to focus only on the co-occurrence of treatment of interest and successful outcomes, ignoring times when the treatment co-occurred with unsuccessful outcomes. Backster uses only those examples from his records in which an emotional response co-occurs with a polygraph deflection; the 12 such examples from the 7 experimental series represent a very small fraction of the total data collected.
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From page 198... ...
Almost certainly, more than 12 emotional responses must have appeared in the total record. The point of conducting the sessions was to expose the subjects to a variety of emotional stimuli; therefore, it is essential to know the number of times that emotional responses occurred without the corresponding occurrence of polygraph responses.
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From page 199... ...
In this case, the critic does not claim that the results have been produced by some artifact, but instead points out that the results have been obtained under conditions that fail to meet generally accepted standards. The gist of this type of criticism is that test tubes should be clean when doing
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From page 200... ...
In the committee's view, it is in this latter sense, the dirty test tube sense, that the best parapsychological experiments fall short. We do not have a smoking gun, nor have we demonstrated a plausible alternative; but we imagine that even the parapsychological community must be concerned that their best experiments still fall far short of the methodological adequacy that they themselves profess.
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From page 201... ...
The ecological validity argument asserts that the artificial conditions required for laboratory experiments are so different from the natural settings in which paranormal phenomena typically occur that findings from such controlled studies are irrelevant. By removing the psychic from his or her natural domain or by arranging conditions to suit the needs of scientific observation, it is claimed, the scientist destroys the very phenomenon under question.
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From page 202... ...
More typical is the proponent who, as a result of compelling personal experience, not only has no doubt about the reality of underlying paranormal cause, but also has no patience with the refusal of others to support that belief. We see two problems regarding qualitative evidence.
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From page 203... ...
Impressed with what they saw, in 1975 these scientists contributed an article to Nature outlining their ideas about how to conduct successful parapsychological research (reprinted in Hasted et al., 1976~. In their discussion they note that successful results depend on the relation among the participants and that phenomena are more likely to occur when all participants are in a relaxed state, all sincerely want the psychic to succeed, and "the experimental arrangement is aesthetically or imaginatively appealing to the person with apparent psychokinetic powers.,' Hasted and his colleagues describe further desiderata.
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From page 204... ...
Over and over again we have been told by participants that they know that metal became paranormally deformed in their presence. This situation gives the distinct impression that proponents of macro-PK, having consistently failed to produce scientific evidence, have forsaken the scientific method and undertaken a campaign to convince themselves and others on the basis of clearly nonscientific data based on personal experience and testimony obtained under emotionally charged conditions.
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From page 205... ...
DISCUSSION OF QUALITATIVE EVIDENCE Our analysis of the evidence put before us indicates that even the most solidly based arguments for the existence of paranormal phenomena fall short of the currently accepted parapsychological standards. Even if the best evidence had been collected according to acceptable scientific standards, most proponents would have in fact remained convinced by personal experiences and data that clearly fall far short of scientific acceptability.
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From page 206... ...
The suggestions of a group of British physicists for testing alleged psychics are aimed at somehow combining the desire to keep the psychic from feeling inhibited with the desire to obtain evidence of acceptable scientific quality. The observers' zeal for making the psychic feel trusted produces conditions that make scientific observation impossible: observers are instructed to refrain from focusing attention on any expected result, and the experimental arrangement must be aesthetically acceptable to the psychic, a condition that in effect puts the psychic in control of the experiment.
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From page 207... ...
. ~ ~ _- , paranormal phenomena.
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From page 208... ...
Concerns about making the experimental situation comfortable for the alleged psychic or conducive to paranormal phenomena frequently result in practices that also increase opportunities for deception and error. SOURCES OF INFORMATION Two of the military officers who briefed us during our first meeting urged the committee to give serious consideration to paranormal phenomena and related parapsychological techniques.
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