ESP Research Charles T. Tart; Harold E. Puthoff; Russell Targ; Persi Diaconis Science, New Series, Vol. 202, No. 4373. (Dec. 15, 1978), pp. 1145-1146. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0036-8075%2819781215%293%3A202%3A4373%3C1145%3AER%3E2.0.CO%3B2-3 Science is currently published by American Association for the Advancement of Science. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/journals/aaas.html. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. The JSTOR Archive is a trusted digital repository providing for long-term preservation and access to leading academic journals and scholarly literature from around the world. The Archive is supported by libraries, scholarly societies, publishers, and foundations. It is an initiative of JSTOR, a not-for-profit organization with a mission to help the scholarly community take advantage of advances in technology. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. http://www.jstor.org Thu Jul 19 17:01:10 2007 For the reader interested in accurate and representative surveys of scientific research on the paranormal, I recom- mend the recently published Handbook of Parapsychology (1). CHARLEST. TART Letters Department of Psychology, University of California, Davis 95616 Radwaste Policy grossly atypical, and clearly biased to- References 1. B. B. Wolman, L. A. Dale, G. R. Schmeidler, ward debunking, and so are quite mis- M. Ullman, Eds., Handbook of Parapsychology Luther J. Carter's report of the Key- leading and a disservice to the readers of (Van Nostrand-Reinhold, New York, 1978). stone radioactive waste management dis- Science. cussion group (News and Comment, 6 There are no legal restrictions on who Diaconis' article on ESP research, Oct., p. 32) has gotten me into some hot can call himself a parapsychologist, so which contains some excellent material water. Some environmentalists are many unqualified people claim that title; on statistics, is unfortunately marred by saying we at Keystone sold out. I did not but Diaconis' article purports to be about errors and faulty reporting in his dis- participate at Keystone because rad- contemporary scientific studies of para- cussion of contemporary research. Spe- waste policy-making is "critical to the psychology, not popular parodies. I esti- cifically, in discussing our work at the survival of the nuclear industry." I par- mate that there are more than 600 pub- Stanford Research Institute (SRI), he ticipated because radwaste policy-mak- lished experimental studies of para- references erroneous second- and third- ing is critical to the survival of humanity, psychological phenomena in the refer- hand accounts published in popular whether the nuclear industry survives or eed specialty journals, the vast majority books and magazine articles. We address not. of them using ordinary subjects rather two of these errors here. Second, because of the above-quoted than psychics, having procedures rigidly The first error concerns an apocryphal phrase, environmentalists are saying the controlled by the experimenters, not the story of a visit to SRI by psychologist Keystone group's statement on repro- subjects, and using quite conventional Ray Hyman. The claim, repeated by cessing is pro-nuclear and pro-repro- statistical procedures to evaluate hy- Diaconis, is that Hyman observed exper- cessing. We simply said that the Inter- potheses which were formulated before iments at SRI performed by the con- agency Review Group, which is pre- the experiment was conducted. Instead troversial psychic-magician Uri Geller paring a policy document for the Presi- of dealing with an adequate and repre- and reported "sleight of hand performed dent, should discuss reprocessing and its sentative sample from this large popu- under uncontrolled conditions, much at implications for radwaste policy. To ig- lation, Diaconis deals at length with variance with the published reports of nore the reprocessing issue seemed in- atypical and flashy cases that have at- the SRI scientists involved." The truth appropriate to us. To favor a discussion tracted wide lay interest, such as Uri of the matter, however, is that when Hy- of reprocessing is not the same thing as Geller's claims of psychic abilities, about man and two colleagues arrived at SRI favoring reprocessing, which I personal- which most respected parapsychologists with a request to observe experiments in ly do not favor. have serious reservations. Diaconis' progress, they were denied permission to PETERMONTAGUE prime example of what he believes do so. We had had several such requests South\vest Research and Information are major problems (multiple end points per week and had previously concluded Center, Post Ofice Box 4524, and subject cheating) in parapsychologi- that it would be impossible to carry out Albuquerque, New Mexico 87106 cal research is his description of B.D.'s controlled experimentation under such self-controlled demonstration at Har- conditions. As an alternative they spent vard, an event that has no relation to ex- an engaging 2 hours with Geller them- perimental science and that no respected selves, observing the informal coffee- ESP Research parapsychologist would have regarded table-type demonstrations which Geller as having serious value as data. What favors, and trying a number of their own Persi Diaconis thanks me for com- was his point in focusing on such an un- (and from our standpoint, uncontrolled) ments on an earlier version of his article representative event, especially after the experiments. Therefore, although it is "Statistical problems in ESP [extra- unrepresentativeness had been called to true that Hyman saw uncontrolled ex- sensory perception] research" (14 July, his attention? periments at SRI, they were not SRI ex- p. 131)*, but except for his potentially After describing several atypical cases periments, and we consider it irrespon- important contributions to clarifying like this, Diaconis concludes that fraud sible for him or anyone else to assign re- statistical problems in cases of guessing and general experimental sloppiness are sponsibility to SRI researchers for their with feedback, I want to dissociate common problems in parapsychology, own unsatisfactory experiments. Since myself from the rest of his article. even .making into an item of faith that the early anecdotal accounts of this As I wrote him in detail about his while you can't spot the sloppiness and meeting have been corrected in the ap- earlier draft (which is essentially un- fraud in the published reports, they prob- propriate literature (I), it is surprising changed in its published form), his con- ably would have been found if a com- that Diaconis would be uninformed in clusions about modem scientific vara- petent observer had been there. There is, this matter. psychological research are based on a of course, no way of disproving such a The second error concerning our work sampling of the field far too small in size, hypothesis. Such faith in the all embrac- occurs in a section on possible pitfalls of ingness of our currently accepted ex- ESP experiments involving feedback. *A second group of letters concerning the Dia- planatory system is touching, but not ap- conis article will be published in a later issue. Here Diaconis describes our experi- -EDITOR propriate in a scientific journal. ments in "remote viewing" (2, 3) which 15 DECEMBER 1978 involved a list of 100 San Francisco Bay troencephalogram (EEG) of the receiver accompanied Hyman on the trip and Area target locations "chosen to be as was monitored in the hope that changes completely supports Hyman's account. distinct as possible." A team of experi- in the EEG could be correlated with the In the first letter above, Tart menters visited the locations in random strobe pattern. The account by Targ and reemphasizes many points I made in my order, and a subject tried to give a Puthoff of this experiment (I) gives a article. To answer his one question, my description of where they were. In the feeling that it was tightly run. Un- purpose in focusing on B.D. was to re- context of the article, the discussion fortunately, my direct observations tell port that a subject who has been used in carries the implication that post-trial a different tale. For example: widely quoted ESP experiments has feedback to the subject during the ex- 1) When I asked a lab assistant how the been observed using sleight of hand. The periments provided information which patterns for the strobe light were gener- similarity of the descriptions of the con- helped him narrow down the field of tar- ated (for example, whether they were trolled experiments with B.D. to the ses- get possibilities in later trials. Diaconis' randomized or carefully designed), she sion I witnessed convinced me that para- statement concerning the distinctness told me that she just made them up. This normal claims involving B.D. should be of targets is incorrect, however. The is a well-known error. Humans cannot discounted. target pool was carefully constructed generate random patterns. The examples I reported in my article to contain several targets of any given 2) Although electronic equipment was are a small and surely biased sample of type-that is, several fountains, several used to record the EEG's, many crucial modern parapsychological research.