From Dean Radin's blog ...

http://deanradin.blogspot.com/2007/02/pear-lab.html
<http://deanradin.blogspot.com/2007/02/pear-lab.html>
Saturday, February 10, 2007 PEAR Lab
Original in the New York Times
<http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/10/science/10princeton.html?_r=1&th=&adx\
nnl=1&oref=slogin&emc=th&adxnnlx=1171117281-qHRISkW3ZxnEqfeD3Z6YTw> .

By BENEDICT CAREY
Published: February 10, 2007

PRINCETON, N.J., Feb. 6 — Over almost three decades, a small
laboratory at Princeton University managed to embarrass university
administrators, outrage Nobel laureates, 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."

Besides the annoying use of the term "telekinesis," which no one in the
field uses, and the fact that Princeton University administrators were
supposedly embarassed, as though embarassment has any role in evaluating
scientific research, this article implies that the PEAR Lab was an
academic anomaly reporting anomalous results, and as such, it was
justifiably shunned by all sober scientists. What the article does not
ask is whether the PEAR Lab's results have been independently confirmed
by other scientists. The answer is clearly yes, as anyone can discover
with a bit of homework, or by reading Entangled Minds or The Conscious
Universe. This makes the Princeton lab's interests not so anomalous
after all, and their empirical results not anomalous at all.

Was their work actually dismissed by most scientists? Perhaps in public
within university circles, but certainly not in private. As the PEAR Lab
found, I've also discovered that there's a large and growing network of
mainstream academics who are privately very interested in these topics.
But taboos in academia prevent scientists from openly discussing their
real interests.

There is much said about the lofty ideals of academic freedom, the
freedom to explore any topic with impunity. But the ideal is a myth. It
is not possible to study any topic one wishes without risk. Scientists
who attempt to study controversial topics will find that they do not get
tenure, or if they already have tenure they will not get promotions, and
if that fails the administrator will attempt to avoid embarassment and
try (usually unsuccessfully) to fire the violator. In this sense the
PEAR Lab showed incredible fortitude by simply surviving within an
environment that tried every trick in the book to make the lab
disappear. This emotional side of supposedly rational academia is a
hidden and shameful secret, not often seen by those outside the ivory
towers.

I recently had a conversation with an intelligent, highly skeptical
scientist who vehemently insisted with unshakable confidence that there
is no reason to accept any claims of psychic phenomena because there are
no peer-reviewed publications supporting their existence. Thus, any
claims to the contrary, even by places like the PEAR Lab, are
necessarily flawed or fraud. And further, if there were such evidence,
then it would have won the "million dollar prize" by now. Ipso facto,
there is no evidence. It's all fraud run by scam artists.

I calmly pointed out that there are in fact hundreds of such
publications, most in peer-reviewed journals. The scientist was
incredulous, refusing to believe that this could possibly be true, and
even if was true, those journals couldn't possibly be any good. I could
only sigh. There are tens of thousands of journals. No one can know more
than a tiny sliver of information appearing in journals that are not
within one's speciality. To assume that because you haven't heard of the
information it doesn't exist is the height of hubris. As Prof. Jahn said
in the NYTimes piece, "If people don't believe us after all the
results we've produced, then they never will." I'm afraid that
is quite true.



posted by Dean Radin at 12:08 PM
<http://deanradin.blogspot.com/2007/02/pear-lab.html>



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