Extrasensory perception, commonly called esp, is perception occurring independently of known sensory processes such as sight or hearing. If other faculties or cognitive processes, such as memory or dreaming, are involved in esp, they are not involved in ways that fit with current scientific knowledge or theories. The main categories of esp are telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition. The existence of esp is disputed, though systematic experimental research on the subject has been ongoing for about a century.
For a detailed account of how easy it is for scientists to commit fraud in this area, read James Randi's account of the Uri Geller experiments designed and executed by Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff of the Stanford Research Institute [not affiliated with Stanford University]. See either chapter 7 of Flim- Flam! or The Magic of Uri Geller. But most people who believe in esp probably have never read the works of researchers such as Rhine, Puthoff and Targ, or Tart and their belief is not dependent upon the scientific research of the paranormal pioneers. Most believers in esp are probably not in the least interested that from the standpoint of physics there seems to be a major problem with the assumption or finding of all psi research that spatial distance is irrelevant to the exercise of esp. Each of the other four known forces in nature weaken with distance. Thus, as Einstein pointed out, "This suggests...a very strong indication that a non-recognized source of systematic errors may have been involved [in these esp experiments]."[note 1] What a kind way to put it!
Most believers in esp are probably not interested in the year- long study done by the United States Air Force Research Laboratories which was unable to verify the existence of esp. The VERITAC study, named after the computer used, is considered insignificant by psi researchers because it didn't support their viewpoint. But I doubt that it much matters to the average believer, who may well believe that the government can't be trusted in this or any other matter. There is a paranoid mentality that accompanies many true believers: the government lies to us about esp and ufo's because it doesn't want us to know what it's doing.
More typical is belief based upon personal and authoritative anecdotes. The personal anecdote takes the form of Aunt Daisie's dream about her father dying right before he died and how the dream was so vivid and accurate that it couldn't possibly be explained by ordinary means; therefore, some sort of supernatural event must have occurred. How else could the dream be explained? The authoritative anecdotes are identical in nature to the personal ones; they are presented by people one admires, respects, loves or thinks is not the kind of person to make things up.
How else can the phenomenon be explained? This is the question I've heard asked by true believers again and again. In fact, when I was a true believer in Edgar Cayce and Paramahansa Yogananda I used to ask the same question. The TB would rather believe that there is a fifth force, and a mighty powerful one at that, that has eluded all efforts at scientific discovery, that accounts for esp. This force might be an as yet undiscovered natural force (or perhaps known on Atlantis aeons ago but lost when it sunk) or it might be due to supernatural intervention, a miracle. The skeptic would rather believe that esp doesn't exist than that there is some very strong and powerful force which is undetectable even though we're able to detect what must be a much weaker force, gravity, without any trouble at all. As for miracles, even if the skeptic believes in them, they're reserved for unique situations and grand purposes.
First of all, I don't rule out the possibility that people can predict the future. We do it all the time, but we usually, if not always, do it by taking into account our experience, knowledge and surroundings. No doubt much of our anticipation of the future is unconscious and second nature, but it is based on quite natural and mundane abilities not on mysterious or supernatural powers.
Secondly, I don't think every event in the universe can be or needs to be explained.
Thirdly, I don't think that an event which can't be explained should be assumed to be a supernatural occurrence. Maybe it can't be explained because there's nothing to explain. For example, I had a dream that I came into a room where my best friend was seated with his back towards me. He died of a cerebral hemorrhage five weeks earlier. Does this dream need to be explained? Why? If I had had the dream five weeks before he died, would it have needed explanation then? I once had a very vivid dream of an airliner crashing nose first in San Diego (where I lived for 20 years). About ten years after the dream an airliner went down in San Diego. Am I clairvoyant? Does my dream need to be explained? If it does, I think several explanations are plausible which do not require any reference to supernatural powers.
Finally, there must be 20 billion dreams a night on this planet and it would be pretty odd if none of them corresponded in vague or precise ways to actual events past, present and future. Yet, most dreams about people dying, airplanes crashing, buildings collapsing, etc., do not correspond to future events. If a significant number of dreams of just a single person corresponded to future events, then I would be the first to try to get close to the clairvoyant and recommend government funding to try to find out what mechanism was at work here. Maybe this power could be harnessed for the good of the human race. Most of us have many anxieties and concerns about people we know and love and have frequent dreams of both good and harm befalling our loved ones. If we are honest with ourselves I think we'll admit that most of these dreams belie very real present fears and concerns. We forget most of these dreams. But, if you have a dream of your mother dying and she dies the next day, there will be a natural tendency in many people to think that somehow their dream was an omen. Furthermore, we know from many studies done on memory that many of the details of our memories are filled in after the fact, i.e., we remember things that we learn of after the event we witnessed or experienced, and incorporate those later experiences into our memories of earlier events.[note 2] It is likely that memories of dreams would follow the same pattern. The striking precision of clairvoyant dreams may well come from data supplied after the dream but remembered as being part of the dream itself.
One thing that defenders of psi have in common is faith. This alone accounts for why they pursue and provide reams of empirical data to support their claims but disregard or trivialize all empirical evidence that indicates their claims are in error. So their faith is not complete irrational fideism--belief without regard for and totally in spite of the evidence. Their faith is the kind of controlled faith that marks religious belief. Evidence counts, but only if it supports your belief; otherwise it doesn't count. This trivializes the concept of evidence and explains, in part, why so many of the empirical tests for psi are inadequately designed, controlled and administered. It explains too why all the rationalization goes on to explain away failures to confirm their psychic hypotheses. Here's an example of typical rationalization and evasion by a scientific investigator of psychic phenomena, Dr. Charles Tart, retired professor of psychology at the University of California at Davis, now at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology. The following is from a letter he wrote to the New York Review (Feb 19, 1981) in response to criticisms by Martin Gardner of Tart's work. [I added to bold italics to call attention to how Tart tries to use language to reinforce the notion that he is a reputable scientist and Gardner is the quack.]
I see that Martin Gardner is again using this popular literary journal as a vehicle to attack my scientific research that was reported in my Learning to Use Extrasensory Perception (University of Chicago Press, 1976) [NYR, May 15]. As a working scientist, I am committed to reporting and dealing with all of the facts in my studies, whether they agree with my cherished beliefs or not. Data is primary. Gardner, by contrast, apparently knows what's true and false in some absolute way, so when inconvenient facts run counter to his beliefs he suppresses them or rationalizes them away. He knows that esp is impossible, so when he is presented with evidence for it, he imagines some way in which the experimenters are fools, frauds, or both. Mr. Gardner doesn't need actual evidence for this, his suspicions are sufficient. Most people would consider his casual and unsupported accusations of fraud against one of my more successful experimenters, Gaines Thomas (now a professional psychologist), as malicious libel, but I suppose Mr. Gardner believes he's just protecting us gullible people from ourselves....Gardner has presented a clearly inadequate theory [about possible error and/or fraud in Tart's and others' work] to a literary audience as if it were valid. The interested reader is invited to look at the above communications [Tart had cited several articles in the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research] to ascertain the facts for himself. There are other distortions in Gardner's article that I shall not bother to waste our time correcting here: they are, unfortunately, typical of Gardner's writings on parapsychology.
When real scientists have criticisms of each other's work, the standard procedure is to submit the criticisms to the appropriate technical journal. The submission is reviewed by other scientists for basic competency and relevance, and then published. I doubt that Mr. Gardner's article would have stood up to this refereeing process in a legitimate scientific journal. A thoughtful reader might begin to wonder, then, why Mr. Gardner presents such a distorted and selectively incomplete picture of serious scientific research to the general audience represented by readers of the Review.
The implications of esp for understanding human nature are enormous, and call for extensive, high quality scientific research. A recent survey of mine showed hardly a dozen scientists working at it full time, on a most inadequate budget of only a little over half a million dollars a year for the entire United States. The subject is too important and too underresearched to waste further time with pseudo-critics like Mr. Gardner who are covertly trying to manipulate public opinion, rather than contributing anything to scientific progress.
I realize that someone of Gardner's stature needs no advocate against Tart, but I can't resist commenting on Tart's method of defending his and others' work on esp and his attack on a critic who stands second to none in our age for relentless study and intelligent and critical examination of all kinds of science (good, bad and bogus, as he put it in the title of one of his books).
The first thing to note is how Tart tries to reinforce the idea that he and his ilk are real scientists, that their concern is only for the truth, they just collect data and let the stats fall where they may. Note next that Tart insists again and again on his own integrity and seriousness. Note next how he reinforces the notion that while he and his dozen comrades are trying to do serious research on a subject of huge significance for mankind, they are being persecuted and unjustly attacked by unworthy and devious opponents.
I can't say for certain that Tart lacks personal integrity and seriousness. It appears that he is a liar and a deceiver, but it may be that he is just self-deceived and overzealous. Yet, it appears that he's not much of a scientist; he apparently knowingly omits relevant data that refute rather than confirm his esp hypotheses; he sets up experiments in sloppily controlled ways; he rationalizes any failure to confirm his pet theories; he distorts the claims of his critics; and, he fails to respond to questions which seriously undermine the integrity of his studies.
He seems to be lying when he says that he is committed to reporting all of the facts in his studies and that data is primary. One of the primary methodological principles of "real" scientific experimentation is that a single test of a causal hypothesis which results in statistical data that indicate a correlation between two or more events should not be taken as proof of a causal connection. Not only did Tart make extravagant claims on the basis of one set of experiments, when he repeated the experiment with better controls than in the first experiment (where a key piece of equipment was demonstrated by several mathematicians at UC Davis to have been malfunctioning), he was unable to duplicate the fantastic results of the first experiment done with faulty equipment and controls. Yet, he trivializes this fact in his book. Sherman Stein, one of the mathematicians who determined that the randomizer used in the first tests was faulty, asked Tart when he was going to do the tests over with a proper randomizer and Tart told Stein that he'd already done it. The results were negative [i.e., the data were what one would expect due to chance] but Tart rationalized the contrary data as due to the less gifted, more uptight subjects and being "constantly plagued by machine malfunctions" in the second experiment [Randi, FlimFlam!, 153], [Gardner, Science Good,Bad & Bogus, p. 211].
Tart is deceptive and attempts to manipulate opinion against Gardner by suggesting things it is likely Tart knows are not true. For example, Gardner has been writing about esp and other paranormal phenomena for years. He has a long public record and he's never indicated any support for the notion that he or anyone else can have a priori knowledge about esp. Gardner has never said, to my knowledge, that esp is impossible. It seems odd that a man who would think all psychic phenomena are a priori impossible and therefore all paranormal claims can be known to be false without investigation would spend a lifetime investigating such claims! And, it seems reasonable that if in case after case, without a single exception, one's investigation keeps turning up evidence of foolishness, fraud, deception, self- deception, wishful thinking, errors and incompetence, that one would be justified in rejecting out of hand the next crackpot claim that comes down the pike. Yet, Gardner never does that. He gives even the stupidest of the stupid the same day in court as the wisest of the wise. I admire him for that, and consider him to be doing mankind a great service by devoting his life to the systematic examination of science and pseudoscience. The fact is that it is Tart and other parapsychologists who act as if they know the truth about esp in some absolute way and who rationalize away counterfactual evidence to their paranormal claims. It is they who have no need for actual evidence. One gets the feeling that they consider doing experiments to confirm their hypotheses a necessary evil that they must do to satisfy others.
It is also likely that Tart knew that Gardner did not accuse him or his associates of fraud. Gardner did point out that the design of the experiment was so poor that the results obtained could easily have been obtained fraudulently. A good experimenter--a real scientist?--especially in a field which has a lifelong history of fraudulent and incompetent experimenters, should take every precaution to guard an experiment's results from being potentially tainted.[note 3] I think any reasonable psi researcher should expect to be checked for fraud and should therefore design experiments where cheating is impossible. The fact that this seems a reasonable requirement indicates something about the nature of the whole parapsychic enterprise. Would any reasonable person take physics or chemistry seriously if those disciplines were as rife with frauds and incompetents as parapsychology is?
Tart is absolutely correct about scientific papers being refereed by scientists before publication in reputable journals. He is certainly wrong, however, when he asserts that an article is published if it passes the tests of "competency and relevance." Those are necessary, but not sufficient conditions for publication in any journal, scientific or not. But I have no doubt that those are sufficient conditions for publication in the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research. If Tart wants to call that journal a "scientific" journal he may do so but why stop there? We may as well call Reader's Digest and Life magazine scientific.
The irony in Tart's claim that Gardner "has presented a clearly inadequate theory to a literary audience as if it were valid" is too rich and resonant with irony to deserve anything but thunderous horse-laughs for comment. Likewise for Tart's claim that "Gardner presents...a distorted and selectively incomplete picture of serious scientific research...."
As for Tart's claim about the significance of esp and esp research, I can only call them self-serving claims of an incompetent egoist or naive claims of a deluded psychologist. I only hope that Tart is correct about one thing: I hope he's right about there only being a dozen scientists working full-time on esp. In a rational world, that would be 13 too many.
further reading
-----. Science Confronts the Paranormal, edited by Kendrick Frazier. (Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1986).
Alcock, James E. Science and Supernature : a Critical Appraisal of Parapsychology (Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1990).
Gardner, Martin. Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1957), ch. 25.
Gardner, Martin. Science: Good, Bad and Bogus (Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1981), chs. 7, 13, 18, 19, 21, 27 and 31.
Gardner, Martin. The WHYS of a Philosophical Scrivener (New York: Quill, 1983).
Gordon, Henry. Extrasensory Deception (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1987).
Hansel, C.E.M. esp and Parapsychology: A Critical Re- Evaluation (Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1980).
Hansel, C.E.M. The Search for Psychic Power : esp and Parapsychology Revisited (Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1989).
Hines, Terence. Pseudoscience and the Paranormal (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1990).
Hyman, Ray. The Elusive Quarry : a Scientific Appraisal of Psychical Research (Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1989).
Kurtz, Paul. The Transcendental Temptation : a Critique of Religion and the Paranormal (Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1986).
Loftus, Elizabeth F. Memory, Surprising New Insights Into How We Remember and Why We Forget (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley Pub. Co., 1980).
Loftus, Elizabeth F. Eyewitness Testimony (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979).
Randi, James. Flim-Flam! (Buffalo, New York: Prometheus Books,1982).
Wells, Gary L. and Elizabeth F. Loftus. Editors, Eyewitness Testimony : Psychological Perspectives (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984).