Abstract

The American Institutes for Research recently produced a report (M. D. Mumford et al, 1995) on the effectiveness of US government-funded research in demonstrating the existence of a remote viewing effect that could be used for intelligence-gathering purposes. The most recent studies in this program were carried out by Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) and these studies were the focus of the assessment. The evaluators concluded that the 10 SAIC studies reviewed contained no obvious flaws. One of the evaluators chose Experiment One to demonstrate 8 methodological criteria used to assess the studies: The experiment appeared to satisfy all 8. The publication of this report prompted the 1st author to become interested in attempting to replicate the SAIC research into remote viewing. Before doing so, the author examined the protocol (N. D. Lantz et al, 1994; unpublished data provided by E. C. May) used in Experiment One as a potential template for the repl!ication. This examination uncovered 4 possible pathways of information leakage apparently present in the study. In addition, problems were encountered by the SAIC team in reconstructing a number of unrecorded procedural details concerning Experiment One.