vault backup: 2026-09-21 23:37:10

10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Ray Hyman.md

@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 ---
 created: 2026-05-15
-updated: 2026-05-17
+updated: 2026-09-21
 title: Ray Hyman
 aliases:
   - Ray Hyman
@@ -14,7 +14,7 @@ tags:
   - SRI
   - 1970s
   - 1990s
-summary: "Ray Hyman is a University of Oregon psychologist and scientific skeptic who evaluated Uri Geller for DARPA in 1973, criticized SRI remote viewing methodology throughout the 1970s-80s, and wrote the skeptical half of the 1995 AIR evaluation of STAR GATE, concluding that methodological flaws precluded accepting the data as evidence for remote viewing."
+summary: "University of Oregon psychologist and skeptic who evaluated Uri Geller for DARPA in 1973 and, for the 1995 AIR review, judged ten SAIC experiments too few to establish remote viewing."
 born: 1928-06-23
 location: "Chelsea, Massachusetts"
 ---
@@ -25,7 +25,14 @@ Hyman, along with [[Martin Gardner]], joined forces in an anti-Geller crusade. H
 
 In 1983, Hyman weighed in on the [[James Randi]] hoax against the McDonnell Laboratory for Psychical Research, stating that Randi was "very upset by Geller’s using trickery to deceive scientists. He thought it was very immoral. And he felt that it was a prostitution of his beloved magic"[^1].
 
-In 1995, Hyman was one of the team leaders for the [[American Institutes for Research]]'s evaluation of the [[STARGATE PROJECT|Star Gate program]], which ultimately recommended its cancellation. However, this evaluation was criticized for its limited scope and the researchers' pre-existing skeptical biases[^1].
+### The 1995 Evaluation
+
+In 1995 the [[American Institutes for Research]], under contract to the CIA, engaged Hyman and the statistician [[Jessica Utts]] to review the research of the [[STARGATE PROJECT|Star Gate program]] ([[1995 AIR evaluation of Star Gate]]). His report of September 11, 1995, took the ten [[Science Applications International Corporation|SAIC]] experiments as "the only ones for which we have adequate documentation," agreed with Utts that they "were free of the methodological weaknesses that plagued the early SRI research" and that "the effect sizes reported in the SAIC experiments are too large and consistent to be dismissed as statistical flukes," and then answered no to three questions: whether the effects established anomalous cognition, whether "the possibility of methodological flaws" had been "completely eliminated," and whether the results were consistent with other laboratories. "Ten experiments, especially from one laboratory," he wrote, "is far too few to establish reliable relationships in almost any area of inquiry." He compared the field's negatively defined anomaly with the discovery of Neptune from the perturbations of Uranus, and told anyone relying on operational hits to read [[David Marks]] and Richard Kammann on subjective validation. Of operations he recorded [[Edwin May]]'s estimate that "approximately 20 percent of the information supplied by a viewer is accurate": "If May is correct, then 80% of all the information supplied by this talented viewer will be erroneous."[^2]
+
+Writing in the *Skeptical Inquirer* in 1996, he said the CIA "abandoned this program in the late 1970s because it showed no promise," that under the DIA it "consisted of three components," one tracking foreign work, an operations program of "six, and later three, psychics on the government payroll," and the laboratory research at SRI and SAIC; that "because of some controversies within the program, a Senate committee decided to transfer the program from the DIA back to the CIA"; that "May helped identify the ten best studies for Utts and me to evaluate"; and that the panel "all agreed that any scientifically meaningful evaluation of these operational psychic intelligence uses was impossible." He ended: "It is premature to draw any conclusions. We will simply have to wait and see. If history is a guide, then this will be a long wait, indeed."[^3]
 
 ### Footnotes
+
 [^1]: Jacobsen, Annie. *Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis*. Little, Brown and Company, 2017.
+[^2]: Hyman, Ray. "Evaluation of Program on Anomalous Mental Phenomena," September 11, 1995, reproduced in the AIR report, pp. 3-41 to 3-75, and published in *Journal of Scientific Exploration,* vol. 10, no. 1, 1996, pp. 31-58. https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB438/docs/doc_57.pdf
+[^3]: Hyman, Ray. "Evaluation of the Military's Twenty-Year Program on Psychic Spying," *Skeptical Inquirer,* March-April 1996, pp. 21-23.