The_Info_Web/10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Arthur Hastings.md

category	tags	summary	created	updated
Scientists & Researchers	Person ArthurHastings RemoteViewing SRI	Consultant to the SRI remote-viewing program and sole judge of the Price and Hammid series, whose target lists and transcripts, lent to David Marks, became the basis of the 1978 cueing critique.	2026-09-22	2026-10-12

Arthur Hastings was the consultant to the remote-viewing program of Russell Targ and Hal Puthoff at the Stanford Research Institute and the judge who ranked the transcripts of the Pat Price and Hella Hammid series, in the second obtaining "five direct hits and four second ranks." With David Hurt he published "A confirmatory remote viewing experiment in a group setting" in the Proceedings of the IEEE in October 1976, in which twenty of thirty-six participants chose the correct target from six named by Hastings, and with Vallee and Askevold an experiment "through computer conferencing."¹²

In October 1976 the Proceedings of the IEEE published "Remote viewing experiments through computer conferencing" by Jacques Vallee, Hastings and Gerald Askevold.³ Harry Snyder's review of remote-viewing research records that the paper was received in early May 1976 and tabulates its results as "Table 17. Results of Vallee, et al. (1976)." Twelve participants in New York, Florida, Quebec and California used home or office computer terminals to describe ten mineral samples held by a geologist; 33 descriptions from six persons were judged, and the correct target received the highest score in 8 of 33 responses against 3.3 expected by chance. Snyder notes that 11 of the 33 transcripts were contributed by "author" A.H.⁴

In a letter of May 26, 1977, to David Marks and Richard Kammann, he wrote that for the Price series "he had been given a typed list of targets in the same order as the table in Mind-Reach, i.e., in the correct order," and that for the Hammid series "I received three target lists," one randomized and two not; he "agreed to let me see the Price transcripts," "loaned me a complete set of nine transcripts from the Price series and showed me six of the nine Hammid transcripts," told Marks that "one transcript even carried the name of the associated target, although he returned this one to SRI," and then "said he felt 'paranoid' about releasing this information and soon requested their return as they had become 'confidential.'" Marks and Kammann described him as "a regularly paid consultant to Targ and Puthoff" who "staunchly believes in psychic phenomena including Uri Geller and remote viewing." The 1979 evaluation by Harry and Arlene Snyder held by the Central Intelligence Agency: "Hastings is an SRI employee, perhaps an SRI scientist, certainly a consultant, and also a coauthor. In addition, we understand (R. Ray Hyman, personal communication) that he is a professional magician and the sole judge used in the latter SRI local target studies and a consultant and judge for another organization in the Southwest currently conducting remote viewing studies. Should the above be as accurate as we believe it to be, significant changes are needed in future judging procedures and judge selection."¹²

Footnotes

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1. Marks, David, and Richard Kammann. The Psychology of the Psychic. Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1980, pp. 12-41, 129, 151, 177, 185, read through the archive.org search index of the item psychologyofpsyc0000mark_j8m3 (page fragments only). Marks, David F. "Remote Viewing Revisited." Skeptical Inquirer, vol. 6, no. 4, Summer 1982, pp. 18-29. https://cdn.centerforinquiry.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/29/1982/07/22165420/p20.pdf ↩︎

2. 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. ↩︎

3. Jacques Vallee, Arthur Hastings and Gerald Askevold, "Remote viewing experiments through computer conferencing," Proceedings of the IEEE, vol. 64, October 1976, as listed in reference 6 of the proceedings of the International Conference on Cybernetics and Society, September 19-21, 1977. CIA-RDP96-00787R000200080055-4. https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/cia-rdp96-00787r000200080055-4 ↩︎

4. Harry L. Snyder, Summary and Critical Evaluation of Research in Remote Viewing, Report RV-79-1, section K (pp. 237-245) and Table 17. CIA-RDP96-00787R000100260003-2. https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/cia-rdp96-00787r000100260003-2 ↩︎