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Chapter 1: Introduction
The psyche’s attachment to the brain, i.e., its
space-time limitation, is no longer as self-evident and
incontrovertible as we have hitherto been led to believe.…
It is not only permissible to doubt the absolute validity of
space-time perception; it is, in view of the available facts,
even imperative to do so.
– Carl Jung, Psychology and the
Occult
In science, the
acceptance of new ideas follows a predictable, four-stage
sequence. In Stage 1, skeptics confidently proclaim that the idea
is impossible because it violates the Laws of Science. This stage
can last from years to centuries, depending on how much the idea
challenges conventional wisdom. In Stage 2, skeptics reluctantly
concede that the idea is possible, but it is not very interesting
and the claimed effects are extremely weak. Stage 3 begins when
the mainstream realizes that the idea is not only important, but
its effects are much stronger and more pervasive than previously
imagined. Stage 4 is achieved when the same critics who used to
disavow any interest in the idea begin to proclaim that they
thought of it first. Eventually, no one remembers that the idea
was once considered a dangerous heresy.
The idea discussed
in this book is in the midst of the most important and the most
difficult of the four transitions – from Stage 1 into Stage
2. While the idea itself is ancient, it has taken more than a
century to conclusively demonstrate it in accordance with
rigorous, scientific standards. This demonstration has
accelerated Stage 2 acceptance, and Stage 3 can already be
glimpsed on the horizon.
The idea
The idea is that those compelling, perplexing and sometimes
profound human experiences known as "psychic phenomena" are real.
This will come as no surprise to most of the world’s
population, because the majority already believes in psychic
phenomena. But over the past few years, something new has
propelled us beyond old debates over personal beliefs. The
reality of psychic phenomena is now no longer based solely upon
faith, or wishful thinking, or absorbing anecdotes. It is not
even based upon the results of a few scientific experiments.
Instead, we know that these phenomena exist because of new ways
of evaluating massive amounts of scientific evidence collected
over a century by scores of researchers.
Psychic, or "psi"
phenomena fall into two general categories. The first is
perception of objects or events beyond the range of the ordinary
senses. The second is mentally causing action at a distance. In
both categories, it seems that intention, the mind’s
will, can do things that – according to prevailing
scientific theories – it isn’t supposed to be able to
do. We wish to know what is happening to loved ones, and somehow,
sometimes, that information is available even over large
distances. We wish to speed the recovery of a loved one’s
illness, and somehow they get better quicker, even at a distance.
Mind willing, many interesting things appear to be
possible.
Understanding such
experiences requires an expanded view of human consciousness. Is
the mind merely a mechanistic, information-processing bundle of
neurons? Is it a "computer made of meat" as some cognitive
scientists and neuroscientists believe? Or is it something more?
The evidence suggests that while many aspects of mental
functioning are undoubtedly related to brain structure and
electrochemical activity, there is also something else happening,
something very interesting.
This is for real?
When discussing the reality of psi phenomena, especially from
the scientific perspective, one question always hovers in the
background: You mean this is for real? In the midst of all the
nonsense and excessive silliness proclaimed in the name of
psychic phenomena, the misinformed use of the term
parapsychology by self-proclaimed "paranormal
investigators," the perennial laughing stock of magicians and
conjurers … this is for real?
The short answer
is, Yes.
A more elaborate
answer is, psi has been shown to exist in thousands of
experiments. There are disagreements over to how to interpret the
evidence, but the fact is that virtually all scientists who have
studied the evidence, including the hard-nosed skeptics,
now agree that there is something interesting going on that
merits serious scientific attention. Later we’ll discuss
the reasons why very few scientists and science journalists are
aware of this dramatic shift in informed opinion.
Shifting opinions
The most important
indication of a shift from Stage 1 to Stage 2 can be seen in the
gradually changing attitudes of prominent skeptics. In a 1995
book saturated with piercing skepticism, the late Carl Sagan of
Cornell University maintained his life-long mission of educating
the public about science, in this case by debunking popular
hysteria over alien abductions, channelers, faith-healers, the
"face" on Mars, and practically everything else found in the New
Age section of most bookstores. Then, in one paragraph amongst
450 pages, we find an astonishing admission:
At the time of writing there are three claims in
the ESP field which, in my opinion, deserve serious study: (1)
that by thought alone humans can (barely) affect random number
generators in computers; (2) that people under mild sensory
deprivation can receive thoughts or images "projected" at them;
and (3) that young children sometimes report the details of a
previous life, which upon checking turn out to be accurate and
which they could not have known about in any other way than
reincarnation.
Other signs of
shifting opinions are cropping up with increasing frequency in
the scientific literature. Starting in the 1980s, well-known
scientific journals like Foundations of Physics, American
Psychologist, and Statistical Science published
articles favorably reviewing the scientific evidence for psychic
phenomena. The Proceedings of the IEEE, the flagship
journal of the Institute for Electronic and Electrical Engineers,
has published major debates on psi research. Invited articles
have appeared in the prestigious journal, Brain and Behavioral
Sciences. A favorable article on telepathy research appeared
in 1994 in Psychological Bulletin, one of the top-ranked
journals in academic psychology. And an article presenting a
theoretical model for precognition appeared in 1994 in
Physical Review, a prominent physics journal.
In the 1990s
alone, seminars on psi research were part of the regular programs
at the annual conferences of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science, the American Psychological Association,
and the American Statistical Association. Invited lectures on the
status of psi research were presented for diplomats at the United
Nations, for academics at Harvard University, and for scientists
at Bell Laboratories.
NEW (not in the book): The first US patent for a psi
effect was granted to Princeton University researchers on
November 3, 1998. Patent "US 5830064" is entitled: Apparatus and
method for distinguishing events which collectively exceed chance
expectations and thereby controlling an output. This patent
specifically covers distant mental control of electronic random
number generator outputs.
The Pentagon has
not overlooked these activities.
From 1981 to 1995,
five different US government-sponsored scientific review
committees were given the task of reviewing the evidence for psi
effects. The reviews were prompted by concerns that if psi was
genuine, it might be important for national security reasons. We
would have to assume that foreign governments would exploit psi
if they could.
Reports were
prepared by the Congressional Research Service, the Army Research
Institute, the National Research Council, the Office of
Technology Assessment, and the American Institutes for Research
(the latter commissioned by the Central Intelligence Agency).
While disagreeing over fine points of interpretation, all five of
the reviews concluded that the experimental evidence for certain
forms of psychic phenomena merited serious scientific
study.
For example, in
1981, the Congressional Research Service concluded that "Recent
experiments in remote viewing and other studies in parapsychology
suggest that there exists an "interconnectiveness" of the human
mind with other minds and with matter. This interconnectiveness
would appear to be functional in nature and amplified by intent
and emotion." The report concluded with suggestions of possible
applications for health care, investigative work, and "the
ability of the human mind to obtain information as an important
factor in successful decision making by executives."
In 1985, a report
prepared for the Army Research Institute concluded that "The
bottom line is that the data reviewed in [this] report constitute
genuine scientific anomalies for which no one has an adequate
explanation or set of explanations.... If they are what they
appear to be, their theoretical (and, eventually, their
practical) implications are enormous."
In 1987, the
National Research Council reviewed parapsychology (the scientific
discipline that studies of psi) at the request of the US Army.
The committee recommended that the Army monitor parapsychological
research being conducted in the former Soviet Union and in the
United States, they recommended that the Army consider funding
specific experiments, and most significantly, they admitted that
they could not propose plausible alternatives to the "psi
hypothesis" for some classes of psi experiments. Dr. Ray Hyman, a
psychology professor at the University of Oregon and long-term
skeptic of psi phenomena, was chairman of the National Research
Council’s review committee on parapsychology. He stated in
a 1988 interview with the Chronicle of Higher Education,
that "Parapsychologists should be rejoicing. This was the first
government committee that said their work should be taken
seriously."
In early 1989, the
Office of Technology Assessment issued a report of a workshop on
the status of parapsychology. The end of the report stated that
"It is clear that parapsychology continues to face strong
resistance from the scientific establishment. The question is
– how can the field improve its chances of obtaining a fair
hearing across a broader spectrum of the scientific community, so
that emotionality does not impede objective assessment of the
experimental results? Whether the final result of such an
assessment is positive, negative, or something in between, the
field appears to merit such consideration."
In 1995, the
American Institutes for Research reviewed formerly classified
government-sponsored psi research for the CIA at the request of
the U. S. Congress. Statistician Jessica Utts of the University
of California, Davis, one of the two principal reviewers,
concluded that "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 … have been replicated at
a number of laboratories across the world. Such consistency
cannot be readily explained by claims of flaws or fraud….
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….."
Surprisingly, the
other principal reviewer, skeptic Ray Hyman, agreed: "The
statistical departures from chance appear to be too large and
consistent to attribute to statistical flukes of any sort….
I tend to agree with Professor Utts that real effects are
occurring in these experiments. Something other than
chance departures from the null hypothesis has occurred in these
experiments."
These opinions are
even being reflected in the staid realm of college textbooks. One
of the most popular books in the history of college publishing is
Introduction to Psychology by Richard L. Atkinson and
three co-authors. A portion of the preface in the 1990 edition of
this textbook reads: "Readers should take note of a new section
in Chapter 6 entitled ‘Psi Phenomena.’ We have
discussed parapsychology in previous editions but have been very
critical of the research and skeptical of the claims made in the
field. And although we still have strong reservations about most
of the research in parapsychology, we find the recent work on
telepathy worthy of careful consideration."
The popular
"serious" media haven’t overlooked this opinion shift. The
May, 1993, issue of New Scientist, a popular British
science magazine, carried a five-page cover story on telepathy
research. It opened with the line, "Psychic research has long
been written off as the stuff of cranks and frauds. But
there’s now one telepathy experiment that leaves even the
sceptics scratching their heads." And in the last few years,
Newsweek, the New York Times Magazine,
Psychology Today, ABC TV’s Nightline,
national news programs, and television and print media around the
world have begun to moderate previously held Stage 1 opinions.
They’re now beginning to publish and broadcast Stage 2-type
stories taking scientific psi research seriously.
If all this is
true, then a thousand other questions immediately bubble up. Why
hasn’t everyone heard about this on the nightly news? Why
is this topic so controversial? Who has psi? How does it work?
What are its implications and applications? These are all good
questions, and this book will attempt to answer them through four
general themes: Motivation, Evidence,
Understanding and Implications.
Theme 1: Motivation
Why should anyone take psychic phenomena seriously? The
answer rests on the strength of the scientific evidence, which
stands on its own merits. But to fully appreciate why the
scientific case is so persuasive, and why has there been any
scientific controversy at all, we have to take a bit of a
circuitous route.
That route will
first consider the language used to discuss psi to show
how many confusions over this topic are due to misunderstood and
misapplied words (Chapter 2). This is followed by examples of
common human experiences that provide hints about the
existence and nature of psi phenomena (Chapter 3). We will then
consider the topic of replication, where we will learn
what counts as valid scientific evidence (Chapter 4). And
we’ll end with meta-analysis, where we will see how
replication is measured and why it is so important (Chapter
5).
In sum, the
motivations underlying this scientific exploration can be found
in mythology, folk tales, religious doctrines, and innumerable
personal anecdotes. While sufficient to catch everyone’s
attention, stories and personal experiences do not provide the
hard, trustworthy evidence that causes scientists to confidently
accept that a claimed effect is what it appears to be. Stories,
after all, invariably reflect subjective beliefs and faith, which
may or may not be true.
Beginning in the
1880s and accumulating ever since, a new form of scientifically
valid evidence appeared – empirical data produced in
controlled, experimental studies. While not as exciting as
folklore and anecdotes, from the scientific perspective these
data were more meaningful because they were produced according to
well-accepted scientific procedures. Scores of scientists from
around the world had quietly contributed these
studies.
Today, with more
than a hundred years of research on this topic, an immense
amount of scientific evidence has been accumulated. Contrary to
the assertions of some skeptics, the question is not
whether there is any scientific evidence, but "What does a
proper evaluation of the evidence reveal," and "Has positive
evidence been independently replicated?"
As we’ll
see, the question of replicability – can independent,
competent investigators obtain approximately the same results in
repeated experiments – is fundamental to making the
scientific case for psi.
Theme 2: Evidence
Theme 2 discusses the main categories of psi experiments and the
evidence that the effects seen in these experiments are genuinely
replicable. The evidence is based on analysis of over a thousand
experiments investigating various forms of telepathy,
clairvoyance, precognition, psychic healing, and psychokinesis
(presented in Chapters 6 through 10). The evidence for these
basic phenomena is so well-established that most psi researchers
today no longer conduct "proof-oriented" experiments. Instead,
they focus largely on "process-oriented" questions like, What
influences psi performance, and How does it work?
Also presented are
experiments exploring how psi interacts with more mundane aspects
of human experience like unusual physical effects associated with
the "mass mind" of groups of people (Chapter 11), psi effects in
casino gambling and lottery games (Chapter 12), and applications
of psi (Chapter 13).
Theme 3: Understanding
The wealth of scientific evidence discussed in Theme 2 will
show that some psi phenomena exist, and that they are probably
expressed in more ways than anyone had previously thought. The
vast majority of the information used to make this case has been
publicly available for years. One might expect then that the
growing scientific evidence for genuine psi would have raised
great curiosity. Funding would flow, and researchers around the
world would be attempting to replicate these effects. After all,
the implications of genuine psi are profoundly important for both
theoretical and practical reasons. But this has not yet been the
case. Few scientists are aware that any scientifically valid case
can be made for psi, and fewer still realize that the cumulative
evidence is highly persuasive.
In Theme 3 we
consider why this is so. One reason is that the information
discussed here has been suppressed and ridiculed by a relatively
small group of highly skeptical philosophers and scientists
(Chapter 14). Are the skeptics right, and all of the scientists
reporting successful psi experiments over the past century simply
delusional or incompetent? Or there is another explanation for
the skepticism?
We will see that
because scientists are also human, the process of evaluating
scientific claims is not as pristinely rational or logical as the
general public believes (Chapter 15). The tendency to adopt a
fixed set of beliefs and defend them to the death is incompatible
with science, which is essentially a loose confederation of
evolving theories in many domains. Unfortunately, this tendency
has driven some scientists to continue to defending outmoded,
inaccurate world-views. The tendency is also seen in the behavior
of belligerent skeptics who loudly proclaim that widespread
belief in psi is due to a decline in the public’s critical
thinking ability. One hopes that such skeptics would occasionally
apply a little skepticism to their own positions, but history
amply demonstrates that science progresses mainly by funerals,
not by reason and logic alone.
Understanding why
the public has generally accepted the existence of psi and why
science has generally rejected it requires an examination of the
origins of science (Chapter 16). In exploring this clash
of beliefs, we will discover that the scientific controversy has
had very little to do with the evidence itself, and very much to
do with the psychology, sociology and history of
science.
Discussions about
underlying assumptions in science rarely surface in skeptical
debates over psi, because this topic involves deeply held, often
unexamined beliefs about the nature of the world. It is much
easier to imagine a potential flaw in one experiment, and use
that flaw to cast doubt on an entire class of experiments, than
it is to consider the overall results of a thousand similar
studies. A related issue is how science deals with
anomalies, those extraordinary "damn facts" that challenge
mainstream theories. Along with an understanding of the nature
and value of anomalies, and how scientists react to them, we will
explore the role that prejudice, in the literal sense of
"pre-judging," has played in controlling what is presumed to be
scientifically valid. Other issues, like how scientific
disciplines rarely talk to each other, and the historical abyss
between science and religion, make it abundantly clear that if
psychic experiences were any other form of curious natural
phenomena, they would have been adopted long ago by the
scientific mainstream on the basis of the evidence
alone.
Beyond the themes
of motivation, evidence, and understanding, resides the question,
So what? Why should anyone care if psi is real or not?
Theme 4: Implications
The eventual scientific acceptance of psychic phenomena is
inevitable. The origins of acceptance are already brewing through
the persuasive weight of the laboratory evidence. There are
converging theoretical developments from many disciplines
offering glimpses at ways of understanding how psi works (Chapter
17). There are explorations of psi effects by major industrial
labs, evaluation of claims of psychic healing by the Office of
Alternative Medicine of the National Institutes of Health, and
articles about psi research appearing in the "serious"
media.
As acceptance
grows, the implications of psi will become more apparent. But we
already know that these phenomena present profound challenges to
many aspects of science, philosophy and religion (Chapter 18).
These challenges will nudge scientists to reconsider basic
assumptions about space, time, mind, and matter. Philosophers
will rekindle the perennial debates over the role of
consciousness in the physical world. Theologians will reconsider
the concept of divine intervention, as some phenomena previously
considered to be miracles will probably become subject to
scientific understanding.
These
reconsiderations are long overdue. An exclusive focus on what
might be called "the outer world" has led to a grievous split
between the private world of human experience and the public
world as described by science. In particular, science has
provided little understanding of profoundly important human
concepts like hope and meaning. The split between
the objective and the subjective has in the past been dismissed
as a non-problem, or as a problem belonging to religion and not
to science.
But this split has
also led to major technological blunders, and a rising popular
antagonism toward science. This is a pity, because scientific
methods are exceptionally powerful tools for overcoming personal
biases and building workable models of the "truth." There is
every reason to expect that the same methods that gave us a
better understanding of galaxies and genes will also shed light
on experiences described by mystics throughout
history.
Now let’s
explore a little more closely what we’re talking about.
What is psi?
Copyright © Dean Radin
1997
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