Stanford Research Institute (now SRI International) in Menlo Park, California carried out research on various phenomena characterized by the term parapsychology from 1972 until 1991. Early studies indicating that phenomena such as remote viewing and psychokinesis could be scientifically studied were published in such mainstream journals as Proceedings of the IEEE and Nature. This attracted the sponsorship of such groups as NASA (by way of Jet Propulsion Laboratory) and The Central Intelligence Agency.
In 1991, the research program was transferred to SAIC as part of the Stargate Project. While the SRI projects were classified at the time, the research materials were subsequently made public in 1995, and a summary of the early history of SRI and the origins of Stargate was published the following year. Scientists and skeptical writers would later find serious flaws in the methodology used at SRI, leaving the work largely discredited.
Areas of research
Harold Puthoff and Russell Targ were the most widely known of the researchers involved with SRI. Originally known for their work with lasers, their work with parapsychology centered around the phenomena of remote viewing and psychokinesis.
Remote viewing
Early experiments in remote viewing involved one subject in the laboratory, the "percipient", attempting to draw or describe a scene, known as the "target", observed by a "sender" from a remote location outside of the laboratory. Protocol stipulated that an independent panel of judges was to determine how close each percipient's description or drawing was to the actual target. Reports that the Soviet Union had successfully used technological devices to augment such psychic communication moved the Central Intelligence Agency in the USA to attempt to keep pace with their Cold War rivals. Puthoff and Targ went on to explore the effect devices such as the Faraday cage and magnetometer would have on the accuracy of the images received by their percipients.
Psychokinesis
Support for the study of psychokinesis came from NASA on a contract administered by JPL in the early 1970s. Protocol called for an automated system that would display images of random objects to an individual. Prior to the image being displayed, the subject would predict what object would appear and then attempt to bias the outcome in favor of the chosen object. However, these protocols were not consistently observed and support was discontinued. Other experiments with psychokinesis included attempts by Ingo Swann to psychically influence the readouts of a magnetometer.
Celebrity test subjects
Ingo Swann
New York artist Ingo Swann met with Puthoff and Targ in 1972 and participated in their remote viewing experiments. In June of that same year, Puthoff and Targ took Swann to a large magnetometer to see what changes Swann could make in the readouts of the machine. While the readouts did show some fluctuations, there was no evidence that this was due to any efforts on the part of Swann. Nevertheless, Puthoff and Targ announced to a gathering in Geneva, Switzerland that they had indeed definitively established psychokinesis as a real phenomenon. The builder of the machine, who had been present during Swann's visit, would later report that while there had been fluctuations these were in no way unexpected or outside the normal parameters.
Uri Geller
Uri Geller began work with SRI in the early 1970s and was the primary focus of Puthoff and Targ's 1974 article in the journal Nature. This article described numerous remote viewing trials undertaken by Geller and the extraordinary results they had gotten during the six weeks he spent at the laboratories. Geller quickly gained notoriety with his apparent gifts for remote viewing and psychokinesis—the latter usually in the form of the bending or otherwise altering the form of metal objects.