BOOK REVIEW : The Case for Psychic Phenomena

Margins of Reality: The Role of Consciousness in the Physical World by Robert G. Jahn and Brenda J. Dunne (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich: $27.95; 415 pages)

“I hope I never see a flying saucer,” a friend of mine once told me. “And I certainly hope I never go for a ride in one.”

“Why not?” I wondered.

“Because,” he said, “I don’t want everybody to think I’m crazy.”

This conversation came to mind while reading “Margins of Reality” by Robert G. Jahn and Brenda J. Dunne, a book, to put the matter bluntly, that lays out an experimental case on behalf of psychic phenomena. Telepathy, psychokinesis, precognition, in short, the works.

Where to begin? The authors are neither kooks nor charlatans. They have impressive credentials. One of them (Jahn) is dean emeritus of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Princeton University. His co-author (Dunne) is manager of the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research laboratory, where the experiments described in this book were conducted over the last decade.

Throughout, they adopt a moderate and reasonable stance, which makes it hard for their opponents not to seem unreasonable. “It could be unwise,” they say, “to dismiss categorically the possibility that human consciousness may be capable of more than passive interaction with its microelectronic aids. Can we be quite confident, for example, of the invulnerability of all modern instrumentation, control and operational equipment to inadvertent or intentional disturbance associated in any way with the psyches of its human operators, especially in periods of intense emotional stress or intellectual demand? . . . Or should some direct, systematic study be mounted to assess the possibilities of such interactions?”

Notice how reasonable they are. Anyone who dismisses the possibility of the psychic interaction of people and machines must be unreasonable and closed-minded. What scientist wants to be called that? Who could oppose a “systematic study?” Scientists are supposed to be open to new ideas.

But the authors know full well that their views are heretical. “Seldom do we present a technical seminar, entertain visitors to the laboratory, or engage in discussions with our professional colleagues that some question does not eventually arise concerning our motivation in pursuing these studies,” they write.

“Occasionally, such queries are cast in quite direct, even blunt terms, such as ‘What are nice folks like you doing in a field like this?’ or ‘I’m surprised to find someone of your background interested in such topics.’ ”

I’ll leave aside the experimental results that Jahn and Dunne report, which persuade them that more is going on in the world than traditional science takes account of. Suffice to say that they have conducted experiments under carefully controlled conditions in which, they claim, human thought affects the behavior of machinery.

I am not in a position to decide which of their anomalies are statistically significant and which ones aren’t, so I leave it to scientists to decide whether these findings should be pursued further or dismissed outright.

What is really at issue here are the broad questions of how do we know what we know and what makes an argument persuasive? If someone doesn’t want to be persuaded of something, he can always say, “Show me more data.” How much data is enough?

The answer to that question is not clear, but there is a good rule of thumb: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. The experimental findings of Jahn and Dunne fly in the face of virtually every shred of evidence that science has amassed for hundreds of years at least.

It is not merely an article of faith among scientists that psychic phenomena are impossible. It is a view of the world bolstered by experiment after experiment after experiment.

Now, Jahn and Dunne claim that great changes in science are always brought about by experimental anomalies that scientists at first ignore and then try to sweep under the rug. Some results don’t fit with the existing theories, and they don’t go away.

The arguments are always the same. The established view says, “Oh, but there is so much evidence supporting us.” Their opponents respond, “Yes, but what about these anomalies?” That is how Copernicus overthrew the Ptolemaic model of the solar system, and that is how Einstein overthrew Newtonian physics.

The trouble is that not every new theory is right. In fact, most of them are wrong. The Copernicuses and Einsteins are rare indeed.

Have Jahn and Dunne identified anomalies that will wind up overthrowing modern science? Nothing less is at stake here.

I don’t want to appear closed-minded, but my money is on science.