SRI/GALE COMMITTEE MEETING OF 24-25 JULY (1979)

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Body:  Approved For Release 2001/04/02 : CIA-RDP96-00788R002000240028-5
 Mr. Manfred Gale (HQDA, DAMA-ZD)
 SUBJECT   SRI/Gale Committee Meeting of 24-25 July              cc
 We appreciated having an opportunity to discuss with you and members of your
 committee several aspects of our work during your recent visit to SRI.                  We
 welcome this kind of dialog and exchange of views with individuals of diverse
 backgrounds, who are willing to focus on issues of importance to us and our
 program.
 There were certain aspects of the meeting, however, which we felt were
 unsatisfactory, but for which we have specific remedial actions to propose.
 As you know from our agenda, we had intended to cover four major areas of
 interest:   (1) an historical overview, including past applications to problems
 of interest to clients;  (2) scientific questions with regard to RV protocols,
 judging, statistics, and so forth;  (3) the goals and planned activities on
 present client programs; and (4) committee discussion with program remote viewers.
 Unfortunately, with the extended ad hoc discussions that took place during the
 opening presentation on historical material (Part 1) and the need to press on
 to a discussion of planned efforts on present client programs (Part 3), we all
 but skipped Part 2 on scientific questions (for example, none of the slides were
 shown).  This seemed expedient at the time, given the apparent inappropriateness,
 in a group of such diverse interests, of getting involved in detailed discussions
 on specific technical issues (e.g., nuances as to protocol procedures, statistical
 evaluation techniques, etc.).  This may have been "penny-wise and pound foolish,"
 however, for all of us at SRI realized at one time or another in casual discussions
 with individual committee members during dinner breaks, etc., that there was a
 profound lack of understanding of some very basic issues.  To cite some specific
 examples:
 (1)    It was expressed that the RV target pool should be chosen and
 than the principal investigators, and that access to the target
 r                     pool should be limited.
 The above is in fact the procedure already in force.  An independent
 =__777=1 er+ion  team  generated the target pool and turned them
 ? qy                over to the Project SSO who keeps them stored in a secure container.
 Targets are then withdrawn only under supervision of the SSO (who
 k 4l      C,           records their withdrawal) at the beginning of RV sessions.   In
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 particular, the RV session interviewers (Targ and Puthoff) had
 never seen the target list until your committee asked that it be
 brought to the conference room.
 (2)   Concern was expressed that apparently successful RV results in
 our protocols might be due instead to a combination of remote viewer
 guesses of known Bay Area landmarks and/or artifactual sharpening
 of a subject's narrative by cues from the interviewer who is at
 least educated, if not directly knowledgeable as to the target
 possibilities.   (We think that is was understood that the inter-
 viewer never knows the particular target.)  The corollary to this
 concern is that although the RV function may exist, our protocols
 can't demonstrate it because of the above-stated circumstances.
 In fact, the statistical procedure we use takes into account at
 the outset the possibility that the target pool might be completely
 known to both remote viewer and interviewer--that it could be that
 the remote viewer and interviewer were poring over the target list
 during the session; in short, that the RV series is to be treated
 as belonging to that class of studies in which the elements of the
 target pool are known a priori to both remote viewer and interviewer,
 as in studies involving numbers or cards as targets.   (In fact, we
 would go this apparent criticism one step further and assert that
 it would be naive to assume that by any change in protocol one could
 in principle avoid the assumption that the remote viewer knows the
 target pool.)  Thus, when there is a statistically significant result
 in our protocols, the cause must lie elsewhere than remote viewer
 guess or interviewer cueing, as these possibilities are handled at
 a fundamental level by a statistical procedure that assumes the worst.
 This fact must be understood by the committee members if they are
 to assess the SRI program results properly.
 (3)   It was repeatedly suggested that it would be better to dispense with
 the interviewer in an RV session so as to have a "cleaner" protocol,
 and that the use of an interviewer is somehow a methodological flaw.
 Such a suggestion indicates a complete failure to comprehend that
 success as obtained by use of the SRI RV protocols (as opposed to other
 procedures) is in large part due to an innovative design which
 incorporates a division of labor between remote viewer and interviewer
 designed to mirror the two primary modes of cerebral functioning;
 namely, the nonanalytic cognitive style (brain function) that pre-
 dominates in spatial pattern recognition and other holistic processing
 (and is hypothesized to predominate in psi functioning), and the
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 analytical cognitive style that predominates in verbal and other
 analytical functioning.   (Only very experienced remote viewers
 appear to have the ability to handle both cognitive styles
 simultaneously.)  The removal of the burden of analytical functioning
 (by the interviewer) during exercise of the RV faculty appears
 to be an important ingredient for success.  A change in this
 aspect of the methodology may give the appearance of a cleaner
 protocol (it is not), but it may also yield the lower level results
 characteristic of classical academic (as opposed to operational)
 studies.  Our client programs, on the other hand, force us to
 develop techniques that yield results, and it cannot be stressed
 enough that we have developed the appropriate statistical procedures
 to handle such possibilities as remote viewer  guessing and
 interviewer cueing or sharpening.
 To the degree that the committee's overall evaluation of the SRI program will
 touch on technical issues such as these, we would suggest that it is incumbent
 on the committee members to obtain a more thorough grounding in the technical
 details than was possible in the few hours available during the July meeting at
 SRI.  We would doubt, for example, that anyone would be in a position to
 critique our present RV statistical procedures fairly and justly (not that there
 wasn't the potential because of the expertise represented) simply because we did
 not have an opportunity to present them, and, being a new approach in our program
 (Scott's direct-count-of-permutations method), we have not discussed them at any
 length in publications available to the committee.  Since the approach (a) is
 specifically designed to handle narrative material of the remote viewing type,
 (b) takes into account the possibility of potential remote viewer/interviewer
 guessing and/or knowledge of the target pool, and (c) has been thoroughly
 investigated, used, and documented in the academic parapsychology community as
 the most conservative reference statistic to fall back on, one cannot assess
 remarks such as  (1) - (3) above without at least an intuitive understanding of the
 assumptions and implications of this approach.  Beyond this, there were other
 items that to our mind need clearing up, such as confusion of our work with
 other labs' work and statements, and little awareness that we have done considerable
 experimentation with simpler paranormal functions than remote viewing (e.g.,
 computer-automated number-perception tasks, binary card tasks) to establish
 certain parameters of the more complicated functioning.   (Such scientific legwork
 we did not present to the committee, as it seemed beyond the scope of interest
 expressed at the time.)
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 To remedy the shortcomings inherent in the brief orientation meeting of 24-25
 July, to ensure that we do justice to the multitudinous concerns of the committee,
 and to ensure that the SRI program obtains a fair hearing from the committee, we
 propose that:   (1) all committee members receive from your office a copy of this
 memo and the attached protocols to gain a better understanding of our procedures;
 (2) further discussions be held in smaller groups between SRI personnel and those
 members of the committee who are especially concerned with specific issues
 (e.g., protocol procedures and statistical approaches with Drs. Synder and
 Tang).
 We are available for such interactions at Menlo Park, Washington, or elsewhere,
 and would appreciate the opportunity to resolve these issues at the earliest
 convenience.  Out of such interactions we could also expect as a bonus to define
 with greater clarity those scientific issues that need to be pursued in more
 detail should fundamentally-oriented research programs be set up in the future,
 as they must.
 Since we are mutually tasked by our sponsor to provide the best technical
 assessment possible of a field fraught with complex and subtle issues, we believe
 that additional actions such as we have proposed are necessary if we are to
 fulfill our mutual goals and responsibilities.
 Enclosed are copies of the memo and protocols for all the committee members,
 which we would appreciate your distributing.  Also enclosed for use at your
 discretion are additional copies for Maj. Gen. E. R. Thompson, Dr. Ruth Davis,
 and the Hon. Walter Laberge.
 We remain at your disposal as to arrangements should you decide to follow up on
 the further interactions we have proposed.
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