>> 
I've been looking forward to this. Dean Radin
is a researcher and an author in the field
of Parapsychology. He is senior scientist
at the Institute of Noetic Sciences in Petaluma,
California and a four time former president
of the Parapsychological Association. He has
held appointments at Princeton University,
Edinburgh University, University Nevada, Las
Vegas, SRI International, Interval Research
Corporation and the Boundary Institute. At
these facilities, Dean was engaged in basic
research on Exceptional Human Capacities Principally
Psi Phenomena. I think many of us would group
psi phenomenon such as ESP, Clairvoyance,
Pre-cognition, and Telekinesis in the realm
of science fiction as oppose to science. Despite
their being a little support for this research
and academia, I was surprised to learn how
much there actually was. The Princeton Engineering
Anomalies Research Labs spent three decades
working on this research. SRI International
has funded a large body of research in this
area. Governments around the world have funded
these studies for potential military applications
and other uses. My curiosity about this led
me to Dean Radin. I met Dean at a conference
a few months ago, I was impressed with Dean
and I wanted to give him a chance to speak
in front of this audience in particular. While
this type of research brings an incredible
amount of skepticism, I respect both Dean's
scientific background and his intellectual
honesty enough to listen with a discerning
but ultimately open mind.
>> RADIN: Thank you very much Jessica. Science
in the psi taboo, I'm going to read a story
here. One Thursday morning about 4AM, I jumped
out of bed, feeling as if I was dying. I felt
as if blood or something was pouring down
from my head and choking me and I was trying
desperately to get my breath. I grew very
weak; I thought I must really be dying. My
husband put me down on the bed where I rested
but felt so "all gone." Oops! Let's restart
that later. Then I thought my son had called
saying, "Oh, Mama help me," in such anguish.
That was February 10th and on the 12th we
received a telegram saying our son was killed
by gunshot in the head at one o'clock on the
February 10th. There is a nine-hour difference
in time. I feel he called me as it was happening,
as it happened, and I heard his groan and
felt his dying. This was published a few days
ago in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.
The original story comes out of a collection
of such cases by Louisa Rhine who is J.B.
Rhine's wife in 1981. Well, what do we do
with such stories? Of course, called Psychic
phenomena, there abbreviated psi, there's
a number of people who will consider it superstitious
nonsense. I suspect typically and technical
audiences, that percentage is higher and in
a general population but it depends on whether
you're asking people publicly or privately
which is part of this nature of the taboo
in this topic. So, there's some people who
say, it's superstitious nonsense, there are
a lots of other people who would say, "Well,
no my experience actually doesn't agree with
that. My experience is more consistent with
the kind of story that I just read as a real
experience than what [INDISTINCT] may think."
So, of course, there's plenty of reaction
to these kinds of things, there's lots of
skeptical comments that basically say that
there are billions of people out there with
trillions of experiences and so we hear the
weird stuff. Occasionally, there is going
to be an unusual coincidence and those are
the things that bubble up to the top and so
while the experience that I just read which
is a true experience, may be it is a one in
a trillion chance but it's because there's
all these other experiences that we don't
hear about. So, that's a possible explanation,
probably true to some extent and there are
lots of other explanations that can be used
to look at stories like this and try to understand
why is it that people have these experiences.
On the other hand, it doesn't take very long
to realize that popular culture is saturated
with this topic. It forms the a base of an
enduring topic that almost everywhere you
look within novels, to TV, to you name it
there is something out there all the time.
It's a compelling topic and so the question
is, "Why is that?" And I would say that, one
of the things that we run into again and again
is the scientist studying this is a taboo.
Well, the taboo in science as it does in any
realm, it restricts the nature of inquiry
and it also restricts what ideas are acceptable
and as a taboo, this is not very good in science
because science rests on informed consent
or informed consensus. If an informed consensus
is constrained because of a taboo, it means
that science can't really make up a good decision
about what's going on. It means that it also
will create distortions on the how the topic
is reported because especially among skeptical
journalists, they don't want to be caught
with their pants down. So, it's extremely
difficult to get accurate reporting on this
topic in the science media and I'll show you
an example in a minute. All this means is
that the taboo is sustained and this taboo
has been sustained for over a hundred years
so it's a really good one. So, this showed
up yesterday on the Boston Globe, brain scan
test failed to support validity of ESP and
the journalist said that research on Parapsychology
is largely taboo in academia, but now, two
Harvard scientists have set out to settle
once and for all, does it exist? The study
was a first use cutting-edge brain scanning
called functional MRI. Well, here is our first
mistake because in fact it wasn't the first,
it's the fifth and the previous four which
you guys can find out very quickly now because
of the nice Google scholar engine, you can
find four others published, three of which
they're in mainstream medical journals of
which all four are the previous MRI studies
are successful. Have you ever heard of them?
No, but this one which turns out that it's
not quite unsuccessful as they claim this
one you do hear about. If ESP were real, the
brain should have responded differently to
ESP than to non-ESP. But they found in all
cases no evidence for ESP but that's actually
not what the paper says. The paper says, it
tested 16 couples of which one couple showed
extremely significant results of the type
that they predicted, but then they go through
great pains to explain a way that result as
a possible artifact in which case my response
writing to this journalist was, "Well, if
you can take the results you're looking for
and it explain in ways in artifact, well doesn't
that mean that the study design was flawed
because it means you potentially could have
explained everything a ways in artifact."
And finally, the person who did this is a
grad student at Harvard who got a prize for
his best thesis when he was an undergraduate
looking at, I believe looking at some kind
of parapsychological effect but now he's abandoning
his interest because of professional peril.
Well, that's the definition almost of the
taboo, the taboo is at as a grad student,
it's kind of okay to do this but absolutely
don't do it for your doctoral dissertation
because a likelihood of going on to get a
real job is much lowered and that's because
of the taboo, the topic itself. So, my interest
all along has been like a lot of people, I've
heard stories over the years I never heard
anything about this in my scientific training
but I was curious, could there be a there,
there? Is there a kernel of truth in all of
these saturation that we have in popular culture,
could there be something really going on?
Well, we can't rely on anecdotes because they're
not controlled but there are scientific tests
that have been controlled. Well, one place
to look for of what science has to say about
this is to look for what--scientific oversight
panels have concluded and there during the
Cold War, there were four open reviews and
a number of classified reviews about, what
happens when you take people who are proponents
and people who are skeptical and people in
the middle, bring them together for a week
or so to review the evidence what do they
conclude. These are four studies that were
done that are in the open literature, all
four concluded that something interesting
was going on. They weren't willing in all
cases to come out and say, "Yes, we believe
that psychic effects are real, but they all
did say including the skeptics, something
is going on that we can't account for." So,
here's an example of a review of remote viewing
evidence that was done for the CIA in 1995
just as the formerly classified program became
unclassified. Jessica Utts, is a Professor
of Statistics and also is now on the Executive
Council of the AAAS. Her conclusion was, that
using the standards applied to any other area
of science, it is concluded that psychic functioning
has been well established. So, Jessica is
a world renowned methodologist besides being
a statistician when we think that she knows
what she's talking about. The other person
was Ray Hyman, a very well known skeptic Professor
of Psychology from University of Oregon now
retired. His conclusion was, well these results
the experiments and the remote viewing were
free of methodological weaknesses and the
effect sizes are two large inconsistent to
be dismissed as statistical flukes. So, something
interesting was going on. And Jessica and
Ray disagreed about what to call this. Like
Ray, is not going to say he believes in psychic
phenomena no matter what. And never the less,
in terms of the actual evidence, he agreed.
Something interesting seems to be going on.
So, the bottom line is that if you begin to
look at scientific oversight committees and
review articles and so on over the past 130
years, you find increasingly sophisticated
methods where effects don't disappear even
under scrutiny with the latest techniques.
So, for example, I just mentioned the fMRI
study, you can get results with an fMRI, something
interesting appears to be going on or why
didn't you learn this in college? Why don't
you ever hear about this in the mainstream
science media? It's because of that, it's
this boo, taboo. Some people think that there
aren't--there are no taboos in science. Like
science is suppose to be open and free willing
and so on and of course this is not the case.
There are 17,500 institutions of higher learning
around the world. There are roughly 50 academics
in the world who are openly interested in
psi and that includes both proponents and
skeptics 50, which means that the academic
interest level is approximately 0.3%, 99.7%
of all academia in the world don't have a
single person identified for their interest
pro to con, that's a taboo; well, over 90%
of the population is interested. About 60%
of the population believes in the probability
or the certainty that psychic effects are
real. The rest of the population is interested,
some are very strongly against it, others
are sort of mildly for it but the point is
that a lot of people are at least interested.
Usually, for interesting topics, you have
academic programs that are discussing in some
way, 0.3%.why is that? Well, imagine that
you put consciousness on a continuum, and
the bottom access is where is consciousness?
And we say, well maybe it's local or maybe
it's not so local. On the vertical access,
we say, "Well, what is consciousness? Is it
something that is caused or something that
is causal?" Down here on the bottom, we have
all is matter, it's a material monism. Under
this model, the mind and the brain are identical.
This is the assumption of the neurosciences.
When you start moving up here--I don't want
to restart my computer. When you start moving
up on this scale, you bump into things that
the neurosciences have difficulty in dealing
with, things like creativity, intuition, and
especially genius. If you look into literature
to find out what neuroscientist think about
genius, and we are talking about Mozart level
genius. There is absolutely no response to
that; we don't know how that can be. You go
further up the scale towards non-local you
end up with things like psi, these strange
experiences that people talk about and then
further up mysticism and now models that start
look like mind is not identical to brain,
it' correlated with but not identical and
all the way at the top is a mental monism
or idealism. Well, here's Western sciences
down here, it assumes that things are material
that we use objective methods and the mind
in fact is equal to the brain. Up here, roughly
is Eastern sciences, it's interested more
in energetic or informational aspects of the
world rather than material. Subjectivity is
held in high regard and mind is not equal
to brain. So, these two ways of looking at
the world create theoretical boundaries and
you notice that I stuck psi into the Eastern
sciences because it is compatible at that
level. Whereas in the Western sciences, there's
no room for it and that what sustains the
taboo from train, does a western scientist,
you look at these phenomena and you cannot
imagine any conceivable way that it can fit
within the world view that you were trained
to understand and obviously that method is
very powerful. You guys wouldn't have a job
here; there wouldn't be no building here or
anything if Western science wasn't extremely
powerful. And so, it's seductive in its power.
But may be Eastern sciences haven't been all
that far off the mark either. So, we both
have our different tools, the tools in Western
science have used fancy machines like an MRI
to look inside the brain, to look at the material
part of it and the Eastern sciences are based
more on contemplative practice, anterior.
And we both have our mendullas, our mendullas
in the west are these pretty pictures that
come out of the brain and mendullas in the
east are other kinds of pretty pictures. So,
in the west, when we look at that object and
we say, "Well, how does that thing work?"
Our tendency is to take it apart since that's
where reductionism is good for. Well, what
if it wasn't the brain that we're looking
at but more like that, it's this object. So,
from the west, we look at this object which
is playing music and so, how do we go about
understanding that? Well, the first thing
is, we imagine that there's music--there is
somebody inside there creating the music.
So, we look for Led Zeppelin inside, we take
it apart and we look for them and can't find
them in there. What we find instead are circuits
and as our methods get better and better,
we find that our ability to detect better
and better circuitry, it's better and this
is what we see in the neurosciences, are pictures
assume that we're seeing reflections of the
thing which is generating the music. Somebody
from the east would say, "No, no, you've completely
misconstrued what's going on here, the object
is not generating music, it's receiving it."
And now, the important point here is that
both sides might be right, what we see in
the neuroscience is a correlations, even in
the east, what would they talk about are correlations
that are going on not in the--we assume the
direction of causation based on our theoretical
assumptions. So, which one of these two are
right? I am not so sure. Does the brain generate
the mind? Or does the brain receive? Or filter
out something about some large mind out there.
Let's look now at experiences. These are the
sorts of the things that people report and
one--and you have mundane events that occur
all the time, in the other you have profound
events. And on this axis, how often they're
reported from common to rare? So, we have
things like this down at the common mundane
level, most people would report that sort
of stuff. As we move up here, you start having
things which have a much greater impact in
terms of how it affects an individual and
also whether or not they're rare, although
we have two mystical union. So, who reports
it? Everyone that is down here at this level
of gut feelings, feeling of being stared at
roughly, 70% of the population including populations
of skeptics will admit that sometimes they
get gut feelings; sometimes they have the
feeling of being stared at. As we move up
here, we start using different labels and
this is where for every scientists, your hair
starts standing up because these words can
push you until you get even further up into
genius and prodigy. And at this level, we
start running into something interest because
they have the saints, the great scientists,
great political leaders and so on. And so,
up there we have rare experiences presently
beyond the reach of science to understand
but very well accepted. It's very well accepted
because those people and those ideas are what
shapes civilization and shape history and
shape science. And by contrast, the other
end of this spectrum, we have common experiences
that are completely amenable to scientific
study but it's highly controversial. I think
the--when presented in this way, it looks
like a paradox and it is kind of a paradox
and in fact, as I'll show you, the reason
for the controversy really is a taboo, it
is not the data. What are we talking about?
We are talking about three kinds of ways in
which information seems to flow. When the
information flows between minds, we call it
telepathy, when it flows from a mind out into
the environment in some way, we call it psychokinesis
or mind matter interaction. If information
flows from the environment into the person's
mind, we call clairvoyance and if it slips
in time, we call it precognition that's basically
the phenomena that we are dealing with. Well,
the first rule in studying these kinds of
effects is to recognize that human performance
varies. You're looking here at the base hit
rate for Mickey Mantle form 1951 to 1968.
Well, how do you know that Mickey Mantle was
a good base hitter? Because if you look at
his overall average, it's basically 30%, that's
good. To get a bat in 30% of the time actually
get on base is exceptionally difficult. So,
we know that Mickey Mantle was good even though
on a year-to-year basis, his ability to hit
actually fluctuated quite a bit. So, human
performance varies even at the level of expertise.
The second is at experimental results will
vary which is a logical outcome of individual
performance varying and so this looks at 25
studies that were conducted to see whether
taking aspirin prevents a second heart attack.
No heart attack above the ratio of one and
heart attacks below and you can see that if
you take the overall average, that it actually
makes a small effect, it does prevent second
heart attacks. The effect size here is really
small, so the first effect size 0.3, I'll
show you in comparison to some other things
in a minute but the 0.006 is the percentage
of variance accounted for by aspirin preventing
second heart attacks. 0.6% which means 99.4%
of the variance in these studies is not accounted
for by aspirin, never the less, even with
a really small effect, it is real, real small
effects are still real if it wasn't for statistics,
we may never know that but nevertheless, that's
what statistics are for, we can find that
things are real. So, here is an example, some
years ago, a silicone implants--breast implants
were remove from the market because sometimes
it cause connective tissue disease. The effect
size is less than 0.00, the amount of the
variance accounted for is less that 0.000,
really tiny and yet real enough to be taken
off the market. Another example is aspirin
which I just said, it prevents heart attacks
but the effect size is really tiny, but still
real enough for bare aspirin to get approval
from the FDA to be able to say and sell aspirin.
A lot of people take aspirin now to prevent
heart attacks to thin the blood and so on.
Aspirin can reduce the risk of death that
taken as directed by doctors as soon as a
heart attack is suspected that's on the basis
of really small effect sizes but real. By
comparison, telepathy experiments have an
effect size which is five times greater and
somehow that's not considered real. And the
fourth rule is many experiences are in fact
not psychic. So, when a skeptic will say what
your--what these anecdotes that we hear are
the result of selective memory and wishful
thinking in coincidence and misperception
and so on, all of that is completely correct
and in fact, if we do a survey, if we take
a whole bunch of case studies and you start
windowing out the ones which will probably
due to these kinds of effects, you probably
get 80%, maybe a little bit more. But at least
a residuum of roughly 10 to 20% of cases where
you can really cannot explain why these effects
are there and it's not these sorts of things.
So, how would you test for telepathy? So,
the typical case of telepathy is something
like that, somebody is thinking of somebody
else even if they haven't thought of them
in a long time and the other person just a
fleeting thought goes to their head and wonder
why this person thinking to me. This sort
of thing is reported and actually Rupert Sheldrake
has been studying specifically telephone telepathy
which is the idea that the phone rings, you
pick it up and you haven't looked at the caller
ID yet and you just know who it is, it happens
more often than you might think. So, the way
this has been studied in the laboratories
through a method called the Ganzfeld. A Ganzfeld
is a German word meaning whole field. And
so, what you do is you'd have a sender and
a receiver, the receiver you sit down and
put them under a red light and you take two
ping pong balls and cut them in half and you
put them over their eyes and you ask them
to keep their eyes open. Now, you can imagine
that if you're under a red light, you're eyes
are open but all you can see is a uniform
redness then after a few minutes your brain
starts to get starved for information and
you begin to project hallucination, visual
hallucinations. Let's see, so you also want
to encourage people to get audio hallucinations
so, you put white noise through a headphones
and you have them wear a headphones and they
sit in a comfy chair and after 15 minutes
of this kind of stimulation, unpatterned stimulation
you begin to hear things and see things very
much like in the dream state and that's the
purpose of this method, to put somebody in
near dream state very quickly. And now, you
isolate them from the rest of the world and
you get a sender and the sender's tasks is
to think of something and try to inject those
thoughts into this person, this experience.
And you encourage a person to speak aloud
the technical term is to mentate, they're
mentating whatever is going on inside their
head and the mentation is taken by a one-way
audio link back to the sender to help the
sender revise their mental sending strategy
so that the other person will begin to get
what the person is sending. So, how do we
choose a target? The target is chosen randomly
from a pool of targets which are different
from each other as you can get. So in this
case, you might have randomly chosen a target
of an elephant. So, the sender is a season
elephant and then I was trying to think elephant
like thoughts and inject it into the mind
of the receiver and if you're lucky, the person
will start talking about things like big animals
in maybe Africa and so on. After about 30
minute of that, you take the sender--the receiver
out of the Ganzfeld condition and you show
them four targets and you may playback to
them anything that they said so that it may
have been talking about a big animal in Africa
and now, you simply ask them to choose which
one of these four best corresponds to their
experience. So, by chance they will choose
the right one, one in four times. And so,
we've collapsed an hours worth of experiment
into a single data point and we do this for
statistical reasons and also for clarity.
A chance of getting it right is one fourth,
25%. These are places that have done this
kind of experiment from about the 1920s until
today. The cumulative results of somewhat
over 3,000 such sessions from about 25 labs
around the world, there's a chance to 25%,
the actual hit rate is about 32% cumulatively
and the other bar show one standard error,
88 experiments: the odds against chance are
29 quintillion to 1. This topic has been discussed
in grey query detail in technical literature
and also in psychological bulletin in a couple
of articles. Well this is all subjects combined
of the 3,000 studies typically college sophomores.
People who are available interested just anybody.
But if you look at special populations in
particular creative populations, sib--or siblings
or people have very high openness traits which
is a psychological trait or have reported
previous experience, the things like telepathy,
you find that their hit rate is not 32% but
it's actually way up here, more like 65%.
So, what kind of explanations are possible
here? Besides the real telepathy explanation,
you have things like; it was a recording mistake,
randomization problems, sensory leakage, on
and on and on. The one that has been looked
at that in most detail is a possibility of
selective reporting because maybe there are
3,000 known studies but there's 50,000 unknown
studies if you serve into the mix, then it
would all go away. But as it turns out there
are ways of testing or in estimating how much
missing data there actually is and I'm not
going into it because that's a whole talk
unto itself. But the bottom line is, a selective
reporting is not a plausible explanation for
the results that we see. What happens when
people review this data? Well, in 1985, Chuck
Honorton was one of the principal researchers
did a Meta-analysis and they concluded that
the results look like there really was telepathy
going on. In 1985 also, Ray Hyman who we've
already met looked at the same data and he
concluded no, he wasn't convinced. Ten psychologists
and statisticians were then ask to comment
on both what Hyman and Honorton had written
and none agreed with Hyman including four
people who had no previously known opinion
about the topic. In 1994, Daryl Bem and Chuck
Honorton published in Psychological Bulletin
and they concluded yes, something was going
on. 1999 Milton and Wiseman published a--another
Meta-analysis on new data which had been collected
up to that point. What they reported was no,
as my--I say that if your--they reported as
no, but it turns out that their analysis is
incorrect. If they use the same analysis,
a very simple analysis based on hits and myths
as everybody else had done, actually, they
did find a significant effect. 2001, Storm
and Ertel did another update, yes. So, the
bottom line here is that when you go through
the Meta-analysis of people we published,
the only person who wasn't convinced was Ray
Hyman. At bottom, what typically happens though
is they say, "Well, Meta-analysis have their
own problems." What happens when skeptical
researchers try the same experiment? 2005,
this very interesting article was published
in the Humanistic Psychologist by two skeptical
psychologists who did eight Ganzfeld studies
of the type that I've just described and after
eight studies, we had an overall statistically
significant hit rate of 32% which turns out
to be exactly the same overall hit rate that
you find in the Meta-analysis. And then said
that--well, this is precariously close to
demonstrating that humans do have psychic
powers. So, they ran one more experiment using
an Ad Hoc Model of how they think psychic
stuff would work which no one had previously
tested and they got a significantly negative
result in that one study. So, they concluded
that due to this last data set, we do not
believe that humans possess telepathic powers.
Further, the approximately 32% correct figure
obtained in an enormous number of psi studies
remains perplexing. Perhaps this 7% phenomenon
in comparable to Meehl's "crud factor." So,
I wrote a letter to the editor saying, "Well,
I'm not sure the "crud factor" is actually
a very good explanation. Well, what it does
is again, show a very clear indicator of a
kind taboo that we're dealing with because
when we come in to this is a skeptic. You
run eight studies and getting allover significant
result which was the same as everyone else
had been reporting and then you're compelled
to say that this is precariously close to
demonstrating something I don't believe well
why do people do that? I would have stopped
after eight studies and said, "Well, looks
pretty good to me." But some people are not
willing to do that. To which I respond, if
they don't like our evidence, I'll show them
the kittens because everybody likes kittens.
This expresses some of my frustration and
a frustration of my colleagues who after showing
a huge amount of evidence which is reasonably
consistent over long periods of time, you
can't convince people if they don't like the
kittens. So, sometimes you have to bring them
out. If all the preceding was true, then that
probably is also true that there should be
correlations betweens peoples brains were
isolated. And so, you can do an experiment
of the following type, you have--take two
people, you isolate them, you have them think
about each other. You get some sort of a light
flashing stimulus to create above potentials
in one person's brain and you look in the
others person's brain and see whether you
get an effect, very simple. So, here's how
we did it up at the Institute of Noetic Sciences,
we have our fancy shielded room, we put the
receiver in there and measured a single cortical
measure, that's easy. Senders at a distance,
the sender's room is normally dark but for
the purposes of taking a picture, it has a
flasher. So, she's in a dark room looking
at a blank screen and every so often, the
face of the other person pops up for a few
seconds and then it goes away. So, it does
two things, it does a visual stimulus and
creates a light flash which will create and
evoke potential in her brain and also remind
her what the nature of the task is, namely
you're trying to connect to your friend at
a distance. So, the experimental data looks
like this. This is based on 13 couples. A
sender's brain gets a big evoke response just
about at the right time scale that you'd expect
and the receiver's brain also showed a peak
at that point. If you do a correlation and
do the proper statistics, you've end up with
a statistically significant correlation in
time between the two brains. Now, this is--the
sender's brain is of course is completely
expected. The receiver's brain is not because
the receiver is sitting in the dark room and
nothing's happening. And by the way, the receiver
never reports anything either. In this case,
the receiver is not reporting seeing weird
flickering lights or anything, she reports
nothing. Well, this is published--another
study was published by some colleagues at
the University of Edinburgh where they looked
at overall level of activation in the brain
using a topological map. And you can see here
that when the light flashed--let's see if
it points it, yes. So the light flashes here,
roughly 200 milliseconds later there's a lot
of activity in the brain and sort of dies
away. What's happening in the composite brain
of the receivers? As it turns out, there's
an interesting activation that rises in the
receivers which peaks around 200 milliseconds
as well. Again, the receivers don't report
anything here. This is all unconscious but
nevertheless, their Central Nervous System
is running in time sync apparently with what's
going on in the centers--yes, the centers.
There are lots of other studies of this type
I could about but I'm going to skip over them
and go directly in to other fMRI studies.
So, here's a study done by Leanna Standish
and their colleagues up at Bastyr University
in Washington University. They did a study
involving 30 couples who had been selected
for having practice Dyad meditation. This
is when two people meditate with each other
and on each other. So, they have been practicing
this for a long time. They took those 30 couples,
ran an EEG study and selected the three top
couples who seem to show on EEG conduction
and then ran the top one of them in this study,
in the fMRI. So, there's one couple pre-selected
out of a group of 30 people. And what you
see here is, in the receiver's brain, while
the sender, the distance is looking at a flickering
checkerboard pattern that the occipital lobe
and particular the visual cortex of the receiver
lit up in time sync into a highly significant
degree. So, that was published in 2001. As
far as I can tell, it was never reported anywhere
other than in the journal, I know Science
Media picked it up. This was repeated a few
years later with the same couple, Richards
at the University of Washington again, the
same couple this time in both of the pair.
They would run the pair, first one is receiver
one is the sender and then flipped them. In
this case, both of them showed an effect.
Although, I'm going to jump now to something
completely different. What we've been talking
about is the possibility of telepathy which
is consistent both in terms of conscious report
and Central Nervous System reports and also
turn out Autonomic Nervous System report.
There's a lot of data suggesting that people
connect with each other at some way that doesn't
look like ordinary physics. What about the
color phi effect? This is a well-known effect
in visual perception. If you look in a time
scale where you have a blue dot and a little
bit later you have red a dot and you just
loop around and around. So, you're seeing
blue, red, blue, red flashing back and forth.
And you ask people, what do they perceive?
What they perceive is that the blue dot about
halfway through, changes into a red dot and
this is an interesting illusion because the
conscious experience precedes the actual stimulus
itself. So, what could account for that? Well,
Daniel Dennett--so this is about the color
phi effect: "Unless there is precognition
in the brain, the illusory content cannot
be created until after some identification
of the second spot occurs in the brain." And
so, it leads to ideas like tape delays and
retrodiction and words that say that the brain
is able to backward infer what happened. Unless
there really is evidence for precognition
in which case, this changes interpretation
quite significantly. So, I call presentiment,
an unconscious form of precognition, a feeling
about an event in the future or a vague sense
of impending doom. 
Here's how you do the experiment. You sit
somebody down in front of a blank screen and
you record some measure. I typically have
used autonomic measures but as you'll see,
you could use other measures as well. Skin
conduct is a good one. They pressed a button,
three to five seconds goes by while the screen
remains blank. A computer randomly selects
one picture out of a huge pull of pictures.
And the computer does shows the picture for
three seconds, it's either calm or it's emotional
and then the screen goes blank for a while
to let the person calm down and then you repeat
this 30 or 40 times. So, the whole experiment
is over in 20 minutes. The pictures that I've
used most often are called the International
Affective Picture System. These were developed
by the--for the NIMH at the University of
Florida and there's an international standard
of pictures that evoke emotion and to what
the degree they evoke the emotion. So, examples
for this, this is a low affect picture, non-emotional
picture. This is a positive affect--positive
valence, high emotion picture for certain
people and the same for certain other people.
And then there's also a negative valence,
positive or emotional. And then they--in each
category here, there--they go to extremes,
so on the really extreme case of a negative
emotional picture, these are pictures you
really don't want to see. And when they get
in your head, you sort of wish you hadn't
seen them; it's that kind of a picture. Not
so much on the erratic side. In the erratic
side, you look at the pictures and you really
want to see them again and again, that's a
different story. So, here's what the actual
data looks like. This is skin conductance
in somebody who saw a sequence of calm pictures
randomly selected. So, the might see a picture
like that and a picture like that. And as
you see, there's a certain degree of anticipation
waiting for the picture, you see it and then
relax, and this happens again and again. But
this is a real case where an emotional picture
arose and the presentiment then is this anomaly
that there's a greater degree of anticipation
before that one picture than there was before
the preceding pictures. So, when you do this
as a formal experiment, you end up with something
like this. This is the average of all the
emotional pictures before, during and after
it was shown. And for the calm pictures, here's
where you press the button to begin the trial.
Here's where the stimulus is randomly selected.
So, when you press the button and you wait
and your physiology is being recorded, the
stimulus has not been selected yet, it's still
in the future. That difference is the presentiment
difference. It suggests that there's something
about the future which is pulling your present.
As we can do a statistical analysis in this
case, one person with 30 trials ended up with
a statistically significant difference suggesting
that somehow they knew it was about to occur.
In 19--starting in 1995 I guess, I started
running a series of studies. This was when
I ran here in Silicon Valley when I was working
[INDISTINCT] research. There is--this is the
button press, here's with the stimulus occurs,
there's a presentiment difference which turned
out to be highly statistically significant.
And most of the participants in this test
turned out to be people like you because I
was working in an environment very much like
this and I needed subjects and basically,
we walk around and say I only 20 minutes to
spare and found people to do the test. So
overall, I did a 133 people out of 4500 trials
and got a statistically significant effect
along the line suggesting that there's something
that is giving you a cue about what's coming
up. So, what sort of explanations can we use
for this other than precognition? Well, there's
a long laundry list. As in any experiment
of this type, we always through--go through
alternative explanations that are more conventional.
And so, you go through all of these and turns
out that none of them were plausible partially
because of the way we design it also because
the way we analyze it and even more explanations.
The bottom always is, is it independently
replicable? And the answer is yes. Shortly
after I presented my first study, Dick Bierman
at the University of Amsterdam did almost
identical study using his hardware and his
people of course and he reported basically
the same kind of result that I did. He didn't
actually think it was going work. He did it
anyway and got an interesting result. This
was then repeated--oh, well there's a significant
result. This was repeated by Chester Wildey
at the University of Texas. He's an electrical
engineering student who built his own skin
conductance meter as part of his master's
thesis and then used it for this experiment.
And there's a presentiment difference, he
also used with people and earthworms. Yes?
>> [INDISTINCT] relationship between phi number
as the graph?
>> RADIN: Phi number is a probability of the
result.
>> How about then the second result of the
graph?
>> RADIN: Well, in this particular cases of
that the difference highlighted in yellow
is due to chance. That's not the way a statistician
would report it but in a popular way of thinking
of it, it's the probability that the result
you're looking at is chance. So, if you get
a probability which is really small, that's
very likely not to due to chance.
>> Oh, I see. So, phi less than 0.03 is a
very low chance [INDISTINCT]
>> RADIN: Right, that's right. So, Chester
did this study with people and earthworms
and got almost significant results. Significant
here by the way is by convention and behavioral
science is 0.5, is at the threshold where
start to think something is going on. And
it's a completely arbitrary number but nevertheless,
it access a kind of a magic icon within the
behavioral and social sciences. So, we got
an 0.6 result. Then my colleagues Ed May and
James Spottiswoode did a study using simply
audio startle tones. You'd sit there with
headphones on and about once a minute, you
hear a real loud noise, randomly and sometimes
you hear nothing. And so, this is looking
at the difference between hearing sound and
hearing silence and they got a significant
effect. This is a 125 people that they ran
just once, just the first time. This was then
repeated by a colleague of his in Hungary,
using new equipment, new populations, and
so on again, a significant result. Rollin
McCraty of the Institute of Heartmath in Boulder
Creek did the same kind of study with using
pictures like I had used, he found similar
results in the heart rate which is his main
interest. So, there's a stimulus in two different
conditions before and after meditation. Those
yellow areas are both significant. And then
let's see, what about presentiment in the
brain? Most of what we look out so far is
presentiment in the Autonomic Nervous System,
it's partially because it's easy to measure
there, but what about the Central Nervous
System? So, we did an experiment where we
looked at presentiment in the brain in a very
simple test where you basically sit down in
a dark environment, you wear glasses that
have LADs in them and every so often they
flash. In fact, you--you're asked to press
a button--let's see, you press a button and
you know that four seconds later you will
either see a flash or you won't see a flash
that's the nature of the experiment. And each
person did a hundred trials. The flashes are
determined completely randomly using a true
number generator. So, this is the results
shown for women. This is the median EEG and
the two conditions. There's a button that's
pressed, there's with a stimulus occurs which
is either a flash light or no flash. That
difference one second before the flash and
remember, in all of these experiments, the
stimulus is determined immediately before
it's shown. So, the physiological result that
you see here is happening before the stimulus
has been determined. Sound like it's a clairvoyant
experiment where somebody knows what the answers
is; nobody knows what the answer is. It's
determined on the fly right before the peers.
So, the women in this experiment, that's the
interesting result, they got a significant
result two-tailed and the men did not. The
men got a 0.12 probability, so interesting
but not significant. Well, here is something
that looks kind of similar, there's a stimulus,
there's three different kinds of pictures:
calm, violent and erotic for both the erotic
and violent pictures that was a rise as a
presentiment type rise. Females got significant
result for both erotic and violent and males
for erotic pictures only which you see actually
fairly often in this. Males become a nerd
to pictures of violence. And we also have
a different reaction. When we see a picture
of violence, we sort of shut--we shut in.
We don't get all emotional about it. Females
in general don't act that way and you just
actually see it in these results. What we're
looking at here is not skin conductance but
we're actually looking at Hemodynamics, we're
looking at an fMRI. So, even in an fMRI, you
can do the study and you can see where is
the effect showing up in the brain? The effect--the
primary effect showed up in the visual cortex
which is not too--not too surprising because
we're dealing with visual stimuli here and
nevertheless, there's something different
in the brain in the visual cortex if you're
just about to see an emotional picture versus
a calm picture. This is by the way, was the
4th fMRI study looking at an ESP Phenomena.
What about in pupil dilation? Pupil dilation
is a very interesting thing to study because
it's reflects a balance between the two aspects
of the Autonomic Nervous System between the
Sympathetic and the Parasympathetic. And if
you ever look at your eye, you could sort
of see it fluctuating a lot. The fluctuation
is showing the balance between the ambient
light but also whether you're Sympathetic
or Parasympathetic part of your Nervous System
is more dominant to that moment. So, it actually
turns out to be really a good lie detector
and a really good way of saying how people
are responding emotionally to what they're
seeing? So, we do this experiment, we did
this in the lab with a nice light tracker
and what you can see, the experiment you can
see what she's looking at. So, I saw that
she's looking at this picture and I see what--how
bigger her pupil is and I also know exactly
where she's looking and we get 60 samples
per second on this. So, using the same kind
designs before, we have emotional picture
average on the top, the calm pictures on the
bottom, we get a highly significant result.
This is what based on 36 people. Most of the
result turns out to be in women, not so much
in men. This is a very nice study to do with
an eye tracker because one of the problems
in doing eye tracking research is that the
amount of illumination in the picture itself
will cause the pupil to change. If you have
a bright picture, the pupil will get stopped
down. But all of the action that we're interested
in is while they're looking at a blank screen.
So, they're always guaranteed that while looking
at the blank screen, that's what we want to
see whether there's difference in their pupil
dilation and it turns out that there is exactly
the same sort of response that we saw in the
other measures. So, the summary for presentiment
study is a fairly new kind study, I've know
of 19 done to date of which 10 are significant.
For 10 studies to be significant out of 19
is [INDISTINCT] significant overall. I mean,
something interesting is going on. What about
mind-matter interaction? Well, this is about
two-hour talk. So, what I can tell you is
that this kind of phenomena has been looked
at in grey query detail. Everything from random
events, properties of metal, bacteria, plants,
animal health, animal behavior, animal intention,
human health, human behavior, human physiology,
water, food, and photons. Most recent study
is individual are actually small group of
photons, other conditions where you're doing
the equivalent of a double slit experiment.
And you want to see whether or not there is
equivalent of a quantum observer effect except
without looking at it with your eye, looking
at it with some kind of internal intuitive
eye where you ask somebody to imagine that
they could see something happening at a distance.
As it turns out, this article is published
today. I've been waiting for this to come
out. It's Explore is an Elsevier Journal.
I wrote this in terms of testing intuitive
knowledge and the intuitive knowledge here
is, if you may know that within a double slit
experiment, if you gain--or any quantum optic
experiment, if you gain which path information
about which--where the photons are going,
you'll always see something that looks particulate-like.
And if you don't get that information, you'll
get interference pattern, so get things to
look wavelike. So, this experiment was one
to use a double-slit type of design, actually
used a Michelson interferometer, where I ask
people to use their intuitive knowledge to
gain which path information. Put your eye
at a distance, in the apparatus at a distance
and gain which path information, try to see
the photon. And then when we looked at the
interference pattern, we've seen what happened.
And it turned out we got a significant result.
So, you can look that up today. Extraordinary
claims require extraordinary evidence. I agree
with that. "But extraordinary with--in regard
to what?" Is a question that usually doesn't
come up. There--are psi experiences extraordinary?
Well, no. It permeates culture, history all
educational levels about the same number of
college professors when asked about their
belief in psychic phenomena is the same as
the general public. You'll get a different
response if you ask them to say aloud what
it is. But if you do anonymous surveys, you
get the same result. "Is it extraordinary
in terms of empirical evidence?" I think the
answer there also, it's not extraordinary.
We're saying repeatable, converging evidence
over a long period of time suggesting that
some of the things that people talk about
are probably real. Not all. What about extraordinary
with regard to theory? Well here, and with
regard to what many people imagined as Western
science theory about what's allowable, yes,
it looks like it's extraordinary. But on the
other hand, are existing theories complete?
I don't think so. At least, I hope not. And
if they're not complete, it leaves open the
possibility door. Well, maybe you will learn
something new at some point, and then it will
no longer be extraordinary. What about an
ontological view? Again, this is our worldview.
What do we--how do we think the world is actually
constructed? I would say the psi is compatible
with what we've learned about nonlocality
in physics. This doesn't mean that I automatically,
well, equate quantum entanglement for example
or nonlocality with psi. But what I do say
is that it opens the door. It creates a vector
pointing in a direction which is consistent,
which is at least allowable for these phenomena
to occur. And one of the things that nonlocal
phenomena has done is take our previous classical
worldview and really expand it a lot. And
it has expanded it so much that most people
are not deeply involved in understanding what
nonlocality means, just don't think about
it. It's very difficult to think about these
things, especially since nonlocality is not
just in space but in time as well. So, we
live in a weird fabric of reality which has
connections of both transcend space and time.
So, I would claim that psi claims are actually
pretty ordinary. They certainly happen often
enough. We can dismiss maybe 80% to 90% using
the usual cognitive biases and coincidences
and so on; but we can't dismiss 100%. And
I'll go back to what Jessica Utts said that
using the standards applied to any other area
of science, it's concluded that psychic function
has been well-established. And one thing that
Ray Hyman agreed to with this statement was,
is this--for at least for remote viewing,
and they probably would agree for telepathy
test as well, there is no need to do additional
studies that are proof-oriented. We have enough
proof-oriented studies. What we need now are
studies that are trying to get more of the
question of why do we get these anomalies.
Is it really psychic? That's hard to say because
we don't know yet exactly what psychic means
or when we see the results in the experiments
that looked a lot like what people report
in real life. Well, why does any of these
matter? Well, one reason is that I think it's
just interesting. My personal reason that
I have spent the last 25 years doing this
as a scientist is because I think it's curious.
It's very curious. Why would you not want
to study this? Another thing is that I think
it enhances public interest in science. When
you have something where 90% of the--of the
people are interested in the phenomena, but
the mainstream reaction to it is, essentially,
you're stupid. You don't understand how science
works. That creates the kind of context where
people get turned off by science. And you
see in the NSF and other places that are concerned
about literacy in science among the U.S. population,
everyone is concerned because people believe
all kinds of weird stuff. Unfortunately, these
phenomena which are empirically testable are
lumped in to weird stuff in general, which
I think is not warranted. This, in some respects,
augments who and what we think we are. If
telepathy is true, it means that you're--what
you think of as private thoughts aren't so
private after all. It means that you'd have
to think of your mind as mostly located in
here but spread out a little bit in both space
and time. And if it spread out in space and
time, it means that your thoughts and other
people's thoughts co-mingle at some stage.
That creates a very dramatic change in terms
of our personal ontology about who and what
we think we are. Another thing is that it
challenges the worldview that says we're--we
are completely isolated, we live in a mechanistic
world where mind is brain and a completely
pointless existence. You see this sometimes.
There are people who have been into the neurosciences
for a while especially students. They become
really depressed because the worldview that
is presented is, you're a meaningless zombie.
There's nothing going on and everything is
pointless. There's no meaning for anything.
Or as Francis Crick wrote in his book, "You're
nothing but a pack of neurons." On the--my
sense is that the neurosciences are correct,
they're just not completely correct. And if
it's not completely correct, what's the part
that's missing? Am I nothing but a pack of
neurons plus something else? Well, if so,
I want to know what the something else is.
And here's why science reacts badly to anomalies,
because what I've presented to you from a
Western science point of view are anomalies.
What you see is an anomaly. Like here's some
kind of weird result having to do with intention
on physiology. And here's another weird result
of attention on photons. And here it is on
random events. And there's with telepathy.
What would you do with this stuff? Well, you
don't know what to do with it. Here's another
one, EEG correlations. But if I showed you
a way of thinking about it and you looked
at this for ten seconds. And now, you look
at the same pattern. Now, you can't not see
the explanation that I just gave you. In fact,
if you see this 10 years from now, you'll
still see the couple dancing. So, once you
have a framework for a way to begin to take
what looks like anomalies--and what I'm talking
about here is basically is a combination of
theory and probably an expansion of our worldview
that all of the stuff will make perfect sense.
And the frustrating thing for me is, we know
historically that when anomalies arise and
they're--they pre-see the theory that once
the theory arises, everything falls into place
and everybody instantly forgets that it was
controversial. It's like a--it's some sort
of weird cultural amnesia that you forget
that things which we accept now, were once
so controversial that it got people burn to
the stake or equivalent. So, for more information
in all these stuffs, these are books I recommend.
My two books on the left. There are bunch
of other books. I brought six copies of Entangled
Minds which was--came out last year or two
years ago now. Conscious Universe I wrote
in 1907, they compliment each other. Extraordinary
knowing is a view of these kinds of phenomena
from the point of view of a psychotherapist.
I thought was--did a very good job. Parapsychology
and The Skeptics goes into much more detail
on how skeptics have responded to these issues
over the past century or so. Irreducible Mind
is a great book which looks at, "Is the neuroscience
assumption that everything is reducible down
to neurons or below. Is that viable?" They
make a very strong case, I believe where the
answer is no. And just the one example I gave
was genius. No one has any idea how to explain
genius. Outside the Gate of Science is written
by a science fiction writer who tried to take
his standard skeptical approach as a journalist
and a science fiction author to this phenomena,
"Could it be real?" And you can see that as
you read through the book that it goes to
enormous amounts of turning in his head to
come out with some kind of conclusion, and
he concludes that he thinks it is, it does
look real. Psi Wars is a combination of skeptical
and proponent essays from the journal of consciousness
studies. And Varieties of Anomalies Experience
was published by the American Psychological
Association, and include psi as one these
strange anomalies that happens in the mind.
And it's all in right there. And I don't know--we
have a few minutes for questions? Okay. Questions.
I'll put this one back up so you can look
at that. A question on the back, yes?
>> Yes. Everything and along in line is that
actually one forward with it was--I mean,
going forward in this area and talking about
technology like that. And [INDISTINCT] actually
used [INDISTINCT] used for work. And it's
actually like a—-usually things that-—we
think of they're actually [INDISTINCT] people
to learn how to harness [INDISTINCT]. So,
I'm wondering have ever you any done studies
which are trying to find people with extraordinary
abilities and observe them and try to find
the fact that they do exactly?
>> RADIN: Well, that question we heard [INDISTINCT]
shall I repeat it? Repeat it? So, the question,
is--to boil it down. Have technological demonstrations
or uses of these phenomena have been tried?
And the answer for technology in the form
of computing technology, probably not. I've
been looking into that issue for a long time.
So, my--one of my degrees is in electrical
engineering, and so it immediately comes to
mind that maybe you can create not a brain
computer interface but a mind computer interface.
I think something like that is possible; but
we're not quite smart enough yet to figure
out how to do it. But in terms of other kinds
of technologies like the use of remote viewing
for psychic spying or for archeology and for
those sorts of things that has been used successfully
and continues to be used. So, in terms of
a skill, yes, they're practical applications.
In terms of technologically augmented skill,
as in what the DARPA is doing for augmented
cognition, I don't think we're quite there
yet but we're getting close. And part of the
reason that we're not closer is because we
really don't yet have a theory about what
exactly is going on. One-—just to show how
difficult the problem is, there are some inkling
that environmental factors strongly influence
these effects. So, James spot us [INDISTINCT]
now if you others have looked at the role
of the geomagnetic field, and people's performance
on these kinds of tasks. And it turns out
that the geomagnetic field makes a big difference,
a huge difference. Possibly, the lunar cycle
does as well, [INDISTINCT] that lunar cycle
and geomagnetic field are linked, possibly
the locals sidereal time also makes a difference.
So, these are all physical correlates that
seem to modulate these effects. It shouldn't
be too surprising because though same variant,
the same variables also modulate other aspects
of human behavior. So, maybe we're looking
at something which are--effects which modulate
the nervous system's ability to attend. And
if we can figure out ways of optimizing that,
well maybe we can get effects which are strong
enough to be able to be used in technological
circumstances. You had your hand up?
>> Test, test. Is this on? No?
>> RADIN: It is now.
>> All right. So, I apologize. I arrived a
little late. So, if you covered this earlier,
I apologize. But I saw four experiments; the
Ganzfeld, the EEG correlation, presentiment,
and the last one is interparameter. And it
seems to me they all share some characteristics
that they could be repeated, that they had
an outcome that could be predicted ahead of
time and that outcome is extensively different
from chance, and that there is no reaction
or explanation for that outcome. Do you agree
with me, folks?
>> RADIN: Yes, that's the most experimental
set-up. Not so much that there's no rational
explanation, but yes.
>> But we know it.
>> RADIN: Yes.
>> Yes. So, it seems to me that anyone of
those four could easily win [INDISTINCT] or
any million dollar prize for establishing
psi phenomena, and therefore get a football
from the establishment to further investigation.
So, why do you think that in the ten years,
nobody has won the prize or even tested for
it?
>> RADIN: Well, as Ray Hyman said--as Ray
Hyman said that no scientist would ever accept
a phenomena based on one shot. So, that's
one reason. So, as the scientist…
>> [INDISTINCT] money based on one shot.
>> RADIN: Perhaps. But as I showed here that
the--because experiments are vary in human,
performance varies, that you have to do a
power analysis to find out how many trials
you need to do in order to be able to get
a result in a certain effect.
>> Right.
>> RADIN: So, I went through this exercise,
how many trials are necessary to get an effect
which would convince somebody to hand over
a million dollars? He probably need a probability,
maybe one in a hundred million to get that.
And if you want, say, a 90% or 99% chance
of getting an effect that's one over a hundred
million and you do the power analysis, it
turns out that we take somebody roughly four
to eight years of running these experiments
every single day in order to get the result
which would reach that level. And if you calculate
how much money you need in order to do that,
it turns out it's more than a million dollars.
So, the answer is, it's not a cost-effective
challenge. The other thing is that the reason
why I don't like challenges that are open-ended.
I mean, this is a very different kind of challenge
than the first private or commercial rocket
that goes a certain distance. It's a very
clear challenge to know in advance what you
need to do.
>> Would you go on to try [INDISTINCT]?
>> RADIN: Absolutely. And by the way, it's
not the case of--not me, but some colleagues
of mine have actually suggested that the presentiment
experiment would be an interesting one to
use for this because it seems to have a pretty
big effect size. The challenge went out, no
response ever came back. So, you know, what
do you do? Yes?
>> So, we've--if it's like you say--I mean,
if you were saying to me that you're not sure
whether this is based on mind entanglement.
But if it is, I guess one thing that you could
expect is that people who are entangled that
they--maybe, their connection would tell you
measurable time as--I mean, supposing that
their brains interact with the environment,
which--in which they do, you know, you don't
expect to--I guess, you weren't--you weren't
entangled [INDISTINCT] you know, the brains
are in [INDISTINCT] collapsed.
>> RADIN: Right.
>> So, is that in effect that you've observed?
>> RADIN: Well, the question is on whether—-if
there is something maybe analogous to entanglement
between brains, would it decline with time?
And I think the answer probably is yes, it
would. But on the other hand, they—-the
kind of entanglement that we're working with
here is a dynamic entanglement. As you--if
you imagine-—if you use as a metaphor something
like entanglement and you're dealing with
people who you're with a lot, you're constantly
being re-entangled. So, you can imagine something
like people you're very close to have the
certain degree of entanglement. I'm not talking
quantum entanglement, but some sort of psychological
entanglement. People you don't tend to be
around very much with you, have a smaller
degree because of the case. People you're
never around at all, you might have some because
of some background entanglement resulting
from the big bang, but it would be really
tiny. So, that kind of a model can be used
to predict that when people report telepathic
type experiences, they ought to be stronger
among the people you know the best and a little
bit less and so on. And that is of course
what you see. So, what's your question? You
got a question?
>> I used to [INDISTINCT] in between [INDISTINCT].
He says something that up to his heart. He
said that, one of the reasons why scientists
don't like its arguing [INDISTINCT] conclusion
theory is that theories in science are regarded
"and, but"[INDISTINCT] because theories explain
buts, and buts just are reason. So, all these
terms that you mentioned are actually very
interesting and they're statistically very
correct but they're missing a key ingredient
of science which is in the scientific method.
You have another theory that makes prediction
and you make an experiment that could falsify
the theory. And the reason [INDISTINCT] that
there are--is the prediction of that there
is no theory made out of these experiments.
So, how do you think we'd go about [INDISTINCT]
theories explains why is that?
>> RADIN: All right. So, the question is that
one of the things that is part of the power
of science is that they're both theories where
you can make predictions, you do experiments
and so on. There's a balance between theory
and experimentation. That's true for what
we might call mature science. But at the leading
edge of science, the way that all sciences
began is somebody making an observation of
a weird thing; and at that point, you don't
have a theory yet. All of this is pre-theoretic.
That doesn't make it not science. It's the
beginning of science. It's where you'd look
at repeated effects throughout history and
you say, "Well, what do we do with this?"
The usual way that it's dealt with which gives
rise to the taboo is to say, "You know what,
there's no theory. Therefore, that observation
can't be what it appears to be." That's where
the theory goes wrong. It's like why theory
sometimes is not such a good thing to come
in on with. Because if you're--if you're carrying
a theory along with you that changes your
way of perceiving the world the way the world
is actually is. And if you look at the history
of science, you see, again and again somebody
reports a strange observation which is dismissed
because it doesn't fit. And it takes sometimes
a hundred years for people to-—for theory
to have evolved to the point where now it's
okay. So, I gave a number of examples of that
in the Conscious Universe, and there are many
examples where theory can act as a blinding
force. So, it also is a temperamental difference.
I have friends who were basically theorists.
They don't think about empiricism at all.
And so, they think in terms of explanatory
that the world must be explained. That's what
they're good at. I'm not a very good theorist.
I'm--I spend most of my career doing empirical
things, looking at what the world actually
is trying to tell me. And I don't really care
that much about theory. The reason why my
book is called Entangled Minds and when I
talk about quantum entanglement is partially
because of the question that you just said
come up--comes up so often where sometimes
people are not even willing to entertain the
evidence unless there's some explanation.
So I said, "Okay. I'll come up with something."
Well, here's a good thing. Entanglement's
good, you know, it sort of sounds like that.
Well, maybe it's completely wrong; but nevertheless,
it at least gives some way of conceiving what's
going on. And so, in a sense, what I'm doing
is challenging theorists by saying, "Well,
okay, you guys. A huge body of data, it has
certain degree of internal consistency over
long period of time. We can make predictions
that if we see it happening like telepathy
and conscious experience, we ought to be able
to see it in unconscious physiological states
as well. So, we go to the experiment and we
see it. So, the hope then is, when I give
a talk and the--in technical environment is
to spark the mind of somebody who's thinking
about theory all the time and have them think,
"Well, okay. Maybe there's microtubules in
the head which are quantum oscillators and
blah, blah, blah." And they come up with some
kind of reason that would advance the state
of the science. So, I completely agree. We
need theories. If anybody comes up with a
good idea, let me know or publish it first.
Yes?
>> So, first of all, thanks for coming. But
certainly, thanks for the talk and be able
to discuss with this kind of audience. So,
I have a few questions. So, I'm a little skeptical
of the experiments that you did because I'm
not sure what the environment [INDISTINCT]
for example, in an experiment with the [INDISTINCT]
where you have four different pictures. I
feel like bias would necessarily be the one
[INDISTINCT] people with all pictures--first
picture. And I think you keep on choosing
the person even if she' saying [INDISTINCT]
so, I don't know whether or not the randomization
is [INDISTINCT]
>> RADIN: Now, let me answer that. So, let
me answer that now while—-before you continue.
In the case of the Ganzfeld, the order in
which the pictures are presented to the subject
at the end are randomized; so maybe it was
the first picture, maybe not. So, over thousands
of such studies, the order should not make
any difference. And in fact, when you look
at the vast majority of studies of this type,
it doesn't make any difference. And that's--so,
that is tracked.
>> Okay. And then--and for what second question
is for the one with the and--with the light.
I mean, there is a possibility that the person
from the receiving side can actually see the
light. So, I don't know, is it possible for
you talk [INDISTINCT]. I mean, the theory
is nice but how do I know that these are just
theories but they literally do not skip anything?
>> RADIN: All right, that's a good question.
The—-it's difficult to convey in a sort
of broad-based presentation like this what
actually goes on in these experiments. I have
a talk on the Ganzfeld alone which is a couple
of hours. And part of the--of the midpoint
of that talk talks about the due diligence
that goes on to make sure that you're not
dealing with an ordinary explanation like
a sensory cue or like an electromagnetic pulse
coming out of the stimulator device, things
of that sort. These have been discussed to
such great detail that you wouldn't believe.
And one of the reasons that is--that it's
both—-that people pay attention to it and
it's discussed in great detail is because
of the skepticism, and rightly so. So, the
people are saying, you know what, I'm not
sure I believe this because maybe it was that.
Imagine now a hundred and thirty years of
those comments. So, if somebody does one of
these experiments now, you come with a huge
long list of things that you have to nail
down tight. Because if you don't nail it down
tight, your colleagues will kill you because
they don't want bad evidence going out either.
So, in the case of something like the Ganzfeld,
how do we know? Well, the besides being in
rooms which are typically 10 to 30 meters
apart, at least one of the rooms will be a
faraday cage typically, like in our case,
it's a double steel walled commercial faraday
room. You do pre-testing and you see if you
make sounds, you make noise, you--in our case,
we tested vibration, we tested audio tones,
light flashing, a bunch of things of that
sort to see whether it's perceivable, either
consciously or unconsciously through physiological
testing on the receiving site. And we're talking
about tones for example from the sender's
room to the receiver's room using a coast
guard horn. So, in those sender's room, you
use a coast guard horn which is over a 100dB,
it's really loud. And you blast it and you
see if the other person can hear it, and you
make audio measurements to see whether there's
any discernable difference. And the answer
is no. But as we learned, you actually attract
the fire department because we were blasting
the horn quite a bit and the fire department
came because they thought we're having a problem.
So, those are kinds of hoops that we jump
through. And in fact, one of the reasons we
have a very fancy electromagnetically shielded
room is exactly for reasons of being able
to describe to somebody how do we know that
there was no ordinary signal getting in. Well,
that's how we know. We test it and then we
use means that are known for getting rid of
such stuff.
>> Okay. And my--and then ask question is
that, by the time [INDISTINCT] service is
that this becoming dangerously close to correlation
versus causation policy. Because I feel like
they're saying that there's like a point of
005 chance that something happens. It states
that, you know, if this like--or might the
event has happened but I feel like you're
going further in stating that because it happened
it means that, you know, there is a possibility
of it being true. And I'm wondering how you
would address that because more than [INDISTINCT]
about that issue.
>> RADIN: Well, it is true. The results we
see in these experiments or in fact almost
all experiments and any domain, there are
correlations. That's what we see. We infer
the arrow of causation. In this case, I'm
willing to take the next step and say that,
"Yes, the experiments show correlations."
But because we set it up in such a way that
we think we know what we're doing, I will
infer that the arrow of causation comes from
that person to this person. But we don't really
know that, so that is true. One of the reasons
that we don't know yet which direction the
arrow of causation goes or in fact maybe there
is no direction of causation. Maybe we're
dealing with something which is a purely correlated
phenomenon, which is possible. We don't have
theories that--which would say that we should
be able to predict that you'll get a correlation
phenomena versus cause 01. That's what we're
waiting for. So technically, you're correct.
We're dealing with correlations. We know that
the correlations are not chance, so that something
is giving rise to the correlation. When I
do an experiment to this type, typically the
way--the way I assign the arrow of causation
is because I tell somebody, "I want you to
do this," and then they--presumably, they
do that in their head. Well, that's one side
of the correlation. The other person is very
passive. They're sitting there in the dark
room doing nothing, and yet their brains sort
of hopping along with what the other person
is doing, who I gave the instruction to do
something. So, it looks like the arrow of
causation is going from the person who I asked
to do something to the other person. But you
can't actually see that in the data itself.
That's true. Yes?
>> You'll have to forgive for using the word
[INDISTINCT] the word here. But so I started
thinking about the Ganzfeld experiment. I
thought is--that the longer it goes from aerial
[INDISTINCT] and claiming that she herself,
you know, performed Ganzfeld experiment in
the '70s and included there the result of
[INDISTINCT] but she went on to investigate
parameters from the other [INDISTINCT] of
people doing that. And as soon as [INDISTINCT]
and lots places that the experiment bring.
And so--and then she goes on to say that,
you know, when you [INDISTINCT] it seems like
that, you know, designing a sort of experiment
is actually incredibly hard because there
are all these [INDISTINCT] sometimes people
might think [INDISTINCT] for instance, I know
that--at least that pre-exist some of the
early [INDISTINCT] actually had interaction
between some [INDISTINCT] interviewing the
person that gets out of the chamber. And that
person who's interviewing is the same person
throughout, but the visual tools from that
[INDISTINCT] I don't know if this a really
good experiment. That's what the science…
>> RADIN: That's not [INDISTINCT]
>> So, the interesting thing to me is that
it seems like that this sort of data, statistical
training is really in serious danger [INDISTINCT]
that this type of methodological plot. I don't
know if it's pure hot like a--but it seems
like to me that reading these accounts and
reading on top of, you know, this experiment
is looking at graphs of sort of people who've
done that result over time and looking at
their results, and then sort of [INDISTINCT]
those together in sort of one [INDISTINCT]
it seems really dangerous. It seems like that,
you know--that there are a lot of…
>> RADIN: There are a lot of [INDISTINCT]
to this Google. You'll find other articles
and you will find that this question has been
addressed some great detail. And in particular,
the study that Sue Blackmore said that she
found a problem with, which by the way was
never proven, just her opinion, if you take
those studies out, you get exactly the same
result.
>> Often says is that, you know, if there
is a methodological problem, it maybe that
sort of--you need to cross all the experiments.
I mean…
>> RADIN: I see that this is not [INDISTINCT]
that never get around. Of course, any experiment
might have a problem. And the reason why we
rely on an independent replication is because
we hope that no--that people are not making
the same mistake over and over again.
>> What would be interesting though is that
at least that experiments and one of them
you could do with methodological problems.
And when you still [INDISTINCT] the same results
from both of them in then play the one that
works better. Wouldn't that be evidence that,
you know--that the fact as I say underlying
sort of problem results.
>> RADIN: Again, if you spend a little bit
more time reading that, you'll find that that--your
question has been addressed as well. And this
is the question about--what is the quality
of the experiment [INDISTINCT] in methodological
quality related to the result to the experiment
in a way that we make you predict that the
better the experiment, the worse the results.
And the answer is no. And so, in other words,
you can address--I mean, all of the--these
questions have been thrashed out for so many
years and in so many different ways. Though,
in virtually, every case you can think of,
there is a way of addressing either analytically
or experimentally whether the result is what
it appears to be.
>> I just say, my skepticism is running that
fact that I understand psi [INDISTINCT] subject
presented result. But if it's--if the evidence
is as strong as you say, I would be--it just
seems like unbelievable to, you know--that,
you know, somebody else play independently
content study and sort of produce the same
answers. And like, you know--I think that
when I find this, it seems like that most
of people [INDISTINCT] really focusing of
how a [INDISTINCT]
>> RADIN: That's why--that's why I show the
results of the two highly skeptical professors
who did the experiment and got exactly the
same results.
>> But when they do the same experiment [INDISTINCT]
by the people who believe in [INDISTINCT]
but I'm not in the same that [INDISTINCT]
>> RADIN: According to the description. Yes.
The experiment that they did not fail to use
is different method and actually didn't fail
because significantly negative results. So,
that's a valid concern of--the people believe
in a result or not. One of the problems with
that as a criticism is they see this actually
happening in the data, somebody comes a long
who is skeptical, they do an experiment and
it works. They publish it, they are no longer
perceived as skeptical, which is ridiculous.
I am as skeptical as any of--anybody else.
And in fact, you have to be skeptical, much
more skeptical than you would imagine when
you do these experiments because if you're
not, it will be transparently obvious to anybody
else looking at it that you made a mistake.
>> I don't [INDISTINCT] I guess that link
is about everything I know about human nature
in the case if there are fundamental biases
[INDISTINCT] giving something and doing [INDISTINCT]
and I see this is where the [INDISTINCT] scientific
skills. So, I mean--I guess like--I can do
some formal searching or something. But I
guess--and to your selves, like--it's always
suspicious to me that most of the people after
[INDISTINCT] and the people who already believe,
and it seems like there are people who start
out with a hold inside and then it could be
some sort of conductive experiments that sort
of…
>> RADIN: Yes. Except, as they say, you have
a--it's very serious problem in that, if you
take myself for example. Did I start out as
a believer? The answer is no. There's no one
in my family or myself whoever reported anything
psychic, and no--no a priori reason to believe
any of it. It was only through during repeated
experiments where I began to convince myself
through the data. It looks like something
was going on. And if you--if you then cast
it out into a wider net then it really does
mean that you will end up with people who
are converted in a sense by their own experience,
by the nature of the data. And that's the
camp that I put myself into. And the continuing
distrust of bias in experimenters is a valid
concern. And one of the reasons why I write
and talk about this stuff is to try to interest
somebody else to actually do the experiment.
So, just to give you an example. In 1994,
in psychological bulletin, this meta-analysis
came out and it said that it looks like there's
a real effect going on in the Ganzfeld. Now,
James [INDISTINCT] well-known skeptic said,
"Well, if there was a real effect going on
then the parapsychologist will constitute
a very small number of scientists." They will
be trampled by thousands of people in academic
psychology who want to go ahead and test this.
And the result was a resounding silence. It
is not the case that you can find lots of
skeptics out there who are actually willing
to go ahead try these experiments. That's
why I was actually--I'm very encouraged by
the studies of the two folks that I mentioned,
the publishing article and the humanistic
psychologist because they were extremely skeptical
and remain extremely skeptical even though
they got the same results that everybody else
reports. Here's a question.
>> So, only a--is there any first words [INDISTINCT]
that as part at all to control or say there's
a receiver but no sender. So, you have the
room with TV that's showing you the outcome
but there's nobody in there, plus the receivers
felt they got [INDISTINCT]
>> RADIN: There have been pre-studies [INDISTINCT]
condition. The results are ambiguous. It's
not clear that one condition is better than
the other. There is a smidging--a smidgeon
of evidence suggesting that it helps to have
a distant sender, and this of course is under
a condition where the receiver doesn't know
if there's somebody sending or not. There's
a little bit of evidence suggesting that it
makes a difference. The stronger evidence
is among the EEG correlation studies, because
they are--what I've done and some colleagues
have done is to look in the sender's brain
to see if they actually have an invoked response;
because sometimes, the senders fall asleep,
in which case their brain goes to sleep too
and they don't show a response. So, if you
partition the data according to whether the
sender is actually showing a response versus
not, you get a--you get a positive correlation
when they are responding and you get no correlation
when they're not responding. So, just in that--at
least in that kind of design that it appears
as though you can make the correlation appear
and disappear by what is actually going on
at the level of the sender. So, that's one
answer. Yes?
>> So, another set of [INDISTINCT] this question.
When can you say the [INDISTINCT] that they're
all, you know--a vast body or just a good
number of various statistically significant
studies and yet on the other hand, you can
be general in the front but it take eight
years of continuous study to actually show
this effect. And you're asking us to believe
the stand along--on something much less than
eight years of continues study. I've got to
ask what exactly does statistical significance
mean.
>> RADIN: The difference here is, if you want
to do a single study, if you're going for
a prize and you need results of a hundred
million to one, and you need to set up all
of the conditions in advance. In order to
get that, you can calculate statistically
exactly how many trials you need. That would
take a long time. It would take a lot of data
to do that. We're looking at--in the meta-analysis
which is a stimulation graph that I showed,
that's not a single study. That's a result
of 30 years of other people's studies. And
the value of the graph is that it shows it
over time you begin to converge on a value.
So, that's like the general population value.
But that's an open-ended experiment, that
will kick going on as long as new data comes
in. So, the difference then is, when you do
a meta-analysis, you're simply asking a question
of, "Is it seem to be real and is it repeatable?"
So, we can tell that on the basis of these
studies. It looks like the answer is yes,
and we know how big the effect is. So now,
if we say, okay, we need a hundred million
to one odds in order to win a prize, you turn
the crank and you come out with, "Well, what
does that study need to be--need to look like?
And you end up with a really big study, a
huge study.
>> So, of the studies currently done, if you--if
you take them and all combined together, what
is the actual probability you currently have?
Is it ten to one, a thousand to one?
>> RADIN: [INDISTINCT] twenty-nine quintillion
to one. Twenty-nine million trillion--or billion
trillion to one.
>> So, that doesn't seem like it should take
eight years of continuous study to really
show the existence of this…
>> RADIN: No, the difference is…
>> So few studies…
>> RADIN: It has to do--it has to do with
the concept of statistical power. If you're
going to--if you have one chance to do this
right and then there's a lot of variance in
one study to the next, you can't really predict
very well if you're going to get a real good
result unless you have enough power, statistical
power. So, normally, when you do an experiment
like of this type, you say, "Well, if you
end up with the overall probability of say
.05, we'll consider that a success." When
you need far few more trails for that, when--to
say with the 90% chance of getting a .05 result
in this experiment, you need something like
600 or 700 trials. It'll take a little while,
but it won't take all that long. But if they're
saying, "I want a 99% chance to get odds of
a hundred million to one," that's a completely
different ball game. You need to have a huge
amount of data in order to guarantee that
you're going to get a successful result at
that very low level of probability. So, it's
basically--it's the mathematics that determine
this.
>> I guess what I'm saying is, two studies
each with a hundred samples, I don't understand
how the difference with one study with two
hundred samples. It's sounds like what we're
doing is we're taking a study that shows a
various small probability. And you're saying
because there was some probability versus
as one, and you're getting the nine--twenty-nine
quintillion number by something of the powers
that way. Whereas had you simply taken all
the samples have done that, I think you can
fine the number much solved.
>> RADIN: [INDISTINCT] I mean, and just--look
into the statistics, and especially look up
statistical power and read about it, and you'll
see that the statistical power curves deviate
very quickly as soon as your requirement for
success goes up a lot. That's one thing. You--we
require many, many more trials. You noticed
then that when the accumulative graph with
3,000 some trails on it, there was no a priori
saying, "Well, we had to get a result of this
number." It--this is simply the accumulation
of all data. That's extremely different than
setting up an experiment. It's a--it's a different
animal. The difference where--and so of an
important difference, because when you set
up an experiment and you know you want it
to win, you want it to be a successful experiment
at a certain level. That's no longer accumulating
old stuff, it's now a prospective study and
it requires much more data. It's just the
way the statistics fall out. It also answers
different questions to come with--the different
question that's being asked. Yes?
>> So, those three [INDISTINCT] freewill.
And freewill seems to be very intrinsic to
human conscience. So, my question to you is,
that I referred to you, that even if in fact
what you're saying if these experiment are
[INDISTINCT] as true, we can't really understand
it if it's not our sort of consciousness that
we--that we normally experience where we experience
frequently. How do you resolve this conflict
in what they're trying to [INDISTINCT]
>> RADIN: Assuming that precognition is true,
it doesn't actually--it doesn't necessary
mean that there is no freewill; because precognition
may be of potential futures, you know. Maybe
if multiple worlds hypothesis is correct,
that at any given moment in time, you have
many possible directions you can go, in which
case the precognition is returning information
about probable future states.
>> So, this is becoming a very complex area,
right? So, okay, the fact is if you want to
assume all this [INDISTINCT] and so on. All
these theories getting--even [INDISTINCT]
say, right? That's a concern, right? I mean,
you can even investigate those sorts of things
in other orthogonal dimension, right? You
can try to look for these extra dimension.
The physicist [INDISTINCT]
>> RADIN: Sure.
>> The physics theories, they fall for [INDISTINCT]
but we don't seem to be able to perceive the--what
we know.
>> RADIN: Right.
>> And it's actually concerning, where you're
showing it's like, you know, ECGs and measurements,
something potentials, you know, activities
and so forth and yet, you know, you're also
acknowledging that your focused on very unsubstantiated
[INDISTINCT] of science of the universe.
>> RADIN: I don't think it's all so substantiated
at all. In fact, of the various phenomena,
probably the easiest one to accept is precognition,
as strange as that sounds. And the reason
is that the fundamental laws of the--of classical
mechanics, quantum mechanics, they're completely
time symmetric. There is no reason and--I
mean, that oftentimes, people will say, "Well,
this stuff can't be true because it violates
the laws of science," to which I respond,
"Tell me exactly what's being violated?" Because
the answer is nothing is being violated.
>> Sure. Because nothing is being consistent
with the lack of [INDISTINCT] in science.
But you're exactly right. All the equations
of physics are symmetric [INDISTINCT]. But
you're actually cutting a frequent [INDISTINCT]
system and you're invoking more…
>> RADIN: The curious thing is that, well
at least within the neural sciences, most
neuroscientists would say that there is no
freewill, that it is an illusion. So, are
they right? Well, I think I have freewill,
but maybe they are right. So, I don't--I don't
know how to answer to these question. This
is where--it's a difficult theoretical problem.
Again, as an empiricist, they simply say,
"Well, look, is the experiment done correctly
or not?" The result is what it is. We need
to be smarter in order to figure it out how
to fit it into our understanding of the world,
rather than a priori saying, "Well, it doesn't
fit any existing theory, therefore I won't
pay attention to it." Yes?
>> I have two questions. First, what kinds
of [INDISTINCT] number generators are used?
The second, if you could take me about Ganzfeld--the
Global Consciousness Project in Princeton.
>> RADIN: Yes. So, regular regenerators that
I typically use are called Orion. It's a circuit
made in the Netherlands. It's a truly random
generator based on noise out of Zener diodes.
It's passed the Diehard suite and so on. It's
been used for many years. I've also used the
random generator coming out of Gheezens group
at the University of Geneva, which is based
on when a photon hits a half silver mirror,
it will go one way or the other, and it can
be measured which one--which path it took.
So, it's based on a quantum optics effect.
I use that one sometimes too. In terms of
the global consciousness project, that's a
two-hour lecture as well. So, I've been involved
in that since the beginning. I'm one of the
analysts on the project. I probably shouldn't
get into it because it--it's just too complex.
It takes too long to describe. But for those
of you who maybe wonder what we're talking
about, we're talking about something that
looks like a global form mind-matter interaction.
That's what it looks like. Yes?
>> Is there [INDISTINCT]
>> RADIN: So, the question--the question basically
is [INDISTINCT] in a random number generator
and presentiment studies could somebody outguess
the sequence somehow and guess maybe the next
one's emotional and third one icalm and so
on? So, one way we address this issue is to
look the actual sequence that comes up and
looking for autocorrelations in it. They might
say, "Well, just accidentally, the random
generator every third time gave a random--an
emotional picture." So, we can check that,
and it turns out that the random generators
are real good. They don't have significant
autocorrelations in them. Could it happen
on the individual basis that's--maybe a small
sequence could look non-random? Well, of course.
Any finite sequence can look non-random, and
we're always dealing with finite sequences.
Nevertheless, the generators as--that we use
are all tested beforehand for true randomness
and as good as we can get, and the sequences
used in the actual experiment are tested as
well. So, in these experiments, we don't find
evidence if people are somehow outguessing
the random sequence.
>> [INDISTINCT] task before receiving [INDISTINCT]
>> RADIN: In most cases, we have one person
doing one test, typically about 20-30 trials.
So, if you--if there's a possibility, if you
have a really crappy random number generator,
you have 20 trials to figure it out. And there's
no evidence even within single runs, the people
are figuring out what's about to happen. So,
the other thing I said so, in early experiments,
we used dichotomous samples. We used just
emotional and just calm. And I stopped doing
that after a while. Because even though the
random sequences were good, it still encouraged
people just to do a statistical counting in
their head. Whereas what I've been doing for
the last eight years or so is picking pictures
at random from the entire pool. So, it's a
huge range of emotionality, and then it because
virtually impossible to know what the next
picture is going to be like because maybe
it's a little bit calmer than the one you
just saw or a lot more emotional, it could
be all over the map. And then at the end,
I do an analytical cut on the data where it--look
at only the results of the data for the most
calm and the most emotional, cut across people.
And that's where you see this big effect.
So, in any given run of maybe 20 or 30 trials,
maybe I only end up using two of them out
of the sequence that that person saw. Whenever
the last--when you do that kind of partitioning
on the data, you end up with these results.
I think we're done. Thank you all for coming.
