Episode 4: The Empire Strikes Back 

Alarmed by intelligence that the Soviets are using “psychic spies,” the CIA inaugurates its own distance-spying program, Project Stargate in 1972. 

Stargate’s key researchers, physicists Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff, coin the term “remote viewing.” The controversial program, whose subjects include psychic-artist Ingo Swann, lasts more than 20 years and wins over President Jimmy Carter. 

For skeptics, however, it’s knives-out. Disgusted with the popularity of parapsychological themes in American life—and resiliently unwilling to distinguish between serious efforts like the Rhine Lab and Stargate versus the media showmanship of psychic Uri Geller and like performers—in 1976 a cohort of ideological skeptics, including stage magician James “The Amazing” Randi, organize Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal or CSICOP.

Unconcerned with scientific verities, data replication, or meta-analyses, the professional skeptics grease a soundbite machine that disparages academic parapsychologists and misleads the public through misrepresentations of psi research and suppression of the skeptics’ own confirmatory retrials. 

Media fallout leaves parapsychology in near-tatters and starved for funding. 

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Written and Narrated by Mitch Horowitz

Produced by Jim Perry and Jon McEdward

Original Music & Sound Design by Dean Hurley

Cover Artwork by Jake in Colour

Selected References

“The Crisis of Professional Skepticism: Leading skeptics fail the test of ‘extraordinary evidence’” by Mitch Horowitz, Medium, February 27, 2023

“The Man Who Destroyed Skepticism: Scourge of psychics James Randi was no skeptic; our culture is poorer as a result” by Mitch Horowitz, Boing Boing, October 26, 2020

“Anomalous Experiences and the Crisis of Skepticism: Why we need better skeptics” by Mitch Horowitz, Medium, October 24, 2022

“Is Precognition Real?: Skeptics Eviscerated a Cornell Psychologist Whose Published Evidence Said Yes. A Decade Later, His Data Has Stood Up” by Mitch Horowitz, Boing Boing, August 17, 2022

“Has Science Developed the Competence to Confront the Paranormal?” by Charles Honorton, Extrasensory Perception, Vol. 2, edited by Edwin C. May and Sonali Bhatt Marwaha (Praeger, 2015)

“Rhetoric over substance: the impoverished state of skepticism” by Charles Honorton, Journal of Parapsychology, June 1993

“The Experimental Evidence for Parapsychological Phenomena: A Review” by Etzel Cardeña, American Psychologist, 2018, Vol. 73, №5, 663–677

“Does Psi Exist? Replicable Evidence for an Anomalous Process of Information Transfer” by Daryl J. Bem and Charles Honorton, Psychological Bulletin, 1994, Vol. 115, №.1

“Replication and Meta-Analysis in Parapsychology” by Jessica Utts, Statistical Science, Vol. 6, №. 4, 1991

“Federal research funding for psychology has not kept up with inflation” by Luona Lin, MPP, Peggy Christidis, PhD, and Jessica Conroy, BA, apa.org

“Rationalists are wrong about telepathy” by Rupert Sheldrake, Unherd, Nov 22, 2021

“Heads I Win, Tails You Lose” by Chris Carter, Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 74, 2010

“A new case of experimenter unreliability” by J.B. Rhine, Journal of Parapsychology, 38, 1974

“Comments: A second report on a case of experimenter fraud” by J.B. Rhine, Journal of Parapsychology, 39, 1975

Psi Wars by Craig Weiler (White Crow Books, 2013/2020) 

“Postscript: Skeptics at Cal Tech,” Travels by Michael Crichton (Knopf, 1988)

“ESP Debate: Is Belief in ESP Irrational?” by Steven Pinker vs. Brian D. Josephson, Skeptic Magazine, Reading Room, July 26, 2022

“The Case Against Psi” by Douglas M. Stokes, Parapsychology: A Hand- book for the 21st Century edited by Etzel Cardeña, John Palmer and David Marcusson-Clavertz (McFarland, 2015)

Archive Clips

The Case of ESP

Uri Geller on Johnny Carson

James Randi Talk Back to NOVA

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