Documents / FOIA release
This is a CIA JPRS translation, dated 1 January 1991, of an editorial roundtable written up by V.I. Shamshurin for the Moscow journal Sotsiologicheskiye Issledovaniya. Soviet scientists, physicians and philosophers discuss medicine and biology as sociohumanitarian sciences and the links between the natural and social sciences. One participant says public interest in parapsychology, UFOs and astrology reflects a human need for miracles during social crisis. He also criticizes parapsychology experiments and Uri Geller's performances.
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
Document 8 of 10 10. But is there a natural science on human capabilities and human conduct (social) in that very sense as a science on inanimate objects? The impression is gained that many parapsychologists would like to fit their subject of research into the framework of methods worked out by natural science. Parapsychology has a rather long history. Thus, in 1882, the Society of Psychic Research was founded in Great Britain and this set as its goal the study of those human abilities which are inexplicable on the basis of any broadly accepted hypotheses.' Since the, parapsychology has acquired an institutionalized development. The anthology 'Basic Experiments in Parapsychology' published in 1884 in Great Britain under the editorship of K.R. Rao has pointed out that around 2,000 such 'basic experiments' have now been carried out. But what is the interesting point? The interesting point was that the rate of definite results for all these experiments was assessed at 50 percent. This means that the experiments did not produce anything definite. Certainly for physics a result with a probability of 50.0001 percent would be more definite, but 50 percent is complete ambiguity. In turn, this can mean only one thing: experimental methods in physics which are perfectly applicable to investigating inanimate objects cannot be applied unconditionally to researching the phenomena of the psyche and consciousness. Psychic and psychophysical relationships can scarcely be modeled in the same manner as physical causal relationships (and actually a majority of the experimental parapsychologists is involved in this). 11. Thirdly, on the basis of the so-called 'experiments' and practice of parapsychologists, numerous speculations and falsifications have arisen. Parapsychology has been even turned into a sort of 'business.' An example would be the activities of the famous conjuror, U. Geller, who appeared recently on our Central Television. Somewhat before, 15-20 years ago, Geller demonstrated his tricks on British Television and he not only 'wound' and 'stopped' watches, but also taught 'spoons and forks to bend,' and this was enormously successful (particularly with children). So, the screens of current Soviet television are offering us rather obsolete information. This information, incidentally, has not informed us that in 1975, another famous magician, J. Randy, published a book entitled 'The Magic of Uri Geller.' It condemns Geller for violating professional ethics of illusionists evident, in particular, in Geller's use of the terms 'psychokinesis,' 'extrasensory perception' and 'parapsychology.' 'This,' commented J. Randy and the English physicist G. Taylor, 'as well as the story of Geller's doctoring photographs for the Israeli newspapers showing him together with Sofia Loren led to a decline in Geller's popularity...'
Not linked to a story yet.
FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 13 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.