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10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Edwin May.md

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 ---
-category: "Psychics & Remote Viewers"
+created: 2026-05-17
+updated: 2026-05-17
+title: Edwin May
+aliases:
+  - Edwin May
+  - Edwin C. May
 tags:
   - Person
-  - RemoteViewer
+  - SRI
   - Stargate
-summary: "Physicist and parapsychologist who became principal investigator and director of the Stargate Project in its later years under SAIC."
+  - CIA
+  - SAIC
+  - PSI
+  - Physics
+  - 1980s
+  - 1990s
+category: "Intelligence & Government"
+summary: "Edwin May is a particle physicist who succeeded Hal Puthoff as principal investigator of the government's remote viewing research program in 1985, moved the program from SRI to SAIC in 1991, and directed the program's final phase until its 1995 declassification and termination."
+location: "Palo Alto, California"
 ---
 
+Edwin C. May is a particle physicist who served as principal investigator of the U.S. government's remote viewing research program from 1985, succeeding [[Hal Puthoff]] at [[Stanford Research Institute]], and who moved the program to [[Science Applications International Corporation|SAIC]] in 1991 when SRI withdrew from the contract. He directed the program through its final phase until the CIA's 1995 termination and commissioned the [[American Institutes for Research]] evaluation that recommended the program's end. Of the government program's principal investigators, May was the most scientifically rigorous in design and the most cautious about operational claims, treating the research as an ongoing scientific investigation rather than an established intelligence capability.
 
-[[Edwin May]] was a physicist and [[Parapsychology|parapsychologist]] who became a principal investigator and later the gatekeeper of the [[STARGATE PROJECT|Stargate Project]] in its later years. He was involved when most of the contracting for the program was transferred to [[Science Applications International Corporation|SAIC]] in 1991. May played a significant role in the scientific direction and management of the remote viewing program during its final phase before declassification.[^1]
+### Background and SRI Entry
+
+May completed a Ph.D. in nuclear and particle physics from the University of Pittsburgh and had a background in experimental physics research before joining the SRI remote viewing program in 1976. He worked initially as a research scientist under Puthoff and [[Russell Targ]], contributing to experimental design and data analysis while the program was in its most active CIA-funded phase. His experimental physics background gave him a different methodological orientation than Puthoff, who had trained as an electrical engineer and was more willing to accept operational application of early-phase research results.
+
+### Principal Investigator (1985-1995)
+
+When Puthoff left SRI in 1985, May assumed the principal investigator role for the government research contract. He shifted the program's emphasis toward rigorous experimental methodology, imposing tighter statistical standards and more controlled experimental protocols than had been standard under the SRI program's earlier phases.
+
+In 1991, SRI withdrew from the remote viewing research contract. May negotiated the transfer of the contract to SAIC, relocating the research to the Cognitive Sciences Laboratory within SAIC's structure. Under his direction, the SAIC phase was conducted with careful attention to experimental controls and protocol documentation, reflecting May's view that the field's credibility depended on methodological rigor rather than operational demonstrations.
+
+### AIR Evaluation and Termination
+
+When the CIA, which had taken over program management from DIA in 1991, commissioned the [[American Institutes for Research]] to evaluate the STAR GATE program in 1995, May's experimental database from the SAIC phase provided the primary data for [[Jessica Utts]]'s positive assessment. Utts, a University of California Davis statistician, concluded that May's experimental results met the statistical standard for establishing an anomalous effect. [[Ray Hyman]], the skeptical evaluator, acknowledged the statistical results but argued that methodological weaknesses precluded firm conclusions.
+
+The AIR report recommended termination. May disagreed with this recommendation but accepted that the decision had been made. He argued that the program was ended before the science had matured sufficiently to determine whether operational applications were feasible, and that the AIR evaluation's split findings indicated genuine uncertainty rather than a resolved negative conclusion.
+
+### Post-STARGATE Research
+
+After the STAR GATE program's termination, May founded the Laboratories for Fundamental Research (LFR) in Palo Alto, California, a private research organization continuing anomalous cognition research. He published extensively in scientific journals on experimental parapsychology, focusing on statistical analysis of remote viewing data and theoretical frameworks for understanding what physical mechanism might account for the observed effects. He proposed "decision augmentation theory" (DAT) as a framework for interpreting the statistical patterns in remote viewing data without requiring conventional psychic transmission.
+
+May continued to serve as a consultant on anomalous cognition research for academic and government-adjacent projects after STAR GATE's termination, representing continuity between the government-funded program and the subsequent private research that drew on the government program's methodological legacy.
 
 ### Footnotes
 
-[^1]: Schnabel, Jim. *Remote Viewers*. Dell, 1997.
+[^1]: Jacobsen, Annie. *Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis.* Little, Brown and Company, 2017, pp. 266-310. Schnabel, Jim. *Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies.* Dell, 1997, pp. 362-390.
+[^2]: Hyman, Ray, and Jessica Utts. "An Evaluation of Remote Viewing: Research and Applications." American Institutes for Research, September 29, 1995 (declassified; the evaluation of the May-era SAIC research). May, Edwin C. "The American Institutes for Research Review of the Department of Defense's STARGATE Program." *Journal of Parapsychology* 60 (1996): 3-23.