Can the scientist remain detached from the phenomena he studies? Or is he so bound up with them that he actually creates the effects that he observes? A. J. ELLISON explores an idea that challenges scientific orthodoxy

A DISTURBING IDEA has gained currency in certain scientific circles in recent years. It is an idea that conflicts completely with the basis on which most scientists conduct their experiments, the basis of 'naive realism'. Most scientists, most of the time, assume that the physical world is 'out there', quite independent of themselves (though the scientist's own body, with its sense organs, is clearly a part of that world). Science is considered to be, firstly, a process of describmg that physical world, and then of devising hypotheses as to how things work. If the hypotheses are good ones, they stand up under test, and assume the status of established theory. For example, the movements of the planets and other celestial bodies could be predicted with considerable accuracy by Newton's theory of gravitation which, after two centuries of successes, came to be regarded as unshakeable knowledge. When hypotheses do not stand up under test they are changed, or scrapped and replaced by better ones. Thus increasingly precise measurement showed Newton's gravitational theory to be inaccurate and it was replaced by Einstein's fundamentally different general theory of relativity of 1915, which now holds the field.

Most scientists would probably be willing to accept that, when constructing their theories, they were actually building mental 'models' representing experience. But they would probably react violently against the suggestion that the realist's view is not the whole truth about science. And if it were suggested that perhaps their mental activity could affect the results of an experiment they would probably be completely incredulous and point out that a most important step in the establishinent of a scientific theory is that the relevant experiments should be repeatable by other experimenters in other laboratories, to provide the assurance that the result obtained was not the product of chance, error or self-deception.

The attitude of modern nuclear physicists is perhaps a little different. In the models they have devised to explain the behaviour of elementary particles some very strange things happen. Time runs backwards, and particles may disappear at one place and reappear in another without crossing the space between. Nuclear physicists on the whole do not worry too much about the physical interpretation of their equations, believing that, provided they lead to correct predictions of the outcome of experiments, their interpretation does not matter. Their mental models cannot be visualised they are abstract and mathematical. The bizarre nature of their theories seems to predispose physicists to be rnore open-minded than other scientists in paranormal questions.

Above: the chain of events that takes place in Helmut Schmidt's PK experiments with a radioactive source. Radioactivity from strontium 90 triggers a detector, which controls a rapidly oscillating switch. The equipment is adjusted so that there is a 50 per cent chance of the switch being in either of its two positions. Lamps are lit up in a clockwise or an anticlockwise direction according to the position of the switch. Some subjects succeed in influencing the lamps to light in a particular direction. But in doing this, are they influencing the strontium, the detector, or some other part of the intricate circuitry?

The theories themselves also seem to give room for paranormal happenings. It is an old idea that, just as everything we can learn about or become aware of in the Universe influences us, directly or indirectly - otherwise we could not gain knowledge about it - so we influence everything else in the Universe, to some degree at least. In quantum mechanics this takes on a new twist. Some of the most eminent of physicists have claimed that, when a nuclear particle is observed by a scientist - or, perhaps, when a measurement is made on it by an automatic instrument -the observation directly affects the particle: if, for example, its position is measured, the particle acquires a definite position at that moment - having previously been in an indefinite, 'spread-out' state. On this view scientists intervene very directly in the phenomena they study - they create them as much as observe them.

Searching for PK

Such an interpretation of the process of measurement in quantum physics is not accepted by all scientists - the problems surrdunding the question are profound (see page 938). But many psychical researchers have been encouraged to look for the effects of influences of the mind on physical processes - psychokinesis, or PK - on the micro-level. One of these is Helmut Schmidt, who built a test machine using radioactive decay. The radioactive emissions from a sample of strontium 90 controlled a number of lamps arranged in a circle. When a Geiger counter recorded the arrival of radiation from the strontium, the equipment switched off the lamp that was illuminated at that moment, and switched on a neighbouring lamp. A rapidly oscillating switch determined whether the neighbouring lamp in the clockwise or in the counterclockwise direction was lit. Schmidt's subjects were asked to try to influence the lamps to light up in a specific direction - say, clockwise - and his results indicated very strongly that they would.

Below: Helmut Schmidt at work with a random number generating device

Psychical researchers have noticed apparent effects of mind on matter for many years, and many other experiments have been carried out to study the phenomenon. Dr Gertrude Schmeidler found, in experiments that have been repeated many times, that subjects who had a belief in the possibility of psychic phenomena were more likely to be successful. Equally remarkably, subjects who strongly disbelieved in the very possibility of such phenomena were more likely to get results that were worse than would be expected by chance. This too involves an interaction of an unknown type between the subject and the system that the subject is trying to observe or influence. Sebmeidler called the believing subjects 'sheep' and the disbelieving ones 'goats'.

The psychical researchers have also put each other under scrutiny. Some researchers frequently get good results with their subjects: they are referred to as 'catalysts'. (The term comes from chemistry, and refers to a substance that promotes some reaction between other substances.) Other experimenters regularly fail to demonstrate PR effects, and have been described, unflatteringly, as 'inhibitors'. Usually such experimenters claim to be open-minded on the possibility of psychic phenomena occurring in their experiments: if, therefore, they are causing their own lack of success, one reason may lie in their unconscious minds.

Sceptics might suggest that the results of the 'catalysts' are actually due to fraud or incompetence. But many of these experimenters have unblemished reputations in other scientific fields: the doubters' speculations cannot be seriously entertained.

How nature evades attempts to observe her closely. Light passing through a slit spreads to form a patch of light on a screen (1). When a second slit is opened, an interference pattern of light and dark bands is formed where the two beams overlap (2). This can be explained by regarding each beam as a train of waves (3). Where they overlap, dark bands are formed at points where 'peaks' and 'troughs' cancel each other out (4). But other experiments show that light must also be viewed as made up of 'particles', called photons. In the one-slit experiment, each photon can follow a wide range of paths (5). But when the second slit is opened, certain paths are 'forbidden' - the photon cannot arrive in a dark band (6). But how can a photon travelling through one slit 'know' whether the other slit is open or closed? It seems that the photon 'goes through both slits at once' -it cannot be regarded as having a well-defined path in these circumstances

Many experiments have verified that the beliefs of subjects and experimenters are factors to be taken into account when conducting experiments in ESP and PR. The effects created by the 'Philip' group in Toronto, Canada, provide a good example (see page 1021). There the deliberate use of the imagination by a group of people, none of whom claimed to have exceptional psychic abilities, created a 'spirit' able to communicate with the group by means of paranormal rappings. The experiment has been repeated on a number of occasions, and there appears to be little doubt of its validity. It has been suggested that the experimenters, by their clear, detailed, and sustained thinking about the fictitious character Philip, created a 'thought form', a physical entity capable of producing sounds and other physical effects. The effects were weakened by the disbelief of group members, and greatly strengthened by belief - even though this belief was of rather an unusual kind, for everyone in the group was well aware that they had 'made up' Philip.

What consequences for science in general follow from this? Suppose a scientist has a long-cherished belief in a particular physical thenry, spends a great deal of time clarifying it in his mind and conducts experiments that are suggested by the theory; then it seems possible that physical effects confirming the theory can be created by this activity.

There are many cases of scientists who produced experimental results in accordance with some theory and were able to repeat them, while other workers were at first unable to do the same. This is usually attributed to the necessity for the other researchers to familiarise themselves with the experimental set-up and learn the skills necessary to conduct the experiment. But might it not also be that their own scepticism inhibited the effects that the original researcher achieved?

In some cases researchers have been unable to continue getting results, after an initial period of success. Could this be the result of discouragement by the unreceptive attitude of the scientifie community?

Every year new, short-lived elementary particles are discovered. Frequently their existence is predicted before their discovery. It has been seriously suggested that these particles are being produced, rather than discovered, by the sustained mental efforts of physicists around the world. Although we have been conditioned to accept naive realism by our scientifically based education, such an idea cannot be dismissed out of hand.

An indivisible whole The amazing properties of the hologram are regarded by some scientists, such as David Bohm, as a vivid analogy for the indivisibility of the Universe. The hologram is a photograph of an object made by a special technique involving lasers. The light from a laser is of very pure colour - it has a single well-defined wavelength. The light waves are also very orderly - they are in phase, or 'in step' with each other. In making a hologram, no lens is used to form an image. Instead there is an apparently meaningless pattern of light and dark areas on the film. When the film is illuminated with laser light, however, a solid-looking image of the original object becomes visible (left, above). The film looks like a window through which the image is viewed; by shifting his viewpoint the observer can see details that are invisible from his original position. Ordinary stereoscopic photographs, by contrast, do not permit the viewer to 'look round the edge' of the image. More strikingly still, cutting a small piece from the hologram and using that to form the image make's very little difference (left, below). The image loses some of its sharpness and must now be viewed through a smaller 'window' - but by shifting his position around, the observer can again view almost as much of the object as he could with the larger hologram. Each small area of the hologram contains 'information', in 'coded' form, about the whole object, as seen from the position at which the hologram was made. That information is 'decoded' by the laser light to form a 'message' that is intelligible to us - the image. In a similar way, it may be that every object - or every mind - contains 'information' about the whole of the Universe - but in a coded form. Is this hidden unity of the Universe revealed when paranormal phenomena occur - and when the scientist discovers he is not separate from the Universe that he studies?

So naive realism is an inadequate basis for an experiment in psychical matters. If the experiment involves the mind of a subject or subjects (and what experiment does not?) then it is essential to remember that the experimenter and any collaborators are parts of the experiment too. In fact, the subject, the experimental team, their beliefs and their attitude towards the theory they are testing, the equipment, the laboratory and the world beyond, form a gestalt, an organised whole. It seems to be impossible to draw hard and fast divisions between any of these and say that they cannot influence each other, even though, in certain circumstances, that influence may be very weak.

The idea that all human beings are part of a greater whole, and are therefore inextricably linked, is a very old one. But it has only recently found its way into science, and most present-day scientists do not yet accept it. We are all - in the West at any rate -conditioned from an early age to accept the very inadequate view that human beings are no more than a mass of complex tissues surmounted by a living micro-computer, and that we are all quite separate from each other and from the physical Universe in which we find ourselves It is verv difficult for us to accept the clear evidence that it is not so. 'We are members one of another,' wrote Paul, and teachers from all the world's great religions have agreed with him. The scientific evidence that this is literally true grows. But the well-conditioned scientist meeting this evidence immediately responds with a well-developed defence reaction. It is interesting to see most of his scientific objectivity fly out of the window as he struggles to reduce the 'cognitive dissonance' (psychologists' jargon for a real or supposed mismatch between a subject's perceptions and his ideas of the way things should be). The greatest scientists do not fly from unfamiliar ideas in this way: genius seems able to resist the conditioning process, or to discount it.

Left: paths of subatomic particles in a bubble chamber. The coiled tracks were produced by a stray cosmic ray: the roughly horizontal ones belong to artificially produced particles, which were the intended subjects of study. Is the intense thought devoted to these phenomena by the world's scientists actually helping to create them?

Western exponents of the idea that human beings and the rest of the Universe are one whole, the evidence of which keeps breaking through in so many ways, are not uncommon.

The eminent South African statesman Jan Christiaan Smuts put forward the idea in his writings on 'holism' - the doctrine that 'wholes are greater than the sum of their parts', having new properties that are not reducible to the properties of the parts. (The word 'holy' has the same root as 'holism' -denoting the idea of wholeness.)

The great psychologist C.G. Jung wrote about 'syncbronicity' - the occurrence of meaningful patterns among things and events, inexplicable by cause and 'effect (see page 594). Arthur Koestler in The roots of coincidence has championed these ideas and those of the biologist Paul Kammerer on 'the law of series'. This is the alleged occurrence of meaningful coincidences in series of events more frequently than we would expect by chance. Later, Koestler coauthored a work on various aspects of ESP and synchronicity,The challenge of chance. The evidence produced by psychical researchers by no means stands alone.

Above: Gertrude Schmeidler (centre) who found that the attitudes of subjects and researchers affect the success of experiments in parapsychology. Others have confirmed her work

Guided evolution

The most recent - and extremely controversial - evidence in this area is that presented by the biologist Rupert Sheldrake. He postulates the existence of 'morphogenetic fields' -non-physical structure-forming fields that carry biological 'information'. The development of an individual organism, and the evolution of a species, are guided by these 'fields. (See page 1141.) The response from that organ of the scientific establishment, Nature, was predictable in all but its intensity: the editor headed a leading article on Sheldrake's book with the phrase 'A book for burning?' The reaction of many physicists to David Bohm's ideas (see page 938) has been similar.

The response of scientific orthodoxy to both these theories has been very like its response to Einstein's work. The evidence in the ease of relativity finally became so strong that it was irresistible. The theories of Einstein are now 'establishment science'. Perhaps in due course Bohm's theories will receive the same recognition; in the meantime, it is unfortunate that they have had the same reception that greeted Einstein's.

The experimenter effect is, then, a phenomenon that does not accord with the basis of most modern scientific practice. However, there appears to be little doubt that it exists and cannot be ignored. Its occurrence could have been foreseen from the teachings of various traditions, especially those of Eastern religion and philosophy, and now seems to be confirmed by the findings in various areas of science. There can be little doubt of its profound importance. The recognition of the experimenter effect may presage radical changes in our ways of looking at the world and at mankind.

On page 1494: some demonstrations of the experimenter effect are surveyed