Information and Uncertainty in Remote Perception Research

The paper says PEAR’s formal database comprised 653 trials evaluated with 24 scoring recipes and reports an aggregate z-score of 5.418 against chance.

The formal database comprises 653 experimental trials performed over several phases of investigation. The scoring methods involve various arrays of descriptor queries

The authors report that aggregate results were not significantly changed by target distance, timing, descriptor effectiveness, tested protocol parameters, or participant-response biases.

these overall results are not significantly affected by any of the secondary protocol parameters tested, or by variations in descriptor effectiveness, possible participant response biases, target distance from the percipient, or time interval

PEAR’s remote-perception database included 653 formal and 126 non-formal trials conducted between 1976 and 1999.

One of the largest extant databases, comprising 653 formal and 126 non-formal experimental trials, was produced between 1976 and 1999

The PEAR protocol required target selection from sealed, randomly numbered envelopes or a volitional target choice, with percipients recording free-response impressions without an experimenter present.

The contents of this pool are stored in separate sealed envelopes, randomly numbered, and maintained so that no agent or percipient has access to them.

The paper says strict precautions required perceptions to be recorded before participants had sensory access to target information and barred ordinary communication between percipient and agent until afterward.

strict precautions are taken to ensure that perceptions are recorded and filed before percipients have any sensory access to information about the targets

As of 1983, PEAR reported 227 formal binary-scored trials with composite z-scores above 6 across five corrected scoring methods.

The original version of this table, published in Technical Report 83003, contained an error that inadvertently inflated the results from Method A

By 1988, the binary-descriptor database contained 411 trials from 48 participants, including 336 formal trials.

By 1988 the total PEAR PRP binary-descriptor database consisted of 411 trials, produced by a total of 48 participants. Of these, 336 trials qualified as formal

The 336 formal binary trials were reported at a composite z-score of 6.355, with stronger average effects for instructed targets than volitional targets.

Formal trials 336 .5447 .347 6 .152 1.083 6.355

The paper says the data did not show attenuation with greater target distance or temporal separation, which the authors describe as difficult to reconcile with known physical processes.

The lack of evidence for attenuation of the remote perception yield with increased distance or time severely limits the possibilities for theoretical explication in terms of any known physical process.

The FIDO phase ran for four years beginning in 1985 and produced 167 trials using 32 revised descriptors.

The FIDO program ran for four years, beginning in 1985, and produced a total of 167 trials.

The standard FIDO analysis produced a marginal composite z-score of 1.735, and alternative scoring methods did not restore the stronger earlier yield.

The composite z-score thus calculated for the 167 FIDO trials was 1.735, indicating a marginally significant overall achievement, but one that was reduced even further from the high yield of the previous data.

Thirty distributive-protocol series totaling 150 trials were reported as completely indistinguishable from chance across six scoring recipes.

Thirty experimental series comprising 150 trials were generated using this distributive protocol by 12 participant pairs

The authors conclude that progressively elaborate analysis did not enhance the effect and describe the 150 distributive trials as null.

It was evident from the null results of the 150 distributive trials that all efforts to enhance the effect by progressively more elaborate analysis techniques not only had failed, but even had proven counter-productive.

The paper’s aggregate statistic was driven primarily by stronger earlier trials, while later ab initio, FIDO, and distributive subsets weakened sharply.

While the composite yield of the total database remains highly significant, it is evident that this result is driven primarily by the much stronger yields of the earlier trials

The authors hypothesize that increasingly detailed descriptor formats may have constrained free-response imagery and suppressed the reported anomaly.

each increment of analytical refinement appears to have resulted in a systematic reduction not of the noise but of the signal itself

The authors also note that early exploratory trials without the agent’s identity or target-visit time were completely null, implying that their uncertainty hypothesis still required minimal task boundaries.

the early exploratory trials, where percipients did not know the identity of the agent or the time of target visitation, produced completely null results