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Sign up for the CuriosityStream-Nebula bundle
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Okay, so, back in the 1970s, when disco was
king, Nixon was queen, and Elvis was their

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inbred prince son, the dirty reds tricked
the pure, hardworking Americans into thinking

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the Russians were spending 60 million rubles
a year on “psychotronic research”—and

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while it turns out they were probably punking
us, we nonetheless decided to show those communists

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the brilliance of capitalism by spending $20
million of public money training psychics

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to help the military.

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This was the birth of the Stargate Project.

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Now, this is just one chapter in the history
of very real experiments into very not-real

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psychic phenomenon: there’s the Ganzfield
experiments, dream telepathy research dating

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back to Freud, even experiments supposedly
proving “precognition” by Daryl Bem as

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recently as 2011.

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But instead of talking about those multiple
other interesting things, let’s talk about

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one half as interesting thing: Stargate’s
earliest, and most foundational, experiment—conducted

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with CIA funding in 1972 at the Stanford Research
Institute by Doctor Harold Puthoff and not-a-doctor

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Russell Targ.

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The experiment went like this.

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Step 1: Find a person.

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Any person, actually.

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Part of Targ and Puthoff’s theory is that
anyone can express psychic ability.

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But the person does have to be willing to
do a bunch of experiments to see if they are,

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in fact, psychic, so maybe do the recruiting
at a renaissance fair or something.

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Step 2: Come up with a list of twelve distinct
locations.

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Do not tell the maybe-psychic person about
them.

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Step 3: Put the maybe-psychic person in a
room with an experimenter.

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Step 4: Without telling either of the people
in the room, have another experimenter choose

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one of the twelve places and then drive there,
along with one to three observers.

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Step 5: Once at the site, have the observers
walk around look at stuff, acting as “psychic

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beacons,” whatever that means.

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Step 6: Simultaneously, have the maybe-psychic
person describe and draw pictures of what

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the observers are seeing, despite not knowing
where they are.

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Record this.

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Step 7: Take the maybe-psychic to the site
so they can see how they did, but do not record

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this.

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Step 8: Repeat steps 1-7 nine times, with
different locations, doing a few a day.

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Step 9: Get an objective judge, take them
to all nine of the locations, and give them

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the nine unedited transcripts of the maybe-psychic
person’s attempts at descriptions.

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Step 10: Have the judge attempt to match up
the transcripts to the locations.

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Step 11: Analyze the data.

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If the objective judge successfully matched
the locations to the transcripts—which,

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again, contained only the conversation between
the maybe-psychic person and the experimenter,

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both trapped in a room and not told where
the observers were—then the maybe-psychic

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person must have accurately read the psychic
beacons of the observers, they can be upgraded

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from a maybe-psychic person to a psychic-psychic
person, and all of our understanding of the

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world needs to be reconsidered.

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Going in with one-in-nine odds if picking
randomly, the six judges in Targ and Puthoff’s

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experiment matched 24 of 45 right.

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The odds of that happening randomly are less
than one in a billion.

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So, the study was published in esteemed scientific
journal Nature, and in conclusion, psychics

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are real.

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End of video.

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Thanks for watching.

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Now let me tell you about our sponsor, Craig.

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Craig is a guy I met on a street corner, and
he sells powder that smells great—wait…

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what’s that?...

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Oh no.

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It’s the Kiwis.

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They found us.

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And they’re here to ruin everything.

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Specifically here to ruin everything are David
F. Marks and Richard Kammann, two New Zealand

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researchers who recreated Targ and Puthoff’s
experiments as exactly as they could.

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But when it came time for the judges to do
the judging thing, it went terribly.

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Despite the subjects being convinced they
had experienced incredible psychic visions,

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not a single judge correctly matched a single
one of their descriptions to a location.

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Which raised the question: “Whaaa?”

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Well, while the answer is complicated, the
answer is also pretty not-complicated: in

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Marks and Kammann’s experiments, before
they gave the transcripts to their judges,

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they edited out certain non-psychic-y lines
that might have provided unfair clues about

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how to match them up.

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The original experiments did… not that.

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Take for example, this sentence that was left
in an original experiment transcript: “I’ve

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been trying to picture it in my mind and where
you went yesterday on the nature walk.”

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Now, this gives the judge two key pieces of
information.

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First, this transcript does not correspond
to the nature walk location.

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Second, this transcript does correspond to
a place that was visited the day after the

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nature walk.

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The transcripts were full of information about
things that happened on previous days—plus,

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it turned out that while the order of the
transcripts was randomized in the original

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experiment, the list of locations was given
to the judges in the order in which they were

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visited.

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That means if the judge could just order the
transcripts chronologically, they could match

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them.

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Basically, the judging was less psychic evaluation,
and more like one of those little logic puzzles

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you did in middle school when your teacher
had a hangover.

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Marks and Kamman also found six, subtler types
of cues that could help judges order chronologically.

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First, subjects would typically express more
confidence in their abilities over time.

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Second, names of observers were mentioned,
but observers changed across days of experimentation.

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Thus, if only, say, three transcripts mention
“Marty,” they’re probably all from the

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same day—the day Marty was there.

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Third, time of day was often mentioned.

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Fourth, only some transcripts had drawings,
and they tended to be grouped in later sessions.

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Fifth, descriptions of how the site was selected
became more sophisticated over time.

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And sixth, transcripts generally got shorter
over time.

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Plus, in a blunder that ranks alongside “this
wooden horse rocks, I bet there’s nothing

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inside it,” it seems that some of the original
transcripts given to judges may have listed

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the date they were recorded.

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To test their cueing hypothesis, David Marks
was given a set of transcripts from the original

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experiments, and a list of locations—but
he was not permitted to visit them.

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Despite not knowing what any of the places
looked like, he matched all the transcripts

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perfectly to the locations, based only on
the cues—a feat then successfully repeated

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by multiple other judges.

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In the end, while the Targ-Puthoff experiments’
bogus findings may have led to 20 years of

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useless CIA and military research into psychics,
they did prove one useful thing: the importance

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of good experimental design.

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While the Targ-Puthoff and Marks-Kammann experiments
had totally different findings, they did have

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one surprising thing in common: in both cases,
test subjects left completely convinced that

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they were psychic.

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And while I’d love to talk about the fascinating
psychological phenomenon that explains why,

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that would make this video too long, inviting
punishment from our capricious czar, the YouTube

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algorithm.

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That’s why I took that and everything we
cut for time and put it in an extended version

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available exclusively on Nebula—the creator-owned
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