Russell Targ was involved in early laser research at Technical Research Group where he co-authored, with Gordon Gould among others, a 1962 paper describing the use of homodyne detection with laser light.[11] Later, at Sylvania Electronic Systems, he contributed to the development of frequency modulation and mode-locking of lasers,[12][13][14][15][16][17] and co-authored a 1969 paper which described the operation of a kilowatt continuous wave laser.[18][19]
In 1972, Targ joined the Electronics and Bioengineering Laboratory at SRI as a senior research physicist in a program founded by Harold E. Puthoff.[20] The two conducted research into psychic abilities and their operational use for the U.S. intelligence community, including NASA, the CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency and Army Intelligence.[1][21] Targ worked at SRI until 1982.[22]
Remote viewing (or RV) is the practice of seeking impressions about a distant or unseen target using subjective means, in particular, extra-sensory perception (ESP) or "sensing with mind".[2] Typically a remote viewer is expected to give information about an object, event, person or location that is hidden from physical view and separated at some distance.[27][28] The term was coined in the 1970s by Targ and Puthoff, while working as researchers at SRI, to differentiate it from clairvoyance.[29][30]
A number of scientific reviews of the SRI (and later) experiments on remote viewing found no credible evidence that remote viewing works, and the topic of remote viewing is regarded as pseudoscience.[2][36][37][38]
Receptionedit
The psychologists David Marks and Richard Kammann attempted to replicate Targ and Puthoff's remote viewing experiments and disputed the claims that the experiments were successful; for example, they were able to successfully identify targets from cues given by the investigators and recorded in the transcripts. They concluded: "Until remote viewing can be confirmed in conditions which prevent sensory cueing the conclusions of Targ and Puthoff remain an unsubstantiated hypothesis."[39] The researchers said that Targ and Puthoff had not provided unpublished transcripts when requested, but that after obtaining them from a judge in the study they were able to find "a wealth of cues".[40]
Simon Hoggart and Mike Hutchinson described Targ as willing to believe and overly credulous.[41] A 1988 report by the United States National Research Council (NRC) concluded: "There should remain little doubt that the Targ–Puthoff studies are fatally flawed."[42]
Remote viewing was popularized in the 1990s upon the declassification of certain documents related to the Stargate Project, a US$20 million research program that had started in 1975 and was sponsored by the U.S. government in an attempt to determine any potential military application of psychic phenomena. The program was terminated in 1995 after it failed to produce any useful intelligence information. David Goslin, of the American Institutes for Research said: "There's no documented evidence it had any value to the intelligence community."[43]
A variety of scientific studies of remote viewing have been conducted. Some earlier, less sophisticated experiments produced positive results, but they had invalidating flaws.[37] None of the more recent experiments have shown positive results when conducted under properly controlled conditions.[29][43][44] This lack of successful experiments has led the mainstream scientific community to reject remote viewing, based upon the absence of an evidence base, the lack of a theory which would explain remote viewing, and the lack of experimental techniques which can provide reliably positive results.[38]
Targ and Puthoff both expressed the belief that Uri Geller, retired police commissioner Pat Price and artist Ingo Swann all had genuine psychic abilities;[50] however, flaws were found with the controls in the experiments and Geller was caught using sleight of hand on many other occasions.[51] The SRI tests gave Geller substantial control over the procedures used to test him, with few limits on his behavior during the test.[52]
In 1982, Targ with Keith Harary and Anthony White formed a company, Delphi Associates, to sell psychic consulting services to individuals and businesses.[22][53] In the book Mind Race,[54] Targ and Harary claimed that all nine silver futures predictions made at Delphi in 1982 were correct; however, a later attempt failed.[55] According to Henry Gordon, "As with most psychic claims, there is little documentation to back them up."[56]Ray Hyman has written "Targ and Harary's much-publicized case for the reality of psi and the validity of remote viewing is filled with exaggerated and unsupported conclusions. Their careless scholarship leads to new deceptions."[53]
Personal lifeedit
Russell was married to Joan Fischer Targ, who died in 1998.[57] Russell and Joan had a daughter, Elisabeth Targ, who was a psychiatrist and parapsychologist[8][58][59] and two sons Alexander and Nicholas.[57] In 2003 Targ married artist Patricia Kathleen Phillips.[60]
Joan Fischer Targ was the sister of World Chess ChampionBobby Fischer.[57] In 2004 Targ assisted Fischer, who had been a fugitive in the United States since violating a trade embargo with his 1992 victory over Boris Spassky.[61] While Fischer was detained in Japan with extradition pending, Targ worked to support a claim of German citizenship for Fischer.[62]
In Pawn Sacrifice, a 2014 biopic of Fischer, Targ appears briefly, portrayed by Marco Verdoni.
Targ, who is legally blind, is an avid motorcyclist and has published a memoir on his experiences as a "blind biker".[60]
Publicationsedit
Books authorededit
Limitless Mind: A Guide to Remote Viewing and Transformation of Consciousness. San Francisco: New World Library. 2004. ISBN 9781577314134.
Do You See What I See: Memoirs of a Blind Biker. Charlottesville, VA: Hampton Roads. 2010. ISBN 9781571746306.
The Reality of ESP: A Physicist's Proof of Psychic Abilities. Wheaton, IL: Quest Books. 2012. ISBN 9780835608848.
Books co-authorededit
—; Puthoff, Harold (1977). Mind Reach: Scientists Look at Psychic Abilities. Dell. ISBN 9780224014243.
—; Harary, Keith (1984). The Mind Race: Understanding and Using Psychic Abilities. New English Library. ISBN 9780450061042.
—; Katra, Jane (1998). Miracles of Mind: Exploring Nonlocal Consciousness and Spiritual Healing. New World Library. ISBN 9781577310709.
—; Katra, Jane (1999). The Heart of the Mind: How to Experience God Without Belief. New World Library. ISBN 9781577310419.
—; Hurtak, James (2006). End of Suffering: Fearless Living in Troubled Times...Or, How to Get Out of Hell Free. Hampton Roads. ISBN 9781612831145.
Journal articlesedit
On remote viewing
—; Puthoff, H. (18 October 1974). "Information transmission under conditions of sensory shielding". Letters to Nature. Nature. 251 (5476): 602–7. Bibcode:1974Natur.251..602T. doi:10.1038/251602a0. PMID 4423858. S2CID 4152651.
Puthoff, H.E.; — (March 1976). "A perceptual channel for information transfer over kilometer distances: Historical perspective and recent research". Proceedings of the IEEE. 64 (3): 329–54. doi:10.1109/PROC.1976.10113. S2CID 12688261.
Tart, C.T.; Puthoff, H.E.; — (13 March 1980). "Information transmission in remote viewing experiments". Matters Arising. Nature. 284 (5752): 191. Bibcode:1980Natur.284..191T. doi:10.1038/284191a0. PMID 7360248.
— (1996). "Remote viewing at Stanford Research Institute in the 1970s: A memoir" (PDF). Journal of Scientific Exploration. 10 (1): 77–88. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2014-10-23.
On precognition
—; Katra, J.; Brown, D.; Wiegand, W. (1995). "Viewing the future: A pilot study with an error detecting protocol". Journal of Scientific Exploration. 9: 367–80.
On lasers and electro-opticsedit
Rabinowitz, P.; Jacobs, S.; —; Gould, G. (November 1962). "Homodyne detection of phase-modulated light". Correspondence. Proceedings of the IRE. 50 (11): 2365. doi:10.1109/JRPROC.1962.287964.
^Gilovich, Thomas (1993). How We Know What Isn't So: Fallibility of Human Reason in Everyday Life. Free Press. pp. 166–73. ISBN 9780029117064.
^"William Targ, 'Godfather' editor, dies at 92". New York Times. 1999-07-25.
^Israel, Peter (2011-08-10). "Peter Israel on how The Godfather came to Putnam". Reader's Almanac (blog). Library of America.
^ abGardner, Martin (March–April 2001). "Notes of a fringe-watcher: Distant healing and Elisabeth Targ". Skeptical Inquirer. Vol. 25, no. 2. Retrieved 2011-01-07.
^Kaiser, David (2011). How the Hippies Saved Physics: Science, Counterculture, and the Quantum Revival. W.W. Norton & Company. p. 70. ISBN 9780393076363.
^Dewar, Elaine (30 July 1977). "In search of the mind's eye: In the weird world of ESP, seeing is not believing". Winnipeg Free Press Magazine. pp. 8–12.
^Harris, S.; McDuff, O. (September 1965). "Theory of FM laser oscillation" (PDF). IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics. 1 (6): 245–62. Bibcode:1965IJQE....1..245H. doi:10.1109/JQE.1965.1072231 – via stanford.edu.
^Harris, S.E. (October 1966). "Stabilization and modulation of laser oscillators by internal time-varying perturbation" (PDF). Proceedings of the IEEE. 54 (10): 1401–13. Bibcode:1966ApOpt...5.1639H. doi:10.1109/PROC.1966.5126. PMID 20057597 – via stanford.edu.
^Smith, P.W. (September 1970). "Mode-locking of lasers" (PDF). Proceedings of the IEEE. 58 (9): 1342–55. doi:10.1109/proc.1970.7926. PMID 19770987 – via optics.rochester.edu.
^Willett, Colin S. (1974). Introduction To Gas Lasers: Population Inversion Mechanisms: With Emphasis on Selective Excitation Processes. International Series of Monographs in Natural Philosophy. Vol. 67. Pergamon Press. p. 5. ISBN 9780080178035. OCLC 790410.
^Zusne, Leonard; Jones, Warren H. (1989). Anomalistic Psychology: A Study of Magical Thinking. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. p. 167. ISBN 978-0805805086.
^"Dr. Harold Puthoff". arlingtoninstitute.org. The Arlington Institute. 2008. Archived from the original on 2013-03-03.
^ abPuthoff, Harold (1996). "CIA-initiated remote viewing program at Stanford Research Institute" (PDF). Journal of Scientific Exploration. 10 (1): 63–76. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2014-05-31.[unreliable source?]
^Puthoff, H.E.; Targ, Russell (22 February 1973). A Progress Report on Contract Number 1471(S)73 (TECHNICAL MEMORANDUM ed.). Stanford Research Institute. Retrieved 18 October 2023. Approved Forf Rease 2003/03/28 : CIA-RDP79-00999A00300030030-6
^Puthoff, Harold E.; Targ, Russell; May, Edwin C. (3–8 January 1979). "Experimental psi research: Implications for physics" (PDF). In Jahn, Robert G. (ed.). The Role of Consciousness in the Physical World. 145th National Meeting American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS): Session: The role of consciousness in the physical world. AAAS Selected Symposia. Vol. 57. Houston, TX: Westview Press. ISBN 9780891589556 – via remoteviewed.com.
^Alcock, James (1981). Parapsychology-Science Or Magic?: A Psychological Perspective. Pergamon Press. pp. 164–79. ISBN 9780080257730.
^ abWiseman, R.; Milton, J. (1999). "Experiment one of the SAIC remote viewing program: A critical reevaluation" (PDF). Journal of Parapsychology. 62 (4): 297–308. Retrieved 2008-06-26 – via richardwiseman.com.
^ abMarks, D.; Scott, C. (6 February 1986). "Remote viewing exposed". Correspondence. Nature. 319 (6053): 444. Bibcode:1986Natur.319..444M. doi:10.1038/319444a0. PMID 3945330.
^Hoggart, Simon; Hutchinson, Mike (1995). Bizarre Beliefs. Richard Cohen Books. p. 151. ISBN 9781573921565.
^Alcock, James E.; Committee on Techniques for the Enhancement of Human Performance: Commission on Behavioral and Social Sciences Education: National Research Council (NRC) (1988). "Part VI. Parapsychological Techniques". Enhancing Human Performance: Issues, Theories, and Techniques, Background Papers (Complete Set). Washington, DC: National Academies Press. p. 57 [659]. doi:10.17226/778. ISBN 978-0-309-07810-8.
^ abcWaller, Douglas (11 December 1995). "The vision thing: Ten years and $20 million later, The Pentagon discovers that psychics are unreliable spies". Time.
^"Remote Viewing". disclosed on 2007-02-23. UK's Ministry of Defence. June 2002. p. 94 (page 50 in second pdf). Archived from the original on 2012-10-26.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
^Bennett, Gary L. (1994). Heretical science – Beyond the boundaries of pathological science(PDF). Washington, DC: American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. pp. 1207–12. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-12-13. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)
^Shermer, Michael (2013). "Science and Pseudoscience". In Pigliucci, Massimo; Boudry, Maarten (eds.). Philosophy of Pseudoscience: Reconsidering the Demarcation Problem. University Of Chicago Press. p. 206. ISBN 9780226051963.
^Ward, Ray (2017). "The Martin Gardner Correspondence with Marcello Truzzi". Skeptical Inquirer. 41 (6): 57–59.
^Scott, C. (29 July 1982). "No 'remote viewing'". Correspondence. Nature. 298 (5873): 414. Bibcode:1982Natur.298..414S. doi:10.1038/298414c0.
^ abHyman, Ray (1986). "Outracing the Evidence: The Muddled 'Mind Race'". In Frazier, Kendrik (ed.). Science Confronts the Paranormal. Prometheus. pp. 91–108. ISBN 978-0879753146.