SRI/GALE COMMITTEE MEETING OF 24-25 JULY (1979)

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: STARGATE
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP96-00788R002000240028-5
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: November 4, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 29, 1998
• Sequence Number: 28
• Publication Date: March 8, 1979
• Content Type: MEMO

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Mr. Manfred Gale (HQDA, DAMA-ZD)
SUBJECT SRI/Gale Committee Meeting of 24-25 July cc
We appreciated having an opportunity to discuss with you and members of your
committee several aspects of our work during your recent visit to SRI. We
welcome this kind of dialog and exchange of views with individuals of diverse
backgrounds, who are willing to focus on issues of importance to us and our
program.
There were certain aspects of the meeting, however, which we felt were
unsatisfactory, but for which we have specific remedial actions to propose.
As you know from our agenda, we had intended to cover four major areas of
interest: (1) an historical overview, including past applications to problems
of interest to clients; (2) scientific questions with regard to RV protocols,
judging, statistics, and so forth; (3) the goals and planned activities on
present client programs; and (4) committee discussion with program remote viewers.
Unfortunately, with the extended ad hoc discussions that took place during the
opening presentation on historical material (Part 1) and the need to press on
to a discussion of planned efforts on present client programs (Part 3), we all
but skipped Part 2 on scientific questions (for example, none of the slides were
shown). This seemed expedient at the time, given the apparent inappropriateness,
in a group of such diverse interests, of getting involved in detailed discussions
on specific technical issues (e.g., nuances as to protocol procedures, statistical
evaluation techniques, etc.). This may have been "penny-wise and pound foolish,"
however, for all of us at SRI realized at one time or another in casual discussions
with individual committee members during dinner breaks, etc., that there was a
profound lack of understanding of some very basic issues. To cite some specific
examples:
(1) It was expressed that the RV target pool should be chosen and
than the principal investigators, and that access to the target
r pool should be limited.
The above is in fact the procedure already in force. An independent
=__777=1 er+ion team generated the target pool and turned them
? qy over to the Project SSO who keeps them stored in a secure container.
Targets are then withdrawn only under supervision of the SSO (who
k 4l C, records their withdrawal) at the beginning of RV sessions. In
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Mr. Manfred Gale
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3 August 1979
particular, the RV session interviewers (Targ and Puthoff) had
never seen the target list until your committee asked that it be
brought to the conference room.
(2) Concern was expressed that apparently successful RV results in
our protocols might be due instead to a combination of remote viewer
guesses of known Bay Area landmarks and/or artifactual sharpening
of a subject's narrative by cues from the interviewer who is at
least educated, if not directly knowledgeable as to the target
possibilities. (We think that is was understood that the inter-
viewer never knows the particular target.) The corollary to this
concern is that although the RV function may exist, our protocols
can't demonstrate it because of the above-stated circumstances.
In fact, the statistical procedure we use takes into account at
the outset the possibility that the target pool might be completely
known to both remote viewer and interviewer--that it could be that
the remote viewer and interviewer were poring over the target list
during the session; in short, that the RV series is to be treated
as belonging to that class of studies in which the elements of the
target pool are known a priori to both remote viewer and interviewer,
as in studies involving numbers or cards as targets. (In fact, we
would go this apparent criticism one step further and assert that
it would be naive to assume that by any change in protocol one could
in principle avoid the assumption that the remote viewer knows the
target pool.) Thus, when there is a statistically significant result
in our protocols, the cause must lie elsewhere than remote viewer
guess or interviewer cueing, as these possibilities are handled at
a fundamental level by a statistical procedure that assumes the worst.
This fact must be understood by the committee members if they are
to assess the SRI program results properly.
(3) It was repeatedly suggested that it would be better to dispense with
the interviewer in an RV session so as to have a "cleaner" protocol,
and that the use of an interviewer is somehow a methodological flaw.
Such a suggestion indicates a complete failure to comprehend that
success as obtained by use of the SRI RV protocols (as opposed to other
procedures) is in large part due to an innovative design which
incorporates a division of labor between remote viewer and interviewer
designed to mirror the two primary modes of cerebral functioning;
namely, the nonanalytic cognitive style (brain function) that pre-
dominates in spatial pattern recognition and other holistic processing
(and is hypothesized to predominate in psi functioning), and the
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Mr. Manfred Gale
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analytical cognitive style that predominates in verbal and other
analytical functioning. (Only very experienced remote viewers
appear to have the ability to handle both cognitive styles
simultaneously.) The removal of the burden of analytical functioning
(by the interviewer) during exercise of the RV faculty appears
to be an important ingredient for success. A change in this
aspect of the methodology may give the appearance of a cleaner
protocol (it is not), but it may also yield the lower level results
characteristic of classical academic (as opposed to operational)
studies. Our client programs, on the other hand, force us to
develop techniques that yield results, and it cannot be stressed
enough that we have developed the appropriate statistical procedures
to handle such possibilities as remote viewer guessing and
interviewer cueing or sharpening.
To the degree that the committee's overall evaluation of the SRI program will
touch on technical issues such as these, we would suggest that it is incumbent
on the committee members to obtain a more thorough grounding in the technical
details than was possible in the few hours available during the July meeting at
SRI. We would doubt, for example, that anyone would be in a position to
critique our present RV statistical procedures fairly and justly (not that there
wasn't the potential because of the expertise represented) simply because we did
not have an opportunity to present them, and, being a new approach in our program
(Scott's direct-count-of-permutations method), we have not discussed them at any
length in publications available to the committee. Since the approach (a) is
specifically designed to handle narrative material of the remote viewing type,
(b) takes into account the possibility of potential remote viewer/interviewer
guessing and/or knowledge of the target pool, and (c) has been thoroughly
investigated, used, and documented in the academic parapsychology community as
the most conservative reference statistic to fall back on, one cannot assess
remarks such as (1) - (3) above without at least an intuitive understanding of the
assumptions and implications of this approach. Beyond this, there were other
items that to our mind need clearing up, such as confusion of our work with
other labs' work and statements, and little awareness that we have done considerable
experimentation with simpler paranormal functions than remote viewing (e.g.,
computer-automated number-perception tasks, binary card tasks) to establish
certain parameters of the more complicated functioning. (Such scientific legwork
we did not present to the committee, as it seemed beyond the scope of interest
expressed at the time.)
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Mr. Manfred Gale
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To remedy the shortcomings inherent in the brief orientation meeting of 24-25
July, to ensure that we do justice to the multitudinous concerns of the committee,
and to ensure that the SRI program obtains a fair hearing from the committee, we
propose that: (1) all committee members receive from your office a copy of this
memo and the attached protocols to gain a better understanding of our procedures;
(2) further discussions be held in smaller groups between SRI personnel and those
members of the committee who are especially concerned with specific issues
(e.g., protocol procedures and statistical approaches with Drs. Synder and
Tang).
We are available for such interactions at Menlo Park, Washington, or elsewhere,
and would appreciate the opportunity to resolve these issues at the earliest
convenience. Out of such interactions we could also expect as a bonus to define
with greater clarity those scientific issues that need to be pursued in more
detail should fundamentally-oriented research programs be set up in the future,
as they must.
Since we are mutually tasked by our sponsor to provide the best technical
assessment possible of a field fraught with complex and subtle issues, we believe
that additional actions such as we have proposed are necessary if we are to
fulfill our mutual goals and responsibilities.
Enclosed are copies of the memo and protocols for all the committee members,
which we would appreciate your distributing. Also enclosed for use at your
discretion are additional copies for Maj. Gen. E. R. Thompson, Dr. Ruth Davis,
and the Hon. Walter Laberge.
We remain at your disposal as to arrangements should you decide to follow up on
the further interactions we have proposed.
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