Evaluation of a Program on Anomalous Mental Phenomena
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Plain English Summary
When the U.S. government spent two decades funding a secret psychic spying program called Stargate, they eventually asked two scientists to grade the homework. Ray Hyman was the skeptic. He looked at the best ten experiments from the program and admitted something striking: the results were too strong to chalk up to dumb luck, and the methods were genuinely better than earlier attempts. But he wasn't ready to pop the champagne. The experiments happened behind closed doors with no outside peer review, used the same small group of psychic viewers and the same judge scoring their hits every time. Nobody independent had reproduced the results. Hyman argued that getting weird statistics isn't enough to prove psychic powers actually exist -- you need a real explanation for how it would work, plus outsiders confirming the findings on their own.
Actual Paper Abstract
Jessica Utts and I were commissioned to evaluate the research on remote viewing and related phenomena which was carried out at Stanford Research Institute (SRI) and Scientific Applications International Corporation (SAIC) during the years from 1973 through 1994. We focussed on the ten most recent experiments which were conducted at SAIC from 1992 through 1994. These were not only the most recent but also the most methodologically sound. We evaluated these experiments in the context of contemporary parapsychological research. Professor Utts concluded that the SAIC results, taken in conjunction with other parapsychological research, proved the existence of ESP, especially precognition. My report argues that Professor Utts' conclusion is premature, to say the least. The reports of the SAIC experiments have become accessible for public scrutiny too recently for adequate evaluation. Moreover, their findings have yet to be independently replicated. My report also argues that the apparent consistencies between the SAIC results and those of other parapsychological experiments may be illusory. Many important inconsistencies are emphasized. Even if the observed effects can be independently replicated, much more theoretical and empirical investigation would be needed before one could legitimately claim the existence of paranormal functioning.
Research Notes
Hyman’s half of the AIR evaluation of the Stargate program—the skeptical counterpart to Utts’ pro-psi assessment. Central to the remote viewing and ganzfeld debates. His critique of relying solely on statistical significance to establish phenomena influenced subsequent methodological standards in parapsychology.
Commissioned alongside Jessica Utts to evaluate the U.S. government-funded Stargate remote viewing program at SRI and SAIC (1973–1994), Hyman focuses on the ten most recent SAIC experiments. He concedes these experiments are methodologically superior to earlier SRI work and that statistical effects are too large to dismiss as chance flukes. However, he argues Utts’ conclusion that psychic functioning has been proven is premature: the experiments were conducted in secrecy precluding peer review, relied on the same viewers, targets, and a single judge (the principal investigator) across all studies, and have not been independently replicated. He identifies key inconsistencies between ganzfeld and remote viewing findings and argues that without a positive theory of anomalous cognition, statistical departures from chance alone cannot establish its existence.
Related Papers
Companion
Same Research Program
- A Joint Communiqué: The Psi Ganzfeld Controversy — Hyman, Ray (1986)
- Anomaly or Artifact? Comments on Bem and Honorton — Hyman, Ray (1994)
- Meta-Analysis That Conceals More Than It Reveals: Comment on Storm et al. (2010) — Hyman, Ray (2010)
- Parapsychological Research: A Tutorial Review and Critical Appraisal — Hyman, Ray (1986)
Critiques
Cites
- Does Psi Exist? Replicable Evidence for an Anomalous Process of Information Transfer — Bem, Daryl J (1994)
- Replication and Meta-Analysis in Parapsychology — Utts, Jessica (1991)
- Information transmission under conditions of sensory shielding — Targ, Russell (1974)
- "Future Telling": A Meta-Analysis of Forced-Choice Precognition Experiments, 1935-1987 — Honorton, Charles (1989)
Cited By
- Why Is Psi So Elusive? A Review and Proposed Model — Kennedy, James E (2001)
- A Compendium of the Evidence for Psi — Parker, Adrian (2003)
- The Capricious, Actively Evasive, Unsustainable Nature of Psi: A Summary and Hypotheses — Kennedy, J.E (2003)
- Follow-up on the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) Remote Viewing Experiments — Escolà-Gascón, Álex (2023)
More in Skeptical
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Searching for the Impossible: Parapsychology's Elusive Quest
False-Positive Effect in the Radin Double-Slit Experiment on Observer Consciousness as Determined with the Advanced Meta-Experimental Protocol
Cross-Examining the Case for Precognition: Comment on Mossbridge and Radin (2018)
N,N-Dimethyltryptamine and the Pineal Gland: Separating Fact from Myth
📋 Cite this paper
Hyman, Ray (1996). Evaluation of a Program on Anomalous Mental Phenomena. Journal of Scientific Exploration.
@article{hyman_1996_evaluation,
title = {Evaluation of a Program on Anomalous Mental Phenomena},
author = {Hyman, Ray},
year = {1996},
journal = {Journal of Scientific Exploration},
}