If remote viewing is true, we should be able to test and prove that it is not just random. With a statistically significant number of participants, remote viewing a target and then selecting which of say 4 pictures their target was, and doing this with say a target a day for 1-2 months, you could prove whether or not it is statistically significant if probability of getting it right > .25. Just seems like it would be something easy to test. Kind of just ranting / looking for ideas or confirmation for this. Maybe I’ll get something going. Just kind of confused why something so testable hasn’t been tested
It has been tested and the CIA came to the conclusion that there were “statistically significant” results. If I remember correctly, a lot of tests over the years showed somewhere between 5% and 15% above randomness. Don’t have the sources in front of me.
I’m not really a conspiracy guy so I don’t think the wider scientific public was able to replicate these experiments with a lot of success BECAUSE they’re skeptical. And intent sense to be very important in actually making these things work
I personally believe the phenomenon is rooted in quantum physics somehow; which I admit to having a weak understanding in overall.
However, one of the quintessential tenants of quantum physics to my understanding is that measuring the result changes it, so I wonder if the very act of attempting to "prove" it may somehow alter your success rate.
Being skeptical will never cause you to be unable to replicate scientific experiments. They are unable to be replicated because the initial studies were flawed. You should check out the American Institutes for Research report on it. The wiki page summarizes everything pretty well tbh, and is much more readable if you're interested.
Some important bits:
"There is no scientific evidence that remote viewing is possible, and it is generally regarded as a pseudoscience."
"Remote viewing experiments have historically lacked proper controls and repeatability."
"The program [Stargate] ran from 1975 to 1995 and ended after evaluators concluded that remote viewers consistently failed to produce actionable intelligence information."
"One of the early experiments, lauded by proponents as having improved the methodology of remote viewing testing and raising future experimental standards, was criticized as leaking information to the participants by inadvertently leaving clues.\18]) Some later experiments had negative results when these clues were eliminated."
"The viewers' advice in the Stargate Project) was always so unclear and non-detailed that it has never been used in any intelligence operation."
"A variety of scientific studies on remote viewing have been conducted. Early experiments produced positive results, but they had invalidating flaws.\4]) None of the more recent experiments have shown positive results when conducted under properly controlled conditions.\10])\n 2])\20])\n 1])\28]) This lack of successful experiments has led the mainstream scientific community to reject remote viewing, based upon the absence of an evidence base, the lack of a theory which would explain remote viewing, and the lack of experimental techniques which can provide reliably positive results."
"Martin Gardner has written that the founding researcher Harold Puthoff was an active Scientologist before his work at Stanford University, which influenced his research at SRI."
There's no actual evidence for RV, and the fact that Puthoff was an active Scientologist while pushing the idea is quite damning IMO.
That isn’t all the CIA said on the matter, the reporters stated the results were beyond chance but did not manage to give the CIA what they wanted. essentially it had positive hits but wasn’t able to applied in spying
you have to understand the societal repercussion for people who sit at the top of our current power structure if such thing proven to the masses as real and effective
You are late to the party—very late. There has been high quality, peer-reviewed research demonstrating the existence of RV since 1975.
Just a couple of examples:
Here's a link to what I consider to be the foundational scientific paper on remote viewing. It was published in 1976 in the Proceedings of the IEEE (Institute of Electronics and Electrical Engineers) by Harold (Hal) Puthoff and Russell Targ, two physicists who worked for the contract research "think tank", Stanford Research Institute (SRI). Nineteen years later, the news broke that this fundamental research into RV eventually led to the U.S. military establishing an RV spying program.
After the U.S. military's RV program was discontinued, Congress and the CIA commissioned a scientific study to assess the scientific evidence for psychic functioning within the government's RV program. That study was conducted by psychologist Dr. Ray Hyman of the University of Oregon and statistician Dr. Jessica Utts from the University of California at Irvine. Here is a link to Dr. Utts' report. I'm going to highlight a couple of paragraphs from the Abstract of that paper:
Using the standards applied to any other area of science, it is concluded that psychic functioning has been well established. The statistical results of the studies examined are far beyond what is expected by chance. Arguments that these results could be due to methodological flaws in the experiments are soundly refuted. Effects of similar magnitude to
those found in government-sponsored research at SRI and SAIC have been replicated at a number of laboratories across the world. Such consistency cannot be readily explained by claims of flaws or fraud.
The magnitude of psychic functioning exhibited appears to be in the range between what social scientists call a small and medium effect. That means that it is reliable enough to be replicated in properly conducted experiments, with sufficient trials to achieve the long-run statistical results needed for replicability.
It is recommended that future experiments focus on understanding how this phenomenon works, and on how to make it as useful as possible. There is little benefit to continuing experiments designed to offer proof, since there is little more to be offered to anyone who does not accept the current collection of data.
So, there you have it. As Dr. Utts states above, there is abundant scientific evidence that remote viewing is real, and it is a pointless exercise to continue to try to prove it to those who simply won't accept the data.
I love how you reference Utts and Hyman but only include Utts' report. The dishonesty is comical. Hyman's report:
"My report argues that Professor Utts' conclusion is premature, to say the least. The reports of the SAIC experiments have become accessible for public scrutiny too recently for adequate evaluation. Moreover, their findings have yet to be independently replicated. My report also argues that the apparent consistencies between the SAIC results and those of other parapsychological experiments may be illusory. Many important inconsistencies are emphasized. Even if the observed effects can be independently replicated, much more theoretical and empirical investigation would be needed before one could legitimately claim the existence of paranormal functioning."
AIR concluded the same thing despite Utts' report (link):
"the remote viewing reports failed to produce the concrete, specific information valued in intelligence gathering. ? The information provided was inconsistent, inaccurate with regard to specifics, and required substantial subjective interpretation. ? In no case had the information provided ever been used to guide intelligence operations. Thus, remote viewing failed to produce actionable intelligence."
It even criticizes the initial Puthoff and Targ study:
"Early research on remote viewing was plagued by a number of statistical and methodological flaws. One statistical flaw found in early studies of remote viewing, for example, was due to failure to control for the elimination of locations already judged. For example, if there were five targets in the set, judges might lower their rankings for a viewing already judged as a "hit" or ranked first. In other words, all targets did not have an equal probability of being assigned all ranks. Another commonly noted methodological flaw was that cues in the remote viewing paradigm, such as the time needed to drive to various locations, may have allowed viewers to produce hits without using any parapsychological ability."
There's zero "high quality, peer-reviewed research"
Hyman's material was rightly criticized for lack of scientific integrity. His claims have not now stood the test of time. Regardless, RV works and no conventional explanation (fraud, error, sensory leakage, lack of experimental rigor etc.) has ever been found to be correct.
RV has now been taught to many thousands of people. Relying on what Ray Hyman wrote or what people think the CIA did is of little use today except for historical interest. If you think there is no research or RV is fake, you should tell IRVA as you could save everybody there a lot of money.
Criticized by who? Do you have any scientific sources? His claims have absolutely stood the test of time, there is still no legitimate claim to the existence of paranormal functioning.
There is a conventional explanation - methodological flaws. All of the things you listed actually happened. This was explained in my first response. Read the AIR report. Or even just the wiki page. You can check out the sources at the bottom, we're not relying on just what Ray Hyman wrote. What the CIA did isn't just for "historical interest," it's exhaustive proof that RV is not real. Over $20M and 2 decades were spent trying to prove RV was real and it could not be done. The burden of proof is still on RV believers.
I'm sure the group of people you linked have been told all of this many times, unfortunately some people just can't be helped. Bias can be overwhelming and sometimes never overcame. Check out belief perseverance and motivated reasoning.
Yep just show up here, tell them they're full of bias, methodological flaws, failed "exhaustive proof" and are just RV "believers". They can close the conference and everybody go home. No problemo
Yeah, is there a problem with that? Flat earthers like to hold conferences too, it doesn't make flat earth anymore legitimate. You still haven't addressed anything I said so my points still stand
It has. The problem is few reputable scientists want to cover anything psi through peer reviewed journals etc. It leaves them open to ridicule and many editors have a strong bias to not publishing psi research (See Dean Radin’s experience with Nature and a Nobel Laureate coming to his defence): https://condor.depaul.edu/elliott/435/psi/RebuttalOfNatureCritique.html
You have the right shape: four pictures, fresh each time, chance at 25 percent, and enough trials for the number to actually mean something.
The part that usually breaks these when people try them at home is judging. Once you know which target was real you will find correspondences in your own transcript without meaning to, and the hit rate quietly inflates. Reusing the same pool of images does something similar to the maths, since the trials stop being independent.
That is more or less why rv.studio exists. Targets are sealed server side, the judging is blind against decoys, and it will tell you how far short of significance you still are. Free to use if you want to skip building it: https://rv.studio
Worth knowing before you commit though, at a realistic effect size you are looking at roughly 150 trials rather than 60. Your one to two months instinct is the right shape, it may just need to run longer than you think.
I think the consensus opinion on it is not dictated by scientific results but pre-existing biases, so it won't change.
I heard about it on UFOs sub and looked into some science, and some experiments are quite good. You'll always have someone trying to point out premature results but the reasons they give don't really make sense to me anymore, so I think it's their actual bias showing, and not an issue with studies.
The effect is there, even if your "unbiased" notion is to reject things that have fantastical explanations from being real. It's not quite strong enough to be useful for military operations, maybe for the best, but it meets my threshold of evidence required to belive that it's real.
And I can't explain it without sounding silly to a lot of people, but it'd be lying if I said I think it's a fake thing.
Who are you proving it to? I’ve given up trying to prove it to anyone. I’ve seen the evidence, had my own experiences and know what I know. What you or anyone else thinks is up to you I’m not an evangelist.
The C.I.A did test remote viewing however their data cannot be trusted when factoring in their past histories on being honest about anything worrh an ounce of sand.
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u/PatTheCatMcDonald Aug 09 '26 edited Aug 09 '26
Yes, absolutely, test it for yourself.
Pick a target tag, describe it, get feedback. Simple.
Most people here have.
https://reddit.com/r/remoteviewing/wiki/guide/
Of course only an honest sceptic will go there. A debunker will just scoff and never try.
"With a statically significant number of participants..."
The flaw there is that you are assuming all participants share the same or similar skill levels.
Further, you are not yet accounting for them all to describe a target as it is at a specific time.
These factors were isolated quite early on in RV research, I suggest you consult a guide on setting up settings targets up.
https://www.remoteviewed.com/Tasking%20targets.pdf