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The capricious, actively evasive, unsustainable nature of psi: a summary and hypotheses
Journal of Parapsychology, The, Spring, 2003 by J.E. Kennedy
critical intelligence reported to the highest echelons of our military and government, including such national level agencies as the Joint Chiefs of Staff, DIA, NSA, CIA, DEA, and the Secret Service, producing crucial and vital intelligence unavailable from any other source. (May, 1996, p. 8)
May indicated that the government agencies did not want the project and that the project evaluation was "restricted so as to preclude positive findings" (p. 22).
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From the perspective of an outside observer, the internal opposition to the project does not seem consistent with the idea that critical information had been provided to the highest echelons of government intelligence. Two possibilities for explaining this inconsistency appear to be likely. One possibility is that the intelligence agencies were impressed with the operational results and planned to start a top secret program. The negative evaluation and formal halting of the project would be a diversion and misinformation strategy to cover the secret program. Another possibility is that the results of the operations work were similar to other efforts to apply psi and gave basically anecdotal cases that were impressive to those favorable to psi, but were not sufficiently reliable to sway those who were skeptical. Given the results of other efforts to apply psi, this possibility seems more likely to me.
The use of psychics in police investigations is another situation that has produced some striking anecdotal successes within a larger domain of unreliable results (Lyons & Truzzi, 1991; Truzzi, 1995). Also, the initial research with intercessory prayer for healing appears to have the same issues of unreliability as other types of psi studies (Kennedy, 2002).
In addition, the great majority of spontaneous psi cases have not involved a practical benefit. For example, in Louisa Rhine's collection, approximately 90% of the precognition cases did not involve any effort to change the outcome of the event (L. E. Rhine, 1981). At the same time, a small proportion of the spontaneous cases have valuable, practical benefits. McGlenon (2002) reported that his case collection did not support the hypothesis that psi experiences generally provide direct benefits (but they may provide "spiritual healing" benefits). Eisenbud (1992a) similarly commented:
That psi-derived information is on the whole quite useless in the ordinary sense of the word is one of the most obvious facts of parapsychology. For every person who, warned by a presentiment of catastrophe, turned back at the last minute from boarding a plane that was shortly to crash, thousands (by now) did not. Tots do get burned, fall out of windows and in other ways come to grief....From the standpoint of the much heralded vigilance or alarm-system of the individual, psi would appear to be about on a par with the watchdog who licks the hand of a burglar. (p. 13)
In summary, attempts to apply psi have resulted in some very impressive individual cases that are among a much larger number of unsuccessful results. Declines and other evidence for evasive psi are apparent.
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