1933 – 2013 · A portrait
An American artist who described lifelong perceptual experiences became a central figure in government-funded remote-viewing research, coining the term in 1971. Skeptics later found cues that could explain results without anything paranormal.
The line above is how his claims were received — by the scientists whose job was to doubt them. It rises as a claim is tested and accepted, and the room brightens with it. It is not a verdict on truth: some accepted ideas are later overturned, and some rejected ones come back.
Working with physicists at the Stanford Research Institute from 1972, he helped design a protocol for 'remote viewing', his term, meant to separate a viewer's raw impressions from their own guessing or analysis.
During an April 1973 session he described Jupiter as having a ring system, years before Voyager 1 confirmed a faint ring in 1979. Supporters cite the episode; skeptics attribute it to guesswork or existing scientific speculation of the time.
Psychologists David Marks and Richard Kammann published a critique in Nature arguing that the early SRI experiment transcripts contained cues — like session dates or offhand remarks — that let judges match descriptions to targets without any anomalous perception.
The CIA-funded program that grew from his SRI work was declassified and shut down in 1995, after an official review found it had produced no actionable intelligence. No remote-viewing result has since been independently replicated to the field's satisfaction.