Can Five Targets Make Psychic Claims Testable?

Introduction

Rank-order judging was designed to solve one of the central problems in free-response remote-viewing experiments: how to convert a loose collection of sketches, words and impressions into a numerical result that could be tested statistically. During the later Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) studies, researchers commonly used a five-target judging procedure in which a blind judge compared one viewing transcript against one correct target and four decoys. If the correct target was consistently ranked nearer the top than chance would predict, researchers treated that as evidence that something unusual had occurred. The method was attractive because it made chance expectations explicit, but it also shifted much of the experiment’s credibility onto the judging process itself. By the time of the 1995 review of the U.S. government’s remote-viewing programme, the mechanics and reliability of rank-order judging had become one of the most closely debated aspects of the evidence.[National Security Archive]nsarchive2.gwu.eduNational Security ArchiveAn Evaluation of Remote Viewing: Research and…March 13, 2015 — by MD Mumford · 1995 · Cited by 76 — For examp…Published: March 13, 2015

How rank-order judging worked

Unlike forced-choice experiments, where participants selected from a small number of predefined answers, remote-viewing sessions produced open-ended descriptions. A viewer might draw shapes, describe textures or mention impressions such as “water”, “metal”, or “high structure”. Any single description could partially resemble many different targets.

The five-target procedure attempted to evaluate these descriptions under blind conditions:

Because the judge ranked every candidate rather than simply deciding “correct” or “incorrect”, the procedure captured degrees of similarity while preserving a clear statistical expectation. If the judging were entirely random, every rank would occur equally often for the correct target.[ResearchGate]researchgate.netAn Assessment of the Evidence for Psychic FunctioningMay 14, 2019 — response most closely, and a rank of 5 means it matches t…Published: May 14, 2019

This approach also helped reduce one criticism of earlier free-response studies. Instead of asking whether a description looked “impressive”, investigators could analyse a predefined numerical variable across many independent trials.

Why an average rank of three mattered

The mathematics of the five-target design is straightforward. With five equally likely candidates, the expected average rank under pure chance is exactly:

1=3\frac{1}{5}=351​=3

That simple expectation gave researchers a benchmark that was easy to interpret.

Rather than relying on a few striking individual sessions, researchers combined many trials and tested whether the average rank was significantly lower than three. Statistical tests then estimated how unlikely such a result would be if viewers possessed no information beyond chance. This emphasis on aggregate performance became an important feature of the later SAIC work and figured prominently in Jessica Utts’s statistical evaluation of the programme.[CIA]cia.govAN EVALUATION OF REMOTE VIEWINGChapter Three: Research Reviews. Review 1 (Dr. Jessica Utts). Review 2 (Ray Hyman). ▻. The Reply (Dr. J…

The attraction of this design was that the hypothesis was specified before analysis. Investigators were not asking whether a transcript “felt convincing”; they were testing whether correct targets occupied unusually high positions within repeated blind rankings.

Why judging familiarity became a problem

Although the scoring rule was mathematically clear, critics argued that the validity of the experiment depended heavily on how judging was performed.

One concern involved target familiarity. If judges repeatedly worked with the same target pool, they could gradually remember distinctive photographs or locations. Even when they remained blind to the correct answer, repeated exposure might subtly influence later rankings in ways unrelated to the viewer’s performance. The concern was not necessarily conscious bias but the possibility that accumulated familiarity could affect matching decisions.[National Security Archive]nsarchive2.gwu.eduNational Security ArchiveAn Evaluation of Remote Viewing: Research and…March 13, 2015 — by MD Mumford · 1995 · Cited by 76 — For examp…Published: March 13, 2015

A related issue involved transcript familiarity. When judges scored many sessions from the same experiment, memorable sketches or phrases from earlier trials might influence later rankings. Critics argued that this could create statistical dependence between supposedly independent judgements.

Ray Hyman highlighted another technical problem identified in some earlier remote-viewing work: ranking procedures had to ensure that every possible rank remained equally available throughout the judging process. If previous rankings constrained later choices, chance expectations could become distorted. Later SAIC protocols were developed partly to avoid these known statistical pitfalls, but debate continued over whether every source of dependence had been eliminated.[National Security Archive]nsarchive2.gwu.eduNational Security ArchiveAn Evaluation of Remote Viewing: Research and…March 13, 2015 — by MD Mumford · 1995 · Cited by 76 — For examp…Published: March 13, 2015

Why supporters and critics interpreted the same method differently

Supporters regarded rank-order judging as one of the strongest methodological improvements introduced into free-response remote-viewing research.

From this perspective, the procedure:

Jessica Utts argued that, when properly implemented, these methods produced statistically significant deviations from chance that could not easily be dismissed as coincidence alone.[CIA]cia.govAN EVALUATION OF REMOTE VIEWINGChapter Three: Research Reviews. Review 1 (Dr. Jessica Utts). Review 2 (Ray Hyman). ▻. The Reply (Dr. J…

Critics accepted that the statistics themselves could be calculated correctly while questioning whether the experimental process generating those numbers was sufficiently insulated from subtle bias. Hyman’s position was not that rank-order statistics were inherently invalid, but that apparently small dependencies in judging, target reuse or experimental procedure could produce misleading significance without demonstrating anomalous perception. Consequently, he argued that statistical significance alone did not establish a paranormal explanation.[CIA]cia.govAN EVALUATION OF REMOTE VIEWINGChapter Three: Research Reviews. Review 1 (Dr. Jessica Utts). Review 2 (Ray Hyman). ▻. The Reply (Dr. J…

Why the five-target test remains central to the SAIC debate

The five-target scoring system illustrates both the strengths and the limitations of the later SAIC experiments.

Its principal achievement was methodological. Instead of relying on subjective impressions of impressive drawings, it translated qualitative responses into a predefined quantitative outcome with a known chance expectation. That represented a substantial advance over less structured forms of evaluation.

At the same time, the method demonstrated that stronger statistics do not automatically settle broader scientific questions. Once scoring depended on human ranking rather than direct measurement, questions naturally shifted from probability calculations to the reliability, independence and blindness of the judging process. As a result, the five-target protocol became one of the defining mechanisms through which supporters saw evidence for anomalous cognition while sceptics focused on the possibility of subtle methodological artefacts.[National Security Archive+2CIA]nsarchive2.gwu.eduNational Security ArchiveAn Evaluation of Remote Viewing: Research and…March 13, 2015 — by MD Mumford · 1995 · Cited by 76 — For examp…Published: March 13, 2015

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Endnotes

1. Source: cia.gov
Link:https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00791R000200180006-4.pdf

2. Source: researchgate.net
Link:https://www.researchgate.net/publication/333228024_An_Assessment_of_the_Evidence_for_Psychic_Functioning

Published: May 14, 2019

3. Source: cia.gov
Link:https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00791R000200180005-5.pdf

4. Source: cia.gov
Link:https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00792R000400240002-6.pdf

5. Source: researchgate.net
Title: 374881423 Remote Viewing A 1974 2022 Systematic Review and [Meta Analysis]({{ ‘meta-analysis/’ | relative_url }})
Link:https://www.researchgate.net/publication/374881423_Remote_Viewing_A_1974-2022_Systematic_Review_and_Meta-Analysis

6. Source: nsarchive2.gwu.edu
Link:https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB438/docs/doc_57.pdf

Published: March 13, 2015

Additional References

7. Source: koestlerunit.wordpress.com
Link:https://koestlerunit.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/wiseman-milton-1998.pdf

8. Source: academia.edu
Link:https://www.academia.edu/9540484/Through_Time_and_Space_The_Evidence_for_Remote_Viewing

9. Source: skeptics.stackexchange.com
Title: have remote viewing tests shown a positive effect 5 15 above chance
Link:https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/17741/have-remote-viewing-tests-shown-a-positive-effect-5-15-above-chance

10. Source: youtube.com
Title: HELLA HAMMID
Link:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZq4urdRbgw

11. Source: academia.edu
Link:https://www.academia.edu/108445581/Remote_Viewing_A_1974_2022_Systematic_Review_and_Meta_Analysis

12. Source: psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk
Title: Psi Encyclopedia Remote Viewing
Link:https://psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/remote-viewing/

13. Source: metabunk.org
Link:https://www.metabunk.org/threads/claim-remote-viewing-is-a-scientifically-proven-technique-that-utilizes-a-natural-human-ability-to-enable-access-to-hidden-information.13057/page-3

14. Source: scribd.com
Title: aperture08 c047c010
Link:https://www.scribd.com/document/879020129/aperture08-c047c010

15. Source: youtube.com
Title: Dr. Edwin May, Psychic Theories (Precognition, Remote Viewing)
Link:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fk3f47jOAFs

16. Source: youtube.com
Title: Classic Reboot: Training Anomalous Cognition with Edwin C. May
Link:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vbb7E7UD30