PK with Prerecorded Random Events and the Effects of Preobservation

Abstract

PK experiments with prerecorded targets (Schmidt, 1976) are interesting because they suggest a variety of new test arrangements to study the basic PK mechanism. In addition, they permit the inclusion of independent observers who, with little time investment, can obtain first-hand evidence of any anomalous effects that may occur. Four such experiments with different independent observers, different subject populations, and minor variations have been performed previously (Schmidt & Braud, 1993; Schmidt, Morris, & Hardin, 1990; Schmidt, Morris, & Rudolph, 1986; Schmidt & Schlitz, 1988) with the first author as main experimenter and the other one or two authors acting as independent observers. The results of PK experiments with prerecorded random events appear most interesting and most puzzling because the subject's mental effort is made long after the random events to be affected have occurred. One tentative viewpoint (Schmidt, 1978; Walker, 1979) is that the subject's mental effort could act backward to the time when the random events were generated and recorded. This would imply a noncausal mechanism in the sense that the effect (the biasing of the random events) occurs before the cause (the mental effort). It might be this element of noncausality that makes psychic phenomena so intuitively implausible and at odds with the known principles of physics. Another viewpoint (Schmidt, 1982) is based on the quantum theoretical notion that there is no if there is no observer. Thus, the decisions of the random generator might become reality only when the subject observes the outcome during the test session. The subject's effort would not have to act into the past because the decision on the outcome would not yet be made until the subject received feedback during the PK test session. In this case, a preobservation of the recorded events should inhibit the subject's success, because the preobservation would make the random decisions real so that the subject's subsequent mental effort would come too late. For this reason it seemed particularly interesting to conduct an experiment in which half of the prerecorded random events had been preinspected so that one could compare the possible PK effects on the preobserved and not-observed events. One previous study (Schmidt, 1985) has indicated an inhibition of the PK effect by preobservation. In view of the central role of the question, however, further studies of the preobservation effect seem most important. In this and the four previous studies, the question of highest priority was whether a PK effect could be demonstrated under tightly controlled conditions. Because preobservation might inhibit the PK effect, we decided in advance to base the possible evidence for the existence of PK only on the results from the not-preobserved events. Although the independent observer was somewhat skeptical about the existence of PK, he was very interested in a possible preobservation effect because of its possible implications for quantum theory. Our subject pool consisted primarily of martial arts students as a matter of practical convenience. This population was relatively easily accessible and one that the experimenter had not yet explored. No attempt was made, however, to compare martial arts training and skill with PK performance systematically. METHOD The study was structured into 20 units such that a unit could be considered as a mini-experiment. Each unit was subdivided into 100 blocks of binary data. The sequence of binary data in each block determined two partial results, an even result and an odd result, arising from the even- or odd-numbered bits in the sequence. The partial results were defined so that by inverting the bits in the sequence (interchanging 1s and 0s) the signs of the partial results were inverted. In following the procedure for each unit, the experimenter used a true random generator to record the random bit-sequences for the 100 blocks on floppy disk. …