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By Root 953 0

with extensive experiments Tart carried out in 1972 to prove that subjects could actually learn, during a period of testing, to improve their ESP scores. Tart had been impressed with work done by Targ and Puthoff in a similar project but had accepted their post hoc explanations when the experiment failed rather grandly. T&P had discovered—no great surprise—that as the controls on the tests were improved, the results approached zero. But they had decided that an automatic recorder, used to ensure that there would be no recording errors, inhibited the testees, who had obtained good results when they were allowed to test themselves (and the possibility existed of their either including or rejecting any run they tried) but did badly using the automatic recorder. Since Targ and Puthoff referred to these testees as "employees, relatives, and friends" (one was Targ's daughter), it is not difficult to sense that there just might have been an incentive to get good results for the big chiefs. After all, little Indians like to please...

The T&P tests—which made no news at all, since they only demonstrated the inverse relationship between good experimental procedure and good results in ESP research—were discontinued. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of the California Institute of Technology had already put $80,000 into the tests, and their purse puckered up tight when they saw the report. But Tart had a new approach. He looked pretty good, for a while. His idea was to set up two isolated units, a "sender booth" and a "receiver booth." In the sender booth was a TV screen and a random number generator with a "dial" consisting of ten playing cards arranged in a circle. There were buttons and lights beside each card. The generator presented a number and the sender concentrated on that number, pressing a signal button when he or she was ready for the receiver in the other booth to make a choice. The TV screen was connected to a camera in the receiver booth, revealing the movements of the receiver to the sender and allowing the sender to "will" the receiver to touch the correct card. The results were good, and Tart wrote his book on these experiments.

The "sender booth" in Charles Tart's experimental setup. Copley News Service

Tart inserted his foot directly into his mouth with these words in Psychic magazine after his research had been completed: "Strong criticism has been leveled at ESP research over the years because the phenomena could not be repeated regularly... Now, a research breakthrough soon may shelve such criticism. A study carried out under my direction... has taken a big step toward repeatability of ESP." But hold that laurel wreath, chaps.

Careful examination by the skeptics undid the pretty picture. Tart hadn't thought of some simple methods by which this demonstration could have been faked, and there were several. (As it turned out, such fakery was not needed, since there was a built-in error here that would later become obvious.) In passing, let me give you just two possible deceptive methods allowed by this setup. The two testees could have had wristwatches with synchronized second hands. The minute could be divided into ten six-second segments, one for each card. For example, the sender in the photo has a 4 to transmit. He looks at his watch, knowing the receiver is doing the same. When the second hand enters the area between eighteen and twenty-four seconds, he presses the signal button. The receiver now has the information and, after an appropriate pause, indicates the number 4. A hit! Another method would be for the sender to wait until the receiver's hand—as seen on his TV monitor—was directly opposite the correct number, then press the button. Again, after an appropriate pause, another hit is scored. An even better way to camouflage the trickery would be to establish a system in which, for example, the correct number is added to whatever number is buzzed next to determine the correct answer. In any case, a clever receiver, once having the information,