Wednesday, February 28, 2007

They Think They Know

Paul H. Smith thoughtfully addresses Britain's Ministry of Defense remote viewing research:

A few days ago when I first read the newspaper reports revealing that Britain’s Ministry of Defense (MoD) had researched psychic skills, I started scribbling down a table-thumping rant about how wrong-headed the research had been – not because it had been done at all (which I otherwise applaud) but because of how poorly-conceived it had been, at least according to the newspapers. Before I published my rant far and wide, someone fortunately pointed me to the actual 168-page declassified report, where I could read a more detailed account of what the MoD had actually done. I discovered that the news stories were embarrassingly oversimplified and incomplete, and that the research was not as ill-advised as reporters had claimed. It was still flawed, which I discuss below – but the whole affair amounts to the latest example of society’s self-perpetuating ignorance of the nature of “psychic phenomena” in general and remote viewing in particular.


Paul H. Smith is President of the International Remote Viewing Association, President of Remote Viewing Instructional Services, Inc., and one of only a handful of government personnel to be personally trained as coordinate remote viewers by Ingo Swann at SRI-International.