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ATTACHMENT 2: Comments on Six Questions Contained in Previous Memo
Question 1: The basic.claim! mElde for remote viewing -and PK are
technically, of course, that both exist and can be demonstrated with
some measure of reliability. Claims also pertain to the distance over
which remote viewing takes place, its noisy characteristics, and its
presence in virtually all persons. As a practical matter, many of these
claims are not valid as jiidged from the experimental data, yet appear
to be substatiLiated from anecdotal-data. I am less familiar with the
PK claims, and will accordingly not address those. See, however, my
staLeinents of the review of remote viewing literature in a later section
of the black notebook. Operationally, the claims are not nearly as
extraordinary. Although some operational people are confirmed skeptics,
others are'obviously believers, and feel that there is some intelligence
value to the remote viewing and PK activities. Some persons have gone
so far as to claim that the Soviets can in fact use PK on a long distance
basis to inflict substantial damage to strategic and tactical warfare
equipments. These claims are unsubstantiated, yet believed by some.
Question 2: Very few reliable data exist to support these claims.
As indicated above and in my analysis of the SRI activities, the "data"
are subject to experimental flaws in most cases and should be treated
cautiously. On the other hand, the rejection of such claims is not a
simple matter because of the statistical implications of doing an
experiment necessary to disprove the existence of a phenomenon. Such an
experiment is by definition a critical one, yet clearly must also be
treated, in a probabilistic sense. Thus, very few scientists would lay
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claim to being able to conduct an experiment designed to disprove the
existence of anything.
Question 3: This question is almost too broad to answer. clearly,
the first form of experimentation that is required is that of a controlled
nature, not one subject to -the fancies of contract monitors, ranking
officers, and key political figures. Rather, a long-range experimental
plan, clearly stating hypotheses to be tested and procedures to be
followed, is required before any experimentation should be supported or
undertaken. I do not consider the AMSAA work to be of this programmatic
and planned nature. That is not to say that there is insufficient
evidence to justify such research being done; rather, there is sufficient
preliminary evidence to justify a future planned program, but not
continued exploration of targets of opportunity.
Question 4: The basic mechanisms underlying RV and PK phenomena
are ceiLainly not agreed upon, and are probably largely undefined.
The so-called tests which have been conducted are of limited scientific
va-lue and have been conducted under limited scientific control. Again,
a proc.1rammatic plan acceptable to scientists before the conduct of the
experiment is necessary, rather than a description of how -the test was
conducted after.the fact. The existing SRI protocol, for example, is
totally insufficient in detail to serve as a model for conduct of such
a program.
Question 5: Assuming the scientific claims are somewhat valid,
then one should conduct controlled operational experiments much as one
might conduct controlled'laboratory experiments. That is, meaningful
content of a form unknown to the experimenters and the viewer should be
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established by an intelligence agency, so that the response can be
scored objectively against that content. Thus, one should he able to
directly compare essential elements of information in a remote viewing
protocol and transcript much as one evaluates essential elements of
information in a photographic transcription. In order to make any
comparison with other operational techniques, common information
element@ must be directly compared in terms of accuracy, completeness,
and false information.
Question 6: The relative importance of many of the steps used in
these experimenLs is questionable, and perhaps justified only by the
claims of the experimenters who have developed the research protocols.
See my detailed question and answer discussion in the black book for
some details. others are contained in the report described in previous
meetings. Certainly, based upon the existing experimental evidence, it
is impossible to tell exactly and to what extent each of the steps in
the experimental procedures produces the claimed positive results.
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