[link to www.emory.edu]


One hardly knows where to begin. Brown's book is remarkable for its virtually complete absence of any data that would qualify as scientific by even the most liberal evidential standards. His "findings" consist entirely of unverified subjective experiences, and the reader searches in vain for anything vaguely resembling a controlled experiment. Brown neglects to mention either the results of a recent government-appointed scientific panel on remote viewing, which concluded that "evidence for the operational value of remote viewing is not available, even after a decade of attempts," or the critiques of Ray Hyman, a psychologist at the University of Oregon, who has shown that the scientific evidence in support of remote viewing is seriously flawed. Philosopher David Hume maintained that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence; Brown's evidence is, to be charitable, singularly unimpressive.

In light of Brown's claims, I recently challenged him to a test of his alleged psychic abilities. I proposed that he appear at a meeting of my undergraduate seminar on Science and Pseudoscience in Psychology, where my students and I would subject him to a simple controlled experiment examining his capacity to remotely view stimuli in an adjacent room. I assured him that he would have considerable input regarding the selection of stimulus materials, and agreed to publicize the results of this test in both Emory newspapers regardless of its outcome.

But Brown categorically refused. His reasoning was curious: In his e-mail response to me, he asserted that "tests of the type you have talked about are very old hat" and that the current status of remote viewing "goes light years beyond that which your letter suggests." But if Brown's psychic powers are as advanced as he claims, shouldn't he be able to pass an elementary test of these powers with flying colors?