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.
Unfortunately, they may not have handled the procedure correctly. It's not surprising that self-proclaimed psychics off the street got no results. These people may well have been the psychic equivalents of those American Idol contestants who get eliminated in the early rounds. The existence of talentless, self-deluded amateur singers doesn't prove that no one can sing, and the existence of talentless, self-deluded amateur psychics doesn't prove that no one has psychic abilities.
To me, the interesting part of the story is this: "The MoD tried to recruit 12 'known' psychics who advertised their abilities on the Internet, but when they all refused they were forced to use 'novice' volunteers."
It would be instructive to learn who these twelve "known" psychics were and why they refused. There are some pretty well-known remote viewers offering their services in the USA, who appear to have produced positive results in the past. Were any of them contacted, or were the contacts limited to Madame Zora's Psychic Viewing and Tarot Card Reading Parlor? We may never know.
More detailed info on this story is found here.
The author notes that the report's negative conclusion about remote viewing "is based on the use of untrained individuals who showed no signs of having a remote viewing ability in the first place."
What bothers me is that people associated with remote viewing Web sites were contacted by the British government, and all declined to participate in the tests. If their abilities are genuine, why would they turn down this opportunity? No doubt this is a question that skeptics will ask - and legitimately so.
Posted by: Michael Prescott | February 24, 2007 at 01:29 PM
Here is a thoughtful "must read" from Paul H. Smith, addressing Britain's Ministry of Defense remote viewing research :
They Think They Know
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]
Posted by: Bo Kindstrand | March 01, 2007 at 01:48 AM