Experiment one of the SAIC remote viewing program: a critical re-evaluation

The American Institutes for Research (AIR) recently produced a report on the effectiveness of US government-funded research in demonstrating the existence of a remote viewing effect that could be used for intelligence-gathering purposes. The most recent studies in this program were carried out by Sc...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Journal of parapsychology 1998-12, Vol.62 (4), p.297
Main Authors: Wiseman, Richard, Milton, Julie
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Extrasensory perception
Military intelligence
Parapsychology
Psychological aspects
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Summary:The American Institutes for Research (AIR) recently produced a report on the effectiveness of US government-funded research in demonstrating the existence of a remote viewing effect that could be used for intelligence-gathering purposes. The most recent studies in this program were carried out by Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) and these studies were the focus of the assessment. The evaluators concluded that the ten SAIC studies reviewed contained no obvious flaws. One of the evaluators used eight methodological criteria to assess the studies, and chose one of the experiments - Experiment One - to demonstrate the use of the criteria: the experiment appeared to satisfy all eight. The publication of this report prompted the first author (R. W.) to become interested in attempting to replicate the SAIC research into remote viewing. Before doing so, R. W. examined the protocol used in Experiment One as a potential template for the replication. This examination uncovered a number of possible pathways of information leakage apparently present in the study. In addition, problems were encountered by the SAIC team in reconstructing a number of unrecorded procedural details concerning Experiment One. The implications of this assessment for Experiment One and the AIR report are discussed.
ISSN:0022-3387