Methodological Issues

One of the challenges in designing a good experiment in any area of science is to close the loopholes that would allow explanations other than the intended one to account for the results.

There are a number of places in remote viewing experiment where information could be conveyed by normal means if proper precautions are not taken. The early SRI experiments suffered from some of those problems, but the later SRI experiments and the SAIC work were done with reasonable methodological rigor, with some exceptions noted in the detailed descriptions of the SAIC experiments in Appendix 2.

The following list of methodological issues shows the variety of concerns that must be addressed. It should be obvious that a well-designed experiment requires careful thought and planning:

• No one who has knowledge of the specific target should have any contact with the viewer until after the response has been safely secured.
• No one who has knowledge of the specific target or even of whether or not the session was successful should have any contact with the judge until after that task has been completed.
• No one who has knowledge of the specific target should have access to the response until after the judging has been completed.
• Targets and decoys used in judging should be selected using a well-tested randomization device.
• Duplicate sets of targets photographs should be used, one during the experiment and one during the judging, so that no cues (like fingerprints) can be inserted onto the target that would help the judge recognize it.
• The criterion for stopping an experiment should be defined in advance so that it is not called to a halt when the results just happen to be favorable. Generally, that means specifying the number of trials in advance, but some statistical procedures require or allow other stopping rules. The important point is that the rule be defined in advance in such a way that there is no ambiguity about when to stop.
• Reasons, if any, for excluding data must be defined in advance and followed consistently, and should not be dependent on the data. For example, a rule specifying that a trial could be aborted if the viewer felt ill would be legitimate, but only if the trial was aborted before anyone involved in that decision knew the correct target.
• Statistical analyses to be used must be planned in advance of collecting the data so that a method most favorable to the data isn't selected post hoc. If multiple methods of analysis are used the corresponding conclusions must recognize that fact.