Evaluation of the Military's
20-year Program on Psychic Spying
Synopsis of Ray Hyman's report
Reviewed by Lyn Buchanan
Abstract: In 1995, the Central Intelligence Agency contracted for an outside, unbiased evaluation of 20 years of until-then classified government-funded programs in "remote viewing" (ESP). Psychologist Ray Hyman was one of two experts asked to review this research.
Ray Hyman's evaluation of the Military's 20-year program appears in the March/April issue of the "Skeptical Inquirer", a national publication.
If one steps back only a few inches from the text, which is not physically separated into sections, one can see that the Evaluation was, nonetheless written in five parts:
- Part one covers a brief summary of the military's project.
- Part two states that Mr. Hyman was selected by the CIA to participate in this evaluation because they knew that he was biased against the possibility of the existance of psi phenomena. It shows that he was instrumental in setting up the criteria for tests which would/would not show statistical proof that the phenomenon exists.
- Part three states that a review of the project's records not only showed that it passed his test, but that it exceeded it.
- Part four shows many of the mental mechanations Mr. Hyman then used to refute the validity of the findings and of his own test criteria. This part also points out that Jessica Utts, expert statistician at the University of California at Davis, who was the other evaluator, was prone to error for her willingness to believe the resultant statistics.
- Part five is Mr. Hyman's explanation of why, no matter how much or how valid the proof, one must, at all costs, disbelieve the data.
The Evaluation ends with Mr. Hyman's list of four reasons which justify why he would wait, forever if need be, for someone to disprove any data which might show the phenomenon's existance rather than to believe it.
The article left this reviewer with the feeling that the CIA might need to examine their evaluator selection process more closely, IF what they are really after is the truth.
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