Prime Time Replay:

Dean Radin
on the scientific evidence for
paranormal mental powers


MsgId: *brain_storm(1)
Date: Fri Aug 1 22:03:04 EDT 1997
From: Rob_Killheffer At: 205.198.117.142

Good evening and welcome to another edition of Brainstorms. Our topic tonight is a bit of a departure from our usual range of subjects -- more often we cover ESP, psychokinesis, and other "paranormal" issues in our High Strangeness chats on Tuesdays -- but I thought that, since the more credible theories of psychic phenomena link it to activity in the brain, it was worth our while to address the subject from the point of view of what we know about the brain. To aid us in examining the subject tonight, we've got as our guest Dean Radin, researcher into psychic abilities and author of the new book "THE CONSCIOUS UNIVERSE: THE SCIENTIFIC TRUTH OF PSYCHIC PHENOMENA." Welcome, Dean.
MsgId: *brain_storm(2)
Date: Fri Aug 1 22:03:44 EDT 1997
From: Dean_Radin At: 207.147.238.43

Thank you.
MsgId: *brain_storm(3)
Date: Fri Aug 1 22:07:32 EDT 1997
From: Rob_Killheffer At: 205.198.117.142

The position you take in your new book is that the experimental evidence in favor of some psychic phenomena is by now so overwhelming that it's essentially proven to exist -- and that it's only a matter of time before mainstream science recognizes that fact. Could you give us a little detail on the kind of evidence that exists?
MsgId: *brain_storm(4)
Date: Fri Aug 1 22:08:44 EDT 1997
From: Dean_Radin At: 207.147.238.43

What constitutes evidence in science is objective, repeatable, empirical measurements. It is in this sense that psychic or "psi" phenomena have been "proven." I put "proven" in quotes because of course in a scientific fashion we only know things to various degrees of probability. In this case, the probabilities are expressed in terms of odds against chance for what we see in the experiments, and the odds are now in the trillions to one.

The types of experiments that are now known to be repeatable by independent investigators include studies of telepathy, precognition, clairvoyance (also called remote viewing), and small-scale mind-matter interactions.

MsgId: *brain_storm(7)
Date: Fri Aug 1 22:12:40 EDT 1997
From: Rob_Killheffer At: 205.198.117.142

Could you describe one such experiment, briefly, so we get an idea of what exactly has been studied?
MsgId: *brain_storm(8)
Date: Fri Aug 1 22:14:49 EDT 1997
From: Dean_Radin At: 207.147.238.43

In a telepathy experiment, three people are involved. A sender, receiver and experimenter. The idea of telepathy is that somehow information gets from the sender to the receiver, but without the use of the usual senses. The procedure used is to create a large pool of targets, usually pictures or video clips.

The experimenter has an assistant (or automated method) randomly select one of these as the target. The sender is asked to try to mentally send that random target to the receiver, oftentimes by trying to vividly imagine the scene or image in the target. Meanwhile, the receiver is asked to speak out loud any thoughts or impressions that come to mind. What they say is, in some experiments, sent via a one-way audio link, to the sender to help guide the sender's mental "telepathic" strategy. At the end of a prespecified time period, say 20 minutes, the receiver is asked to look at four pictures, one of which was the real target, and three are decoys. The receiver is asked to select the one that most closely corresponded to their images. By chance, you'd expect to get the right target 1 in 4 times, or 25%. We talk in terms of a "hit rate" in these studies, so the hit rate by chance is 25%.

In some 2,500 studies to date, conducted by investigators around the world in at least 10 different laboratories, the observed hit rate in telepathy experiments is about 34%. The odds of getting 34% rather than 25% is billions to one against chance. So we know that the 9% over-chance effect is genuine. The question is: What caused that 9%? Other possibilities that might explain the 9% are sensory leakage, randomization problems, selective reporting problems, and a host of other criticisms often levied against these results. More detailed analyses of these and other criticisms, however, show that *none* of the plausible explanations can explain away that 9%. Even long-term skeptics concede now that we are dealing with something genuine that is not a known artifact. Among those skeptics is the late Carl Sagan.

MsgId: *brain_storm(16)
Date: Fri Aug 1 22:26:33 EDT 1997
From: Rob_Killheffer At: 205.198.117.142

Okay, so if we grant (at least for the sake of argument) that the evidence indicates that something interesting is going on: as you said a moment ago, the question is, what? And that's what interests me most: you clearly don't subscribe to any "supernatural" explanation of these effects -- your goal seems to be to reconcile them with the rest of scientific knowledge instead, right?
MsgId: *brain_storm(17)
Date: Fri Aug 1 22:29:11 EDT 1997
From: Dean_Radin At: 207.147.238.43

Right. The history of science may be seen as the history of turning the supernatural into the paranormal, and then the paranormal into the normal. It is no different for psi research. We are beginning to glimpse not only *that* psi phenomena are genuine, but a little about *why*. Contrary to a common skeptical argument that psi violates "natural" or scientific laws, in fact psi may be seen as becoming increasingly more compatible with advancements in many scientific disciplines.

Theoretical and empirical advancements in, for example, quantum physics, shows that such odd things as nonlocality, "quantum teleportation," and quantum influences in biology, are being discussed seriously now. If nonlocality does express itself (as it must) in biological systems, and at the psychological level as well (as it must in some sense), then I am proposing that psi is the *experience* of nonlocality. The only reason this is seen as controversial is because of the assumption that there is no evidence for psi. Well, that evidence is reviewed in some detail in my book, "The Conscious Universe."

MsgId: *brain_storm(20)
Date: Fri Aug 1 22:37:12 EDT 1997
From: Rob_Killheffer At: 205.198.117.142

There's no doubt that some of the odder concepts of quantum physics seem to open room for things like precognition and telepathy, but there still seems to be a big gap between the demonstration of the effects and proving a connection to nonlocality or entangled particles, doesn't there? Most physicists tend to think that such quantum effects aren't visible at macroscopic scales, so why would they be perceptible in the brain?
MsgId: *brain_storm(24)
Date: Fri Aug 1 22:51:06 EDT 1997
From: Dean_Radin At: 207.147.238.43

It's true that to date many quantum physicists have believed that the hot, wet environment of the brain was incompatible with the cold (or small) world required to demonstrate quantum coherence and some of the stranger aspects of the quantum world. However, discussions in the last few years have begun which have seriously challenged this conventional wisdom. The turn-about in thinking was partially stimulated by the suggestion that microtubules in brain neurons *may* provide a physical substrate for quantum coherence.

However, the point here is not that we know that it is microtubules per se, but only that we know so little about brain structure at deep levels, and even less about the limits of quantum coherence, that as we discover more about both aspects it is becoming more likely that the principle of nonlocality is what people are reporting when they talk about certain interconnections traditionally called psychic. In addition, at some point we are presented with such an enormous degree of empirical evidence for a "psi anomaly," that theorists will be pushed to think of ways to account for psi. I would be pleased if someone thought of a better explanation.

MsgId: *brain_storm(26)
Date: Fri Aug 1 22:51:49 EDT 1997
From: Rob_Killheffer At: 205.198.117.142

While we're waiting for him to return, let me say that there are some provocative anecdotes in Dean's book, and some compelling experimental data, that make it hard to disagree with Carl Sagan, who said in one of his last books, "THE DEMON HAUNTED WORLD," that there are a few claims of psychic phenomena that would justify serious scientific investigation. Something does seem to be happening, but what? It will be interesting to see if more researchers become willing to explore these areas what they come up with. Is it weird quantum physics? Some as-yet undiscovered field effect generated by the brain?

Ah, you're back! Great. You might have encountered an occasional problem we have -- if you're trying to send a long message, you may have to break it into smaller parts, as you had been doing so far. Sometimes if you try to send too much at once the server just hangs.

Sorry if the server trouble has derailed our conversation a bit. We're running short on time, and one thing I wanted to ask about was the disparity in scale between the effects that have been studied in the lab and the anecdotal reports that everyone has encountered.

MsgId: *brain_storm(29)
Date: Fri Aug 1 22:56:17 EDT 1997
From: Dean_Radin At: 207.147.238.43

It's true that we would feel more comfortable if we had a good theoretical explanation for the psi effects we see in the lab, but science is a two-step: both theory and experiment. In this case, the experiments have out-run the theories. What the future explanatory theory looks like will probably paint a picture of reality unlike anything we're used to.

On your last question (since we're out of sync a bit), it is not surprising that we see much smaller effects in the artificial, controlled environment of the lab. This is a chronic problem in all psychology experiments. But what we see in the lab has a big advantage over the "real world": We know that what we're seeing is very likely to be what we *think* it is.

MsgId: *brain_storm(31)
Date: Fri Aug 1 22:59:16 EDT 1997
From: Rob_Killheffer At: 205.198.117.142

The case of the 19th century painter Arthur Severn and his wife, which you recount in your book, for instance, seems so much stronger an effect than anything that's been seen in an experiment -- she wakes up feeling as if she has been struck in the mouth, thinks she's bleeding, but in fact it was her husband in the boat who was injured. Or the CIA psychic who drew the picture of the machine at the Soviet nuclear research center: if it's the same sort of thing that's being seen in the lab, why isn't it more dramatic, more unequivocal?
MsgId: *brain_storm(32)
Date: Fri Aug 1 23:02:19 EDT 1997
From: Dean_Radin At: 207.147.238.43

Some individual results in the lab are as impressive as the real-life anecdotes. But we need to deemphasize the amazing, UFO-on-the-white-house-lawn sort of examples. The key to a scientific confirmation of psi is repeatable evidence by many investigators. Amazing individual trials do occur, but they are rare compared to real, but smaller effects that are much easier to obtain in the lab.
MsgId: *brain_storm(33)
Date: Fri Aug 1 23:03:22 EDT 1997
From: Rob_Killheffer At: 205.198.117.142

Dean, we're just about out of time. Let me close with a follow-up to that last question: do you think that some (or all?) of those dramatic anecdotes are distorted, exaggerated, or even mistaken -- that psi effects are more likely to occur as the relatively weak effects seen in the lab rather than in the striking way they come up in urban legend?
MsgId: *brain_storm(34)
Date: Fri Aug 1 23:07:15 EDT 1997
From: Dean_Radin At: 207.147.238.43

Some of the amazing real-life anecdotes are clearly exaggerations or due to selective memory. But not all. Some truly striking effects do occur in the lab under controlled conditions, so we know that these sorts of things can occur in principle. Still, it is always best to be conservative in these matters, so I and many of my colleagues are more comfortable with smaller but easier to replicate effects.
MsgId: *brain_storm(35)
Date: Fri Aug 1 23:09:43 EDT 1997
From: Rob_Killheffer At: 205.198.117.142

Dean, thanks for coming tonight, and sorry again for the server glitches. I think the message is clear enough, though: the evidence for some kinds of psychic phenomena are impressive enough that they deserve full-fledged scientific investigation and unbiased consideration. Perhaps the results will be revolutionary, or perhaps they won't, but it's unscientific to let prejudice interfere. Thanks again, Dean. This is Rob Killheffer, signing off for Braistorms. Goodnight!
MsgId: *brain_storm(36)
Date: Fri Aug 1 23:11:10 EDT 1997
From: Dean_Radin At: 207.147.238.43

Thanks, good night!


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