This study by a UK government agency is an incredible example of incompetent research.
As
Angela Thompson-Smith, a member of
the International Remote Viewing Association commented,
"This would have had the same results if they were studying math or musical ability. Say, for example they contacted a group of master musicians for a study but they refused to participate. Then the study took people "off the street" to test them for musical ability and found average results.Then concluded that there were no master musicians and no musical ability to be found. What a flawed study." [Permission to quote granted]
From
an article describing the study:
'Defence experts tried to recruit 12 psychics who advertised their abilities on the internet, but when they refused they were forced to use "novice" volunteers. Commercial researchers were contracted at a cost of £18,000 to test if psychic ability existed, according to a classified report released under the Freedom of Information Act.'
Conclusions reached by The MoD?'. . .the study had concluded there was "little value" in using "remote viewing" in the defence of the nation.'[I detect reflections of US media's use of the
AIR report to dismiss 20 years of research.]
Those were the 'conclusions' widely reported in the press and internet media. However, a read of the original documents indicates that the MoD may pursue further experiments. We should encourage them to contact the most accomplished people and to get it right this time.
Comments from around the web:
From Michael Prescott:
I'm sure the British government will be ridiculed for this, but personally I'm glad they were open-minded enough to give it a shot.
From inkycircus.com:
Now, I'm not a total sceptic about the strange and unusual powers of the brain, I'm glad the stuffy MoD has an open mind, and I generally approve of finding alternative methods of defending Queen and country rather than starting wars all over the shop, but I'm pretty sure that celebrity 'psychics' aren't exactly the ideal alternative.
From strangeattractor.co.uk
It’s hard to believe that there haven’t been other RV projects here in the past and I’ve certainly met psychics who have told me that they’d done government work back in the ’80s. Let’s see if this confessional mood leads to any more such admissions.
In it's typical manner of misrepresentation, Skeptico does itself justice, while doing injustice to the truth: They never heard of Stargate?
Have they never heard of Project Stargate – the US government’s failed attempt from the 1970s through 1995 to look for exactly the same thing? They spent $20 million before they realized it doesn’t work and gave up. (At least the UK government only wasted $35K.)
[Read the AIR report articles to understand the politics and flawed methods used to shut down a program that managed to survive yearly reviews and maintain it's funding - why? because it was not a failed program]
The PsiTech organization supposedly purchased the “technology” from the US government, and are having a similar consistent lack of success in being able to remote-view anything correctly.
[PsiTech purchased nothing from the US government - Dames walked away with a copy of the CRV manual generated by the team of military remote viewers trained by Ingo Swann.]
As Randi knows, as soon as you want to test any “psychic” to see if they really can do what they say, they run for the hills. They must hate freedom.
[For a closer look at James Randi ]
And the all too familiar and classic argument:
Of course, if remote viewing really worked, we’d have captured bin Laden years ago.
[An often-used flawed assumption implying a government agency with the desire to capture bin Laden affiliated with accomplished remote viewers. In other words, it takes a chain of command from the RV session to take the results and test it against ground truth.]
~ Shelia
