Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
The Princeton Engineering Anomalies Laboratory (PEAR), a colossal waste of money for nearly 3 decades, is finally closing down, having discovered precisely nothing.
The laboratory has conducted studies on extrasensory perception and telekinesis from its cramped quarters in the basement of the university's engineering building since 1979. Its equipment is aging, its finances dwindling."For 28 years, we've done what we wanted to do, and there's no reason to stay and generate more of the same data," said the laboratory's founder, Robert G. Jahn, 76, former dean of Princeton's engineering school and an emeritus professor. "If people don't believe us after all the results we've produced, then they never will."
If only they had actually produced something. But this is the kind of drek they churned out:
In one of PEAR's standard experiments, the study participant would sit in front of an electronic box the size of a toaster oven, which flashed a random series of numbers just above and just below 100. Staff members instructed the person to simply "think high" or "think low" and watch the display. After thousands of repetitions -- the equivalent of coin flips -- the researchers looked for differences between the machine's output and random chance.Analyzing data from such trials, the PEAR team concluded that people could alter the behavior of these machines very slightly, changing about 2 or 3 flips out of 10,000. If the human mind could alter the behavior of such a machine, Dr. Jahn argued, then thought could bring about changes in many other areas of life -- helping to heal disease, for instance, in oneself and others.
Holy non sequitur, Batman. This is sounding like the scene in Ghostbusters where they got thrown out. "Your theories are the worst kind of popular tripe, your methods are sloppy, and your conclusions are highly questionable. You are a poor scientist, Dr. Venkman!"
Comments
"Yeah, but the kids love us."
I vaguely remember participating in an experiment that, to the best I could tell, determined if you would touch the thingy that shocked you more than once. Or twice. Okay, I tried it twice, just to see if the shocky was being moved around.
Posted by: TW | February 11, 2007 10:26 AM
But at least the Ghostbusters were vindicated in the end. After all, if you're being slimed by a Class III vaporous ectoplasm ... Who ya gonna call?
I remember back in 70's they were all looking for what I call macro-psychical phenomena, like moving actual objects via telekinesis or predicting the order of Zenner cards well in front of chance. Nowadays they spend all their time in the statistical shadows, trying to find the tinyest blip above the mean and flogging that as evidence. It's a bizarre phenomena indeed that seems to manifest itself so obviously, at least in the minds of some, ...until you actually try to look at it carefully. Then it sublimes to nothingness, leaving behind only the certainty that something must be there.
Posted by: Dave S. | February 11, 2007 10:42 AM
Maybe the research--such as it is--will go to China.
As an aside relevant to my comment, I'll merely point out an article from a recent Scientific American. Apparently China has announced that it will be building the largest (in terms of energy, but also size) particle accelerator in the world. If they actually do that, they will exceed CERN in Switzerland, and will certainly take fundamental research in physics away from the US.
That should have been expected after the US cancelled the Superconducting Supercollider in the 1990s. But it is actually sad that it has become obvious that fundamental science is shifting away from the US, in large part because of the "demands" of the US defense budget.
Whatever. It should be evident that the fundamental purpose of the US budget is to beat plowshares into swords.
Posted by: raj | February 11, 2007 11:14 AM
In their defense, it's good someone did those experiments, though 28 years is a long time to spend generating negative results. I'm just glad it wasn't my career wasted.
A lot of modern spectroscopic results use signal averaging, where thouands or even millions of sets of noisy data are accumulated and averaged, to reveal tiny signals deeply buried in the noise. If ESP worked, this would be a recipe for artifact production, as the hopes and expectations of thousands of researchers would create artificial signals from the noise. Nobody's data would ever agree; different groups with different expectations would generate results in agreement with what they expected. This is another instance of why naturalism isn't just an optional assumption in science; it's both an experimental result, and a sine qua non.
My first significant result as a grad. student involved averaging around a million transients. I was sitting at the instrument for days, staring at the spectrum every hour or so, willing a signal to appear. Problem was, where I expected it was not where it actually was. It's a darn good thing ESP doesn't work; if ESP actually worked, my result would have been rather boring rather than unusual and therefore quite significant.
Posted by: Gerard Harbison | February 11, 2007 11:18 AM
"If people don't believe us after all the results we've produced, then they never will."
Paging Dr. Wells. Paging Mr. Chapman. Please locate the nearest white courtesy cluephone immediately.
Posted by: Elf M. Sternberg | February 11, 2007 11:21 AM
Wells can only dream of the day he has some results for skeptics to disbelieve. At least the PEAR lab produced some experimental data, even if they were unable to prove their hypothesis. They put their money where their mouth is--something IDists have been curiously reluctant to do.
Posted by: tacitus | February 11, 2007 12:37 PM
"China has announced that it will be building the largest... particle accelerator in the world."
Yeah, but will it keep the Mongols and Manchus out?
Posted by: Grumpy | February 11, 2007 2:09 PM
What I don't understand is why PEAR had to be colossal waste of money. Seems to me that these experiments should be relatively cheap to set up.
Posted by: JW | February 11, 2007 2:30 PM
When I was a graduate student at Duke eons ago, J. B. Rhine was receiving a great deal of attention for his ESP experiments. Indeed, he was the main popularizer of the term. They were found over and over again to fall short of any scientific evidence. Duke University was embarrased by him and let him set up a separate 'lab' (in an old house as I recall) apart from any academic department. This crap will not just go away!
Posted by: vhutchison | February 11, 2007 3:56 PM
Those researchers at Princeton don't need to close down. They just need to refocus their research. We need some good scientific research on the accuracy of "gut" directions as a means of making decisions compared to reasoned conclusions based on factual compilations and analysis. Why, I've heard some heads of state decide matters as important as going to war on the basis of "gut" information. Surely a sound study on the accuracy of gut infomation would be a wise expenditure of Princeton's resources....
Posted by: flatlander100 | February 11, 2007 3:57 PM
I think we could have foreseen that the results of ESP studies are devoid of significance. Which is something that ESP researchers don't seem to foresee.
Posted by: Kev | February 11, 2007 4:12 PM
Given results, I guess they didn't see this coming.
Posted by: Dave | February 11, 2007 4:58 PM
That makes me a little nostalgic. PEAR is responsible for my one mention by name in Scientific American, in Martin Gardner's column, when I pointed out Brenda Dunne's misuse of statistical significance probabilities in describing PEAR's research. Sic transit gloria mundi.
Posted by: RBH | February 11, 2007 6:20 PM
flatlander -
I think your absolutely right. Even the high-stakes of world leaders aside, a lot of people are affected, every day, by the "gut" decisions of others. Certainly, if it was worth spending millions on ESP research, it would be worth studying this. It certainly has direct, practical value - while the potential value of ESP is abstract, at best.
Posted by: DuWayne | February 11, 2007 7:26 PM
The lab was probably dumb, but let's put it in perspective. A decade at the lab probably cost less than a the time of a sneeze in Iraq.
I'm more concerned about the fact tha particle physics is moving to CERN and China. Whatever.
Posted by: raj | February 11, 2007 8:56 PM
I understand that the funding for this bogus research was needed for the new Intelligent Design program at Princeton. I may be wrong about that though.
Posted by: pablo | February 12, 2007 7:07 AM
When I read that "if people don't believe us..." quote, I thought he meant they were trying to show the ESP stuff is bogus.
That's valuable info to me, in the comparative religions department I end up meeting alot of the new age crowd. It's nice for everyone to have one less reason to take this stuff seriously.
Now that i think about it, the belief of the scientists might short-circuit one of the main objections the 'psychics' come up with, which is that science is more interested in explaining it away than really exploring the possibility of ESP. If some people who believed spent 30 years trying to find a solid proof, what more can you ask?
Posted by: John B | February 12, 2007 8:19 AM
ESP lab closed? How'd they not see that one coming?
Posted by: Matthew Young | February 12, 2007 9:12 AM
What has SETI produced?
Posted by: Jake | February 12, 2007 5:22 PM
Jake -
Among other things, a lot of great technology. The advances in lazer optics alone, have been incredible. The study of the radio spectrum that SETI has produced, has been incredibley usefull in communications technology - from sattelites, to cell phones.
SETI has also been highly instrumental in the developement of analytical software. The same software that is so very usefull for coordinating and analysing the input from the radio telescopes, is also usefull for all sorts of data analysis. Extremely usefull for analysing electronic intelligence data.
While SETI has yet to show evidence of e.t. intelligence, there remains the absolute likelyhood it exists. That alone makes it worth investigating. But the technology that continues to be developed for the search, is almost always usefull in other fields - often many other fields. It most certainly pulls it's weight, producing plenty in return for the investment.
Posted by: DuWayne | February 12, 2007 7:13 PM
And The Onion, as usual, gets in the best comment ... ""This does not bode well for Yale's Department of Goblin Studies or for Brown's Center for Skunk Ape and Yeti Research.""
Posted by: Scott Simmons | February 15, 2007 9:34 PM