PEAR - Research Activities

The most substantial portion of the PEAR experimental program examines anomalies arising in human/machine interactions.

In these studies human operators attempt to bias the output of a variety of mechanical, electronic, optical, acoustical, and fluid devices to conform to pre-stated intentions, without recourse to any known physical influences. In unattended calibrations all of these sophisticated machines produce strictly random data, yet the experimental results display increases in information content that can only be attributed to the consciousness of their human operators.

Over the laboratory's 27-year history, thousands of such experiments, involving many millions of trials, have been performed by several hundred operators. The observed effects are usually quite small, of the order of a few parts in ten thousand on average, but they compound to highly significant statistical deviations from chance expectations. These results are summarized in "Correlations of Random Binary Sequences with Pre-Stated Operator Intention" and "The PEAR Proposition."

A number of secondary correlations reveal other anomalous structural features within these human/machine databases. In many instances, the effects appear to be operator-specific in their details and the results of given operators on widely different machines frequently tend to be similar in character and scale. Pairs of operators with shared intentions are found to induce further anomalies in the experimental outputs, especially when the two individuals share an emotional bond. The data also display significant disparities between female and male operator performances, and consistent series position effects are observed in individual and collective results. These anomalies can be demonstrated with the operators located up to thousands of miles from the laboratory, exerting their efforts many hours before or after the actual operation of the devices.

The random devices also respond to group activities of larger numbers of people, even when they are unaware of the presence of the machine. Such "FieldREG" data produced in environments fostering relatively intense or profound subjective resonance show larger deviations than those generated in more pragmatic assemblies. (See "FieldREG II: Consciousness Field Effects: Replications and Explorations.") Venues that appear to be particularly conducive to such field anomalies include small intimate groups, group rituals, sacred sites, musical and theatrical performances, and other charismatic events. In contrast, data generated during most academic conferences, business meetings, or other mundane venues show less deviations than would be expected by chance.

Elaborate analytical methods have been developed to extract as much understanding as possible from all of these results, and to guarantee their integrity against any experimental or data processing flaws.

I. Human/Machine Anomalies