Publisher: Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, 2021, Vol. 85, No. 2, 65–90, www.spr.ac.uk

Researchers: By Debra Lynne Katz, Igor grgIc´, PatrIzIo tressoldi and T.W. Fendley

Abstract

Associative Remote Viewing (ARV) is a psi-based methodology used by individuals and for-profit organizations to predict such things as sporting event outcomes, and stock market moves, and for research purposes. Documented studies have shown the successful application of psi using ARV to predict future events, leading to profits, and unsuccessful applications, leading to losses. To better understand the contributing factors, 86 completed ARV trials which included 220 remote viewing transcripts for individual sporting or financial events, were collected. Three teams of judges operating under blind conditions — some working independently, some working as teams — repeated the process of judging, scoring, and predicting while keeping all other variables stable. To gauge inter-rater reliability, the new scores and predictions were compared to the original scores and predictions, and to each other. Rating variance was clearly demonstrated. Judges were in 100% agreement in only six (6.9%) of 86 trials. In seventeen trials (19.7%), eight of nine judges agreed with each other. Original judges did better than all new judges, and judges with more experience obtained statistically significantly higher hit rates than less experienced judges. The results were virtually the same for the two ranking scales used. This project points to a variety of factors in need of further testing, both in future ARV projects and in parapsychology projects that involve independent judging of tasks and photosets.

Title: An Ethnographical Assessment of Project Firefly: A Yearlong Endeavor to Create Wealth by Predicting FOREX Currency Moves with Associative Remote Viewing

Researchers: Debra Lynne Katz, PhD., Igor Grgic’, T.W. Fendley

Published: March 31, 2018 by the Journal of Scientii c Exploration, Vol. 32, No. 1, pp. 21–54, 2018

Abstract

More than 60 remote viewers contributed 177 intuitive-based associative remote viewing (ARV) predictions over a 14-month period.

These viewers comprised pre-established, self-organized groups cooperating under the rubric of “Project Firefly” (PFF), and were supervised by experienced ARV group managers operating under the umbrella of the Applied Precognition Project (APP), a for-profit organization exploring precognition and leveraging ARV methodology as an investment enhancement tool.

Based on predictions from the ARV sessions, PFF used the Kelly wagering strategy to guide trading on the Foreign Exchange (FOREX) currency market. Viewers performed under typical scientific protocols, including double-blind conditions, appropriate randomization, etc., using a variety of

ARV application methodologies. Investors, many of whom were also participants (viewers and judges), pooled investment funds totaling $56,300 with the stated goal of “creating wealth aggressively.” Rather than meeting that goal, however, most of the funds were lost over the course of the project.

Beyond merely reporting on an extensive remote viewing experiment, the present study is an examination of what went wrong, providing lessons learned for further ARV research whether involving for-profit activities or basic research, as the principles are relevant to both. Associative remote viewing is a research paradigm that harkens back to the early days in science when competent non-academic researchers could provide data points and breakthroughs in a field typically peopled solely by professional researchers.

Adapting a form of ethnographic study, we refer not only to the statistical results produced by the PFF effort, but also employ a mixed-methods qualitative approach to exploit the information and insights contributed by numerous participants about what happened, what worked, and what didn’t. This creates a reference we believe will be useful for those conducting future applied precognition projects involving multiple participants or groups. We feel that the insights gleaned from this study will improve both

ARV experimental design and execution of research protocol, benefiting professional and amateur researchers alike in their future ARV experimentation.

Keywords: associative remote viewing—remote viewing—precognitionKelly wagering—FOREX—Applied Precognition Project—intuitive wagering—controlled remote viewing—parapsychology—predicting the future—sociology of science—ethnography of parapsychology research—non-academic contributions to science.

Researchers: Debra Lynne Katz & Michelle Freed (formerly Bulgatz).

Title: An expedition into the unexplored territory of remote viewing and rating human subjects as targets within a binary protocol.

Publication: Aperture Magazine, 2013, published by the International Remote Viewing Associaiton.

Introduction

In early October 2012, Michelle Bulgatz and Debra Lynne Katz designed a project to determine whether remote viewers could accurately predict the outcome of the then-upcoming presidential election on November 5, 2012. With the primaries completed, the two candidates in the general election would be the incumbent, Barack Obama, and Republican challenger Mitt Romney. Polls indicated that it would be a very close race. This experiment set out with the following questions:

1. Can remote viewers from a variety of backgrounds, even with little experience viewing human targets, predict the outcome of a presidential election when utilizing a double-blind protocol.

2. How does a project involving a human target differ from those utilizing objects and locations?

3. Is the use of human targets in remote-viewing related research projects or applied-precognition projects involving binary outcomes, something that researchers or project managers may want to consider in the future?

4. Which method/system of rating/judging sessions is most helpful when evaluating sessions with human subjects as targets?

5. How strongly will a viewer’s candidate preference affect their session?

While this modest study was not intended to produce a huge data set (and therefore statistical significance cannot be calculated), its value lies in the knowledge gained and lessons learned about remote viewing and the rating of human targets within a bi- nary blind protocol; this has the potential to be useful to those designing and implementing their own remote-viewing projects in the future.

Researcher: Debra Lynne Katz, PhD

Between March, 2015 and October 2017, an exploratory online survey was conducted to study remote viewers’ perceptions about whether or not remote viewing-related instruction had helped them, and if so, to what extent. Participants were recruited from various remote viewing-related Facebook groups and online industry forums; and from email lists associated with the International Remote Viewing Association (IRVA), the Applied Precognition Project (APP) and the International School of Clairvoyance. About one-half of respondents were from all regions of the United States. Others were from the UK, Canada, Ireland, Australia, Sweden, Hungary, Poland and India.

This double-blind study utilised dreaming instead of remote viewing as a precognitive tool within an Associative Remote Viewing (ARV) protocol. In the spirit of Participatory Action Research, but using a quantitative design, a cohesive group of experienced remote viewers (who varied in experience) designed and participated in a year-long study that included 56 trials in which they attempted to have precognitive dreams that would enable them to produce descriptions and sketches that would match a photograph they would be shown at a future time. Five out of 7 remote viewers/dreamers were able to consistently produce dreams at will. Their 278 transcripts were utilized for the purpose of making predictions and wagers on the outcomes of sporting events. They produced an overall rate of 17 hits out of 28 predictions, which a binomial test showed to be marginally above chance (one-tailed). Nevertheless, the overall monetary gain was a little under 400 percent of the initial stake. Further, one individual dreamer had a 76 percent correct hit rate based on 13 hits and 4 misses with 20 passes, while another had 16 hits and 9 misses. These points are discussed along with the notion that raising the threshold of Confidence Ranking Scores (up to a CR of 6) for dream based ARV predictions may help to improve the overall hit rate.

Don't Judge a Book by Its Cover: A Case Study and Comparative Analysis of Popular vs. Academy Psychology Books HIGHLIGHTS A review of selected 'pop psychology' books shows that they do not inevitably contain misreported facts or findings from the original research studies they reference. This result suggests that negative sterotypes of such lay books should be reconsidered. ABSTRACT Many academic psychologists hold negative and stereotypical views about popular psychology books, even though there have been few formal investigations into these materials to understand their content, construction, purposes, or orientations, or their authors’ credentials. This paper explores the origins of these views within the Sociology of Scientific knowledge literature and psychological literature. Through formal case study methodology, an extensive review and comparative analysis of books with the psychological construct of “Attention” in their title was undertaken to determine whether the current delineations between scholarly and popular materials and those who write them are as clear-cut as they seem, or if an alternative model of the relationship between academic and popular psychology literature could be offered. A bibliography of 145 books was compiled, followed by what turned out to be an arduous and at times impossible task of sorting these books into either popular or scholarly categories. This revealed flaws in the dualistic nature of this activity that is often required of university students, instructors, and scholars alike. Six popular and six scholarly books (Table 3) revealed that while some of the popular books were less rigorous in referencing and representing experimental or original findings, they offered bibliotherapeutic benefits and were cited by others within journal articles, books, and dissertations across multiple disciplines, thus suggesting that popularization is not simply a trickling down of knowledge from the scientific arenas to the public, but that science can be informed by professionals with expertise in applied areas. Meanwhile, the six books designated as scholarly only had a collective of 14 Amazon reader reviews. This project’s findings have implications for educators, researchers, librarians, and journal editors who may presently disqualify useful materials without fully understanding them, and for writers seeking to improve in their research and writing skills. KEYWORDS Popularization of science, popular science, attention, scholarly books, pop psychology, popular psychology, bibliotherapy, self-help books

Researcher: Debra Lynne Katz, Ph.D

Publication: Journal of Scientific Exploration, 2022

https://doi.org/10.31275/20222463

Abstract

This paper takes a case-collective approach to examine healing phenomena claimed to be produced by physical mediums operating within the spiritualist traditions of Europe, the Philippines and Brazil. In Part I, articles and books that were written about the eight “best-case” examples of physical mediums spanning from the mid-1800s to the present day were searched to discover whether healing had been reported and to discover relevant themes. While all cases of physical mediumship included at least one mention of physical healing, only three of the eight physical mediums had as their primary focus the intention to perform physical healings. Findings suggest that most cases of healings in conjunction with physical mediumship are thought to be carried out by spirit doctors, some who may have been doctors while alive, and some who may work with other spirit doctors to produce healing effects. “Healing lights” and partial or full materializations that interact with the bodies of those who later reported alleviations of long-term suffering, disease, blindness and deafness have been reported. Part II covers some of the best-case examples of the psychic surgeons of Brazil and the Philippines. Included here are results of qualitative studies, paradoxical findings from laboratory tests on materials extracted during healing sessions, and a sharing of the present author’s own direct observations and experiences of several Filipino healers spanning a year’s independent study with them. Recommendations for further research are presented.

Keywords: Popularization of science, popular science, attention, scholarly books, pop psychology, popular psychology, bibliotherapy, self-help books

Abstract—Photographic images of physical objects are common targets in remote viewing projects today. This exploratory experiment investigated whether the background within which the object is positioned may impact the accuracy of remote viewing. Twelve experienced remote viewers each completed 30 open-response, triple-blind remote viewing trials, requiring them to utilize extrasensory perception to describe the photographic image they would receive via email a few days later. Investigators created a photographic target pool of complex objects set within one of three background conditions: 1) White: devoid of information; 2) Normal: a setting in which the object would typically be found; 3) Unusual: a setting in which the object would not typically be found. Participants completed a total of 360 in-depth transcripts consisting of 8,460 written descriptors and 1,472 sketches. Two methods were used to analyze the transcripts for accuracy, the traditional sum of ranks matching procedure and an exploratory method involving the scoring of each item and sketch by both the participant and an independent judge. These two methods revealed significant but opposite differences for photographic targets of objects set within white backgrounds compared to the other two backgrounds. Better scores for targets with a white background were found for the traditional matching procedure, but worse scores were found for this background when each item and sketch were rated individually. In Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 35, No. 4, pp. 752–787, 2021 0892-3310/21 Effects of Background in Photo Targets on Remote Viewer Performance 753 addition, the individual items and sketches were found to describe the target object more frequently than the background when normal or unusual backgrounds were present. Results suggest that object background can affect the outcome of remote viewing sessions, although the effect may depend on the scoring method applied. Keywords: Remote viewing, target material, extrasensory perception, anomalous cognition, photographic target material