ED ITOR AN INDEPENDENT SCIENTIFIC REVIEW OF CLAIMS OF ANOMALIES AND THE PARANORMAL INSULTING EDITORS JAMES E, ALCOCK THEODORE X, BARBER ~ILBO~RNE CHRISTOPHER HARRY COLLINS WILLIAM R, CORLISS RICHARD DE MILLE PERSI DIACONIS MARTIN EBON ROBERT GALBREATH MICHEL GAU~UELIN C,E,M, HANSEL BERNARD HEUVELMANS ELLIC HOWE J, ALLEN HYNEK DAVID M, JACOBS JOSEPH G, JORGENSEN THE JOURNAL OF THE CENTER FOR SCIENTIFIC SEYMOUR MAUSKOPF ANOMALIES RESEARCH (CSAR) EDWARD J, MOODY ROBERT L, MORRIS WILLIAM NAGLER ISSUE NUI'IBER8 JOHN PALMER WILLIAM F, POWERS JULY 1981 CHARLES T, TART ROY WALLIS Copyright @I 1981 by Marcello Truzzi. ZETETIC SCHOLAR is published by Marcello Truzzi and is an independent journal of opinion. All correspondence, including manuscripts, letters, books for review, and subscription and editorial inquir- ies should be addressed to: The Editor, ZETETIC SCHOLAR, Depart- ment of Sociology, Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti, MI 48197 (USA). SUBSCRIPTIONS: Zetetic Scholar is published twice per year, approximate- ly in July and December. Subscription rates are: Individuals (USA and Canada), $12 (U.S.) per year. Libraries, institutions, and foreign, $18 (U.S.) per year. No foreign currency or non-U.S. bank checks, please, since service charges are prohibitive. New subscrip- tions begin with the current issue (when available) and will be for two numbers. Individual issues (when available) are $8. Out of stock issues can be made available in reduced Xerox copies for $8. Double issue #3/4 (out of stock as are issues #l and #2) is available in a reduced Xerox copy for $12. CHANGE OF ADDRESS: Six weeks advance notice and old address as well as new are necessary for change of subscriber's address. etetic Ch01 I CONTENTS NUmER8 JULY 1981 SPECTAL ZS FEATURES Announcing the Center for Scientific Anomalies Research (CSAR) . 8 R&PO&& &wm 7kr(t'CS&? %oj'eci% PIET HEIN HOEBENS The Mystery Men From Holland, I: Peter Hurkos' Dutch Cases...... 11 RON WESTRUM UFO Sightings Among Engineers and Scientists.................... 18 ART7ClE.S ROBERT K.G. TEMPLE On the Sirius Mystery: An Open Letter to Carl Sagan............. 29 DAVID HOY Psychic Surgery: Hoax or Hope?.................................. 37 tiUMOR MARVIN GARDENS (CHARLES HONORTON) The Case of Psiless Marner . 34 SPECIAL ZS BlBllOGRAF4ilC FEATURE JEROME CLARK (Introduction by M. TRUZZI) Bibliography of Skeptical and Debunking Articles in Fate Magazine, 1975Sept. 1981 . ..'*........ 76 NEW ZS DlALOGUES JEFFREY MISHLOVE The Schism Within Parapsychology . 78 Critical Commentaries BY: JOHN BELOFF............ 85 JOHN PALMER............ 96 RICHARD KAMMANN,,,,,,,, 86 D. SCOTT ROGO.......... 97 STANLEY KRIPPNER....... 90 GERTRUDE SCHMEIDLER.... 99 JOSEPH K. LONG......... 92 ROGER W. WESCOTT.......lOZ ANDREW NEHER........... 94 MICHAEL WINKELMAN......103 JEFFREY MISHLOVE: Scientific Logic, Rationality, and Subjectivity in Parapsychology: Responses to Comments on My Article..........105 LEONARD USNE On Conducting a Zetetic Dialogue . l . 118 122 Keply by M. TRUZZI . contend continued. CONTTNUZNG ZS 277ALOGUES On Theories, Hypotheses and Speculations on the Origins of UFOs, II Comments by RICHARD F. HAINES . ..*........................... 47 J. RICHARD GREENWELL Replies to His Commentators ................. 49 EVAN HARRIS WALKER replies to E.W. Karnes re Remote Viewing...........12 4 EDWARDW. KARNES responds to E.H. Walker..............................12 8 . REGULAR FEATURES EDITORIAL.. 3 ? LETTERS: ROBERT SHEAFFER - JEROME CLARK - J.RICHARD GREENWELL - AIMf MI CHEL. 5 RANDOMBIBLIOGRAPHY ON THE OCCULT AND THE PARANORMAL................. 114 BOOK REV1EWS James Randi's Ffi-F&m: The TtuLth u6auA: Unicohti, PahapaychoLogy and Otietr Vek~ioti (MILBOURNE CHRISTOPHER) . ..-..... 131 Malcolm Dean's The A&;tno.f%gy Game (DON H. SAKLOFSKE).............133 137 BOOKS BRIEFLY NOTED. ERRATA . ...*.. 2 ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS TO THIS ISSUE . 145 ERRATA . The following corrections should be made re I.J. Good's "Scientific Speculations on the Paranormal and the Parasciences" in ZS #7: Page 11, line 9: For 0.00000000000000000, correct to p.000000000000000001. Page 24, line18up: For f(xO,xt,,), correct to f(xo,yl(yo,xt,,)). *************** In David W, Swift's "Comments" on J. Richard Greenwell's article, on page 99 of ZS #7, on line 6 up, the word "psychics" should be corrected to read "physics." *************** In the "Random Bibliography" in ZS #7, page 108, the reference to the article by Robert Jastrow given as being in Science News should ve corrected to Science Digest. JAMES W. FlOSELEY's name was misspelled as "Mosley! Mea culpa. 2 Starting with this issue, ZETETIC SCHOLAR becomes the official organ of the Center for Scientific Anomalies Research (see full announcement in this i'ssue). The formation of the center is largely a response to many of the readers of ZS asking for us to institutionalize a net- work of experts to allow greater corrrnunication between active researchers. IS is pleased to bring you the first two reports of ongoing research of the Center in this issue. The first is f.rom our large scale study of the use of alleged p.sychics by law enforce- ment agencies (the Psychic Sleuths Project), and the second is from an analysis of engineers' reports of UFO encounters (the Anomaly Pro- ject). Further reports will be issued from both these projects by the Center, and some of these will be published in future issues of zs . Involvement with the Psychic Sleuths Project and other involvements with what some have called applied parapsychology has made certain issues salient. Critics have decried the use of the term applied parapsychology on the grounds that you can not build up applications of a science until that science and its alleged variables have been established. You can not apply psi unless psi exists, and an applied pseudoscience would be worse than a plain pseudoscience since that would be like selling snake oil remedies. I think that most responsible parapsychologists would agree with such critics that an applied para- psychology would now be at least premature. Yet, there seems little doubt that the claims of those like dowsers) psychic detectives, psychic counselors, and psychic healers are frequently quite impressive (at least on the surface), and many people find these practices useful, In fact, such "applied" areas often generate a great deal more excite- ment in practical terms than do dull guessing experiments in laboratories, I would suggest that we might wish to distinguish between Experimental and Clinical Parapsychology, mudh as we distinguish between Experimental and Clinical Psychology. The criteria for evaluating clinical efforts is far broader than the purely scientific criteria found in experimental methods. The criterion of effectiveness plays a major role in the evalu- ation of clinical methods. Thus, whether or not the theory is correct or not may be secondary to the pragmatic consideration of whether or not the patient/client is helped by the procedures. When dealing with clinical matters, an element of art as well as science is typically involved, and importance is often weighed not in scientific but in human terms. So, questions like "Was the patient% conditUMimproved?" or "Did you find the missing object. 3" become more significant than the validity of the theory behind the method used to get the positive result. In normal jsychology, we are usually concerned with what statisticians term a Type I error. This error would consist of mistakenly thinking that something special was going on when it was not. But there is also a Type I I error, This, consists of mistakenly thinking that nothing l 3 special is going on when actually something rare (a small signal amidst much noise) is.happening.Since most psychologiists are leoncerned not to think psi is operating when merely normal perceptual processes are producing the results, they usually concentrate (quite properly) on not making such a Type I error. But for many parapsychologists, the exist- ence of psi is believed to be so important that they don't want to make the error of ignoring it if it really is present in the world. They, then, are particularly concerned about not making a Type II error. Concern with a Type II error is most common where extra-scientific factors make the existence of a rare variable important. In medical research, there is commonly interest in avoiding a Type II error be- cause the outcome may be a matter of life and death, and we don't want to overlook something that may be hard to find but terribly important. Other extra-scientific factors may make things important. For example, in the case of military interest in psi research, the existence of psi might have extremely important military-political consequences should an enemy be able to use it to break through national security defenses. Thus, even if the chances are small that psi,really exists, it is quite rational to want to avoid a Type II error and investigate this area. It is simply too important to neglect. The same is true in cases where people have exhausted all normal remedies. If you desperately need water and the geologists tell you there is none on your land, or if the doctors tell you you are doomed, it is not irrational for you to pursue the use of a dowser or a form of alternative medicine on even the slim chance that something positive might come of it. If we recognize that the probability of success is very low but have no orthodox alternative, and if the costs in trying an unorthodox method are reasonable, I would suggest that it is only rational to give the unorthodox method a try if the need for success is great. But the degree of need and the concern with importance that determines our desire to avoid a Type II error is typically extra-scientific. It may be unscientific for law enforcement officers to try the use of an alleged psychic in solving a dead-end case, and it may be un- scientific for the Pentagon to spend money on psi research (at least in terms of Type I considerations), but that does not make it irra- tional to do so.