Mind/Machine Interaction Consortium: PortREG Replication Experiments
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Plain English Summary
Three labs in the US and Germany teamed up to repeat Princeton's famous PEAR results, where people apparently nudged random number generators with their minds. Using identical equipment, 227 volunteers ran 750 sessions. The headline? They couldn't replicate it -- the original effect shrank by a factor of ten. But here's where it gets weird: all three labs found strange structural quirks, like the spread of numbers being consistently squished and odd patterns at odds of 1,000-to-1 against chance. The authors called it an "empirical paradox" -- the simple mind-over-machine effect vanished, but messier anomalies stubbornly persisted. Skeptics see a nail in the coffin; the researchers saw something stranger.
Research Notes
Key ‘failed primary replication’ data point for the PEAR/REG program. Often cited by skeptics as disconfirming the PEAR effect; the authors’ structural-anomalies argument is contested. Forms a pivotal bridge between the 12-year PEAR record and PEAR’s final MegaREG and closure papers.
Three-laboratory consortium (Princeton PEAR, Freiburg FAMMI, Giessen GARP) attempted to replicate PEAR’s 12-year anomalous REG database. Using identical PortREG equipment and tripolar (HI/LO/BL intention) protocol, 227 operators generated 750 experimental sessions totaling ~2.25 million 200-bit trials. The primary criterion — matching PEAR’s prior HI-LO mean shift of delta=0.0208, Z=3.809 — failed by an order of magnitude (combined Z=0.596, delta=0.0034). Yet structural anomalies persisted across all sites: near-universal depression of trial-level standard deviations, irregular series-position patterns, and secondary-parameter dependencies at composite p=0.001–0.002. Authors frame this as an ‘empirical paradox’: the ordered mean-shift effect gave way to a polyglot pattern of structural distortions, suggesting the phenomena are real but inadequately modeled.
Links
Related Papers
Same Research Program
- The Persistent Paradox of Psychic Phenomena: An Engineering Perspective — Jahn, Robert G (1982)
- Engineering Anomalies Research — Jahn, Robert G (1987)
- The PEAR Proposition — Jahn, Robert G (2005)
- FieldREG Anomalies in Group Situations — Nelson, Roger D (1996)
- FieldREG II: Consciousness Field Effects: Replications and Explorations — Nelson, Roger D (1998)
- The MegaREG Experiment: Replication and Interpretation — Dobyns, Y. H (2004)
- Information and Uncertainty in Remote Perception Research — Dunne, Brenda J (2003)
- On the Quantum Mechanics of Consciousness, with Application to Anomalous Phenomena — Jahn, Robert G (1986)
Cites
Cited By
- The MegaREG Experiment: Replication and Interpretation — Dobyns, Y. H (2004)
- Quantum Aspects of the Brain-Mind Relationship: A Hypothesis with Supporting Evidence — Kauffman, Stuart A (2023)
- The Capricious, Actively Evasive, Unsustainable Nature of Psi: A Summary and Hypotheses — Kennedy, J.E (2003)
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📋 Cite this paper
Jahn, Robert G, Dunne, Brenda J, Bradish, G. J, Dobyns, York H, Lettieri, A, Nelson, Roger D, Mischo, Johann, Boller, Emil, Bösch, Holger, Vaitl, Dieter, Houtkooper, Joop M, Walter, Bernhard (2000). Mind/Machine Interaction Consortium: PortREG Replication Experiments. Journal of Scientific Exploration. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1005537818953
@article{jahn_2000_replication,
title = {Mind/Machine Interaction Consortium: PortREG Replication Experiments},
author = {Jahn, Robert G and Dunne, Brenda J and Bradish, G. J and Dobyns, York H and Lettieri, A and Nelson, Roger D and Mischo, Johann and Boller, Emil and Bösch, Holger and Vaitl, Dieter and Houtkooper, Joop M and Walter, Bernhard},
year = {2000},
journal = {Journal of Scientific Exploration},
doi = {10.1023/A:1005537818953},
}