Remote Viewing Revisited: Well-Controlled Experiments Don't Find the "RV Effect"

In the late 1970s, Stanford Research Institute claimed two subjects could "remotely view" distant locations using ESP. Psychologist David Marks investigated -- and what he found was devastating. The original researchers refused to release raw transcripts (red flag!). When Marks obtained them anyway, he discovered they were riddled with giveaway clues: dates, experimenter names, and cross-session references having nothing to do with psychic ability. The jaw-dropping part: Marks sent these cue-laden transcripts to judges in New Zealand, who matched them to locations just as accurately as the originals -- using only mundane clues, no ESP required. Surveying all replication attempts, he found a clean pattern: tightly controlled studies came up empty, while positive results only appeared in sloppy designs. Remote viewing, Marks concluded, is a methodological mirage. His work set the standards that all serious RV research has followed since.