It happened I was out of town on business, and I had come home from the airport. The phone rang. A local TV station wanted to know if I could come down and do an interview on remote viewing. I had the time, so I went down there. The producer and I discussed remote viewing, and a cameraman recorded. Here is about remote viewing as best as I can pull it together.

There is a thing called the ganzfeld (whole field) state. It involves putting a human subject into sensory deprivation, and in that state the subject can perceive what another person is seeing. The other person can be in another part of the city. A curious thing about the ganzfeld state is the subject puts halves of ping pong balls over his eyes.

Meanwhile the other person, the sender, drives to various locations and looks at a street scene, park, building or other. The subject is advised to start seeking, and they draw a sketch of what the other person is seeing. At the end everybody gets back together to see if what the sender saw is what the subject perceived. Some researchers claimed good results. Specifically Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff working at Stanford University were among those who conducted experiments. From Wikipedia:

Examination of the few actual transcripts published by Targ and Puthoff show that just such clues were present. To find out if the unpublished transcripts contained cues, Marks and Kammann wrote to Targ and Puthoff requesting copies. It is almost unheard of for a scientist to refuse to provide his data for independent examination when asked, but Targ and Puthoff consistently refused to allow Marks and Kammann to see copies of the transcripts. Marks and Kammann were, however, able to obtain copies of the transcripts from the judge who used them. The transcripts were found to contain a wealth of cues.

The TV producer asked me what I thought of it, and my reply was lame. All I could tell him was about the Targ and Puthoff tests, and that there were irregularities. But here is my take on what is necessary to reliably test remote viewing.

The outside person goes out and takes photos of five to ten locations. He makes prints of all the photos, and he makes a backup set and numbers each one in random order. This is necessary so there are no time of day cues in the images. He keeps them to himself. On the day of the test the outside man goes to the various locations in the order of the numbers on his set of prints. Then the test moderator advises the subject to view and to draw.

Everybody gets together after the test run. The outside man shows photos of the sites, likely numbered 1, 2, 3… They compare the photos with the drawings. Yes, that looks like the drawing. No, that’s not like the drawing. And Targ and Puthoff claimed better better than chance results. If that is what they did, then they did it wrong. There is a topic called DOE, design of experiments. How do you design an experiment that does not fall prey to judgement or fakery? I would suggest this approach:

The subject then compares photos with drawings and matches drawings to prints. This photo goes with this drawing, and so on. Remember, that the outside person has the numbered prints, so the question boils down to, “Do the numbers match?” This removes subjectivity from the analysis of the results. My guess is remote viewing will never provide results better than probability