FOUNDER QUITS ANTI-PSI COMMITTEE, CITES MEDIA BLITZ

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 ou       rs anti-psi committee,
 FRONTIERS OF RESEARCH,
 THEORY AND PRACTICE
 to explore transpersonal realm
 The federal government, will sponsor a project designed to explore the farther
 reaches of human capability.
 Mary F. Berry, assistant secretary for education of the Dept. of Health,
 Education and Welfare, approved the project, titled The Limits of Educability, early
 in December. It will inquire into such topics as altered states
 of consciousness, values, cultural 'visions,' emotional blocks
 to learning, new scientific paradigms, creativity, synergy,
 "'myths of transformation," psychic phenomena, paradox,
 non-linear processing capabilities, extraordinary human capa-
 biliti
 s
 e
 ~~~~            The project will culminate in articles, a hook and a conference.
 "In any absolute sense we can probably never know what
 the 'limits of educability' arc," the project description states. "Yet we can specify
 areas where we believe there are great disparities between what is being achieved by
 current educational practice and either known limits achieved through optimal use of
 current practices or achievable limits through known alternative practices."
 Various federal agencies will participate in the project, but half its $300,000 cost
 is to be raised privately. Jerry Fletcher of HEW told Brain/Mind Bulletin that
 co-sponsors are eagerly sought.
 "We'd like the participation of as many organizations, large or small, as
 possible," he said. The Institute of Noetic Sciences already has become a co-sponsor.
 For information: Fletcher, Education Division/HEW, 200 Independence Ave.
 Room 317-H, Washington 20201, (202) 245-6266.
 Pribram at AHP seminar
 cites meaia  1, t
 Marcello Truzzi of Eastern Michigan Uni-
 versity, founding editor of the journal Zetct-
 ics and co-founder of the controversial Com-
 mittee for the Scientific Investigation of
 Claims of the Paranormal, has resigned his
 editorship, co-chairmanship and member-
 ship. Truzzi charged that the committee's
 executive council is interested only in de-
 bunking-not investigating-psychical phe-
 nomena.
 Under his editorship. Zetetics was a forum
 for critical reviews of parapsychological re-
 carch.
 Truzzi said he deplored "the media blitz,"
 the committee's recent attacks on the report-
 ing of unusual phenomena in newspapers
 and on television. Paul Kurtz, co-chairman
 of the committee, had held press confer-
 ences in recent months urging the media to
 More recently; after
 Truzzi's resignation,
 Kurtz filed the commit-
 tee's complaint with the
 Federal Trade Commis-
 sion on the airing of
 NBC's Exploring the
 Unknown, a 90-minute
 special on psychic phe-
 nomena, hypnotic regression and related
 topics. NBC was accused of presenting
 controversial material that "may result in
 harm to the public." The network's "fre-
 quent disclaimers" were considered "inade-
 quate protection."
 The committee demanded equal time for
 'the critical scientific viewpoint" in re-
 sponse to this and all other programs,
 network and local, that may deal with
 sychic phenomena. It said that possible
 Future to bring 'hard - nosed' work in `soft' sciences
 Stanford neuroscientist Karl Pribram has
 predlctcd that within    ,her I0 or 15
 years "all of the, really hard-nosed scien-
 tific work will he going on in fields that are
 now considered soft."
 Under the auspices of the Assn. for I-lu-
 r.tanistic Psychology, Pribrarn led two small,
 cisco earlier this month to discuss his
 theory of holographic brain function in a
 universe whose matrix, ."the frequency do-
 rtaiu,"" is expressed in holographic principles. (See B/MB special
 issue. July 4, 1977.)
 Pribrarn has suggested that the model is part of a major shift in the
 scientific description of reality. It attempts to explain phenomena of
 normal perception, accoitiiting for remarkable laboratory data, and
 siirntilhancously helps to explain many events previously categorized
 as paranormal. A number of persons well-known in psychology were
 invited, as well as specialists in oilier fields: education, medicine,
 philosophy, religion, physics and the arts.
 As historic examples of 'soft' disciplines becoming central and
 scientifically rigorous, lie cited the shift in emphasis from behavioral
 to cognitive psychology that began in the late 1950s as well as the
 increasingly non-material world of quantum physics: "relationships
 between observations-not observables."
 According to the holographic theory of brain function, the fre-
 quency domain is important in neural processes, just as it is in sub-
 atomic physics. Stimuli are perceived by the senses via complex
 mathematical transforms, an interpretation of interference patterns,
 much as a hologram is reconstructed by its light source. Pribrarn
 presented data on his laboratory findings indicating that the visual
 system responds to spatial frequencies. Other evidence indicatr's
 that all sensory systems obtain their information by "reading out"
 information from a frequency domain. Synthesizing his and other
 findings supporting holographic brain principles with speculation by
 physicists that the universe itself may be holographic in nature (that
 is, interference patterns of frequencies), Pribrarn suggests that coli-
 crete reality is apparent rather than fundamental.
 Mystical insights may be a type of "lensless knowing," a more ut
 less direct perception of the holographic state. Pribrarn noted r+i_, ly.
 "I think it must be a very compassionate universe-.-it gave its
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 $rainiMindRultctln-2
 New findings: v l i um, marijuana, alcohol, heroin
 The therapeutic virtues of heroin and marijuana will get a
 serious look by the National Cancer Institute and other federal
 agencies by virtue of a memorandum from Peter Bourne,
 President Carter's special assistant for health.
 Health undersecretary Julius Richmond was directed to
 evaluate the potential medical benefits of the drugs, which are
 classified as "dangerous." One study comparing heroin and
 morphine for terminal cancer patients had indicated that heroin
 caused less nausea, was less constipating, increased the appe-
 tite, was less soporific and more mood-enhancing. Heroin is
 effective in smaller doses, and it is more soluble. Marijuana, in
 using alcohol-or marijuana in combination with
 alcohol! ... Tetrahydrocannabinot, the  active
 principle in marijuana, supresses lutcinizing
 hormone in rats, judging from tests at Duke Uni-
 versity by Lee Tyrey and his associates. The
 dose equivalent of one or two marijuana cigar-
 ettes for humans suppressed all LII secretion.
 Institute, San. Francisco, and his fellow research-
 ers. But they found no pupil changes in subjects
 Marijuana research update: Cannabinoids do not cause muta-
 tion in human cells, according to Arthur Zimmerman of the Uni-
 versity of Toronto department of zoology and Hans Stich of the
 Cancer Institute, University of British Columbia.... Marijuana
 causes constriction of the pupils, not dilation as popularly
 believed, according to Brian Brown of Smith Kettlewell
 addition to its promise in the treatment of glaucoma, reportedly
 has been helpful in relieving nausea from cancer chemotherapy.
 Acupuncture eases withdrawal pain in heroin addiction, Wen
 Hsiang-lai of Tung Watt Hospital, Hong Kong, reported. Fifty-
 one per cent of the addicts treated by acupuncture were
 drug-free a year after treatment, compared to 28.5 per cent on
 methadone. The National Institute of Mental Health has
 granted Wen $100,000 for further research.
 Valium may reinforce alcoholism, say J.
 A. Deutsch and Nancy Walton of the Univer-
 sity of California-San Diego. Thirty-two alco-
 holic rats showed an increased craving to
 drink when they were given Valium during
 their drying-out period. Librium, structur-
 ally similar, may have the same effect.... David Warburton, a
 psychologist at the University of Reading, England. charged
 that Hoffmann-LaRoche has spent more than $400 million on
 the promotion of Valium and Librium. He said that 19 per cent
 of the women and seven per cent of the men in Great Britain
 were prescribed tranquilizers in any one year.
 Barbiturates cause 5,000 deaths a year and are "probably not
 effective" in the treatment of insomnia anyway. The National
 Institute on Drug Abuse has asked the FDA to take appropriate
 action, such as requiring manufacturers to note on the labels
 -unless they can meanwhile prove otherwise-that the drugs
 are not effective on a longterm basis.
 Truzzi quits `debunking' committee..
 Continued from Page 1
 worse than those resulting from excesses of
 violence, rigging of sports presentations and
 game shows or biased news reporting.
 Copies of the complaint were sent to the
 Senate and House subcommittees on com-
 munications.
 Truzzi said that the committee's by-laws
 allow voting only by its executive council.
 The other 35 members, termed 'fellows'
 (including B. F. Skinner and Carl Sagan),
 can advise but cannot vote. Truzzi said he
 refused to continue editing Zetetics when
 the board voted to make it a "hard-hitting"
 popular publication. He had founded Zetet-
 ics as a newsletter before the committee was
 organized in 1976.
 "1 felt we should keep the debate in a
 scholarly framework," Truzzi said. "Except
 for Ray Hyman, the other members of the
 executive council are primarily debunkers,"
 Hyman, a psychologist at the University
 Future research...
 Continued from Page I
 physics so we could understand what those
 other people who didn't have physics at-
 ready knew."
 He acknowledged his own difficulty in
 really comprehending the idea of holo-
 graphic mind in a fundamentally timeless,
 spaceless universe. "But when the next
 generation conics along it won't be so hard
 for them."
 An abridged version of the proceedings
 will appear at a future date in Re- Visions, a
 new journal (see Tools and Resources, page
 4). Tapes will not be available.
 of Oregon, acknowledged that he and Truzzi
 were at the "far end of the spectrum" in
 that they did not automatically equate belief
 in the paranormal with irrationality. Hyman
 said, "I. believe that our job is to present the
 skeptical point of view-responsibly. But
 some of the others believe that we can't get
 attention if we argue in an academic journal
 or if we qualify our statements. They feel we
 have to paint things in black and white or the
 media won't pay attention.
 "So far they've been right in getting pub-
 licity-but at the price of embarrassing
 people like Marcello, who didn't want his
 Ile aSSV;.:LLllQ1,l Will] Wllak ti-,Y - --r'.
 It's a question of tactics."
 Hyman said he agreed with the complaint
 against the NBC special, "but some of the
 things our committee protests are just sense-
 less, pointless, a lot of noise."
 Truzzi said he had objected to Zetetics'
 continued association with The Humanist
 (which has an anti-religion stance) and to
 Kurtz's frequent television talk-show ap-
 pearances purporting to represent the com-
 mittee. He said he felt Kurtz was unfamiliar
 with the parapsychology literature and also
 presented the experiments of authors pub-
 lished in Zetetics as if they were investiga-
 tions done by the committee.
 Subjective reports contradictory
 Phrsl arousal note in `frigid' women
 It is possible that women who never or     difference in the criterion of arousal-vaso-
 rarely experience orgasm actually undergo                                                         congestion in the vagina-between the clini-
 normal physical arousal that they either                                                          cal group and the controls, who were women
 refuse to acknowledge or fail to recognize.  from the surrounding community.
 In a study conducted !
 ~  ~ ~ -?~..,,               The mean age of the. non-orgasmic women
 by Julia IIcitnan and I a-  ,   ?            was 28, that of the controls 30.
 41lcia LVLVLI,r,,li t,  -a,n4W
 University of New York,                          Surprisingly, the women whose physio-
 reatest were those
 onse was
 al res
 l
 i
 g
 p
 c
 og
 11 non-orgasmic women
 and 55 controls were in-                     who reported the least arousal during inter-
 ested that they
 Heiman su
 4 home
 gg
 .
 may not have learned to recognize early
 about sex, then listened
 stages of sexual excitement, may hold dif-
 to an erotic live-minute
 tape, fantasized again                                                                           ferent expectations of what arousal should
 for three minutes, watched a film, then fan- feel like or may harbor negative feelings that
 tasized for another three minutes.           short-circuit the awareness of arousal.
 Their subjective reports of non-arousal     Heiman: Dept. of psychiatry, SUNY
 (lid not correlate with the physiological    School of Medicine, Stony Brook, N. Y.
 measurements. There was no significant       11790..
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