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Richard Perry/The New York Times
Robert G. Jahn founded a Princeton laboratory that is closing after
almost 30 years of disputed research on telekinesis and the ability of
the mind to influence machines. Brenda Dunne is the laboratory's
manager.
February 10, 2007 A Princeton Lab on ESP Plans to Close Its Doors By
BENEDICT CAREY
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arey/index.html?inline=nyt-per>
PRINCETON, N.J., Feb. 6 — Over almost three decades, a small
laboratory at Princeton University
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/p/pri\
nceton_university/index.html?inline=nyt-org> managed to embarrass
university administrators, outrage Nobel laureates
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ml?inline=nyt-classifier> , entice the support of philanthropists and
make headlines around the world with its efforts to prove that thoughts
can alter the course of events.

But at the end of the month, the Princeton Engineering Anomalies
Research laboratory, or PEAR, will close, not because of controversy but
because, its founder says, it is time.

The laboratory has conducted studies on extrasensory perception and
telekinesis from its cramped quarters in the basement of the
university's engineering building since 1979. Its equipment is
aging, its finances dwindling.

"For 28 years, we've done what we wanted to do, and there's
no reason to stay and generate more of the same data," said the
laboratory's founder, Robert G. Jahn, 76, former dean of
Princeton's engineering school and an emeritus professor. "If
people don't believe us after all the results we've produced,
then they never will."

Princeton made no official comment.

The closing will end one of the strangest tales in modern science, or
science fiction, depending on one's point of view. The laboratory
has long had a strained relationship with the university. Many
scientists have been openly dismissive of it.

"It's been an embarrassment to science, and I think an
embarrassment for Princeton," said Robert L. Park, a University of
Maryland
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/u/uni\
versity_of_maryland/index.html?inline=nyt-org> physicist who is the
author of "Voodoo Science: The Road From Foolishness to Fraud."
"Science has a substantial amount of credibility, but this is the
kind of thing that squanders it."

PEAR has been an anomaly from the start, a ghost in the machine room of
physical science that was never acknowledged as substantial and yet
never entirely banished. Its longevity illustrates the strength and
limitations of scientific peer review, the process by which researchers
appraise one another's work.

"We know people have ideas beyond the mainstream," said the
sociologist Harriet Zuckerman, author of "Scientific Elite: Nobel
Laureates in the United States" and senior vice president of the
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, "but if they want funds for research
they have to go through peer review, and the system is going to be very
skeptical of ideas that are inconsistent with what is already
known."

Dr. Jahn, one of the world's foremost experts on jet propulsion,
defied the system. He relied not on university or government money but
on private donations — more than $10 million over the years, he
estimated. The first and most generous donor was his friend James S.
McDonnell, a founder of the McDonnell Douglas Corporation.

Those gifts paid for a small staff and a gallery of random-motion
machines, including a pendulum with a lighted crystal at the end; a
giant, wall-mounted pachinko-like machine with a cascade of bouncing
balls; and a variety of electronic boxes with digital number displays.

In one of PEAR's standard experiments, the study participant would
sit in front of an electronic box the size of a toaster oven, which
flashed a random series of numbers just above and just below 100. Staff
members instructed the person to simply "think high" or
"think low" and watch the display. After thousands of
repetitions — the equivalent of coin flips — the researchers
looked for differences between the machine's output and random
chance.

Analyzing data from such trials, the PEAR team concluded that people
could alter the behavior of these machines very slightly, changing about
2 or 3 flips out of 10,000. If the human mind could alter the behavior
of such a machine, Dr. Jahn argued, then thought could bring about
changes in many other areas of life — helping to heal disease, for
instance, in oneself and others.

This kind of talk fascinated the public and attracted the curiosity of
dozens of students, at Princeton and elsewhere. But it left most
scientists cold. A physics Ph.D. and an electrical engineer joined Dr.
Jahn's project, but none of the university's 700 or so
professors did. Prominent research journals declined to accept papers
from PEAR. One editor famously told Dr. Jahn that he would consider a
paper "if you can telepathically communicate it to me."

Brenda Dunne, a developmental psychologist, has managed the laboratory
since it opened and has been a co-author of many of its study papers.
"We submitted our data for review to very good journals," Ms.
Dunne said, "but no one would review it. We have been very open with
our data. But how do you get peer review when you don't have
peers?"

Several expert panels examined PEAR's methods over the years,
looking for irregularities, but did not find sufficient reasons to
interrupt the work. In the 1980s and 1990s, PEAR published more than 60
research reports, most appearing in the journal of the Society for
Scientific Exploration, a group devoted to the study of topics outside
the scientific mainstream. Dr. Jahn and Ms. Dunne are officers in the
society.

News of the Princeton group's experiments spread quickly worldwide,
among people interested in paranormal phenomena, including telekinesis
and what people call extrasensory perception. Notable figures from
Europe and Asia stopped by. . Keith Jarrett, the jazz pianist, paid a
visit. For a time, the philanthropist Laurance Rockefeller visited
regularly and donated money for research.

And many people, in and out of science, joined what Ms. Dunne called the
PEAR Tree, a kind of secret society of people interested in the
paranormal, she said. Many PEAR Tree members who are science faculty
members will not reveal themselves publicly, Ms. Dunne said.

The culture of science, at its purest, is one of freedom in which any
idea can be tested regardless of how far-fetched it might seem.

"I don't believe in anything Bob is doing, but I support his
right to do it," said Will Happer, a professor of physics at
Princeton.

Other top-flight scientists have taken chances. At the end of his
career, Linus Pauling, the Nobel laureate, came to believe that vitamin
C supplements could prevent and treat cancer, heart disease and other
ailments. Dr. Pauling had some outside financing, too, and conducted
research and had plenty of media coverage. But in the end he did not
sway many of his colleagues, Dr. Zuckerman said.

At the PEAR offices this week, the staff worked amid boxes, piles of
paper and a roll of bubble wrap as big as an oil drum. The random-event
machines are headed for storage.

The study of telekinesis and related phenomena, Dr. Jahn said, will
carry on.

"It's time for a new era," he said, "for someone to
figure out what the implications of our results are for human culture,
for future study, and — if the findings are correct — what they
say about our basic scientific attitude."

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