(for other interesting reports not covered in this list, see this. Extremely useful overview is provided on pp. 41-56 and 213-222 of Rupert Sheldrake's The Sense of Being Stared At (Hutchinson; 1st edition (May 1, 2003)). See also the SPR overview of experimental parapsychology, prior to reading the below texts) Dodds (1946). Telepathy and Clairvoyance in Classical Antiquity. Lang (1909). The maid of France; being the story of the life and death of Jeanne d'Arc. (see also the quick overview from FWH Myers) Prince (1928/1963). Noted Witnesses for Psychic Occurrences: Men of Science: Clairvoyantly Witnesses a Fire in Progress at Three Hundred Miles Distance - Emanuel Swedenborg. Barth (1853). Adolph Didier's Clairvoyance. Townshend (1854). The Indisputable Clairvoyance of M. Adolphe Didier. West & Barrington (2004). Didier in the Zoist. (overview of the feats of Adolphe Didier's brother, Alexis) Gauld (1996). Notes on the career of the somnambule Léonie. (discusses the career of, and heterogeneous, but very notable, results obtained in the career of the somnambule Léonie - see for fascinating results with this subject the paper "On Telepathic Hypnotism, and its relation to other forms of Hypnotic Suggestion" by Frederic W. H. Myers. Gurney overviewed a couple of corroborating cases for that particular phenomenon - see the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research V (1888), pp. 221-223) Richet, C. (1884). La suggestion mentale et le calcul des probabilites. [Mental suggestion and probability calculation] Revue Philosophique de la France et de I'Etranger, 18, 609-674. (the set up seems to have been similar to poker: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=njp.32101042688133;view=1up;seq=634 as for overview, see the following commentary - Note on Charles Richet’s "La Suggestion Mentale et le Calcul des Probabilités" (1884) (Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 22, No. 4, pp. 543–548, 2008): http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download;jsessionid=CA882F7E79C364A6F0E2E2A8DED9CAC6?doi=10.1.1.616.4966&rep=rep1&type=pdf The statistical methods of this paper and its significance in using such methods were praised by historian of science Ian Hacking - see Hacking (1988). Telepathy: Origins of Randomization in Experimental Design, which noted, on p. 441. that "[the noted statistician F. Y. Edgeworth] does conclude that the probability that Richet's phenomena were obtained by chance is very small, 0.00004, and so the reliability of the phenomena not being due to chance "may fairly be regarded as physical certainty" and "the conclusion may be regarded as safe." After this, with some sagacity, he con- cludes his 1885 paper with the words: "Such is the evidence which the calculus of probabilities affords as to the existence of an agency other than mere chance. The calculus is silent as to the nature of that agency- whether it is more likely to be vulgar illusion or extraordinary law. That is a question to be decided, not by formulae and figures, but by general philosophy and common sense." This warn- ing may be compared with a rather celebrated assertion by R. A. Fisher on the logic of significance testing. He speaks of a "logical disjunction" being the basis of a test of significance. Either something very uncommon has occurred by chance, or a hypothesis of "no effect" must be rejected. Fisher explicitly introduced these observations in connection with "the studies known as para- psychology. "37" Alvarado provided a summary of this text as follows: "'Richet went on to report certain experiments of his own that he evaluated statistically – a novel approach at the time. (JB Rhine, the American scientist who contributed much to parapsychology as a statistical science in the 1930s, credited Richet as the first to use ‘the mathematics of chance’ in evaluating results of telepathy tests.6) His tests consisted of guessing tasks that employed playing cards and photographs of statues, antique objects, paintings, and the like, also motor automatisms, the movements involved in table turning and the dowsing rod. By statistical analysis of the guesses Richet aimed to demonstrate that the ‘thought of an individual is transmitted without the help of exterior gestures to the thought of an individual located close to him’.7 Discussing the quantitative aspect of his work, he wrote: The method that I have adopted is that of probabilities; it poses the problem thus: Given an arbitrary designation whose probability is known; does the probability of this designation change by the fact of mental suggestion? To this question our experiments allow us to reply affirmatively: For playing cards, the answer by chance should be 458, and it was 510 with suggestion on 1833 tests. For photographs and pictures, the probable number was 42, and the acquired number was 67 on 218 tests. For experiments with the dowsing rod, the probable number was 18, and the real number was 44 on 98 tests. For experiments called spiritistic, the probable number was 3, but the real number was 17 on 124 tests. The results acquired by the calculation of serial probability are more conclusive still.8 Richet found it ‘completely implausible’ that these results could have occurred by chance in around 300 experiments.9 Following Pascal, he wrote: ‘If it was necessary to opt for the reality or not reality of mental suggestion, I would let luck decide; but I would give two chances to the hypothesis that suggestion exists, and one chance only to the opposite hypothesis’.10 Turning to the characteristics of telepathy, Richet described the phenomenon as ‘capricious, wandering, uncertain’.11 The process, he believed, showed various degrees of sensitivity. He also noted displacement and declines in participant responses. Satisfactory results were acquired with adult participants who were ‘in good health, not hypnotized, nor hypnotizable...’,12 although two successful participants proved to be highly sensitive to hypnotism. The majority of participants were non-psychic, among them Richet himself and his friends. Five of the participants in the table tilting tests were childhood friends of Richet, two of whom were said to be mediums. Richet went to on highlight studies carried out by other researchers, among them card guessing thought-transference experiments conducted by members of the Society for Psychical Research that on one occasion achieved five successive hits.13 He pointed out that with just one chance in 52 to select the target card from a pack of cards. The odds of getting five right in a row is one in 16,680,235, making chance highly unlikely as an explanation. Turning to possible theories, Richet suggested that telepathy might be an unconscious process, also that ‘the vibration of the thought of an individual influences the vibration of the thought of a nearby individual’,14 an idea which, however, would find little favour among psi researchers today. ": As noted in "Phantasms of the Living" by Gurney, Myers, and Podmore: "In the Revue Philosophique for December, 1884, M. Ch. Richet, the well-known savant and editor of the Revue Scientifique, published a paper, entitled “La Suggestion Mentale et le Calcul des Probabilités,” in the first part of which an account is given of some experiments with cards precisely similar in plan to those above described. A card being drawn at random out of a pack, the “agent” fixed his attention on it, and the “percipient” endeavoured to name it. But M. Richet’s method contained this important novelty—that though the success, as judged by the results of any particular series of trials, seemed slight (showing that he was not experimenting with what we should consider “good subjects”), he made the trials on a sufficiently extended scale to bring out the fact that the right guesses were on the whole, though not strikingly, above the number that pure accident would account for, and that their total was considerably above that number. This observation involves a new and striking application of the calculus of probabilities. Advantage is taken of the fact that the larger the number of trials made under conditions where success is purely accidental, the more nearly will the total number of successes attained conform to the figure which the formula of probabilities gives. For instance, if some one draws a card at random out of a full pack, and before it has been looked at by anyone present I make a guess at its suit, my chance of being right is, of course, 1 in 4. Similarly, if the process is repeated 52 times, the most probable number of successes, according to the strict calculus of probabilities, is 13; in 520 trials the most probable number of successes is 130. Now, if we consider only a short series of 52 guesses, I may be accidentally right many more times than 13 or many less times. But if the series be {i-32} prolonged—if 520 guesses be allowed instead of 52—the actual number of successes will vary from the probable number within much smaller limits; and if we suppose an indefinite prolongation, the proportional divergence between the actual and the probable number will become infinitely small. This being so, it is clear that if, in a very short series of trials, we find a considerable difference between the actual number of successes and the probable number, there is no reason for regarding this difference as anything but purely accidental; but if we find a similar difference in a very long series, we are justified in surmising that some condition beyond mere accident has been at work. If cards be drawn in succession from a pack, and I guess the suit rightly in 3 out of 4 trials, I shall be foolish to be surprised; but if I guess the suit rightly in 3,000 out of 4,000 trials, I shall be equally foolish not to be surprised. Now M. Richet continued his trials until he had obtained a considerable total; and the results were such as at any rate to suggest that accident had not ruled undisturbed—that a guiding condition had been introduced, which affected in the right direction a certain small percentage of the guesses made. That condition, if it existed, could be nothing else than the fact that, prior to the guess being made, a person in the neighbourhood of the guesser had concentrated his attention on the card drawn. Hence the results, so far as they go, make for the reality of the faculty of “mental suggestion.” The faculty, if present, was clearly only slightly developed; whence the necessity of experimenting on a very large scale before its genuine influence on the numbers could be even surmised. Out of 2,927 trials at guessing the suit of a card, drawn at random, and steadily looked at by another person, the actual number of successes was 789; the most probable number, had pure accident ruled, was 732. The total was made up of thirty-nine series of different lengths, in which eleven persons took part, M. Richet himself being in some cases the guesser, and in others the person who looked at the card. He observed that when a large number of trials were made at one sitting, the aptitude of both persons concerned seemed to be affected; it became harder for the “agent” to visualise, and the proportion of successes on the guesser’s part decreased. If we agree to reject from the above total all the series in which over 100 trials were consecutively made, the numbers become more striking.1 Out of {i-33} 1,833 trials, he then got 510 successes, the most probable number being only 458; that is to say, the actual number exceeds the most probable number by about 1/10. Clearly no definite conclusion could be based on such figures as the above. They at most contained a hint for more extended trials, but a hint, fortunately, which can be easily followed up. We are often asked by acquaintances what they can do to aid the progress of psychical research. These experiments suggest a most convenient answer; for they can be repeated, and a valuable contribution made to the great aggregate, by any two persons who have a pack of cards and a little perseverance.1 Up to the time that I write, we have received, in all, the results of 17 batches of trials in the guessing of suits. In 11 of the batches one person acted as agent and another as percipient throughout: the other 6 batches are the collective results of trials made by as many groups of friends. The total number of trials was 17,653, and the total number of successes was 4,760; which exceeds by 347 the number which was the most probable if chance alone acted. The probability afforded by this result for the action of a cause other than chance is ·999,999,98[☼]—or practical certainty.2 I need hardly say that there has been here no selection of results; all who undertook the trials were specially requested to send in their report, whatever the degree of success or unsuccess; and we have no reason to suppose that this direction has been ignored. It is thus an additional point of interest that in only one of the batches did the result fall below the number which was the most probable one for mere chance to give. And if we take only those batches, 10 in number, in which a couple of experimenters made as many as 1,000 trials and over, the probability of a cause other than chance which the group of results yields is estimated by one method to be ·999,999,999,96, and by another to be ·999,999,999,999,2. ": http://www.esalen.org/ctr-archive/book-phantasms.html#i-c2-7) Gurney, Myers, & Podmore (1886). Phantasms of the Living. (a defense of Phantasms of the Living is here (removed by others but archived here: http://archive.is/aQvaq, scroll down to section "Phantasms of the Living", but prior to this section, qualify the statement in that article that "J.B. Rhine, in his book Extra-Sensory Perception, called this a "most fascinating" set of data, but noted that replications had not taken place" with the information in Gauld's "Notes on the career of the somnambule Léonie", on p. 143) see also Williams (2011). Review and appraisal of Phantasms of the Living, for relevant analysis. For follow-up work, see Podmore (1894). Apparitions and Thought Transference. , Podmore (1909). Telepathic hallucinations: the new view of ghosts, and Sidgwick (1923). Phantasms of the Living, pt. II) Usher & Burt (1910). Quelques expériences de Transmission de la Pensée à grande distance Coover (1917). Experiments in Psychical Research at Leland Stanford Junior University. (Rao & Palmer note, at the end of the 1987 Brain & Mind Sciences debate, "On to Hansel's specific points. Coover's results are in fact highly significant, if analyzed fairly (Thouless 1935; see also Coover 1939)." - Rao & Palmer are candid by referencing the skeptic Coover's attempted rebuttal of Thouless, however, Utts, in her 1991 article Replication and Meta-analysis in Parapsychology noted (p. 365), "One of the first American researchers to use statistical methods in parapsychology was John Edgar Coover, who was the Thomas Welton Stanford Psychical Research Fellow in the Psychology Department at Stanford University from 1912 to 1937 (Dommeyer, 1975). In 1917, Coover published a large volume summarizing his work (Coover, 1917). Coover believed that his results were consistent with chance, but others have argued that Coover's definition of significance was too strict (Dommeyer, 1975). For example, in one evaluation of his telepathy experiments, Coover found a two-tailed p-value of 0.0062. He concluded, "Since this value, then, lies within the field of chance deviation, although the probability of its occurrence by chance is fairly low, it cannot be accepted as a decisive indication of some cause beyond chance which operated in favor of success in guessing" (Coover, 1917, page 82). On the next page, he made it explicit that he would require a p-value of 0.0000221 to declare that something other than chance was operating." Whateley Carington's overview of Early ESP Experiments and his book on telepathy contain some important commentary on this series and shows that there were serious pre-Rhine replications from which evidence could be adduced regardless of the researcher's prejudice - see especially his commentary on Troland, Usher and Burt, etc. : https://archive.org/stream/telepathy032278mbp#page/n33/mode/2up) Verrall (1918). Report on a Series of Experiments in "Guessing." (a dispute over whether or not these results could be explained by unconscious hyperaesthesia occurred in JSPR Volume 47. See also Sidgwick (1924). Report on Further Experiments in Thought-Transference Carried Out by Gilbert Murray, LL.D., LITT.D., Sidgwick (1924). Appendix II to Mrs. Sidgwick's Paper on Professor Murray's Experiments on Thought-Transference, Thouless (1925). Letter Regarding Murray's Experiments in Telepathy, and Dodds (1972). Gilbert Murray's Last Experiments) Bender (1938). The Case of Ilga K: Report of a Phenomenon of Unusual Perception. (on the face of it, the results with this girl are absolute, incontrovertible evidence of telepathy. However, some experimenters found that hyperaesthesia could account for some of the results. In this paper, Bender argues that it cannot account for many of the results with her. He wrote a later paper on this - I don't have access to it - Bender, Hans (1940): Zur Nachuntersuchung des Falles Ilga K. In: Zeitschrift für angewandte Psychologie und Charakterkunde 58,5/6, S. 317-342 , which can be located here, but not read: http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015082019657). Schouten & Kelley (1978). On the Experiments of Brugmans, Heymans, and Weinberg. (In this experiment first presented in 1921, the selected subject, Van Dam, sat in a cubicle and make his selection of the target symbol, which the sender one floor above had randomly chosen, by reaching out and tapping at the appropriate symbol on a checker board. This paper demonstrates that C.E.M. Hansel misrepresented the Brugmans experiment, it also rebuts the critiques of Gardner Murphy and Samuel Soal. There was, later, a dispute about this experiment in the Zetetic Scholar Vol. 6, where John Beloff presented this experiment as one of the 7 items he believed provided convincing evidence for psi) Pagenstecher (1922). Past Events Seership: A Study In Psychometry. (psychometry is a form of extra-sensory perception characterized by the claimed ability to make relevant associations from an object of unknown history by making physical contact with that object. This study replicates results in The Soul of things: Or, Psychometric Researches and Discoveries, and an overview of psychometry mentioning this and many other studies can be found in MAry Rose Barrington's 2016 SPR article on the subject. These results were further corroborated by Dr. J. Hettinger in his text The Ultra-Perceptive Faculty, summarized by G.N.M. Tyrell. Eric Dingwall criticized this later study by Hettinger, and further criticism was given by the skeptic Christopher Scott (Scott, C. (1949), 'Experimental object-reading: a critical review of the work of Dr J. Hettinger', Proc. S.P.R., 48, 16-50), but it is interesting in light of earlier results, and as such is suggestive for further research. John Beloff, in Parapsychology: A Concise History, pp. 97-98, wrote of the featured work: "Another German physician who discovered an outstanding clairvoyant subject was Gustav Pagenstecher. He had settled in Mexico city where he was a surgeon at the American Hospital. His subject, Maria Reyes de Zierold, knon in the literature as 'Señora de Z.' had been a patient of his, and her peculiar ability came to light only after he had hynotized her in an attempt to cure her of her insomnia! She excelled in what, in spiritualist parlance, is known as 'psychometry': an object of unknown provenance is held in the hand and the psychic attempts to produce relevant associations. Of course, if the object in question is a sealed letter, such 'psychometrizing' may approximate to a straightforward clairvoyant reading. Prince visited Pagenstecher in 1920 and carried out a study of this case. It proved a turning-point in his outlook. For example, he gave her a letter he had taken from an old file which she held between her hands while giving her associations. Subsequent association revealed that no less that 35 of 38 statements she had made concerning the author of the letter (a clergyman) proved to be literally correct.") Dingwall (1922). An Experiment With the Polish Medium Stephan Ossowiecki. (In this account of the experiment, published in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, after ruling out any possibility of access to the contents of the envelope by normal means, Dingwall concluded, "The supernormal character of the incident seems to me quite clear and decisive." Regarding this experiment conjuring expert Harry Price, in Fifty Years of Psychical Research, pp. 41-42, the following: "It is a relief to turn from rather clever conjuring tricks to the really abnormal cognizance of the contents of a sealed package, a feat accomplished during my attendance at the Second International Congress for Psychical Research, held at Warsaw in August and September, 1923) by the Polish engineer, Stefan Ossowiecki. Dr. E. J. Dingwall, then research officer of the (British) S.P.R., also attended the Congress and took with him a sealed package, consisting of coloured opaque envelopes, in which were a message in French, a date, and crude drawings of a bottle and a flag. By merely holding the package, Ossowiecki correctly visualized the flag and the bottle, the colours of the envelopes, and the numerals of the date, though not in the order as written. Because he had himself prepared the drawing, etc., and in order to eliminate the possibility of telepathy, Dingwall did not attend the experiment, the result of which was cheered by those present, Baron Schrenck-Notzing rushing up to the medium and crying "Merci, merci, au nom de la science!" Most of the skepticism regarding Ossowiecki is countered by Weaver on pp. 64-69 of the 2002 EJP article Poland: Home of Mediums. Weaver noted that the test of Dingwall was overlooked by critics, and supersedes their objections. Weaver wrote a text on Ossowiecki with Barrington and Stevenson entitled The World In A Grain of Sand: The Clairvoyance of Stefan Ossowiecki (McFarland & Company, Inc., 2005) He was not omniscient, but did prove psi under controlled conditions, and as we can see from Appendix I of the aforementioned book on him, skeptical claims with regards to the work done with him by Poniatowski are misleading. Most of this work produced valid information (see especially experiments 9, 10, and 13, 14, and 15, highlighted in the text. Most of his hits in the work with him were successful - Appendix II is devoted to this. See also Besterman (1933). An Experiment in "Clairvoyance" With M. Stefan Ossowiecki. (Whereas the Dingwall paper is more proof oriented, this is more process-oriented. Stevenson, Weaver, and Barrington noted (p. 66) that Besterman's "choice of target was more process oriented than was Dingwall's, in that he sought answers to two questions, firstly, whether the medium, despite not knowing any English, perceived the meaning associated with the drawing of a bottle of ink with the words "Swan Ink" written on it; i.e., would he show any apprehension of the black swan trademark associated with those words, or would he show any apprehension of "swan" or "bird". Secondly, Besterman folded the paper so that one of these words was folded over on itself, while the other was not; a psychic operating by clairvoyance might be expected to have clearer sight of the unfolded word, on the principle that if you hold up to the light a paper on which a word is written and then folded over on itself, you would normally have great difficulty in deciphering the word." Hansel's dismissal of this experiment is refuted by text from the report - "I minutely examined the envelopes and found that with the exception of considerable wear and tear on the outer envelope, they were all intact. The private marks which I had made and which would have been inevitably disturbed on any attempt to open the envelopes, were all in order. I have no hesitation in saying that none of the envelopes was opened. I am also satisfied that no effort was made [...] to render the contents transparent by chemical means. The same is true of X-ray and similar methods."). Warcollier (1922). La télépathie, recherches expérimentales. - (later published, along with other articles, as Mind to Mind - the theoretical contributions of this book are summarized here. My research has suggested that a conclusive analysis of this text may be found in ESP over distance: A survey of experiments published in English (K Osis - Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 1965). However, I need to obtain that text before providing further commentary). Osty (1923). Supernormal Faculties in Man: An Experimental Study. (Rhine, in ESP, p. 15, notes the importance of this book as an extension of earlier SPR case collection work. See also this review of early cases in psychometry, and the following 2005 review of the text itself. Alan Gaud, in Mediumship & Survival, noted that ". It would take an immense mass of erroneous material to outweigh Osty’s more remarkable cases, and a great deal of misrecording and misverification to undermine them. They receive some support from comparable findings by others (e.g. Pagenstecher, 117; Prince, 125c, 125e). And they have some curious and fascinating features. Consider, for example, the case I have just quoted. Can one possibly attribute the ‘hits’ to telepathy? The sensitive gave (as often happened) a sort of conspectus or précis of the subject’s life. One can hardly suppose that the subject herself was revolving such a précis in her mind and thus broadcasting it to the world. Nor can one plausibly suppose that the sensitive quickly scanned the memory-store of her distant subject and was immediately able to extract therefrom the series of general facts required—especially when one adds that in many cases this sort of conspectus was apparently continued into the future. Clairvoyance is not a possible explanation—it is not stated that the main facts of the subject’s life were anywhere recorded in physical form. It seems to me that what we have here does not (in most instances) suggest a telepathic cognizing of the subject’s memory-store; it suggests rather the direct acquisition (whatever that may mean) of propositional knowledge about the subject. If I understand Osty’s somewhat vague remarks aright, this is the sort of conclusion towards which he too is driven. He points out that the visions and images which pass before the minds of his sensitives cannot be regarded as perceptions of distant persons, scenes, etc. They are often symbolic in form; and the same piece of information can present itself to the same sensitive in numerous different guises. It is as though what the sensitive grasps is on a conceptual level, a level of propositional or factual knowledge, which she then translates into the language of sensory imagery (cf. 162b; also 44d and 44e, pp. 617–618). I am not sure that this sort of knowledge-acquisition fits into the conventional categories of ESP at all. The knowledge is, one may note, knowledge primarily about people and thus differs markedly from the ‘knowledge’ which it is hoped that e.g. subjects in card-guessing experiments will display.") Gradenwitz (1924). Experimental Telepathy (also here). (Scientific American 130, 304 - 305. Upton Sinclair noted, in "Mental Radio" (given below), "As this book is going to the printer, my attention is called to the fact that Dr. Carl Bruck of Berlin has published a book entitled "Experimentelle Telepathie," in which he reports a series of tests closely resembling those here described. The main difference is that he used hypnotized subjects, four different young men, as the recipients of his telepathic messages. He made drawings at home, and locked them in a large portfolio, which he placed in an adjoining room from the subject, two or three yards distant through a wall. He himself sat in front of the hypnotized subject, and concentrated upon "sending" one of the drawings. Under these conditions, in a total of 111 experiments, one-third were successful. The Berlin correspondent of the "Scientific American" reported these tests in the issue of May, 1924, where those interested may read the details, and inspect twelve of the drawings. The tests were conducted in the presence of various physicians and scientists; and I am interested in a recent comment on the matter by a German physician living in Mexico City: "Bruck's work has gone almost wholly unnoticed."") Estabrooks (1927). A Contribution to Experimental Telepathy. (cited as evidential in light of Whateley Carington's commentary: https://archive.org/stream/telepathy032278mbp#page/n37/mode/2up see also Carington's overview of past evidential studies in JSPR Volume 30 pp. 298-308) Rhine (1934). Telepathy and clairvoyance in the normal and trance states of a medium (in Character and Personality, 3, 91-111) (Tests with Eileen Garrett. As Harry Price notes above, in his 1939 overview of ESP work, Soal's results with Garrett were less impressive than Rhine's. Dean Radin commented on this as follows: "I found in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research (1938-1939), "A repetition of Dr. J. B Rhine's work with Mrs. Eileen Garrett," by S. G. Soal. Soal reports that the total number of trials was 12,425, of which 7,425 were in a telepathy mode with 1,535 hits, and 5,000 in a clairvoyance mode with 980 hits. The former gives an overall p = value of 0.07 and the latter p = 0.76. Thus, Soal was correct that overall this is not a very impressive performance. In that same article Soal reports Rhine's (1934) experiments with Garrett. He reports for telepathy 625 trials (336 hits) for a wildly successful outcome, and for clairvoyance 3,525 trials and 888 hits, again for results more than 7 sigma from chance. Later publications have both Soal and Rhine puzzling over the differences in their results. Both were keenly aware of critiques about sensory leakage and other cues, misrecorded data, and etc. These loopholes were reportedly closed, so Rhine's spectacular results did not appear to be due to obvious errors.") Sinclair (1930). Mental Radio. (attempts to attack this piece by people like Martin Gardner are refuted by consideration of the article of Walter Franklin Prince in an addendum to that text. Regarding Mcdougall's less than spectacular results in this case, WF Prince has relevant commentary. Harry Price, in his aforementioned chapter from Fifty Years of Psychical Research entitled The Story of ESP, stated, "Other tests carried out in the United States were those staged by the Scientific American in 1933 and 1934, with readers as percipients. Results were negative." Hopefully someone interested in process oriented work will make a review of both the Sinclair and Scientific American work and reveal the causes of the discrepancy. Critics have also misrepresented the Wilkins and Sherman experiment Thoughts Through Space (Charlottesville, VA: Hampton Roads, 2004. Originally published in 1951 by C & R Anthony, Inc). Radin, in Entangled Minds (Pocket Books, 2006), on pp. 70-72, wrote a corrective summary, "Just before the Second World War erupted, Sir Herbert Wilkins and Harold Sherman conducted a remarkable long-distance experiment in clairvoyance. Wilkins was an Australian photographer and naturalist who gained fame for exploring the world in aeroplanes and submarines. Sherman was a popular author and playwright with a long-term interest in psychic phenomena. The experiment was sparked by the loss of a Russian plane somewhere in the Arctic off the coast of Canada. Given Wilkins knowledge of the Arctic and his piloting skills, he was asked by the Russian government to see if he could find the missing plane. He agreed, and Wilkins and Sherman decided to use this opportunity to see if Sherman could "tune in" to Wilkins at a distance. On a daily basis, Sherman used clairvoyance to "see" what was happening to Wilkins and his team. Wilkins, in turn, kept a daily log of each day's events, which was later compared against Sherman's perceptions. Intercontinental communication was sporadic at best in 1938, and communication with Wilkins, who was usually flying a small plane off the coast of Alaska, was impossible. Weeks would often pass from the time when Wilkins wrote his daily reports to when they were received in New York City. To ensure that the experiment was conducted fairly, each day Sherman deposited copies of his nightly impressions to third-party witnesses, all of whom later attested that the recordings were in their hands before Wilkins's [sic] log was received. As an example of the similarities in their reports, on November 30, 1938, Wilkins and his team were in Aklavik, in the Canadian Northwest Territories. This was the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the winter, above the Arctic Circle. Within the small settlement of Aklavik, at one point Wilkins and his men were invited to attend a party at the local hospital. They did so, and later that evening two of his crew went to the basement where they were surprised to find Ping-Pong tables. They played Ping-Pong with some nurses and had a grand time. That evening in New York City, some 3000 miles away, Sherman recorded his nightly clairvoyant vision as follows: "I received a strong impression of 'Ping-Pong balls,' for some reason, and found myself writing: "sudden flash of Ping-Pong - is there table in town where people play? Can't account for this unusual impression. ..." Wilkins later noted, after reading Sherman's impressions of this day, that "[Sherman] would have hardly guessed that we would be playing Ping-Pong in the Arctic." Dozens of such correspondences are described in their book.") (Of the Warcollier and Sinclair items, Adrian Parker noted, in his Compendium of Evidence for Psi, "these would be deficient by modern standards, which require additional controls especially concerning the random selection of target. However, since they usually allow the reader to make an assessment of the complete series from which targets have been represented, it must be said some of the results are extremely impressive and the conditions for success described there may be instructive for process research." However, Parker notes that "those of Whatley Carington can be considered the most controlled and some of these do appear to fulfill the modern safeguards and requirements". He cites the experiment given below.) Carington (1941). Experiments on the paranormal cognition of drawings. (C.D. Broad and R.H. Thouless were very critical of Whately Carington's word association tests with Gladys Osborne Leonard. However, as Broad noted in his introduction to this work, this experiment, conducted after the word-association tests, was vetted both by Thouless and himself, and Broad had very positive comments about it.) Rhine & Pratt (1954). A Review of the Pearce-Pratt Distance Series of ESP Tests. (Rhine, on p. 85 of ESP, describes this experiment as follows: "Pratt picks up, in a room in the Physics Building of Duke University, every minute during the running period a card taken from a cut and shuffled pack that lies on the table before him, and puts it face down on top of a book. He does not look at its face. At the beginning of the same minute, Pearce, in the Duke Library, over 100 yards away, tries to perceive the card then "exposed" by Pratt. He has succeeded, magnificently, in doing so." The type of test is "Pure clairvoyance. Mr. Pratt handled (did not look at) cards at B, afterwards at A Mr. Pearce got his surprising results at C. Both made independent sealed reports to me." Of the Pearce-Pratt experiment, Palmer noted that "Pratt, however, was more successful in obtaining the blueprints [of the area in which the experiment took place] and they discredited Hansel's theory [of fraud in this experiment] (Stevenson, 1967)." (John Palmer. "Extrasensory Perception: Research Findings". In Advances in Parapsychological Research Volume 2: Extrasensory Perception. Editors: Stanley Krippner, Mary Lou Carlson, Montague Ullman, Robert O. Becker ISBN: 978-1-4615-9094-1 (Print) 978-1-4615-9092-7. pp. 59-243, on p. 66)) Pratt & Woodruff (1939). Size of stimulus symbols in extrasensory perception. (see also Pratt (1976). New Evidence Supporting the ESP Interpretation of the Pratt-Woodruff experiment - Hansel does not cite this later item in "the Search for Psychic Power" (1989), though it is the last item mentioned by Gerd Hövelmann in his overview of relevant literature Palmer noted that "The overall results, although not dramatic, were highly significant. In this case, Hansel's villain was the experimenter (Woodruff) who controlled the deck of target cards. One of the control features supposedly introduced into this series was that this experimenter should not know the order of the key cards hung in a row by the subject on the opposite side of the screen, so that he could not cheat by occasionally matching a target card to the corresponding key card contrary to the subject's call. However, Hansel discovered that one could determine the location of at least some key cards by noting their order on the preceding run (which was revealed during the scoring of that run). This assumes that the subject did a poor job of rearranging the key cards between runs, thus allowing the experimenter to keep track of them. Hansel also found that for himself it was easiest to keep track of the cards that occupied the end positions on the previous run (E-cards), and he concluded that the misplacement of target cards should be concentrated on these key cards. Hansel then went a step further and actually demonstrated that in the case of the highest scoring subject in the series, the significance indeed was attributable to an excess of hits on the E-cards. This effect also was found to a lesser but still significant degree in the combined results of the four other subjects whose overall scores were independently significant (Medhurst and Scott, 1974). Pratt argued that parapsychological interpretations could account for this finding (Pratt and Woodruff, 1961; Pratt, 1974a), and he succeeded in providing evidence for such an explanation in a later paper (Pratt, 1977). He suggested that subjects might score best on the E-cards simply because these cards were most salient to them, as a result of their positions on the previous run. As we will see later (see section 4.1.1.) such salience effects have been found in other ESP data. He reasoned that if the E-cards were salient to the subject, he would be more likely to remember to change their locations on the next run than he would if these E-cards were not salient. Pratt in fact found, at least with the highest scoring subject, that there were significantly more hits on the E-cards when their locations had been shifted than when they had not been shifted." (John Palmer. "Extrasensory Perception: Research Findings". In Advances in Parapsychological Research Volume 2: Extrasensory Perception. Editors: Stanley Krippner, Mary Lou Carlson, Montague Ullman, Robert O. Becker ISBN: 978-1-4615-9094-1 (Print) 978-1-4615-9092-7. pp. 59-243, on pp. 66-67.) Pratt and his colleagues in ESP-60 also noted that: "The E did not look at the backs of the cards but at the fast-moving pointer. The pace was too rapid (average, about 25 trials per 20 seconds) to permit shifting the focus of acute vision required for identifying cards by cues.") Pratt (1973). Decade of Research With a Selected ESP Subject: An Overview and Reappraisal of the work with Pavel Stepanek. (Proceedings of the American Society for Psychical Research, Vol. 30, Sept. 1973, which notes egregious misrepresentations by CEM Hansel - a preceding dispute on work with Stepanek can be found in the Journal Nature beginning with Pratt, J. G., Stevenson, I., Roll, W. G., Meinsma, G. L., Keil, H. H. J., & Jacobson, N. (1968). Identification of concealed randomized objects through acquired response habits of stimulus and word association. Nature, 220, 89-91., and then Hansel (1969). ESP: Deficiencies of Experimental Method, Nature, 221, 1171-1172., followed by Stevenson and Pratt's (1970). Correspondence: Identification of Concealed Randomized Objects. Nature, 225, 394. Palmer in his aforementioned 1978 article "Extrasensory Perception: Research Findings" (on pp. 61-62) noted the significance of this work - that "The second outstanding subject is a library information clerk in Czechoslovakia by the name of Pavel Stepanek (Pratt, 1973). Stepanek, who was discovered by the Czech parapsychologist Milan Ryzl, has been tested over a period of more than 10 years. He probably has retained his card-guessing abilities longer than any other subject in the history of parapsychology, although his ability has seemed to decline since 1968. Stepanek has been able to succeed on only one type of test, one which involves guessing which side of a green-and-white card is facing upward inside a cardboard envelope. Although he was able to succeed at guessing the correct color early in his career, his success has always been combined with a strong tendency to base his calls on visual cues from the envelopes. The significance of his later results derived in large part from the continuation of these secondary scoring patterns when the envelopes were concealed in progressively larger containers that shielded the inner containers from Stepanek's view. We will discuss this "focusing effect" in greater detail toward the end of the chapter. Stepanek has succeeded with tests conducted by a number of investigators, including a neutral scientist not previously associated with parapsychology (Blom and Pratt, 1968)." As regards Martin Gardner's attacks on this work, see Kiel (1990). How a Skeptic Misrepresents the Research with Stepanek, also see in the Journal of Parapsychology vol. 54, 1990 correspondence, Ryzl Accuses Martin Gardner of Attempted Bribery.). Targ & Puthoff (1974). Information transmission under conditions of sensory shielding. (I will wait several years before appraising any of this because more literature might come out. I will merely begin by stating that on the first part of this paper, Hansen, in his aforementioned 1992 article CSICOP and the Skeptics: An Overview, p. 47n25, stated: "Randi’s antics should have come as no surprise to members of CSICOP because he has engaged in similar behavior in relation to psi research. Krippner (1977), Rao (1984), Targ and Puthoff (1977, pp. 182-186), and Tart (1982b) have all documented glaring errors of Randi. Dennis Stillings has demonstrated that “Randi is capable of gross distortion of facts” (Truzzi, 1987, p. 89). Randi has been quoted as saying, “I always have an out” with regard to his $10,000 challenge (Rawlins, 1981, p. 89). Puthoff and Targ (1977) documented a number of mistakes. In a published, handwritten, signed letter, Randi replied offering $1,000 if any claimed error could be demonstrated (see Fuller, 1979). Fuller proved Randi wrong. In a rejoinder to Puthoff and Targ (1977), Randi reversed himself (for a clear example, see point number 15 in Randi, 1982, p. 223). Randi should have paid the $1,000, but he never did." however, a critical contradiction showing that Geller would cheat when he could comes from David Marks - see David Marks. (1986). Investigating the paranormal. Nature 320: 121-124. It is difficult to proceed further pending an appraisal of relevant source literature. I will provide an overview of the relevant ones, in lieu of an appraisal: See first Marks' 1978 paper "Information Transmission in Remote Viewing Experiments" and Tart's paper of the same name (Nature. Vol. 284. No. 5752. p 19 1. March 13 1980 , then see further exchange Tart, Puthoff, & Targ (1980). Information transfer in Remote Viewing Experiments, Marks (1981). Sensory cues Invalidate Remote Viewing Experiments, Puthoff & Targ (1981). Rebuttal of Criticisms of Remote Viewing Experiments, and the following paper which does not cite the Targ 1981 paper Marks (1986). Remote Viewing Exposed. (for rebuttal to this paper, see pp. 210-212 of the aforementioned thesis Is Physicalism "Really" True?, a concluding excerpt states, "Though seriously flawed, the Marks/Kamman analysis was an important contribution to remote viewing research. Even before this objection became known some experimenters had recognized the problem and were taking care to check their raw data for inadvertent clues prior to judging. But once the Marks/Kamman critique was published, those safeguards quickly became standard procedure for all responsibly done remote viewing research." In CHILD, I. L. (1987). Criticism in experimental parapsychology, 1975–1985. In S. Krippner (Ed. ), Advances in Parapsychological Research 5 (pp. 190–224). Jefferson, NC: McFarland, on p. 209, we find that "inaccuracies in Marks and Kamman's account of these [remote viewing] experiments are described in a review by T. Rockwell (1981)"[FOOTNOTE:Rockwell, T. (1981). [Review of The psychology of the psychic]. Parapsychology Review, 12(2), 25-28.]) The reader can look at aforementioned thesis "Is Physicalism really True", Palmer's 1985 paper An Evaluative Report on the Current Status of Parapsychology, and this: https://s3.amazonaws.com/cttart/articles/april2013articles/Remote+Viewing-+Examination+of+the+Marks+and+Kamman+Cueing+Artifacts+Hypothesis.pdf, on Price and remote viewing. Regarding Puthoff & Targ (1976). A perceptual channel for information transfer over kilometer distance: Historical perspective and recent research, the reader can make use of the thesis "Is Physicalism Really True", then John Palmer's 1985 article in evaluating Hammid series. For what it is worth, Russell Targ noted, in response to Internet attacks, [1]: Remote viewing is not "pseudoscience." Please immediately drop that inaccurate and insulting term that you have scattered throughout my Wikipedia bio-page. Wikipedia's definition: "Pseudoscience is a claim, belief or practice which is presented as scientific, but does not adhere to a valid scientific method, lacks supporting evidence or plausibility, cannot be reliably tested, or otherwise lacks scientific status. The term pseudoscience is often considered inherently pejorative, because it suggests something is being inaccurately or even deceptively portrayed as science." There are a number of reasons that editors at Wikipedia should not characterize remote viewing as pseudoscience, when it is not characterized that way by the informed scientific community. 1 — In order to publish our findings in the 1976 Proceedings of the IEEE, we had to meet with Robert W. Lucky, managing editor, and his board. The editor proposed to us that we show him how to conduct a remote viewing experiment. If it was successful, he would publish our paper. The editor was also head of electro-optics at Bell Telephone Laboratory. We gave a talk at his lab. He then chose some engineers to be the "psychics" for each of five days. Each day he hid himself at a randomly chosen location in the nearby town. After the agreed-upon five trials, the editor read the five transcripts and successfully matched each of the five correctly to his hiding places. This was significant at 0.008 (one in 5!, 5-factorial). As a result, he published our paper on "Information Transmission Over Kilometer Distances". 2 — In our 23 year program for the government at SRI, we had to carry out "demonstration of ability" tasks for the Director of CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency, NASA, and Commanding General of the Army Intelligence Command. (The names are available upon request.) For the CIA we were able to accurately describe and draw a giant gantry crane rolling on eight wheels over a large building, and draw the 60 foot gores, "slices" of a sphere, under construction in northern Russia. The sphere was entirely accurate, although its existence was unknown at the time. The description was so accurate that it became the subject of a Congressional hearing of the House Committee on Intelligence. They were afraid of a security leak. No leak was found, and we were told to "press on." 3 — Remote viewing is easily replicated and has been demonstrated all over the world. It has been the subject of several Ph.D. dissertations in the US and abroad. Princeton University had a 25 year program investigating remote viewing with more than 450 trials. Prof. Robert Jahn also published a lengthy and highly significant (p = 10-10 or 1 in ten billion) experimental investigation of remote viewing in the 1982 Proc. IEEE. 4 — The kind of tasks that kept us in business for twenty-three years include: SRI psychics found a downed Russian bomber in Africa; reported on the health of American hostages in Iran; described Soviet weapons factories in Siberia; located a kidnapped US general in Italy; and accurately forecasted the failure of a Chinese atomic-bomb test three days before it occurred, etc. When San Francisco heiress Patricia Hearst was abducted from her home in Berkeley, a psychic with the SRI team was the first to identify the kidnapper by name and then accurately describe and locate the kidnap car. I was at the Berkeley police station and witnessed this event. 5 — Jessica Utts is a statistics Professor at the University of California, Irvine, and is president of the American Statistical Association. In writing for her part of a 1995 evaluation of our work for the CIA, she wrote: "Using the standards applied to any other area of science, it is concluded that psychic functioning has been well established. The statistical results of the studies examined are far beyond what is expected by chance. Arguments that these results could be due to methodological flaws in the experiments are soundly refuted. Remote viewing has been conceptually replicated across a number of laboratories, by various experimenters, and in different cultures. This is a robust effect that, were it not such an unusual domain, would no longer be questioned by science as a real phenomenon. It is unlikely that methodological flaws could account for its remarkable consistency." 6 — Whether you believe some, all, or none of the above, it should be clear that hundreds of people were involved in a 23 year, multi-million dollar operational program at SRI, the CIA, DIA and two dozen intelligence officers at the army base at Ft. Meade. Regardless of the personal opinion of a Wikipedia editor, it is not logically coherent to trivialize this whole remote viewing undertaking as some kind of "pseudoscience." Besides me, there is a parade of Ph.D. physicists, psychologists, and heads of government agencies who think our work was valuable, though puzzling. - Russell Targ, May 12, 2014 follow-up work from SRI experiments is described in Targ (1994). Remote viewing replication evaluated by concept analysis (on this,
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