PSI NEWS BULLETIN OF THE PARAPSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: STARGATE
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP96-00787R000200080029-3
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: November 4, 2016
• Document Release Date: November 5, 1998
• Sequence Number: 29
• Publication Date: October 1, 1979
• Content Type: BULL

}p or Release 2001/03/26 : CIA-RDP96-00787R000200080029-3
the .
Parapsychological
Ass~c lotion
McDONNELL ESTABLISHES
LABORATORY FOR
%%XSYCHIC RESEARCH
A parapsychology cer has been
established at Washington University,
St. Louis, through the support of James
S. McDonnell, Chairman of the
McDonnell Douglas Corporation. Dr.
Peter R. Phillips, Professor of Physics,
has been appointed Director of the
Laboratory.
In making the $500,000 grant which
established the new psi facility,
McDonnell said, "Man is approaching the
evolutionary point where he is beginning
to realize there is a possible merging of
matter and mind, and a priority item for
current scientific research is the under-
standing of human consciousness. The
exploration of the deep inner space of
humankind can challenge intellectually
adventurous men and women for gen-
erations to come. From these explora-
tions will surely come countless
discoveries which in time can make
possible human life at higher levels of
health, happiness, and creativity."
McDonnell has a life-long interest in psi
and is an Honorary Member of the PA.
Phillips, who was educated at
Cambridge University (BS), Princeton
and Stanforc]0( dVed tRd$ea
the 1978 PA C n ention which was held
at Washington University.
ETHICAL AND SOCIAL ISSUES
Diana Robinson
Innovations and claims in healing
practices combined with growing public
acceptance of parapsychology have
spawned a plethora of supposed psychic
healers. How far is the professional core
of parapsychology able to test the
claims? Should the PA propose a basis
for professionalization of psychic healing
with implementation of appropriate
controls?. These and other issues were
brought up in a roundtable discussion at
the PA Convention sponsored by John F.
Kennedy University in Orinda, Cali-
fornia, August 14-18. The roundtable
was chaired by Dr. Ralph Locke of the
University of North Carolina and the
Psychical Research Foundation.
Dr. Arthur Hastings of JFK Universi-
ty spoke on the popular programs which
claim to develop psi abilities. He pointed
out that laboratory tests do not indicate
that students' abilities have been much
enhanced and went on to discuss the
pros and cons of such courses. The cons
include misinformation about the proper
controls needed to test psi, the possibil-
ity of negative use of psi abilities if they
are developed, and psychological prob-
lems arising from students' belief that
they have psi abilities when in fact they
do not.
On the positive side are the arousal of
public interest in psi, which may transfer
to parapsychology, the possibility that
students from these courses may become
subjects in parapsychological tests, and
the techniques of the programs, which
could be tested by researchers and
perhaps used to establish psi conducive
conditions during testing. Hastings
urged parapsychologists to investigate
and even take part in such courses.
Barbara Honegger of the Washington
Research Center in San Francisco gave a
report on government involvement in psi
research. She commented that many
individual legislators prefer to use cover
terms, referring to holistic health,
transpersonal psychology, etc., rather
than naming parapsychology as the
object of their interest.
Although a recent survey by C. T.
Tart suggests that the U.S. government
rarely has approached PA members,
Honegger cited reports which indicate
~tW0I/W23d 10FAsR
Agency are evaluating Eastern Euro-
pean research in parapsychology (see
abstract by Hoyt Edge in this issue of
PSI NEWS). In a period when research
funding is difficult to obtain, the issue of
military and intelligence relevant re-
search is especially serious. It raises
again the moral and ethical questions
which science has to confront in the
world of today.
On the subject of psychic healing,. Dr.
Stanley Krippner pointed out that a
great responsibility is placed on the
parapsychologist who is asked to recom-
mend a healer. There are three
alternatives in such a situation: one can
give no recommendation, give a recom-
mendation and hope that it is accurate, or
take the course that Krippner suggests.
This is to give a list of certain healers,
but point out that the fact that a healer is
on the list is not an assurance of his
healing ability, only of his apparent
sincerity. Krippner explained that he
does not include on his list healers who
make high charges, recommend that
their patients stop medical treatment, or
who seem to be publicity seekers. Some
of these on his list cooperate with
researchers.
Dr. Lendell Braud Williams said it is
important to find out how the public
feels about psi so that parapsychologists
can know in what ways psi can be
presented helpfully as far as everyday
life is concerned. She suggested a
questionnaire to help answer this. Most
importantly, she felt that parapsycholo-
gists' concern over frequent criticisms
should not be allowed to cast a negative
pall over the field. Positive thinking, she
emphasized, would be more helpful to
both parapsychologists and the public.
After Dr. Locke's summary of the
contributions, the need for better
communication with scientists and lay-
people was discussed. The media and
entertainment industry often stretch the
public's image of parapsychology to-
wards occultism and away from the
research scene. In this way parapsychol-
ogy becomes something which facinates
at the same time as it repels-and not
something which contributes to the
understanding of human nature. There is
a need for better education of the public
and also for better understanding of a
culture in which occult ideas grow so
easily.
The matter of a more relaxed attitude
by parapsychologists to critics was
also emphasized. A siege mentality
may also
impede t e cu ttvation o a research
environment favorable to psi.
 Approved For Release 2001/03/26 : CIA-RDP96-00787ROO0200080029-3
monkeys may react to the same sound
quite differently.
The vervets are not absolutely consist-
ent about what intruder triggers an alarm
call, so the scientists in the field kept track
of the "mistakes." They found that the
adult monkeys seldom err, juveniles err
more frequently and infants err most fre-
quently of all. The juveniles, for instance,
give the eagle call on occasion at the sight
of an innocuous bird such as a stork or a
spoonbill. Infants carry their caution even
further; one gave the eagle alarm at the
sight of an airborne leaf.
"Although they make mistakes, there is
an order to the errors," Marler says. The
young monkeys, for instance, may give an
eagle call at the sight of a pigeon, but they
never mistakenly give the eagle call in re-
sponse to a leopard. "It's as though they
have a generally preordained mechanism,
which specifies that the eagle alarm call
should be given to something that may be
defined as 'moving up above' of a certain
size and with a certain trajectory," he pro-
poses. Initially for the young monkey,
many stimuli satisfy that requirement.
Gradually, however, the animals' percep-
tion becomes more discriminating, like
children sharpening their semantic sense,
Marler says. .
Marler suggests that these animal
Fluoride: Prevents
caries longer
Tooth decay may not be the most seri-
ous or painful health problem in the
United States, but is probably the most
common and certainly the most enduring.
Most - but not all - dental researchers
consider fluoridation the most effective
means of preventing dental caries (SN:
9/1/79, p. 152). Now, in the most recent
follow-up of a clinical study started in
1969, it looks as if fluoride's protective ef-
fects continue after treatment with fluo-
ride tablets ceases. A year and a half after
treatments were discontinued, the chil-
dren in the Wayne County, North Carolina
Public Health Service study who had re-
ceived one or two fluoride tablets daily for
six school years had fewer dental caries
than those who had received a flavored
placebo tablet. Both during and after
treatment, the fluoride group had between
32 and 35 percent fewer caries than the
control group.
The study - conducted by William S.
Driscoll, Stanley B. Heifetz and Janet A.
Brunelle of the National Institute of Dental
studies offer a glimmer of hope for ex- Dean Justifies
perimental elucidation of the process by
which a child brings "innate knowledge" to psychic research
the task of developing understanding. "We
blind ourselves to the prospect of new Many respectable scientists, from Ein-
discoveries if we insist on treating animals stein on down, have speculated on the
as though they were automata. The credibility of so-called "psychic"
knowledge they have of companions and phenomena and on how they can be
their surroundings is probably as intricate studied scientifically. Generally such ef-
and complex as our own, though with an forts to legitimize this study have been
emphasis that is unique to each species," thwarted by the obvious presence of char-
Marler says. In other work Marler observes latans and fools among reputed psychics
among songbirds a complex mix of innate and by open hostility from the scientific
tendency, imitation, modification and in- community at large. Perhaps worst of all,
vention (see p. 362). In discussion at the few new theoretical or experimental ap-
recent meeting in Atlanta of the Society for proaches to the subject have been gen-
Neuroscience, James L. Gould of Prince- erated.
ton University challenged the idea that Now a fresh set of "psi" experiments
complexity of a behavior necessarily im- involving sophisticated technology has
plies cognition. He says that what appears been designed by Princeton University's
to be animal awareness and intentions dean of Engineering and Applied Science,
may just be preordained, preprogrammed Robert G. Jahn, and his co-workers. Al-
learning routines combined with scien- though Jahn is not yet ready to publish any
tists' ignorance of h
ow complicated such conclusive results, he has offered some
programs can get. His work with bees thoughts on a theoretical approach to
(SN:11/17/79, p. 342) indicates that appar- psychic phenomena and has concluded
ently complicated feats of communication that "once the overburden of illegitimate
can be described by simple rules that activity and irresponsible criticism is re-
could be genetically determined. moved, there is sufficient residue of valid
Donald R. Griffin of Rockefeller Univer- evidence to justify continued research."
sity emphasizes the importance of gather- Jahn best known for h
Research-started in 1969 when the 1,064
children were in first or second grade.
After the original check-up, they were re-
examined at intervals of 30 months, 55
months and six years. Following the six-
year check-up, the fluoride/placebo
treatments were stopped. Then in 1977,
after one and a half treatment-free years,
354 children who had also been checked
after six years were re-examined. This ex-
amination showed that "... cariostatic
[anti-caries] benefits continue to be ap-
parent for both [one and two] tablet
treatment procedures at the end of seven
and one half years.... Thus, the caries pre-
ventive benefit did not diminish as a result
of discontinuing such treatment."
The study examined not only the pro-
tective effects of fluoride tablets, but also
looked at the cost-effectiveness of using
the treatment on large numbers of chil-
dren. Overall, the fluoride treatments cost
about $25 per child for six school years
and - if the post-treatment period is in-
cluded - prevented 3.65 "decayed, miss-
ing or filled" tooth surfaces from occurring
in each child during seven and a half years.
This means that it cost about $7 to prevent
each decay, compared with the $10 to $20
it costs to have a decayed tooth filled. El
Chart produced by physical changes in a
Fabry-Perot interferometer clearly shows
different effects when a subject just relaxed
(base) or tried to influence the instrument
through psychokinesis (PK).
i
s poneermg
ing information about whether nonhuman work with plasma discharges, summarized experiments, results of which can be
animals have intentions or are aware of his two-year experience with psychic re- scrutinized but not clearly interpreted.
themselves in relation to their surround- search during a recent science writers' What the Princeton researchers have tried
ings. "A cognitive ethology can thus hope meeting in Palo Alto. to do is design experiments in which the
to illuminate the fundamental di en ions~p ~~S (~ to statis-
of those a11A PPP sWIKQ1aAgsea t oeHmZSr'~thf`ftte c 01 ec-- 7 ica a~ ysis. 9W
and which, in their most versatile manifes- tion of anecdotes of spontaneous events, The work started when an undergradu-
tations, are the sources of our most pro- which tend to be spectacular but unverifi- ate, Carol K. Curry asked ]ahn to --4-
 lata pro ;"sing skills. The researchers
vegan witiz some prOebfdnEb&,1" FNIMAW2
)erception exercises - "to establish that talksat
.ve were indeed capable of generating ef-
rects to study"-then moved onto design-
;ng equipment to measure psychokinesis
- a palpable disturbance of a physical
-system by thought alone.
The psychokinesis experiments illus-
trate well why such research can be both
ntalizing and frustrating. Rather than try
isa reproduce spectacular, "macroscopic"
:;ifects, such as spinning a compass with-
'1t touching it (which has been reported
. poorly documented studies), Jahn and
arry concentrated on easily observed
microscopic" phenomena. In one exper-
ient, a subject was to raise the tempera-
..;re of a thermistor by a few thousandths
:i a degree. In another, the goal was to
change the separation of two mirrors in a
1abry-Perot interferometer by a hundred-
thousandth of a centimeter. The observa-
tions were specific and even dramatic.
Subjects did, indeed, seem capable at
times of raising the thermistor tempera-
ture or changing the optical pathlength of
the interferometer at will. But neither ex-
periment was fully "reproducible" in the
scientifically accepted sense: The effects
varied unpredictably from person to per-,
son and from day to day. Because of this
unpredictability, Jahn prefers to call the
results of work so far "tutorial" rather than
technically conclusive. That is, they
should be used as models for more exten-
sive research rather than as any sort of
"proof" of the validity of psychic
phenomena. Nevertheless, analysis of
these experiments has offered two impor-
tant insights that can be further tested. in
future research.
First, the ability to produce measurable
psychic effects appears to be trainable.
Neither Jahn nor Curry was aware of any
initial psychic ability and both got better
as they went along. An important element
in such training appears to be feedback
that is "visible and attractive," Jahn says.
Second, Jahn speculates that psychic
phenomena may have an inherently statis-
tical nature. If so, theories dealing with
such phenomena are likely to involve
abstruse concepts related to the for-
malism of quantum mechanics or statisti-
cal mechanics, rather than some easily
grasped intuitive explanation. In particu-
lar, psychokinesis appears to involve a re-
duction of entropy-a statistical measure
of disorder-and the equivalence of phys-
ical "information" and energy.
An ad hoc committee of the university
has established a charter for Jahn's work
on psychic phenomena to proceed and he
has brought in developmental psycholo-
gist Brenda Dunne to work full time on the
program. In an interview Dunne said that a
growing number of reputable scientists
are becoming active in psychic research,
but that "the field as a whole is struggling
for recognition as a legitimate science." ^
in the United States." The agency will be
studying multi-beam antennas, on-board
signal-switching and other technologies,
but there is far more to the satellite com-
munications problem than the opening of
additional frequencies.
As the SAS committee's report empha-
sized, there are many potential satellite
communications users who are too small
or widely scattered to form a feasible
commercial market. The Ka band is
primarily relevant to large-scale, wide-
band traffic, while the small users often
can use narrow-band, lower-frequency
equipment - which is also less costly.
Some of NASA's new technologies will be
applicable there, but much of the small-
user activity is being studied amid a
thicket of other agencies and organi-
zations. The matter is thorny - and far
< from solved. ^
Z
Lasker Awards:
DNA and the brain
Satellite communications, more inti-
mately woven into contemporary life than
perhaps any other aspect of Space Age
technology, owes much of its solid footing
to years of research and development by
the National Aeronautics and Space Ad-
ministration, which was ultimately able to
pass on most of the effort to private indus-
try as a self-sustaining enterprise. In 1973,
prompted by tight budgets, NASA virtually
dropped its R and D program in the field.
Now NASA is back in the game, with a
five-year program "aimed at retaining U.S.
world leadership in satellite communica-
tions research and technology."
Several factors have contributed to the
restored effort: Early in 1977, a special
committee of the National Research
Council's Space Applications Board
strongly recommended just such action
(SN: 4/9/77, p. 231). A year later, President
Jimmy Carter's reorganization plans pro-
duced the National Telecommunications
and Information Administration, charged
in part with easing the way for NASA com-
munications experiments into commer-
cial use. Further support came from vari-
ous federal agencies and industries in the
form of responses to a questionnaire from
the White House's Office of Science and
Technology Policy. The satellite-allocated
portions of the communications spectrum
have become increasingly crowded, and,
NASA points out, the U.S. is facing more
foreign technology competition.
The new NASA effort, based at the agen-
cy's Lewis Research Center in Cleveland, is
concentrated on the high-frequency, 20-
to-30-gigahertz portion of the spectrum
known as the Ka band. Lower frequencies
are fast approaching saturation, and, says
NASA's Donald K. Dement, "this Ka-band
allocation is the last potential opportunity
for significant new capacity to be devel-
t0
CIA-RDA-001707ROOO2OOO8OO993
ogy has not been widely developed for use
The 1979 Albert Lasker Basic Medical
Research Awards were presented to three
scientists whose basic research has po-
tential for clinical as well as laboratory
use. Roger W. Sperry of the California Insti-
tute of Technology received a $15,000
award for his investigations into the work-
ings of the brain's hemispheres, and Walter
Gilbert of Harvard University and Freder-
ick Sanger of the Laboratory of Molecular
Biology in Cambridge, England shared
another $15,000 for their independent de-
velopment, of new methods of rapid
sequencing of DNA.
In 1953, Sperry developed the technique
of "split brain" research, in which he se-
vered the bundle of nerve fibers that con-
nects the two halves of the brain. He dis-
covered that the two hemispheres func-
tion independently in this situation; the
right brain does not know what the left
brain is learning. Sperry found that the two
halves of the brain govern two sets of ac-
tivities; there is no one "dominant" hemi-
sphere for all mental processes.
The second Basic Research Award was
presented jointly to Sanger and Gilbert (a
1949 Westinghouse Science Talent Search
winner), whose rapid sequencing tech-
niques will allow molecular biologists to
discover the sequence of DNA compo-
nents in a few days, instead of months.
Gilbert's method uses chemical reagents
to break the DNA molecules into frag-
ments, and Sanger's employs an enzy-
matic reaction in its sequencing proce-
dure.
The Lasker Special 'Public Service
Award was presented to Sir John Wilson,
President of the International Agency fo^r
the Prevention of Blindness.
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