The Stargate Project

Two chairs

For twenty years the CIA funded 'remote viewing' research. In 1995 two outside reviewers read the same data and split: one says it deserves a look, the other says it never produced usable intelligence.

The question

From 1972 the CIA, Army and Defense Intelligence Agency spent roughly $20 million on 'remote viewing' — training people to describe hidden targets using only a coded reference. When the program ended in 1995, the CIA's own outside reviewers, a statistician and a psychologist, reached opposite conclusions about the same data. Who was right?

Round 1

The chair that trusts the dataIn 1972, physicists at Stanford Research Institute began testing a claimed ability to describe distant places — and the CIA kept funding it for two decades.

The chair that says it failedAn earlier 1984 review by the National Research Council had already found no scientific evidence for remote viewing at all.

Round 2

The chair that trusts the dataYet in 1995, Jessica Utts, the statistician on the CIA's own review, concluded the results were too consistent to be chance.

The chair that says it failedRay Hyman, the psychologist on that same review, found methodological flaws serious enough that chance couldn't yet be ruled out.

Round 3

The chair that trusts the dataEven Hyman didn't call it fraud or nothing — he called it unproven. That's a real distinction, not a dismissal.

The chair that says it failedReal distinction or not, both reviewers agreed the sessions never produced intelligence clean enough for actual operations.

Where are you sitting?

The chair that trusts the data The chair that says it failed Neither — I’m still listening

Held open

The CIA spent two decades and $20 million on remote viewing. Its own 1995 reviewers split on whether the data showed a real effect. What both agreed on: the results were never reliable enough to inform an actual operation.

Twenty years, two reviewers, one answer they could agree on.

scroll to hear both

1 / 7