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.

Click here to read the 6 page article [pdf format - 1.3 M]

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.