Remote Viewing
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[edit] Defintion
Remote Viewing is the claimed ability for a person to perceive physically remote locations without recourse to normal sensory channels. It differs from Astral Viewing (in which people visit other non-physical dimensions) and the Ganzfeld experiments (since no altered state of consciousness is needed) and was the subject of a twenty year program of experimentation with US government funding from the CIA, the DIA and other government agencies. This was carried out at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) until 1989 when government funding for this issue transferred to the Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) where Ed May (a previous Project Director at SRI) was working. The projects went under a variety of code names and is now generally referred to as Star Gate.
[edit] Early History of Star Gate
The earliest occurrence of ESP being suggested to the US government was in 1952 when Puharich gave an address to the Pentagon entitled "On the possible usefulness of extrasensory perception in psychological warfare". In the early 1960's Project ULTRA was carried out by Dr. Abrams from Oxford University, England, but the results were not conclusive and ESP research was not carried out by the US govt for another ten years.
In 1972 two scientists, Targ and Puthoff, who had already made their name in laser research, approached the CIA with an aim to use psychic powers in intelligence operations and later that year the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) began doing research for various government institutions (the first being the Office for Technical Service). Dr Kress describes the ambiguous nature of the early results when he talks about the same experiment with different subjects yielding different results and he writes that even "repeating the same experiment with the same subject did not yield consistent results. I began to have serious feelings of being involved with a fraud."
Nevertheless, the following investigation into remote viewing threw up a curious hit. The Office of Strategic Intelligence (OSI) asked for a description of a location from two remote viewers, giving them only map references (with no actual maps). The location was actually a holiday resort, so when the two reports came back with descriptions of a military base the exercise was originally written off as a miss. But one officer was surprised by the similarity in the two reports so he went to the location to see for himself. To his surprise he found, a few miles away, a military base. As a result, he asked one of the viewers, Pat Price, to give more details on the site. He successfully gave codenames of past and present projects but was inaccurate when it came to names of people working there.
[edit] Early criticisms of Star Gate
In 1973 SRI performed another remote viewing experiment with Pat Price in which he was asked to describe nine locations on different days, and then these notes were given to judges who were asked to match the notes to locations. The result was that seven of the nine targets were matched correctly. In a series of papers in the late 1970's (later summarised in book form in 1980) Marks and Kammann pointed out that the unedited notes from the Pat Price experiment included clues which would allow a judge to match target to the notes with no recourse to psi. For example, one set of notes included remarks about yesterday's two targets, and one of the judges, Dr. Hastings, said that the notes had been supplied in the order that they'd been made.
In 1981 Marks and Kammann took the nine transcripts, edited out clues and also discarded four transcripts which had already been published, and then Marks (who was unaware of the actual results) judged them. He scored at chance. To check these results, they then asked eight new judges to view the notes and locations with the clues intact. The results were significant (p<0.0005, or less that 1 in 2,000). They then took the five non-published notes, edited the clues out again, and gave them to two new judges whose results were not significantly different from chance.
In response, SRI also edited the transcripts to eliminate any cueing. Then all nine transcripts were re-judged by a new judge with a similar score as before, with seven out of nine correctly identified. Marks and Kammann argued that with four transcripts already published, these should not be included in any rejudging and also that the person doing the editing was Charles Tart: one of the original investigators. After a few years they were finally given these new transcripts and found that many clues had been left intact.
In other experiments, most famously by the remote viewer Hammid, clues were still evident. In a similar protocol to the one used for Pat Price, the judge was given the notes in the same order as they were carried out. He (Dr. Hastings again) shuffled them before judging, however some of the notes had the date written at the top of the page making any matching of notes to target very easy.
[edit] Pat Price's viewing of URDF-3
This episode is often quoted in web sites that support or even sell remote viewing programs. The usual story is that a remote viewer (Pat Price, a retired policeman from Chicago) was given map co-ordinates and asked to describe what he saw. The actual target was a nuclear plant at Semipalatinsk in the U.S.S.R. and was codenamed URDF-3 (which stands for Unidentified Research and Development Facility). This investigation was carried out over four days (9-11 and 15 July 1974). Below is a list of elements that Price described. Items 1-16 are from the first day. Items 17-30 are from day two. Only items 31-34 come from day three. Day four is given only two paragraphs in the report and is summed up as "the discussions did nothing towards supplying any new evidence (that could be checked) to establish validity for Price's remote viewing ability"
The experimenters may have been blind to the nature of the target in question, but they were certainly fed questions to ask the remote viewer by people who were not. This can be seen by the questioning with regards to certain elements, such as cranes and headframes.
This is what Price saw, with direct quotes from the report in "quotation marks" or comments in [brackets]:
1. Price talked about low one-storey buildings and short squatty buildings which "could very well describe a first look at URDF-3."
2. Going into one of the buildings, Price described a peculiar type of helmet worn by someone, but the remote viewer "gets bogged down in the specifics and purpose."
3. Price identified the base as being 30 miles south of a river but "this information had been given to him earlier"
4. According to Price, the road from the river passed through a gorge [this is incorrect]
5. Price sketched the layout of URDF-3: "the layout of the buildings and they area they cover as shown in sketch are incorrect for URDF-3"
6. Price described antennas "although there are some antennas at URDF-3, none are as tall as the 500 ft antenna he described"
7. Price described an outdoor pool, 60 feet by 150 feet "in reality, there is no outdoor pool at URDF-3"
8. Price drew a military complex 3/8ths of a mile NE of URDF-3 "there is a military complex at URDF-3, located at about 2 1/2 miles NW of the Operations Area, but this data was given to him earlier"
9. Price described a radar/communications building to the north which "fits the description of the probable laboratory/administration building located about 2 1/2 miles NW" [i.e., from the same information given to him earlier]
10. Price described an array of telegraph poles but "there is no such array"
11. Price sketched the general landscape as seen from 50,000 feet "nothing in this figure is correct, except the area is arid and has low hills to the south. Specifically, he is incorrect in his locations of a small village, and airstrip, a cluster of pine trees, and a city 60 miles to the SW. There is, however, an airfield at the main support complex 30 miles north of URDF-3"
12. Price was asked about railways. The closest railroad he saw was 60 miles away "in reality there is a railroad at the main support complex (about 30 miles north of URDF-3) with a railway spur under construction down to URDF-3"
13. Pat Price said the area had a cyclone fence "in reality the Operations Area of URDF-3 has four security fences, not just one cyclone fence"
14. then again he described the non-existent telegraph pole array
15. Price saw low-boy trucks and a gantry crane [more on this later, it is worth noting that Hal Putoff, while speaking to Pat Price after the first session, asked if Price could focus on the crane, so there's a chance that Pat Price could deduce that he'd stumbled upon a hit.]
16. Price was asked to describe Building 1: three floors, flat roof, 80 feet by 160 feet "there is no building at URDF-3 that matches the above description"
17. Price then talked about the gantry crane as he was asked to, and about how big it is [doesn't give figures yet, more on this later]
18. He spoke about the security fence being electrified, but he doesn't mention "the fact that there are really four perimeter fences at URDF-3"
19. Price talked about the crane, and how it relates to the non-existent telegraph array, swimming pool and Building 1.
20. Price mentioned that the crane goes into a sunken building and according to the report "the gantry crane at URDF-3 operates on rails that go over a sunken building"
21. He described the rails that the crane rides on: "that description compares quite closely with one of the most distinctive observables at URDF-3"
22. Price described two gantry cranes that enter building 1 "his description of the interaction between the crane and building 1 is incorrect"
23. Price described building one as having five stories, not three as he previously thought [incorrect]
24. He then talked about welding operations south of building 1 [this is not verified or denied in the report]
25. He described an electric substation east of the building: "in reality there is no substation near the gantry crane or building 1 at URDF-3"
26. He gave the dimensions of the crane as 50 feet wide, 150 feet tall
27. He gave the dimensions of building 1 as 50 feet tall. When asked how the crane could fit inside building 1, he describes two smaller gantry cranes that actually enter the building: "this complicated relationship of three gantry cranes does not exist at URDF-3"
28. Price was then asked to scan to the west to look for another structure of similar size to the crane. The experimenters wanted to see if Price could see the four headframes [nothing immediate is noted: possibly the dome shaped building later on]
29. Price sketched the two cranes "the sketch of the taller gantry crane is remarkably close in detail to the actual gantry crane"
30. He described a dome shaped building about 200 feet SW of building 1 [?]
31. He talked about and sketched a cement silo-like building [?]
32. He described the outdoor pool "at one time during this discussion I thought the pool he was looking at might well be the underground building"
33. Price incorrectly described the distance to the nearest railroad
34. Price was then shown a sketch of URDF-3, with the headframes included. He is asked if he can now see the headframes. He says only one is still present. "That proved to be untrue, since all four headframes are still there"
35. is asked if the buildings labelled A, B, C, and D on the sketch are actually parts of one larger underground building. He says they aren't. They are. "This description is the most negative evidence yet and tends to discredit Price's ability to remotely view URDF-3"
This episode became part of remote viewing mythology. It is usually reported that Price described and drew the crane with no prompting. Some articles, even those written by people present at the time, makes it look very impressive. Dr. Kress, who was intimately involved in the early government research into ESP, wrote in 1999 "Initially Price was given only the geographic coordinates, a world atlas map marked with the approximate location of URDF-3, and told it was a Soviet RD&E test site. Overnight, he produced the drawing [of the crane]." This gives the impression that the drawing came almost immediately and with no prompting, although the report written at the time makes the sequence of events quite clear.
Price first mentioned the crane in passing on one day and was then asked to elaborate on it the following day. It's worth noticing that whenever Price mentioned size, it was always to do with grandeur. The swimming pool, Building 1, the domed building, the telegraph array and the crane were all described as being big, whether they existed or not. It could be that Price thought that, since the US Intelligence only had aerial photos to work with, the targets most easily identifiable would have to be big. So when he got the prompt for more information about the crane, would it have been such a leap of logic to make?
Another hit apparently came from the sessions. According to Targ, writing in 1996, Price also saw large 60-foot wide metal spheres. This was confirmed in 1977 in a report published in Aviation Week. However, this hit is not described in the report. It is possible that it came in the fourth day which was not detailed to any extent, in which case we would need to say what else Price said during that day and with what prompting.
[edit] Other work for Star Gate
In general, the valuation of the various experiments was rather vague and badly described. Sometimes they would appear to be very strongly positive. In the Sun Streak Annual Report of 1987 there are eleven projects listed. Of these, six are described as being "useful" and the others were listed vaguely using language like "of value (verbal)", "oral eval", "undetermined" and "continuing". Only one was deemed of "no intel value". Similarly, in 1989 a remote viewing experiment was written up by Ed May (one of the people working on the remote viewing project) and stated that "the weighted accuracy total of 0.80 (i.e., 80% of the identifiable elements at the target site were correctly identified by V372)[372 was the code number for Joe McMoneagle]".
This seems impressive, but there's no control involved in these trials (at least, none is mentioned in the paper). By comparing notes to target locations directly, it is easy to construct similarities between the two which don't really exist. An informal experiment was carried out on an internet forum in which a list of descriptors was posted and people were asked to say how many they could see from their window. It finished with a hit rate of around 60%, and this was for people in many parts of the world. This is, of course, subject to the influence of confirmation bias and non-blind judging. If the people writing the Star Gate reports were aware of these influences in these experiments, they made no acknowledgement in the papers.
Another paper comments that "Individual and beacon training searches were conducted during the reporting period with an apparent success rate of 30%. Efforts to provide predictive data resulted in an apparent success rate ranging from 8 to 12 per cent". These papers report "success" or "accuracy" in numerical form without ever properly defining their terms.
In the training programs, which use non-operational locations to be remotely viewed, the choice of targets seems slightly frivolous, even geeky (for want of a better word). Locations such as UFO crash sites, Stonehenge, the satellite Titan, Mars in the year one million B.C. and the Tunguska Explosion (twice!) are dotted liberally amongst the more sensible choices. It's difficult to see how some of these could be judged, even in a non-blind protocol.
One experiment that did report its results using a recognisable statistical measure happened in 1979. In this year the Special Activities Office of the Army Material Systems Analysis Activity (AMSAA) published a report (an "interim note") about a remote viewing experiment carried out in the previous year. This was the first phase of "Project Grill Flame" which lasted for another three years. This paper describes how two remote viewers were tested in twenty experiments in which they viewed physical locations. These twenty transcripts were divided into three groups for judging purposes (two groups of seven and one group of six) and then three judges took the transcripts (after any temporal clues had been removed by a third party) and order-ranked each one against each location.
Results for all twenty trials were at chance, with judge 1 scoring the three judging sets at p numbers of 0.054, 0.99, 0.55. Judge 2 scored at p=0.85, 0.46, 0.061. Judge 3 scored at p=0.8, 0.46, 0.1 (sum of ranks=228, mean chance expectation=201, the lower the better).
Then five of the six experiments in the last group where taken and re-evaluated. A judge read and decided the principal concepts before being aware of the locations. Thus he took notes of only two pages to each location, as opposed to the six or seven pages that the other judges took. Out of five targets, he correctly identified four. The report does not describe why or when those experiments were chosen for rejudging, but it is clear from the report that this set of six had the best scores and also those with the greatest level of agreement between the three judges. Only one location amongst the six scored consistently poorly, and it is not clear if this is the one to be left out.
[edit] Remote viewing for hostages
During the 1980s the Star Gate program turned it's attention to the increased hostage taking activity in the Middle East and Europe. These included the kidnapping of General Dozier, taken hostage by the Red Brigade in Italy on December 17th 1981.
The Washington Post wrote on 30th December 1996 that "An important U.S. Army general was kidnapped in Italy by the Red Brigades terrorists. The U.S. government pulled out all the stops, shook up every intelligence source and scanned every photo but had no luck locating the general."
The story goes that, in desperation, that secret services turned to the Star Gate (then named Grill Flame) Project to find General Dozier. Joe McMoneagle supplied a description including the correct town and description of the flat in which Dozier was being held, but by this time intelligence had been gathered by normal means (from a previous Red Brigade member turned informer) and so by the time the remote viewing intelligence had reached the ears of the people involved, Dozier had already been released. However, it is not clear how many remote viewers were involved in this "search" nor how extensive their guesses were. The Vancouver Courier of 2nd June 1996 mentions that another remote viewer identified the building, so it seems clear that more than one viewer was involved. The Washington Post article says that the name of the city, Padua, was identified by a remote viewer eight days before the general was released while the flat had been identified by intelligence as the hiding place of Dozier for at least three days before his release.
[edit] Remote viewing review 1988
In 1988 the National Research Council published a colection of papers called "Enhancing Human Performance: Issues, Theories, and Techniques, Background Papers". Amongst its chapters it covered three main aspects of parapsychology in one of its chapters, namely: remote viewing, PK on random number generators, and the ganzfeld work. Concerning the remote viewing work they wrote:
"In summary, after approximately 15 years of claims and sometimes bitter controversy, the literature on remote viewing has managed to produce only one possible successful experiment that is not seriously flawed in its methodology - and that one experiment provides only marginal evidence for the existence of ESP. By both scientific and parapsychological standards, then, the case for remote viewing is not just very weak, but virtually nonexistent."
This referred to work published in parapsychological papers, and did not cover the then-still-classified SRI work.
[edit] SRI review 1988
In 1988 SRI released a document which covered all work carried out at SRI from 1973-1988. Including work other than remote viewing, it reported odds of 2x10 to the power 20 to 1 against for all the work. It was written by May, Utts, Trask, Luke, Frivoid & Humphrey and entitled "Review of the Psychoenergetic research conducted at SRI International (1973-1988)"
The remote viewing work is split into four categories: Forced Choice (where the target is a limited set of known possibilities, i.e., numbers); RV-Lab (where the target is drawn from a set of photographs and the RV session is carried out under laboratory conditions); RV-Ops (where the target is requested by an intelligence agency); and RV-search (where the target is known, but the location is not).
The paper is heavy on statistics. Their use of effect size is curious. They use the equation d=z/sq rt n, where z is the z-score and n is the number of trials. This has the effect of penalising large experiments, and it renders the number somewhat meaningless. Early in the paper they give the results for all work completed at SRI with an effect size of 0.059 and odds against chance of 3.69x1020 to 1. Later, on page 21, they talk about an experiment of 55 trials not reaching significant with a higher effect size d=0.064. There is a pattern throughout the paper that short experiments get large effect sizes, and vice versa, regardless of actual results. On one page they wrote "We are able to conclude that targets 1mm in diameter do not inhibit remote viewing ability" based on the high effect size (d=0.857) of one experiment lasting just six trials.
The paper concluded, amongst others, that RV can provide the intelligence community with accurate information.
[edit] Star Gate review 1995
In 1995 the American Institute for Research released "An Evaluation of Remote Viewing: Research and Applications" by Mumford, Rose and Goslin. This document contained the two summaries of evidence regarding remote viewing written by Ray Hyman and Jessica Utts where they assess the results of the ten most recent SAIC experiments (Ed May had originally been asked to provide the labs ten best experiments, but he decided this would not make for a fair assessment, so he supplied details of the last ten).
In parapsychological literature it is usually assumed that these two parts were the only parts considered in the judgement of the efficacy of remote viewing in intelligence gathering. But a third part, which summarised the experiences of a number of people who had actually tested remote viewing in something approaching an operational environment is perhaps more detrimental that Hyman's report.
The first review was from Jessica Utts, and it is a solidly written piece of work. It deftly introduces the definitions of the phenomena being examined as well as the statistical methods used to measure them. She explains the ten experiments being examined and their results as well as comparing them to results from other laboratories (using ganzfeld data from four other institutions) to demonstrate a replicable effect size. On the first page of her report she makes the statement that " Using the standards applied to any other area of science, it is concluded that psychic functioning has been well established."
Ray Hyman's paper gave a brief history of arguments against parapsychology, including Rhine, the Soal controversy and the early ganzfeld work and he doesn't talk much about the SAIC experiments at all. Utts has a reply printed afterwards, answering Hyman's remarks about parapsychology.
The last part, called " Evaluating the Utility of Remote Viewing in Intelligence Operations" talked about the use of remote viewing in something approaching operational circumstances. It contains a number of interviews with people (who remain anonymous) who'd asked for some remote viewing to be carried out on a particular subject.
In interview one, the interviewee says "The information provided by these viewings was not held to be useful in any operational sense. The reasons stated for reaching this conclusion were: 1) the information was too broad and too vague to direct relevant observations: 2) crucial elements of the case, particularly financial concerns, did not appear in any of the reports; 3) the information provided could be interpreted in too many different ways; 4) hits were often stereotypic given the available cues in the tasking; 5) there were a large number of demonstrably wrong conclusions."
In interview two, the interviewee claimed that some of the data given by the remote viewers was of use but "some degree of accuracy could be expected if the viewers had a knowledge of the sponsoring organization and its areas of interest." The same report already stated that "The viewers had some knowledge of the target organizations and their operations but not the background of the particular tasking at hand."
In the third interview "all members of the group stated that the information was too vague and ambiguous for operations, noting that unless specific map locations could be identified, the information could not be used in operational decision making."
[edit] Post-Star Gate remote viewing
Perhaps the most high profile remote viewers to emerge recently are PSI TECH. These people, using a technique called "Technical Remote Viewing", claim to be able to remote view unsolved mysteries. On their site they carry an number of details about their projects. One of these referred to the arrest of Jose Padilla in O'Hare airport in Chicago. This man, also known as Abdullah al-Muhajir, was arrested on suspicion of planning a "dirty bomb" attack. A dirty bomb is not devastating for the size of the explosion but for the damage wrought by the toxic chemical compounds released.
In the first "preliminary report" (dated Oct 6th 2001) of possible terrorist attacks after 9-11, PSI TECH did identify Chicago as a future target for terrorists. In a follow-up report PSI TECH mentioned the use of "dirty bombs" and this was certainly one of the initial suspicions about Padilla's motives. However, when Jose Padilla was finally charged in November 2005, the "dirty bomb" accusation had been dropped. Instead he was charged with aiding terrorists and conspiracy to murder US citizens overseas (which would imply that Chicago wasn't a target).
Most famously, they came in for serious criticism for their handling of the Elizabeth Smart case. On 5th June 2002, a 14-year-old girl, Elizabeth Smart was kidnapped from her home in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. Psi-Tech quickly tried to remote view her fate. An announcement dated June 6th, 2002, states that " On the day after Elizabeth's abduction, PSI TECH issued a Preliminary Report on her status. Sadly, we concluded that she was deceased". Dave Smart, an uncle of Elizabeth Smart, contacted PSI TECH and asked for more information. They proceeded to give details about where to find her body: a man.made structure with sloping sides and a long shaft connected to it. They even went to the length of digging up a possible site for her grave in the presence of a couple of police officers and the state archaeologist.
On March 12th 2003, Elizabeth Smart was found alive and well. At this point PSI TECH began a damage limitation operation which, eventually, included removing all references to Elizabeth Smart from their web site.
At first they blamed their inaccuracy on their recent involvement in the case of the missing Bradley children and so their team of viewers was exhausted, although their interest in the Elizabeth Smart case was entirely self-motivated. They attempted to suggested that Elizabeth had been drugged deeply, which is why they thought she was dead, and that some of the geographical locations they described did have some connection to the location where she was found, but this is more to do with how inhabited locations tend to share characteristics and less to do with anomalous cognition.
[edit] References
Anderson, Moller, "Military Psychic Unit's 'Hits' and Misses", Washington Post, 30 December 1996
Anonymous, "Analysis of a remote-viewing experiment of URDF-3", CIA report, 1974
Commission on Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education, "Enhancing Human Performance: Issues, Theories, and Techniques, Background Papers", Part 6, National Academy Press, 1988
Kress, "Parapsychology In Intelligence: A Personal Review and Conclusions", Journal of Scientific Exploration, 13, 1999
Marks, Kammann, "The Psychology of the Psychic", Prometheus Books, 1980, cited in Alcock, "A comprehensive review of major empirical studies in parapsychology involving random event generators or remote viewing", an appendix to "Human performance research: An overview"
Mumford, Rose, Goslin, "An Evaluation of Remote Viewing: Research and Applications", AIR report 1995
Olson, "The Cold War induced powers to explore information gathering through psychic phenomena", The Vancouver Courier, June 2 1996
Tart, "Remarkable Distant Viewing", Neotic Studies 38, 1996
Utts, "An assessment of the evidence for psychic functioning" from "An Evaluation of Remote Viewing: Research and Applications" (see Mumford, Rse, Goslin, above)
[edit] Links
Online pdfs from the Star Gate program
More online pdfs from the Star Gate program
