Utts and I were hired as the evaluation panel to assess the results of 20 years of previously classified research on remote viewing and related ESP phenomena. In the time available to us, it was impossible to scrutinize carefully all the of documents generated by this program. Instead, we focused our efforts on evaluating the ten studies done at Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) during the early 1990s. These were selected, in consultation with the principal investigator, as representing the best experiments in the set. These ten experiments included two that examined physiological correlates of ESP. The results were negative. Another study found a correlation between when a subject was being observed (via remote camera) and galvanic skin reactions. The remaining studies, in one way or another, dealt with various target and other factors that might influence remote viewing ability. In these studies the same set of viewers produced descriptions that were successfully matched against the correct target consistently better than chance (with some striking exceptions).

Neither Utts nor I had the time or resources to fully scrutinize the laboratory procedures or data from these experiments. Instead, we relied on what we could glean from reading the technical reports. Two of the experiments had recently been published in the Journal of Parapsychology. The difficulty here is that these newly declassified experiments have not been in the public arena for a sufficient time to have been carefully and critically scrutinized. As with the original ganzfeld data base and the autoganzfeld experiments, it takes careful scrutiny and a period of a few years to find the problems of newly published or revealed parapsychological experiments. One obvious problem with the SAIC experiments is that the remote viewing results were all judged by one person -- the director of the program. I believe that Utts agrees with me that we have to withhold judgments on these experiments until it can be shown that independent judges can produce the same results. Beyond this, we would require, as with any other set of newly designed experiments, replication by independent laboratories before we decide that the reported outcomes can be trusted.

Utts and other parapsychologists also talk about prima facie evidence in connection with the operational stories of the psychics (or remote viewers) employed by the government. Everyone agrees there is no way to evaluate the accounts of these attempts to use input from remote viewers in intelligence activities. This is because the data were collected in haphazard and nonsystematic ways. No consistent records are available; no attempt was made to interrogate the viewers in nonsuggestive ways; no contemporary systematic attempts to evaluate the results are there, etc.

The attempts to evaluate these operational uses after the fact are included in the American Institutes for Research (A.I.R.) report and they do not justify concluding anything about the effectiveness or reality of remote viewing. Some stories, especially those involving cases that occurred long ago and/or that are beyond actual verification, have been put forth as evidence of apparently striking hits. The claim is that these remote viewers are right on -- are actually getting true psychic signals -- about 20 percent of the time.

Call it prima facie or whatever, none of this should be considered as evidence for anything. In situations where we do have some control comparisons, we find the same degree of hitting for wrong targets (when the judge does not realize it is the wrong target) as for the correct targets. A sobering example of this with respect to remote viewing can be found in David Marks and Richard Kammann's book The Psychology of the Psychic (Prometheus Books, Amherst, New York, 1980).

Psychologists, such as myself, who study subjective validation find nothing striking or surprising in the reported matching of reports against targets in the Stargate data. The overwhelming amount of data generated by the viewers is vague, general, and way off target. The few apparent hits are just what we would expect if nothing other than reasonable guessing and subjective validation are operating.

Utts points to consistencies in effect sizes across the studies. More important, she points out several patterns such as bigger effect sizes with experienced subjects, etc. I do not have time or space to detail all the problems with these apparent consistencies. Many of them happen to relate to the fact that the average effect sizes in these cases are arbitrary combinations of heterogeneous sources. Moreover, where Utts detects consistencies, I find inconsistencies. I have documented some of these elsewhere; I will do so again in the near future.

When we examine the basis of Utts's strong claim for the existence of psi, we find that it relies on a handful of experiments that have been shown to have serious weaknesses after undergoing careful scrutiny, and another handful of experiments that have yet to undergo scrutiny or be successfully replicated. What seems clear is that the scientific community is not going to abandon its fundamental ideas about causality, time, and other principles on the basis of a handful of experiments whose findings have yet to be shown to be replicable and lawful.

Utts does assert that the findings from parapsychological experiments can be replicated with well-controlled experiments given adequate resources. But this is a hope or promise. Before we abandon relativity and quantum mechanics in their current formulations, we will require more than a promissory note. We will want, as is the case in other areas of science, solid evidence that these findings can, indeed, be produced under specified conditions.

Again, I do not have time to develop another part of this story. Because even if Utts and her colleagues are correct and we were to find that we could reproduce the findings under specified conditions, this would still be a far cry from concluding that psychic functioning has been demonstrated. This is because the current claim is based entirely upon a negative outcome -- the sole basis for arguing for ESP is that extra-chance results can be obtained that apparently cannot be explained by normal means. But an infinite variety of normal possibilities exist and it is not clear than one can control for all of them in a single experiment. You need a positive theory to guide you as to what needs to be controlled, and what can be ignored. Parapsychologists have not come close to this as yet.