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

created	updated	title	aliases	category	tags	summary	born	location	relations
2026-05-15	2026-10-05	Ray Hyman	Ray Hyman Raymond Hyman Dr. Hyman Hyman	Skeptics & Critics	Person Skeptic Psychologist Magician CSICOP UriGeller SRI Stargate AIR NationalResearchCouncil GrillFlame Parapsychology	University of Oregon psychologist who observed Uri Geller at SRI for the Defense Department in 1972, sat on CSICOP's Executive Council, and wrote the skeptical half of the 1995 AIR evaluation of Star Gate.	1928-06-23	Eugene, Oregon	type with start end role fn employed_by Harvard University 1953-07 1961-06 assistant professor of social psychology 1 type with start role fn employed_by University of Oregon 1961-09 associate professor of psychology, professor from September 1964 1 type with start end role fn employed_by Stanford University 1982-09 1983-06 visiting professor of psychology, Thomas Welton Stanford Chair for Psychical Research 1 type with start end role fn investigated Uri Geller 1972-11 1972-12 observed a day of tests at SRI as consultant to the Department of Defense; wrote that the tests were performed with 'incredible sloppiness' 3 type with role fn member_of Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal Executive Council member 1 type with role fn member_of Skeptical Inquirer editorial board, 1994 1 type with start end role fn member_of National Research Council 1985 1991 Committee on Techniques for the Enhancement of Human Performance; led the parapsychology section 1 type with start end role fn contractor_to American Institutes for Research 1995-06 1995-09-11 reviewer of the SRI/SAIC anomalous mental phenomena program for the CIA, with Jessica Utts 12

Raymond Hyman was born on June 23, 1928 in Chelsea, Massachusetts. He took a bachelor's degree with honors in psychology from Boston University in 1950, a master's degree in 1952 and a doctorate in February 1953 from Johns Hopkins University, and was an assistant professor of social psychology at Harvard University from July 1953 to June 1961. From 1958 to 1961 he was a consultant in behavioral research to the General Electric Company, and in January to July 1953 a consultant to the Systems Coordination Division of the Naval Research Laboratory. He joined the University of Oregon as associate professor of psychology in September 1961 and has been professor there since September 1964. From September 1982 to June 1983 he was visiting professor of psychology at Stanford University, holding the Thomas Welton Stanford Chair for Psychical Research. His 1994 vita lists him on the Executive Council of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal and on the editorial board of the Skeptical Inquirer, and states that he earned his way through college "performing mentalism and reading palms" and has published articles in magic journals.¹

His vita states that "since 1953, I have been called upon by various governmental agencies to investigate or evaluate paranormal claims," and lists among examples "the evaluation of a lady who allegedly could read with her fingertips; the evaluation of the claim by a group of engineers that they could teach psychics to gather information from photographs; the assessment of parapsychological research by American and foreign investigators; and the observation of metal bending and other alleged miracles by Uri Geller."¹

SRI and Uri Geller, 1972 and 1973

Time of March 12, 1973 described Hyman as "a psychology professor from the University of Oregon who is used frequently by DOD as a consultant." According to the magazine, news of the work at the Stanford Research Institute "reached the Department of Defense, and investigators were soon on the scene": Hyman, George Lawrence, the DARPA projects manager, and Lawrence's companion Robert Van de Castle, a University of Virginia psychologist. Van de Castle "decided that Geller was 'an interesting subject for further study,'" while "neither Lawrence nor Hyman was impressed." After a day with Uri Geller, Russell Targ and Hal Puthoff, Hyman said he "was able to spot the 'loopholes and inconclusiveness' of each feat." Time reported two episodes. In the first, Geller asked Lawrence to write a number between one and ten on a pad as large as possible while Geller covered his eyes with his hands, and Hyman saw Geller's open eyes through his fingers and the arm motions that identified the number. In the second, Geller turned a compass needle about five degrees, Lawrence moved his body and made the needle deflect further, Geller accused Lawrence of trickery, and Targ examined Lawrence for hidden magnets, while Hyman noted that Targ did not feel it necessary to search Geller. Hyman wrote in a letter to a friend that the SRI tests were conducted with "incredible sloppiness" and that the earlier records Targ and Puthoff offered were "the most uncontrolled and poorly recorded data I have ever encountered." The magazine added that his impressions were "admittedly based on observations made on a day when normal testing routine was not in effect."²

New Scientist, in an issue of October 17, 1974 on the Geller research, places the visit in two ways. One passage says Hyman was "called in to see Geller at SRI by a government agency to whom Russell Targ and Dr Hal Puthoff had applied for funding," and that one of Geller's demonstrations for him "at SRI in December 1972" was to guess a number written by another person, where Hyman could "see his eyes through his hands" and the number 10 from "George's arm motions." Another passage says Hyman "observed a day of SRI tests on Geller in November 1972" and concluded that "they don't know how to observe. Targ and Puthoff recounted incidents we just saw in completely the reverse order, making them miracles." The same article records a story Hyman told, confirmed by another person present who asked not to be identified, about a Geller "premonition" of a plane crash in Washington during a half hour in which a newspaper report could have reached him.³

Annie Jacobsen wrote that Hyman, Lawrence and Van de Castle concluded that anyone who believed in Geller's powers was falling for the "ridiculous," and that Hyman and Martin Gardner joined in what she called an anti-Geller crusade, criticizing Puthoff and Targ for loose laboratory controls, skewed data and experimenter bias, the charges Gardner had made against J. B. Rhine. She also wrote that Hyman, in 1983, said of James Randi's campaign against Geller 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."⁴ Edwin May, in a 1996 commentary, wrote of the visit that Hyman, Lawrence and Van de Castle were refused access to an experiment in progress, and gave the date as 1973 or 1974.⁵

In a 1985 paper Hyman wrote that "parapsychologists blamed me, rather than Geller, for the fact that Geller cheated in my presence because, as they put it, I did not impose sufficiently stringent conditions to prevent him from cheating."⁶

CSICOP

Paul Kurtz recorded that CSICOP was established on April 30 and May 1, 1976 at a conference at the State University of New York at Buffalo, Amherst campus. The call announcing the committee was signed by, among others, George Abell, Isaac Asimov, Antony Flew, Gardner, Sidney Hook, Philip Klass, Ernest Nagel, W. V. Quine, B. F. Skinner, Randi and Marcello Truzzi. In 1996 Kurtz listed Hyman, James Alcock and Susan Blackmore among the Executive Council members who had examined "in cooperation with parapsychologists, claims of psychic phenomena," set beside Gardner and Randi in "fearlessly debunking" popular claims, and named among efforts to discredit the committee "Hyman's tangle with parapsychologists."⁷

Grill Flame, 1979

Hyman was considered for the Army's Grill Flame Scientific Evaluation Committee in 1979. Its coordinator, Major William Stoner, wrote in January 1980, against the chairman's claim to have "rejected two people who had pronounced tendencies to be nonobjective," that "one person himself declined the offer to participate, claiming potential flak from his corporation. The other, Dr Ray Hyman, was rejected not because of any action by Gale, but because of a protest memo from MG Edmund Thompson to Dr Walter LaBerge."⁸

A memorandum from the Under Secretary of the Army's office to Manfred Gale of July 17, 1979, reads: "Reference the 'few additional experts,' Dr. Orlansky has accepted. Dr. Harry Snyder of VPI has been asked in place of Dr. Hyman - at this time he has not accepted the invitation." Snyder's own evaluation of remote-viewing research, delivered that June, cited "R. Hyman, personal communication" for its statement that Arthur Hastings, the SRI judge, "is a professional magician."⁹

Project Alpha, 1979 to 1983

Hyman held the Stanford psychical research chair during the academic year in which James Randi ended Project Alpha. Randi's account is that he placed two young magicians, Steven Shaw and Michael Edwards, as subjects in the McDonnell Laboratory for Psychical Research at Washington University beginning in 1979, and revealed the arrangement at a press conference on January 28, 1983. Hyman is named in the August 1987 Zetetic Scholar among those who gave Truzzi critical commentary on the preliminary draft of his essay about Alpha, and is listed on its masthead as an associate editor. In it Truzzi recorded that Hyman had pointed out that even a psychic who performed a feat could not repeat it under exactly the same conditions, so a test of a conjuror against a psychic would require both to attempt the same feat under conditions agreed to by proponents, critics and agnostics.¹⁰

Research criticism, 1985 to 1994

Hyman's "Parapsychological Research: A Tutorial Review and Critical Appraisal" appeared in the Proceedings of the IEEE in June 1985 and is held in the CIA's STARGATE collection. Its abstract states that "each generation of parapsychologists has set aside the work of earlier generations and offered up as sufficient scientific evidence the best work of its own day," and that "two systematic evaluations of the best contemporary research programs in parapsychology revealed that the experiments departed from the minimal standards of adequate randomization of targets, appropriate use of statistical inference, and controls against sensory leakage."⁶ He was a member of the National Research Council's Committee on Techniques for the Enhancement of Human Performance from 1985 to 1991, and Edwin May's 1996 commentary describes George Lawrence as commissioning that study in 1985 with Hyman leading its parapsychology section.¹⁵

In Psychological Bulletin in 1994, in "Anomaly or Artifact? Comments on Bem and Honorton," Hyman wrote that although the autoganzfeld experiments of Charles Honorton were "methodologically superior to previous parapsychological experiments, the tests of their randomization procedures were inadequate," and that "we have to wait for independent replications of these experiments before we can conclude that a replicable anomaly or psi has been demonstrated." The paper is in the same STARGATE files.¹¹

The 1995 Evaluation

On June 12, 1995 Hyman faxed his curriculum vitae from the University of Oregon psychology department to "Mike" with a handwritten cover note, a document filed in the CIA's "Misc. Stargate Notes/Memos - 1995 Chrono."¹ 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 (1995 AIR evaluation of Star Gate). The panel convened at AIR's Palo Alto office; AIR's Michael Mumford and Andrew Rose served as panel members and staff, Lincoln Moses of Stanford as statistical resource, and David Goslin, AIR's president, as reviewer and coordinator. Utts and Hyman wrote independent reports, took part in conference calls to identify points of agreement and disagreement, and Utts wrote a reply to Hyman's statement of those points.¹²

A preliminary draft by Hyman, titled "Preliminary Evaluation of SRI/SAIC Anomalous Mental Phenomena Program" and dated August 29, 1995, was faxed from his office to AIR on August 30, 1995. It opens with a passage from William James of 1909, calls the investigators' conclusion that anomalous cognition was "clearly demonstrated" "premature," and describes his work as "the tentative outcome of a quick first pass." It records that he was "unimpressed by the results of meta-analysis on the psychoenergetic research conducted at SRI International from 1973-1988," which covered 25,449 trials, and describes a "fatal flaw" in the original Targ and Puthoff judging protocol: because a subject learned each target after a session, successive trials were not independent, and a subject might avoid describing anything resembling earlier targets, which he illustrated with the Hoover Tower and the Palo Alto train station. It credits David Marks with discovering that transcripts given to judges contained clues, and recommends that the project, if continued, contract with several independent laboratories and "some non-parapsychological, neutral investigators" to replicate its key findings. The Hoover Tower illustration does not appear in his report of September 11 as reproduced in the AIR report.¹³¹²

His report of September 11, 1995, reproduced in the AIR report at pp. 3-41 to 3-75, took the ten Science Applications International Corporation 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 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."¹²

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 Defense Intelligence Agency 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."¹⁴

On Nightline of ABC News on November 28, 1995, he said: "My considered judgment, if someone pushed me hard right now, I'd have to say the odds are 99 to 1 that there's nothing to remote viewing." May's commentary of 1996 traced "a thread of bias" from the visit to SRI, at which Hyman, George Lawrence and Robert Van de Castle were refused access to an experiment in progress, and Time quoting Hyman on the tests' "incredible sloppiness," through Lawrence's commissioning of the National Research Council study in 1985 with Hyman leading its parapsychology section, to the AIR review under David Goslin, who had administered the NRC report.¹⁵

Footnotes

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1. Hyman, Ray, "Curriculum Vitae," September 1994, faxed from the University of Oregon Department of Psychology June 12, 1995, in "Misc. Stargate Notes/Memos - 1995 Chrono," CIA-RDP96-00791R000100030044-7; Hyman's vita as reproduced in Appendix A of An Evaluation of Remote Viewing: Research and Applications, American Institutes for Research, September 29, 1995, https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB438/docs/doc_57.pdf. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection. ↩︎

2. "The Magician and the Think Tank," Time, March 12, 1973, pp. 111-112, CIA-RDP96-00787R000400100023-4. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection. ↩︎

3. Hanlon, Joseph, "Uri Geller and science," New Scientist, vol. 64, no. 919, October 17, 1974, CIA-RDP96-00787R000700110020-3. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection. ↩︎

4. Jacobsen, Annie. Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis. Little, Brown and Company, 2017. ↩︎

5. May, Edwin C. "The American Institutes for Research Review of the Department of Defense's STAR GATE Program: A Commentary," Journal of Parapsychology, vol. 60, no. 1, March 1996, pp. 3-23. ↩︎

6. Hyman, Ray, "Parapsychological Research: A Tutorial Review and Critical Appraisal," Proceedings of the IEEE, June 1985, CIA-RDP96-00789R003800330001-4. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection. ↩︎

7. Kurtz, Paul, "CSICOP at Twenty," Skeptical Inquirer, July/August 1996, pp. 5-8, https://cdn.centerforinquiry.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/29/1996/07/22165034/p05.pdf ↩︎

8. Stoner, William L., Major, GS, "Memorandum of Conversation, Subject: Gale Briefing to ZA, Science Evaluation Group Final Report on GRILL FLAME, 14 Jan 80," CIA-RDP96-00788R001200230017-7. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection. ↩︎

9. "Grill Flame Review Panel Members," undated roster, CIA-RDP96-00788R001200230008-7; Office of the Under Secretary of the Army, memorandum for Mr. Manny Gale, July 17, 1979, CIA-RDP96-00788R001200230004-1; K. Lytle, Major, Military Assistant, memorandum for Mr. Gale, Advisor for RDA Analysis, ODCSRDA, "Briefing for Dr. Ruth Davis and Mr. Nealsen," August 8, 1979, CIA-RDP96-00788R001200230013-1; Snyder to Gale, undated (catalogued May 11, 1979, but referring to October and a visit of September 28), CIA-RDP96-00788R001200230038-4, and November 19, 1979, CIA-RDP96-00788R001200230042-9; "Findings," "Recommendations," "Estimated Costs," unsigned, CIA-RDP96-00788R001200230043-8; SSO Meade to SSO ACSI DA, "Grill Flame DoD Science Evaluation Team Report," LTC Watt, November 1979, CIA-RDP96-00788R001200230047-4. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection. Snyder, Harry L., and Arlene G. Snyder. Summary and Critical Evaluation of Research in Remote Viewing, Report RV-79-1, final technical report, contract 77F104420, Systemetrics, Inc., Blacksburg, Virginia, June 1, 1979, parts 1 and 2, CIA-RDP96-00791R000100440001-9 and CIA-RDP96-00787R000100260003-2. The sponsor of the contract is not named in the report. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection. ↩︎

10. Truzzi, Marcello, "Reflections on 'Project Alpha': Scientific Experiment or Conjuror's Illusion?," Zetetic Scholar, nos. 12 and 13 (issue numbers printed 11 and 12), August 1987, https://archive.org/details/alpha-project-zetetic-scholar-nos-12-13; Randi, James, "The Project Alpha Experiment: Part 1. The First Two Years," Skeptical Inquirer, Summer 1983, https://archive.org/details/JamesRandiTheProjectAlpha ↩︎

11. Hyman, Ray, "Anomaly or Artifact? Comments on Bem and Honorton," Psychological Bulletin, vol. 115, no. 1, 1994, pp. 19-24, CIA-RDP96-00789R003200100001-5. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection. ↩︎

12. 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; panel composition and procedure at AIR report pp. 2-2 to 2-5. https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB438/docs/doc_57.pdf ↩︎

13. Hyman, Ray, "Preliminary Evaluation of SRI/SAIC Anomalous Mental Phenomena Program," August 29, 1995, fax transmittal to American Institutes for Research, August 30, 1995, CIA-RDP96-00789R003200290001-5. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection. ↩︎

14. Hyman, Ray. "Evaluation of the Military's Twenty-Year Program on Psychic Spying," Skeptical Inquirer, March-April 1996, pp. 21-23. ↩︎

15. "Psychic Spies: Cold War Whimsy or Secret Weapon?," ABC News Nightline, November 28, 1995, Radio TV Reports transcript for the CIA Public Affairs Staff, CIA-RDP99-01448R000402140001-7, read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room. May, Edwin C. "The American Institutes for Research Review of the Department of Defense's STAR GATE Program: A Commentary," Journal of Parapsychology, vol. 60, no. 1, March 1996, pp. 3-23. ↩︎