They never heard of Stargate?

Readers Kim, Jeremy and Tyler each emailed me a story of how the UK Ministry of Defence has spent £18,000 ($35,000) on experiments to discover if psychic powers exist and if they could put to military use:

Subjects were blindfolded and asked if they could "see" the contents of sealed brown envelopes containing pictures of random objects and public figures.

[…]

More than a quarter – 28 per cent – of those tested managed a close guess at the contents of the envelopes, which included pictures of a knife, Mother Teresa and an "Asian individual". But most subjects were hopelessly off the mark.

[…]

The MoD last night refused to discuss the possible applications of such a technique, but said that the study had concluded there was "little value" in using "remote viewing" in the defence of the nation.

Have they never heard of Project Stargate – the US government’s failed attempt from the 1970s through 1995 to look for exactly the same thing? They spent $20 million before they realized it doesn’t work and gave up. (At least the UK government only wasted $35K.) The PsiTech organization supposedly purchased the “technology” from the US government, and are having a similar consistent lack of success in being able to remote-view anything correctly.

One thing in the article caught my eye:

Defence experts tried to recruit 12 psychics who advertised their abilities on the internet, but when they refused they were forced to use "novice" volunteers.

Typical. As Randi knows, as soon as you want to test any “psychic” to see if they really can do what they say, they run for the hills. They must hate freedom.

Of course, if remote viewing really worked, we’d have captured bin Laden years ago.

Comments

[Nes]

Awww, and here I thought you were going to be talking about the movie or TV show...

[Frank A.]

Skeptico, you've got it backwards. The fact that those "psychics" refused to be tested is clear evidence of their powers: they were able to precognificatize that they would fail.

... er, waitaminute ...

[outeast]

Actually, remote viewers located Bin Ladin years ago but the US govermint doesn't want to 'catch' him because hes a US agent.