Insp. Clue!So?
02-22-2007, 11:06 AM
February 10, 2007
A Princeton Lab on ESP Plans to Close Its Doors
By BENEDICT CAREY
PRINCETON, N.J., Feb. 6 — Over almost three
decades, a small laboratory at Princeton
University managed to embarrass university
administrators, outrage Nobel laureates, entice
the support of philanthropists and make headlines
around the world with its efforts to prove that
thoughts can alter the course of events.
But at the end of the month, the Princeton
Engineering Anomalies Research laboratory, or
PEAR, will close, not because of controversy but
because, its founder says, it is time.
The laboratory has conducted studies on
extrasensory perception and telekinesis from its
cramped quarters in the basement of the
university’s engineering building since 1979. Its
equipment is aging, its finances dwindling.
“For 28 years, we’ve done what we wanted to do,
and there’s no reason to stay and generate more
of the same data,” said the laboratory’s founder,
Robert G. Jahn, 76, former dean of Princeton’s
engineering school and an emeritus professor. “If
people don’t believe us after all the results
we’ve produced, then they never will.”
Princeton made no official comment.
The closing will end one of the strangest tales
in modern science, or science fiction, depending
on one’s point of view. The laboratory has long
had a strained relationship with the university.
Many scientists have been openly dismissive of it.
“It’s been an embarrassment to science, and I
think an embarrassment for Princeton,” said
Robert L. Park, a University of Maryland
physicist who is the author of “Voodoo Science:
The Road From Foolishness to Fraud.” “Science has
a substantial amount of credibility, but this is
the kind of thing that squanders it.”
PEAR has been an anomaly from the start, a ghost
in the machine room of physical science that was
never acknowledged as substantial and yet never
entirely banished. Its longevity illustrates the
strength and limitations of scientific peer
review, the process by which researchers appraise one another’s
work.
“We know people have ideas beyond the
mainstream,” said the sociologist Harriet
Zuckerman, author of “Scientific Elite: Nobel
Laureates in the United States” and senior vice
president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation,
”but if they want funds for research they have to
go through peer review, and the system is going
to be very skeptical of ideas that are
inconsistent with what is already known.”
Dr. Jahn, one of the world’s foremost experts on
jet propulsion, defied the system. He relied not
on university or government money but on private
donations — more than $10 million over the years,
he estimated. The first and most generous donor
was his friend James S. McDonnell, a founder of
the McDonnell Douglas Corporation.
Those gifts paid for a small staff and a gallery
of random-motion machines, including a pendulum
with a lighted crystal at the end; a giant,
wall-mounted pachinko-like machine with a cascade
of bouncing balls; and a variety of electronic
boxes with digital number displays.
In one of PEAR’s standard experiments, the study
participant would sit in front of an electronic
box the size of a toaster oven, which flashed a
random series of numbers just above and just
below 100. Staff members instructed the person to
simply “think high” or “think low” and watch the
display. After thousands of repetitions — the
equivalent of coin flips — the researchers looked
for differences between the machine’s output and random chance.
Analyzing data from such trials, the PEAR team
concluded that people could alter the behavior of
these machines very slightly, changing about 2 or
3 flips out of 10,000. If the human mind could
alter the behavior of such a machine, Dr. Jahn
argued, then thought could bring about changes in
many other areas of life — helping to heal
disease, for instance, in oneself and others.
This kind of talk fascinated the public and
attracted the curiosity of dozens of students, at
Princeton and elsewhere. But it left most
scientists cold. A physics Ph.D. and an
electrical engineer joined Dr. Jahn’s project,
but none of the university’s 700 or so professors
did. Prominent research journals declined to
accept papers from PEAR. One editor famously told
Dr. Jahn that he would consider a paper “if you
can telepathically communicate it to me.”
Brenda Dunne, a developmental psychologist, has
managed the laboratory since it opened and has
been a co-author of many of its study papers. “We
submitted our data for review to very good
journals,” Ms. Dunne said, “but no one would
review it. We have been very open with our data.
But how do you get peer review when you don’t have peers?”
Several expert panels examined PEAR’s methods
over the years, looking for irregularities, but
did not find sufficient reasons to interrupt the
work. In the 1980s and 1990s, PEAR published more
than 60 research reports, most appearing in the
journal of the Society for Scientific
Exploration, a group devoted to the study of
topics outside the scientific mainstream. Dr.
Jahn and Ms. Dunne are officers in the society.
News of the Princeton group’s experiments spread
quickly worldwide, among people interested in
paranormal phenomena, including telekinesis and
what people call extrasensory perception. Notable
figures from Europe and Asia stopped by. . Keith
Jarrett, the jazz pianist, paid a visit. For a
time, the philanthropist Laurance Rockefeller
visited regularly and donated money for research.
And many people, in and out of science, joined
what Ms. Dunne called the PEAR Tree, a kind of
secret society of people interested in the
paranormal, she said. Many PEAR Tree members who
are science faculty members will not reveal
themselves publicly, Ms. Dunne said.
The culture of science, at its purest, is one of
freedom in which any idea can be tested
regardless of how far-fetched it might seem.
“I don’t believe in anything Bob is doing, but I
support his right to do it,” said Will Happer, a
professor of physics at Princeton.
Other top-flight scientists have taken chances.
At the end of his career, Linus Pauling, the
Nobel laureate, came to believe that vitamin C
supplements could prevent and treat cancer, heart
disease and other ailments. Dr. Pauling had some
outside financing, too, and conducted research
and had plenty of media coverage. But in the end
he did not sway many of his colleagues, Dr. Zuckerman said.
At the PEAR offices this week, the staff worked
amid boxes, piles of paper and a roll of bubble
wrap as big as an oil drum. The random-event machines are headed for
storage.
The study of telekinesis and related phenomena, Dr. Jahn said, will
carry on.
“It’s time for a new era,” he said, “for someone
to figure out what the implications of our
results are for human culture, for future study,
and — if the findings are correct — what they say
about our basic scientific attitude.”
http://select.nytimes.com/mem/tnt.html?t...RJ/c/jT+dG31OKw (http://select.nytimes.com/mem/tnt.html?tntget=2007/02/10/science/10princeton.html&tntemail1=y&adxnnl=1&emc=tnt&adxn nlx=1171119196-jw3FIDYRJ/c/jT+dG31OKw)
A Princeton Lab on ESP Plans to Close Its Doors
By BENEDICT CAREY
PRINCETON, N.J., Feb. 6 — Over almost three
decades, a small laboratory at Princeton
University managed to embarrass university
administrators, outrage Nobel laureates, entice
the support of philanthropists and make headlines
around the world with its efforts to prove that
thoughts can alter the course of events.
But at the end of the month, the Princeton
Engineering Anomalies Research laboratory, or
PEAR, will close, not because of controversy but
because, its founder says, it is time.
The laboratory has conducted studies on
extrasensory perception and telekinesis from its
cramped quarters in the basement of the
university’s engineering building since 1979. Its
equipment is aging, its finances dwindling.
“For 28 years, we’ve done what we wanted to do,
and there’s no reason to stay and generate more
of the same data,” said the laboratory’s founder,
Robert G. Jahn, 76, former dean of Princeton’s
engineering school and an emeritus professor. “If
people don’t believe us after all the results
we’ve produced, then they never will.”
Princeton made no official comment.
The closing will end one of the strangest tales
in modern science, or science fiction, depending
on one’s point of view. The laboratory has long
had a strained relationship with the university.
Many scientists have been openly dismissive of it.
“It’s been an embarrassment to science, and I
think an embarrassment for Princeton,” said
Robert L. Park, a University of Maryland
physicist who is the author of “Voodoo Science:
The Road From Foolishness to Fraud.” “Science has
a substantial amount of credibility, but this is
the kind of thing that squanders it.”
PEAR has been an anomaly from the start, a ghost
in the machine room of physical science that was
never acknowledged as substantial and yet never
entirely banished. Its longevity illustrates the
strength and limitations of scientific peer
review, the process by which researchers appraise one another’s
work.
“We know people have ideas beyond the
mainstream,” said the sociologist Harriet
Zuckerman, author of “Scientific Elite: Nobel
Laureates in the United States” and senior vice
president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation,
”but if they want funds for research they have to
go through peer review, and the system is going
to be very skeptical of ideas that are
inconsistent with what is already known.”
Dr. Jahn, one of the world’s foremost experts on
jet propulsion, defied the system. He relied not
on university or government money but on private
donations — more than $10 million over the years,
he estimated. The first and most generous donor
was his friend James S. McDonnell, a founder of
the McDonnell Douglas Corporation.
Those gifts paid for a small staff and a gallery
of random-motion machines, including a pendulum
with a lighted crystal at the end; a giant,
wall-mounted pachinko-like machine with a cascade
of bouncing balls; and a variety of electronic
boxes with digital number displays.
In one of PEAR’s standard experiments, the study
participant would sit in front of an electronic
box the size of a toaster oven, which flashed a
random series of numbers just above and just
below 100. Staff members instructed the person to
simply “think high” or “think low” and watch the
display. After thousands of repetitions — the
equivalent of coin flips — the researchers looked
for differences between the machine’s output and random chance.
Analyzing data from such trials, the PEAR team
concluded that people could alter the behavior of
these machines very slightly, changing about 2 or
3 flips out of 10,000. If the human mind could
alter the behavior of such a machine, Dr. Jahn
argued, then thought could bring about changes in
many other areas of life — helping to heal
disease, for instance, in oneself and others.
This kind of talk fascinated the public and
attracted the curiosity of dozens of students, at
Princeton and elsewhere. But it left most
scientists cold. A physics Ph.D. and an
electrical engineer joined Dr. Jahn’s project,
but none of the university’s 700 or so professors
did. Prominent research journals declined to
accept papers from PEAR. One editor famously told
Dr. Jahn that he would consider a paper “if you
can telepathically communicate it to me.”
Brenda Dunne, a developmental psychologist, has
managed the laboratory since it opened and has
been a co-author of many of its study papers. “We
submitted our data for review to very good
journals,” Ms. Dunne said, “but no one would
review it. We have been very open with our data.
But how do you get peer review when you don’t have peers?”
Several expert panels examined PEAR’s methods
over the years, looking for irregularities, but
did not find sufficient reasons to interrupt the
work. In the 1980s and 1990s, PEAR published more
than 60 research reports, most appearing in the
journal of the Society for Scientific
Exploration, a group devoted to the study of
topics outside the scientific mainstream. Dr.
Jahn and Ms. Dunne are officers in the society.
News of the Princeton group’s experiments spread
quickly worldwide, among people interested in
paranormal phenomena, including telekinesis and
what people call extrasensory perception. Notable
figures from Europe and Asia stopped by. . Keith
Jarrett, the jazz pianist, paid a visit. For a
time, the philanthropist Laurance Rockefeller
visited regularly and donated money for research.
And many people, in and out of science, joined
what Ms. Dunne called the PEAR Tree, a kind of
secret society of people interested in the
paranormal, she said. Many PEAR Tree members who
are science faculty members will not reveal
themselves publicly, Ms. Dunne said.
The culture of science, at its purest, is one of
freedom in which any idea can be tested
regardless of how far-fetched it might seem.
“I don’t believe in anything Bob is doing, but I
support his right to do it,” said Will Happer, a
professor of physics at Princeton.
Other top-flight scientists have taken chances.
At the end of his career, Linus Pauling, the
Nobel laureate, came to believe that vitamin C
supplements could prevent and treat cancer, heart
disease and other ailments. Dr. Pauling had some
outside financing, too, and conducted research
and had plenty of media coverage. But in the end
he did not sway many of his colleagues, Dr. Zuckerman said.
At the PEAR offices this week, the staff worked
amid boxes, piles of paper and a roll of bubble
wrap as big as an oil drum. The random-event machines are headed for
storage.
The study of telekinesis and related phenomena, Dr. Jahn said, will
carry on.
“It’s time for a new era,” he said, “for someone
to figure out what the implications of our
results are for human culture, for future study,
and — if the findings are correct — what they say
about our basic scientific attitude.”
http://select.nytimes.com/mem/tnt.html?t...RJ/c/jT+dG31OKw (http://select.nytimes.com/mem/tnt.html?tntget=2007/02/10/science/10princeton.html&tntemail1=y&adxnnl=1&emc=tnt&adxn nlx=1171119196-jw3FIDYRJ/c/jT+dG31OKw)