A Perceptual Channel for Information Transfer over Kilometer Distances: Historical Perspective and Recent Research
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Plain English Summary
This landmark paper put 'remote viewing' on the scientific map, published in the prestigious Proceedings of the IEEE. Across 51 double-blind experiments at Stanford Research Institute, subjects sat sealed in a room and tried to describe a randomly chosen distant location with no normal way of knowing where it was. Results were stunning: experienced viewer Price hit targets at odds of about 1 in 34,000, and learner Hammid scored at 1 in 550,000. A Faraday cage (a metal box blocking electromagnetic signals) made no difference. In four precognitive trials where the target hadn't even been selected yet, judges matched every description correctly. The researchers concluded remote viewing is a real, learnable ability best suited to shapes, colors, and spatial information.
Research Notes
The foundational published report of the SRI remote viewing program that became Project Stargate. Published in Proceedings of the IEEE — a prestigious engineering journal — it brought RV research into mainstream scientific discourse and established the double-blind outbound-experimenter protocol adopted by subsequent researchers including May, Utts, and the AIR evaluation.
Fifty-one double-blind remote viewing experiments at Stanford Research Institute tested whether individuals could perceive and describe remote geographical or technical targets. Six subjects (experienced and learners) plus visiting scientists generated tape-recorded descriptions and drawings of randomly selected target locations while closeted with a blind experimenter. Blind rank-order judging yielded highly significant results for experienced subject Price (p = 2.9 x 10⁻⁵) and learner Hammid (p = 1.8 x 10⁻⁶). Faraday cage shielding did not degrade performance. Four precognitive trials, where descriptions were completed before target selection, were matched without error by three independent judges. The authors conclude that remote viewing is a latent, widely distributed perceptual ability predominantly involving non-analytic (shape, form, color) information consistent with right-hemisphere processing.
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- An Assessment of the Evidence for Psychic Functioning — Utts, Jessica (1996)
- Explicit Anomalous Cognition: A Review of the Best Evidence in Ganzfeld, Forced-choice, Remote Viewing and Dream Studies — Baptista, Johann (2015)
- Remote Viewing as Applied to Futures Studies — Lee, James H (2008)
- Information and Uncertainty in Remote Perception Research — Dunne, Brenda J (2003)
- Apparent Association Between Effect Size in Free Response Anomalous Cognition Experiments and Local Sidereal Time — Spottiswoode, S. James P (1997)
- A Preliminary Survey of the Eastern Harbor, Alexandria, Egypt, Including a Comparison of Side Scan Sonar and Remote Viewing — Schwartz, Stephan A (1980)
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Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence: The Case of Non-Local Perception, a Classical and Bayesian Review of Evidences
📋 Cite this paper
Puthoff, Harold E, Targ, Russell (1976). A Perceptual Channel for Information Transfer over Kilometer Distances: Historical Perspective and Recent Research. Proceedings of the IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/PROC.1976.10113
@article{puthoff_1976_perceptual,
title = {A Perceptual Channel for Information Transfer over Kilometer Distances: Historical Perspective and Recent Research},
author = {Puthoff, Harold E and Targ, Russell},
year = {1976},
journal = {Proceedings of the IEEE},
doi = {10.1109/PROC.1976.10113},
}