User talk:Torgownik

Welcome[edit]

Hello, Torgownik, and welcome to Wikipedia. Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. If you are stuck, and looking for help, please come to the New contributors' help page, where experienced Wikipedians can answer any queries you have! Or, you can just type {{helpme}} and your question on this page, and someone will show up shortly to answer. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

We hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! By the way, you can sign your name on talk and vote pages using four tildes, like this: ~~~~. If you have any questions, see the help pages, add a question to the village pump or ask me on my talk page. Again, welcome! -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 21:50, 7 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

No legal action: I have absolutely no intention to raise any legal action with regard to Wiki editors having "pseudoscience" splashed all over my bio page. It will be settled in the court of public opinion, or even within Wikipedia. I see that the lead on the bio page has been toned down for the moment, to only one "pseudoscience." Thanks,Torgownik (talk) 16:45, 12 May 2014 (UTC)Russell Targ[reply]

Edit warring[edit]

{{edit warring}}Barney the barney barney (talk) 22:13, 7 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

April 2014[edit]

You currently appear to be engaged in an edit war according to the reverts you have made on Russell Targ. Users are expected to collaborate with others, to avoid editing disruptively, and to try to reach a consensus rather than repeatedly undoing other users' edits once it is known that there is a disagreement.

Please be particularly aware, Wikipedia's policy on edit warring states:

Edit warring is disruptive regardless of how many reverts you have made; that is to say, editors are not automatically "entitled" to three reverts.
Do not edit war even if you believe you are right.

If you find yourself in an editing dispute, use the article's talk page to discuss controversial changes; work towards a version that represents consensus among editors. You can post a request for help at an appropriate noticeboard or seek dispute resolution. In some cases it may be appropriate to request temporary page protection. If you engage in an edit war, you may be blocked from editing. MrBill3 (talk) 23:33, 7 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Remote viewing is not “pseudoscience.” Please immediately drop that inaccurate and insulting term that you have scattered throughout my Wikipedia bio-page. Wikipedia’s definition: “Pseudoscience is a claim, belief or practice which is presented as scientific, but does not adhere to a valid scientific method, lacks supporting evidence or plausibility, cannot be reliably tested, or otherwise lacks scientific status. The term pseudoscience is often considered inherently pejorative, because it suggests something is being inaccurately or even deceptively portrayed as science.” There are a number of reasons that editors at Wikipedia should not characterize remote viewing as pseudoscience, when it is not characterized that way by the informed scientific community. 1--In order to publish our findings in the 1976 Proceedings of the IEEE, we had to meet with the Robert W. Lucky, managing editor, and his board. The editor proposed to us that we show him how to conduct a remote viewing experiment. If it was successful, he would publish our paper. The editor was also head of electro-optics at Bell Telephone Laboratory. We gave a talk at his lab. He then chose some engineers to be the “psychics” for each of five days. Each day he hid himself at a randomly chosen location in the nearby town. After the agreed-upon five trials, the editor read the five transcripts and successfully matched each of the five correctly to his hiding places. This was significant at 0.008 (one in 5!, 5-factorial). As a result, he published our paper on “Information Transmission Over Kilometer Distances”. 2—In our 23 year program for the government at SRI, we had to carry out “demonstration of ability” tasks for the Director of CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency, NASA, and Commanding General of the Army Intelligence Command. (The names are available upon request.) For the CIA we were able to accurately describe and draw a giant gantry crane rolling on eight wheels over a large building, and draw the 60 foot gores, “slices” of a sphere, under construction in northern Russia. The sphere was entirely accurate, although its existence was unknown at the time. The description was so accurate that it became the subject of a Congressional hearing of the House Committee on Intelligence. They were afraid of a security leak. No leak was found, and we were told to “press on.” 3—Remote viewing is easily replicated and has been demonstrated all over the world. It has been the subject of several Ph.D. dissertations in the US and abroad. Princeton University had a 25 year program investigating remote viewing with more than 450 trials. Prof. Robert Jahn also published a lengthy and highly significant (p = 10-10 or 1 in ten billion) experimental investigation of remote viewing in the 1982 Proc. IEEE. 4—The kind of tasks that kept us in business for twenty-three years include: SRI psychics found a downed Russian bomber in Africa; reported on the health of American hostages in Iran; described Soviet weapons factories in Siberia; located a kidnapped US general in Italy; and accurately forecasted the failure of a Chinese atomic-bomb test three days before it occurred, etc. When San Francisco heiress Patricia Hearst was abducted from her home in Berkeley, a psychic with the SRI team was the first to identify the kidnapper by name and then accurately describe and locate the kidnap car. I was at the Berkeley police station and witnessed this event. 5—Jessica Utts is a statistics Professor at the University of California, Irvine, and is president of the American Statistical Association. In writing for her part of a 1995 evaluation of our work for the CIA, she wrote: “Using the standards applied to any other area of science, it is concluded that psychic functioning has been well established. The statistical results of the studies examined are far beyond what is expected by chance. Arguments that these results could be due to methodological flaws in the experiments are soundly refuted.… Remote viewing has been conceptually replicated across a number of laboratories, by various experimenters, and in different cultures. This is a robust effect that, were it not such an unusual domain, would no longer be questioned by science as a real phenomenon. It is unlikely that methodological flaws could account for its remarkable consistency.” 6--Whether you believe some, all, or none of the above, it should be clear that hundreds of people were involved in a 23 year, multi-million dollar operational program at SRI, the CIA, DIA and two dozen intelligence officers at the army base at Ft. Meade. Regardless of the personal opinion of a Wikipedia editor, it is not logically coherent to trivialize this whole remote viewing undertaking as some kind of “pseudoscience.” Besides me, there is a parade of Ph.D. physicists, psychologists, and heads of government agencies who think our work was valuable, though puzzling. Torgownik (talk) 00:14, 13 May 2014 (UTC)Russell Targ, May 12, 2014[reply]

AN/I notice[edit]

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. - - MrBill3 (talk) 02:08, 8 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You have been blocked from editing for a period of 48 hours for edit warring, and for persistently editing to try to promote a point of view, contrary to the requirement that Wikipedia editing be done from a neutral point of view. In addition, you should be aware that Wikipedia's guideline on conflict of interest strongly discourages editors from editing articles about themselves, their work, or any other subject in which they have a similar personal involvement. Once the block has expired, you are welcome to make useful contributions. If you think there are good reasons why you should be unblocked, you may appeal this block by adding the following text below this notice: {{unblock|reason=Your reason here ~~~~}}. However, you should read the guide to appealing blocks first. The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 13:06, 8 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Recent edit to Russell Targ[edit]

Please do not remove content or templates from pages on Wikipedia, as you did to Russell Targ, without giving a valid reason for the removal in the edit summary. Your content removal does not appear constructive and has been reverted. Please make use of the sandbox if you'd like to experiment with test edits. Thank you.Vieque (talk • ctb) 19:40, 18 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Conflict of Interest editing and Edit Warring at Russell Targ[edit]

Hello, Torgownik. We welcome your contributions to Wikipedia, but if you are affiliated with some of the people, places or things you have written about in the article Russell Targ, you may have a conflict of interest or close connection to the subject.

All editors are required to comply with Wikipedia's neutral point of view content policy. People who are very close to a subject often have a distorted view of it, which may cause them to inadvertently edit in ways that make the article either too flattering or too disparaging. People with a close connection to a subject are not absolutely prohibited from editing about that subject, but they need to be especially careful about ensuring their edits are verified by reliable sources and writing with as little bias as possible.

If you are very close to a subject, here are some ways you can reduce the risk of problems:

Avoid or exercise great caution when editing or creating articles related to you, your organization, or its competitors, as well as projects and products they are involved with.
Avoid linking to the Wikipedia article or website of your organization in other articles (see Wikipedia:Spam).
Exercise great caution so that you do not accidentally breach Wikipedia's content policies.

Please familiarize yourself with relevant content policies and guidelines, especially those pertaining to neutral point of view, verifiability of information, and autobiographies.

For information on how to contribute to Wikipedia when you have a conflict of interest, please see our frequently asked questions for organizations. You have made statements in content you have attempted to add to that article that indicate you are the subject of the article. It is not appropriate for you to edit the article directly. If you have suggestions for improving the article post them on the talk page of the article.

You currently appear to be engaged in an edit war according to the reverts you have made on Russell Targ. Users are expected to collaborate with others, to avoid editing disruptively, and to try to reach a consensus rather than repeatedly undoing other users' edits once it is known that there is a disagreement.

Please be particularly aware, Wikipedia's policy on edit warring states:

Edit warring is disruptive regardless of how many reverts you have made; that is to say, editors are not automatically "entitled" to three reverts.
Do not edit war even if you believe you are right.

If you find yourself in an editing dispute, use the article's talk page to discuss controversial changes; work towards a version that represents consensus among editors. You can post a request for help at an appropriate noticeboard or seek dispute resolution. In some cases it may be appropriate to request temporary page protection. If you engage in an edit war, you may be blocked from editing.
You have been blocked once for edit warring on this article and have now returned and are engaging in similar behavior.

MrBill3 (talk) 04:39, 19 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Your submission at Articles for creation: User:Torgownik/sandbox (April 19)[edit]

Your recent article submission to Articles for Creation has been reviewed! Unfortunately, it has not been accepted at this time.
Please read the comments left by the reviewer on your submission. You are encouraged to edit the submission to address the issues raised and resubmit when they have been resolved.

If you would like to continue working on the submission, you can find it at User:Torgownik/sandbox.
To edit the submission, click on the "Edit" tab at the top of the window.
If you need any assistance, you can ask for help at the Articles for creation help desk, or on the reviewer's talk page.

Thank you for your
contributions to Wikipedia!

Please remember to link to the submission!

You can also get real-time chat help from experienced editors.

The Ukulele Dude - Aggie80 (talk) 13:19, 19 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Sources[edit]

I noticed your post on BLP about getting your full background posted. Do you have a list of the sources for your laser work, or any sort of record of how much the CIA paid you for your ESP program? If so, I'd be happy to try to add in those citations and see if we can't make your bio more balanced. Anything even remotely related to WP:FRINGE gets WP editors very agitated (something I found out the hard way), but the supremacy of neutral sources will out, in my opinion. Let me know if I can help. The Cap'n (talk) 12:17, 28 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Talkback[edit]

Someone insists on putting the very judgmental word "pseudoscience" on the first line of my Wiki bio-page. I do not think this is appropriate. No doubt some people consider anything to do with psychic abilities as pseudoscience, the Parapsychology Association is a full member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, AAAS. And remote viewing research has been replicated world-wide. Although our work has been criticized by some, it was strongly supported by many branches of the US government for 23 years. Russell Targ, May 10, 2014 <russ at targ dot co>

Hello, Torgownik. You have new messages at Talk:Russell Targ.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

There are some potential references listed in the discussions above. Please place proposal on talk page. I hope the article on Russell Targ can be improved. - - MrBill3 (talk) 01:53, 9 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I am attaching some of my laser and electro-optics papers. Papers 1-6 comprise very early early laser papers and key papers later in my laser career.

The ESP program at Stanford Research Institute ran from 1972 to 1995 at a total support level of $25 million.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS OF RUSSELL TARG

Plasmas, Lasers and Electro-Optics

M. Ettinberg and R. Targ, “Observations of Plasma and Cyclotron Oscillations,” Proc. Symposium on Electronic Waveguides, Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, (April, 1958).

R. Targ and L.P. Levine, “Backward Microwave Oscillations in a System Composed of an Enectron beam and Hydrogen Gas,” Journal of Applied Physics, 32, 4, pp. 731-737, (April 1961).

1. P. Rabinowitz, S. Jacobs and R. Targ, "Homodyne Detection of Phase-Modulated Light," Proc. IRE, Vol. 50, No. 11 (November 1962).

2. R. Targ, "Optical Heterodyne Detection of Microwave Modulated Light," Proc. IEEE Correspondence, pp. 303-304 (March 1964).

R. Targ and W.B. Tiffany, "Gain and Saturation on Transverse Flowing He, N2, CO2 Mixtures," Appl. Phys. Letters, Vol. 15, No. 9 (1 November 1969).

W.B. Tiffany and R. Targ, "The Gas-Transport Laser: A New Class of High-Power Electro-Optic Devices," Laser Focus, (September 1969).

3. W.B. Tiffany, J.D. Foster and R. Targ, "Kilowatt CO2 Gas-Transport Laser,"Appl. Phys. Letters, Vol. 15, No. 3 (1969).

R. Targ and M.W. Sasnett, "Xenon-Helium Laser at High Pressure and High Repetition Rate," Appl. Phys. Letters, Vol. 19, No. 12, (15 December 1971).

Fahlen and R. Targ, "High Average Power Xenon Laser," IEEE J. Quant. Elect, Vol. QE-9, No. 6 (1973).

R. Targ, "Pulsed Nitrogen Laser at High Repetition Rate," IEEE J. Quant. Elect.Vol. QE-8, pp. 726-728, (August 1972).

R. Targ and M.W. Sasnett, "High Repetition Rate Xenon Laser with Transverse Excitation," IEEE J. Quant. Elect, Vol. QE-8, pp. 166-169, (February 1972).

4. Russell Targ, Roland Bowles, Michael Kavaya, and R. Milton Huffaker, "Coherent Lidar Airborne Windshear Sensor: Performance Evaluation," APPLIED OPTICS, 20 May 1991. (Cover).

5. James G. Hawley, Russell Targ, Michael Kavaya, Sammy Henderson, and Daniel Moerder, "Coherent Launch-Site Atmospheric Wind Sounder: Theory and Experiment, APPLIED OPTICS, August 21, 1993. (Cover).

6. Russell Targ, Bruce C. Steakley, James G. Hawley, Lawrence L. Ames, Paul Forney, David Swanson, Richard Stone, Robert G. Otto, Vassilis Zarifis, Philip Brockman, Raymond A. Calloway, Paul A. Robinson, and Sarah R. Harrell, "Coherent lidar airborne wind sensor II: flight test results at 2 µm and 10 µm," APPLIED OPTICS, 20 December 1996. (Cover). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.68.105.17 (talk) 04:09, 9 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your suggestions. Some of these papers are now in the article. When I get a chance I will look into the others. What I am looking for is support for their notability. As I am not an expert in the subject so I am not qualified to judge what makes a highly cited paper. It seems that over 75 citations may be a good guideline for papers in the field. Does that sound appropriate? I will see if other editors have some knowledge. I think citations in major textbooks, reviews of the subject or a description when cited that such and such paper is important or similar support inclusion in the article. It would be great if there were a book or article that describes the development of laser/laser research that explicitly describes Targ's contributions/role. I'd like to personally apologize for aggressive editing on the article, let me assure you it was based on advocacy of WP policy. I hope the article is substantially improved giving a fair description of Targ's work. - - MrBill3 (talk) 05:44, 9 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Torgownik I recommend you sign in instead of using your IP 108.68.105.17. Do you have any reliable secondary sources that discuss your laser work i.e. books or papers not published by you. Do any physics textbooks discuss your laser work? If so can you list them? That's the sort of thing which can be used on your article to cite your laser work. So far you have not listed any. We are all well aware that you have published papers on lasers and nobody is trying to suppress this information but the problem is that it has been hard to find sources outside of your own papers that discuss your work in that field. Perhaps you can compile a list on the talk-page of the article. Goblin Face (talk) 20:27, 10 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

May 2014[edit]

Your recent editing history at Russell Targ shows that you are currently engaged in an edit war. Being involved in an edit war can result in your being blocked from editing—especially if you violate the three-revert rule, which states that an editor must not perform more than three reverts on a single page within a 24-hour period. Undoing another editor's work—whether in whole or in part, whether involving the same or different material each time—counts as a revert. Also keep in mind that while violating the three-revert rule often leads to a block, you can still be blocked for edit warring—even if you don't violate the three-revert rule—should your behavior indicate that you intend to continue reverting repeatedly.

To avoid being blocked, instead of reverting please consider using the article's talk page to work toward making a version that represents consensus among editors. See BRD for how this is done. You can post a request for help at a relevant noticeboard or seek dispute resolution. In some cases, you may wish to request temporary page protection. Binksternet (talk) 00:54, 11 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I am not in an edit war. I am responding to an anonymous skeptical reviewer who is thrilled to be able to ignorantly insult and degrade my life's work. How dare he or she put "pseudoscience" on the lead on my Wikipedia bio page. Am I in an edit war if I don't agree that reviewers are omnipotently able to write whatever nonsense they want to put under my name? Wikipedia is supposed to be an encyclopedia not a soapbox.

Russell Targ. <russtarg at gmail.com.>

Remote viewing is not “pseudoscience.” Please immediately drop that inaccurate and insulting term that you have scattered throughout my Wikipedia bio-page. Wikipedia’s definition: “Pseudoscience is a claim, belief or practice which is presented as scientific, but does not adhere to a valid scientific method, lacks supporting evidence or plausibility, cannot be reliably tested, or otherwise lacks scientific status. The term pseudoscience is often considered inherently pejorative, because it suggests something is being inaccurately or even deceptively portrayed as science.” There are a number of reasons that editors at Wikipedia should not characterize remote viewing as pseudoscience, when it is not characterized that way by the informed scientific community. 1--In order to publish our findings in the 1976 Proceedings of the IEEE, we had to meet with the Robert W. Lucky, managing editor, and his board. The editor proposed to us that we show him how to conduct a remote viewing experiment. If it was successful, he would publish our paper. The editor was also head of electro-optics at Bell Telephone Laboratory. We gave a talk at his lab. He then chose some engineers to be the “psychics” for each of five days. Each day he hid himself at a randomly chosen location in the nearby town. After the agreed-upon five trials, the editor read the five transcripts and successfully matched each of the five correctly to his hiding places. This was significant at 0.008 (one in 5!, 5-factorial). As a result, he published our paper on “Information Transmission Over Kilometer Distances”. 2—In our 23 year program for the government at SRI, we had to carry out “demonstration of ability” tasks for the Director of CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency, NASA, and Commanding General of the Army Intelligence Command. (The names are available upon request.) For the CIA we were able to accurately describe and draw a giant gantry crane rolling on eight wheels over a large building, and draw the 60 foot gores, “slices” of a sphere, under construction in northern Russia. The sphere was entirely accurate, although its existence was unknown at the time. The description was so accurate that it became the subject of a Congressional hearing of the House Committee on Intelligence. They were afraid of a security leak. No leak was found, and we were told to “press on.” 3—Remote viewing is easily replicated and has been demonstrated all over the world. It has been the subject of several Ph.D. dissertations in the US and abroad. Princeton University had a 25 year program investigating remote viewing with more than 450 trials. Prof. Robert Jahn also published a lengthy and highly significant (p = 10-10 or 1 in ten billion) experimental investigation of remote viewing in the 1982 Proc. IEEE. 4—The kind of tasks that kept us in business for twenty-three years include: SRI psychics found a downed Russian bomber in Africa; reported on the health of American hostages in Iran; described Soviet weapons factories in Siberia; located a kidnapped US general in Italy; and accurately forecasted the failure of a Chinese atomic-bomb test three days before it occurred, etc. When San Francisco heiress Patricia Hearst was abducted from her home in Berkeley, a psychic with the SRI team was the first to identify the kidnapper by name and then accurately describe and locate the kidnap car. I was at the Berkeley police station and witnessed this event. 5—Jessica Utts is a statistics Professor at the University of California, Irvine, and is president of the American Statistical Association. In writing for her part of a 1995 evaluation of our work for the CIA, she wrote: “Using the standards applied to any other area of science, it is concluded that psychic functioning has been well established. The statistical results of the studies examined are far beyond what is expected by chance. Arguments that these results could be due to methodological flaws in the experiments are soundly refuted.… Remote viewing has been conceptually replicated across a number of laboratories, by various experimenters, and in different cultures. This is a robust effect that, were it not such an unusual domain, would no longer be questioned by science as a real phenomenon. It is unlikely that methodological flaws could account for its remarkable consistency.” 6--Whether you believe some, all, or none of the above, it should be clear that hundreds of people were involved in a 23 year, multi-million dollar operational program at SRI, the CIA, DIA and two dozen intelligence officers at the army base at Ft. Meade. Regardless of the personal opinion of a Wikipedia editor, it is not logically coherent to trivialize this whole remote viewing undertaking as some kind of “pseudoscience.” Besides me, there is a parade of Ph.D. physicists, psychologists, and heads of government agencies who think our work was valuable, though puzzling. 108.68.105.17 (talk) 00:17, 13 May 2014 (UTC)Russell Targ, May 12, 2014[reply]

I was asked by Wiki for some published ESP references. Because of my very poor vision, I laboriously added them in this morning. Now they have been edited out. I will not do that again. My bio page was on wiki for at least two years without "pseudoscience" Why did that insult and libel become necessary? If you don't like my references, I can tell you what else we were doing. Though I gather you have no interest in facts with regard to what SRI did for our twenty years. Since I see you always delete the fact that we had a 23 year program. Wouldn't a reader find that interesting? its a fact. Here is how we paid the rent: The kind of tasks that kept us in business for twenty-three years are the following: SRI psychics found a downed Russian bomber in Africa, confirmed in a public lecture by Jimmy Carter; reported on the health of American hostages in Iran; described Soviet weapons factories in Siberia; located a kidnapped US general in Italy; and accurately forecasted the failure of a Chinese atomic-bomb test three days before it occurred, etc. When San Francisco heiress Patricia Hearst was abducted from her home in Berkeley, a psychic with the SRI team was the first to identify the kidnapper by name and then accurately describe and locate the kidnap car. We received a commendation from the Berkeley Police Dept. But I realize that if you are convinced that remote viewing doesn't exist, nothing I say could make any difference. Wikipedia's bias is becoming inceasinglywell known. You can obviously print anything at all that meets your prejudices. I have no control over that. But as you continue your biased editing, Wikipedia will become synonymous with FOX news and other other untrustworthy surces. You get to choose.

Wikipedia has a rule against subjects of biographies editing against the editors who are interested in the biography. You have been doing exactly this under your Torgownik account and also under the IP address 108.68.105.17. Many of the edits you have been making are reversions of the edits others have made; this is what Wikipedia calls edit warring. I count five instances today:

Revision as of 04:53, May 10, 2014, UTC. Torgownik changed "pseudoscience" to "controversial field".
Revision as of 16:41, May 10, 2014, UTC. Torgownik changed "pseudoscience" to "contentious area".
Revision as of 18:14, May 10, 2014, UTC. 108.68.105.17 changed "pseudoscience" to "considered a the pseudoscience by those who have not read the published papers".
Revision as of 20:46, May 10, 2014, UTC. 108.68.105.17 changed "pseudoscience" to "controversial research area".
Revision as of 23:26, May 10, 2014, UTC. Torgownik changed "pseudoscience" to "highly controversial".

A friendly "talk" comment says (on 5/10) the reason that the page is called "Pseudoscience" is because there are "no scientific references". How about the following which are on the page, plus Robert Jahn from Princeton?. On remote viewing -—; Puthoff, H. (18 October 1974). "Information transfer under conditions of sensory shielding". Letters to Nature. Nature 251: 602–7. doi:10.1038/251602a0.

--;   Puthoff, H.E.; — (March 1976). "A perceptual channel for information transfer over kilometer distances: Historical perspective and recent research". Proceedings of the IEEE 64 (3): 329–54. doi:10.1109/PROC.1976.10113.

--; Rauscher, E.A.; — (20–22 June 2006). "Investigation of a complex space-time metric to describe precognition of the future". AIP Conference Proceedings. Frontiers of Time: Retrocausation - Experiment and Theory 863. San Diego, CA. pp. 121–46. doi:10.1063/1.2388752. and: Robert G. Jahn, "THE PERSISTENT PARADOX OF PSYCHIC PHENOMENA: AN ENGINEERING PERSPECTIVE"

Proc. IEEE,Vol. 70, No. 2, pp. 136-170, February 1982.

If you take a minute or two and glance at the edit-warring noticeboard, you will see that a lot of editors have been blocked for reverting four times in a 24-hour period. If you are blocked you will only be able to edit this user talk page for the account Torgownik, and only for the purpose of asking to be unblocked. You will not be able to edit the page Russell Targ or the talk page Talk:Russell Targ. Of course that is not what you want, so please stick to arguing your case at Talk:Russell Targ rather than changing the word "pseudoscience" one more time against consensus, which will definitely get you blocked. Binksternet (talk) 03:55, 11 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

So, I have to assume that you are not all crazy. If I understand Mr. Binksternet correctly, the Wikipedia organization is telling me as the subject of your bio-page, you can say anything whatsoever on my Wiki bio-page, whether it is true or not, or in between. And if I try to change it, then you will block me for engaging in an "edit war." I am asserting that calling my life's work a "pseudoscience" is untrue, libelous, and degrading, especially on the lead line on my biography. Why is that not an obvious, malicious libelous public defamation of my character? Russell Targ. <russtarg at gmail.com.> — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.68.105.17 (talk) 04:23, 11 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I find that your definition of pseudoscience exactly corresponds to my understanding of Wikipedia's general feeling toward all of parapsychology. Your def. attached to my lead, on the Russell Targ page reads: "The term pseudoscience is often considered inherently pejorative, because it suggests something is being inaccurately or even deceptively portrayed as science.[9]" THAT IS WHY I AM REMOVING IT. If you are actually an encyclopedia and not a soap box, you should not be insulting the subject of a bio-page on the lead of the article. That is why it is a libelous accusation. Do you understand? If you are not prepared to Prove that my forty years of work is a deception, which it of course is not, then I suggest you delete your "pseudoscience". Russell Targ. russtarg at gmail.com

A friendly "talk" comment says (on 5/10) the reason that the page is called "Pseudoscience" is because there are "no scientific references". How about the following which are on the page, plus Robert Jahn from Princeton?. On remote viewing -—; Puthoff, H. (18 October 1974). "Information transfer under conditions of sensory shielding".

Letters to Nature. Nature 251: 602–7. doi:10.1038/251602a0.

-—; Puthoff, H.E.; — (March 1976). "A perceptual channel for information transfer over

kilometer distances: Historical perspective and recent research". Proceedings of the IEEE 64 (3): 329–54. doi:10.1109/PROC.1976.10113.

-—; Rauscher, E.A.; — (20–22 June 2006). "Investigation of a complex space-time metric to describe precognition of the future". AIP Conference Proceedings. Frontiers of Time: Retrocausation - Experiment and Theory 863. San Diego, CA. pp. 121–46. doi:10.1063/1.2388752.

-—; Robert G. Jahn, "THE PERSISTENT PARADOX OF PSYCHIC PHENOMENA: AN ENGINEERING PERSPECTIVE" Proc. IEEE,Vol. 70, No. 2, pp. 136-170, February 1982. Russell Targ. <russtarg at gmail.con.

Wiki asked me to add in some of my published remote viewing references. I did that this morning, at great pain, since I have very poor vision. Within an hour they were entirely edited out. Why would you do that? If refs. are of no interest, I am attaching a brief list of some of the operational remote viewing that paid our rent. The kind of tasks that kept us in business for twenty-three years are the following: And why do you keep editing out the fact that were at SRI for 23 years. Wouldn't a reader find that fact interesting. Or is that too much against the NO ESP grain for you? SRI psychics found a downed Russian bomber in Africa; Confirmed by Jimmy Carter in a public lecture at Emory University, we reported on the health of American hostages in Iran; described Soviet weapons factories in Siberia; located a kidnapped US general in Italy; and accurately forecasted the failure of a Chinese atomic-bomb test three days before it occurred, etc. When San Francisco heiress Patricia Hearst was abducted from her home in Berkeley, a psychic with the SRI team was the first to identify the kidnapper by name and then accurately describe and locate the kidnap car. I was in the police station when Pat Price did that. We received a commendation from the Berkeley police for that work. After two years on Wikipedia, who decided that I had to be branded as a pseudo-scientist. Does that help your brand as totally anti parapsychology. Wikipedia is getting a reputation for its various biases, and will be up there with FOX news as entertainment rather than information. The world of humanistic psychology and parapsychology can help you accomplish that. You have demonstrated that you have absolute control over Wikipedia. I understand that you can put any kind of libelous accusations all over my bio-page, and I have no appeal. But you do not control the rest of the Internet. And I understand that it's not "my" biopage it belongs to the editors who hate ESP. So I surrender to the anonymous editors. Torgownik (talk) 19:17, 11 May 2014 (UTC)Russell Targ. russtarg at gmail.com[reply]

I was asked to add remote viewing references. I added them,and they were then erased. Could someone please explain that to me? Torgownik (talk) 20:46, 11 May 2014 (UTC)Russell Targ| russtarg at gmail.com[reply]

Your parapsychological papers on remote viewing that you added to the article were removed because you did not format them properly. This was your edit here [1]. You made a mistake by not formatting the papers properly and you made a mess of the section so they were removed. Goblin Face (talk) 15:00, 12 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Legal threat[edit]

I have closed down the thread you opened on the help desk because I perceive your comments to be a threat to take legal action. I now require you to clarify that position please. Spinning Spark 10:47, 12 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I have absolutely no intention to raise any legal action with regard to Wiki editors having "pseudoscience" splashed all over my bio page. It will be settled in the court of public opinion, or even within Wikipedia. I see that the lead on the bio page has been toned down for the moment, to only one "pseudoscience." Thanks, Torgownik (talk) 16:47, 12 May 2014 (UTC)Russell Targ[reply]

Remote viewing is not “pseudoscience.” Please immediately drop that inaccurate and insulting term that you have scattered throughout my Wikipedia bio-page. Wikipedia’s definition: “Pseudoscience is a claim, belief or practice which is presented as scientific, but does not adhere to a valid scientific method, lacks supporting evidence or plausibility, cannot be reliably tested, or otherwise lacks scientific status. The term pseudoscience is often considered inherently pejorative, because it suggests something is being inaccurately or even deceptively portrayed as science.” There are a number of reasons that editors at Wikipedia should not characterize remote viewing as pseudoscience, when it is not characterized that way by the informed scientific community. 1--In order to publish our findings in the 1976 Proceedings of the IEEE, we had to meet with the Robert W. Lucky, managing editor, and his board. The editor proposed to us that we show him how to conduct a remote viewing experiment. If it was successful, he would publish our paper. The editor was also head of electro-optics at Bell Telephone Laboratory. We gave a talk at his lab. He then chose some engineers to be the “psychics” for each of five days. Each day he hid himself at a randomly chosen location in the nearby town. After the agreed-upon five trials, the editor read the five transcripts and successfully matched each of the five correctly to his hiding places. This was significant at 0.008 (one in 5!, 5-factorial). As a result, he published our paper on “Information Transmission Over Kilometer Distances”. 2—In our 23 year program for the government at SRI, we had to carry out “demonstration of ability” tasks for the Director of CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency, NASA, and Commanding General of the Army Intelligence Command. (The names are available upon request.) For the CIA we were able to accurately describe and draw a giant gantry crane rolling on eight wheels over a large building, and draw the 60 foot gores, “slices” of a sphere, under construction in northern Russia. The sphere was entirely accurate, although its existence was unknown at the time. The description was so accurate that it became the subject of a Congressional hearing of the House Committee on Intelligence. They were afraid of a security leak. No leak was found, and we were told to “press on.” 3—Remote viewing is easily replicated and has been demonstrated all over the world. It has been the subject of several Ph.D. dissertations in the US and abroad. Princeton University had a 25 year program investigating remote viewing with more than 450 trials. Prof. Robert Jahn also published a lengthy and highly significant (p = 10-10 or 1 in ten billion) experimental investigation of remote viewing in the 1982 Proc. IEEE. 4—The kind of tasks that kept us in business for twenty-three years include: SRI psychics found a downed Russian bomber in Africa; reported on the health of American hostages in Iran; described Soviet weapons factories in Siberia; located a kidnapped US general in Italy; and accurately forecasted the failure of a Chinese atomic-bomb test three days before it occurred, etc. When San Francisco heiress Patricia Hearst was abducted from her home in Berkeley, a psychic with the SRI team was the first to identify the kidnapper by name and then accurately describe and locate the kidnap car. I was at the Berkeley police station and witnessed this event. 5—Jessica Utts is a statistics Professor at the University of California, Irvine, and is president of the American Statistical Association. In writing for her part of a 1995 evaluation of our work for the CIA, she wrote: “Using the standards applied to any other area of science, it is concluded that psychic functioning has been well established. The statistical results of the studies examined are far beyond what is expected by chance. Arguments that these results could be due to methodological flaws in the experiments are soundly refuted.… Remote viewing has been conceptually replicated across a number of laboratories, by various experimenters, and in different cultures. This is a robust effect that, were it not such an unusual domain, would no longer be questioned by science as a real phenomenon. It is unlikely that methodological flaws could account for its remarkable consistency.” 6--Whether you believe some, all, or none of the above, it should be clear that hundreds of people were involved in a 23 year, multi-million dollar operational program at SRI, the CIA, DIA and two dozen intelligence officers at the army base at Ft. Meade. Regardless of the personal opinion of a Wikipedia editor, it is not logically coherent to trivialize this whole remote viewing undertaking as some kind of “pseudoscience.” Besides me, there is a parade of Ph.D. physicists, psychologists, and heads of government agencies who think our work was valuable, though puzzling. Torgownik (talk) 23:59, 12 May 2014 (UTC)Russell Targ, May 12, 2014[reply]

Please stop using talk pages such as User talk: Torgownik for general discussion of the topic. They are for discussion related to improving the article; not for use as a forum or chat room. If you have specific questions about certain topics, consider visiting our reference desk and asking them there instead of on article talk pages. See here for more information. Your repeated protestations that remote viewing is not a pseudoscience, when it is the mainstream opinion of the scientific community that it is a pseudoscience, is becoming tedious, and has a too long, don't read quality. Robert McClenon (talk) 00:55, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I certainly don't want to become tedious. On the other hand, if you read my letter you might learn something interesting. Absolutely no legal threat written or implied. Cheers, Torgownik (talk) 02:39, 13 May 2014 (UTC)Russell Targ[reply]

original letter was titled "My 23 years of research at Stanford Research Institute has suddenly been defamed and libeled on my bio page" -- emphasis added. I would consider the possibility that no threat may have been intended, but accusations of libel are legal threats. You also said "I am prepared to take all necessary measures public, Internet or private to discover a path to redressing this libel" -- emphasis added again. It is more reasonable than not to assume that includes a lawsuit, especially with the continued use of the word "libel." At any rate, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia that summarizes mainstream scholarship, not a place to right great wrongs or promote one's work. If you have a problem with how the article presents your prior work, then blame mainstream academia, not us. Your letter only shows that US intelligence agencies desperately wasted tax payer money for decades. The US government is not the final authority on science, and any real scientist would know that. Ian.thomson (talk) 03:09, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, Torgownik. We welcome your contributions to Wikipedia, but if you are affiliated with some of the people, places or things you have written about in the article Russell Targ, you may have a conflict of interest.

All editors are required to comply with Wikipedia's neutral point of view content policy. People who are very close to a subject often have a distorted view of it, which may cause them to inadvertently edit in ways that make the article either too flattering or too disparaging. People with a close connection to a subject are not absolutely prohibited from editing about that subject, but they need to be especially careful about ensuring their edits are verified by reliable sources and writing with as little bias as possible.

If you are very close to a subject, here are some ways you can reduce the risk of problems:

Avoid or exercise great caution when editing or creating articles related to you, your organization, or its competitors, as well as projects and products they are involved with.
Avoid linking to the Wikipedia article or website of your organization in other articles (see Wikipedia:Spam).
Exercise great caution so that you do not accidentally breach Wikipedia's content policies.

Please familiarize yourself with relevant content policies and guidelines, especially those pertaining to neutral point of view, verifiability of information, and autobiographies.

For information on how to contribute to Wikipedia when you have a conflict of interest, please see our frequently asked questions for organizations. You have continued to edit this article rather than propose changes on the talk page. You have continued to insert unsourced information that is contradicted by the sources. Please present any proposed changes on the talk page of the article and provide sources. MrBill3 (talk) 09:28, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You need to understand this[edit]

These are the things you need to understand.

In matters which are within the realm of scientific investigation, Wikipedia follows the scientific consensus. We do not represent fringe views as if they were anything but fringe. The consensus view that remote viewing is pseudoscience, and that this characterisation applies explicitly to your work, is established from reliable independent sources. We are not going to stop representing it as pseudoscience unless and until the scientific community accepts its validity. It may be a long wait.
In arguing for the representation of this field as science rather that pseudoscience, you have consistently overstepped the boundaries of acceptable behaviour on Wikipedia. Please read this essay on why strong opinions like yours are a problem.
You have also issued unambiguous legal threats. You have been given some slack because we understand that biography subjects can get upset. That's not going to last much longer. We have an absolute prohibition on legal threats and the use of language implying legal threats. If you choose to go down this route, you will be banned until all such threats are withdrawn. No ifs, no buts.

Your best course of action is to stick to proposing changes, incremental ones, on the talk page. Identify a sentence, say why it's a problem according to our policies (WP:NPOV, WP:V) and propose a revised version with sources (WP:RS). These must be reliable independent sources: not fringe journals, not books by advocates. Or leave it to Brian Josephson, who seems to be capable of articulating your issues without the problems you have had.

We understand that you do not like the fact that much of your life's work is considered by most scientists to have been invalid. We sympathise. We cannot fix it, and we cannot pretend it is not the case, because our policies do not allow it. Guy (Help!) 10:05, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You have been mentioned in connection to an edit-warring IP address[edit]

Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there is currently a discussion involving you at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Edit warring regarding a possible violation of Wikipedia's policy on edit warring. Thank you. Ian.thomson (talk) 17:13, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Notification regarding a discussion about you on the Administrator's Noticeboard.[edit]

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. The thread is Russell Targ needs to be blocked, or at least topic-banned. Thank you. Ian.thomson (talk) 19:30, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You have been blocked from editing for a period of 1 week for making an offsite posting that drove quote a number of meatpuppets to the article about you. Once the block has expired, you are welcome to make useful contributions. If you think there are good reasons why you should be unblocked, you may appeal this block by adding the following text below this notice: {{unblock|reason=Your reason here ~~~~}}. However, you should read the guide to appealing blocks first. Kevin Gorman (talk) 20:55, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I've made two minor changes to my block message. I've first removed the reference to WP:CANVASS because it wasn't the appropriate policy as it deals with on-wiki, and second changed "your own article" to "the article about you," to better reflect reality. I'm letting the block stand because I view attracting large numbers of meatpuppets to the article about you as significantly disruptive and incompatible with the goal of building a better encyclopedia. Kevin Gorman (talk) 13:55, 14 May 2014 (UTC) [reply]

Hi Torgownik, I'm going to provisionally unblock you after I post this here. I apologize for not being more detailed in my initial block message about why I was blocking you. Please understand that I'm unblocking you because I think you can productively contribute here, not because I think my initial block was a bad block, and that lifted blocks can be reinstated.

One of the reasons I blocked you was your offsite canvassing; it brought a bunch of new editors to Wikipedia in a way that caused disruption. I'm not going to go in to further detail here, because I think it's covered down below. Another is because you were engaging in a practice that we generally refer to as sockpuppeting, even if incidentally, by editing from an IP address at the same time that you were editing from your main account on the same page. Socking of this fashion is bad, because it can create the impression of a consensus where none exists, and can be used to game various other rules. You were also edit-warring on the page about yourself, and made a comment that is very easily construed as a legal threat, even if you didn't mean it as such. Real legal threats are a big deal, but even perceived legal threats have a significant chilling effect on other editors, which is why we treat them harshly.

If you would like to continue to stay unblocked, there are a couple things to do that will likely make that happen. Don't encourage people to come to Wikipedia for the purpose of making your article look like what you wish it looked like; it won't work, and people will get cranky. Try to, as much as you can, only edit from one account - check if you're logged in to your account before you edit. Don't editwar; if you make a change a couple of times and it gets reverted, start a discussion on the talk page of the article in question, and try to reach agreement with other editors about the best way forward. And finally, don't say anything that could be construed as a legal threat. If you feel like you need to sue Wikipedia or particular editors over your article, you are welcome to do so - but we as a community don't believe that someone threatening legal action (or taking legal action) should be editing Wikipedia at the same time.

Please feel free to pop over to my talk page and ask any questions you have about Wikipedia policy etc, but please be aware that violating the things I initially blocked you for is likely to wind up with you blocked again - and saying something that can be construed as a legal threat again is definitely likely to end with you getting reblocked, even if you didn't actually mean it as a legal threat, so it would be good to be careful with your wording. Best, Kevin Gorman (talk) 18:10, 16 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Your article[edit]

Torgownik, you can always contact Wikipedia at Wikipedia:Contact us - Subjects. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 23:44, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Pretty sure he already has, and he will have received the standard advice to biography subjects, which I wrote. This explains how to ask for help on Wikipedia, and told to request changes on the Talk page. Guy (Help!) 20:58, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Safety[edit]

Sorry to read about the block, but meanwhile, I'm just curious: how do you study precognition without hurting people? I mean the broken vase in _The Matrix_. Wnt (talk) 03:28, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Your off Wikipedia rants[edit]

On the Society for Psychical Research facebook page you recently wrote "I am having a problem with Wikipedia. They think all remote viewing is "pseudoscience". And they have defaced my Wiki bio-page with lots of nonsense." This isn't true. Nobody has "defaced" your Wikipedia biography. Reliable scientific sources have been used on your Wikipedia bio, if you have a problem take it up with the sources, not Wikipedia. Goblin Face (talk) 18:11, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Do note that he has no duty to you to explain or justify any of his off-Wikipedia writings here. Calling them "rants" here is just a personal attack we can do without. Please be sure to avoid what WP:OUTING describes as "opposition research". Wnt (talk) 00:55, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

On any credible definition of 'deface', this bio is being defaced by a number of editors. The fact that the material added has been taken from another source in no way alters that fact since it has been amply demonstrated by user Torgownik on the Targ talk page that the pseudoscience ascription is incorrect (of course, people with limited understanding of science may fail to appreciate the cogency of his arguments, but lack of expertise is no defence for a defacer). The point may become clearer if we consider this example. Suppose a bus timetable is posted in a public place and a member of the public considers there is an error, as some source that he considers reliable gives a different time (parenthetical comment on reliable sources: I have an app produced by a company that sells UK train tickets, one of the most popular apps for journey planning, which not infrequently generates timetables that are pure fantasy (most recent example: when asked to list trains from Plymouth to Paddington it listed 2 through trains leaving Plymouth at the same time, one arriving at Paddington at the actual scheduled time and one about 20 min. later. Only one train actually left at that time, and how one would manage to arrive 20 min, later without changing trains baffles me). If I had not learnt better by now, I might have considered this a reliable source). Our public spirited person alters the times in the belief that he is improving the timetable. But the magistrate, sentencing our friend to 2 weeks' community service for defacing the bus timetable, is unimpressed by the fact that our friend based his 'correction' on a 'reliable source'. --Brian Josephson (talk) 08:47, 16 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

And just how is your hypothetical good Samaritan supposed to have known that the timetable is wrong? Just because he experiences a late or missed bus does not mean that those are the times the bus is supposed to run. A reliable source is needed (eg the bus company) before he should risk making a change. Your semi-hidden real-life example also does not hold water. Many trains have coaches that are decoupled at some point along their journey and then take an alternative route. See for instance, this example. So yes, it is perfectly possible that two timetable entities can leave Plymouth as a single train and arrive at Paddington as two different trains at two different times. I have no idea if that is the case or not in your example, but I would hesitate to declare the timetable nonsense without information from a reliable source with expertise in train timetables that had analysed the figures and come to that conclusion. Anyway, it does not matter whether or not you agree that that is a good methodology for building an encyclopaedia. If you want to play in this playground, those are the rules you need to follow. You are welcome to argue that the rules should be changed, but both here and article talk pages are not the appropriate place to discuss policy. Spinning Spark 16:47, 16 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Nice try, Spinner, but it won't work. When a train splits into two there is always a warning announcement to make sure passengers get into the right carriage and there was none; neither was there any indication on the departure board at Plymouth. And the official National Rail planner doesn't show that train either, even if you do not check the box 'show only fastest trains'. And TheTrainLine makes other errors as well, e.g. claiming there was a through train on a certain journey at a weekend when there wasn't one. And one day it left out all the fast trains from London to Cambridge, which information I ignored of course as I had learned not to trust the service. Of course, my assumption was that the good Samaritan did get his information from what he thought was a reliable source. --Brian Josephson (talk) 17:07, 16 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia is the only top-ten internet site where good Samaritans (armed with reliable sources) are even allowed make corrections to the material. Oh, by the way, if you really have to post in the middle of a thread please learn to use the right number of indents otherwise no one will be able to follow what is going on. Spinning Spark 17:20, 16 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Do note that canvassing "which is done with the intention of influencing the outcome of a discussion in a particular way (i.e. calling fellow POV-pushing meatpuppets) is considered inappropriate," especially when it is off-site. Ian.thomson (talk) 00:59, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Normally this applies to editors taking on-wiki disputes off-wiki. When it is an author asking for fairness about himself here, I don't think it makes a lot of sense to hold him to that standard. Especially when he's not even being allowed to edit here at the time, what duty does he have to follow policies off-wiki??? Wnt (talk) 01:04, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The problem is that the claim the article is unfair, requires acceptance that refuted ideas are valid. Taking any request to a partisan audience in an attempt to recruit sympathetic edits, is canvassing and is inappropriate. The subject and the subject's beliefs do not affect this. Guy (Help!) 13:21, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict)(meant to also include) Please be sure to avoid what WP:GAMING describes as "Selectively 'cherry picking' wording from a policy (or cherry picking one policy to apply but willfully ignoring others) to support a view which does not in fact match policy."

WP:OUTING states "if individuals have identified themselves without redacting or having it oversighted, such information can be used for discussions of conflict of interest (COI) in appropriate forums." "Opposition research" would be digging up your or my Facebook posts for evidence that (completely hypothetical stuff like) you believing in remote viewing or me losing money to a claimed psychic. It does not include making sure that canvassing isn't going on.

Do you not care that he's basically trying to flood our site with incompetent POV-pushing meatpuppets? Disrupting the site is disrupting the site, whether it's on-wiki or off-wiki, and we have to prepare for it. Ian.thomson (talk) 01:10, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Well, this is an exercise in dehumanization. They're incompetent because they read his site? They're POV-pushing because they have "the wrong" POV? They're "meatpuppets"... that last one I can't make sound any more ridiculous. You're setting far too nasty a tone toward people just because you don't like their perspective on science. Wnt (talk) 13:27, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately a couple of people (you included, Wnt) have been muddying the waters by being supportive of the edits themselves or of the editor's dignity. The problem with the canvassing is independent of the merits of the content issue discussed or the terminology used, and there is a risk with people inexperienced with Wikipedia, and driven by strong opinions, that they will interpret supportive comments about content as an indication of support in respect of problematic behaviour. We do need to ensure that Torgownik is in no doubt that off-site solicitations for support is disruptive and will only lead to protection of the article and talk page to control disruption.

I agree that we should avoid the use of terms of art that have aggressive overtones, such as "meatpuppet". We can say it nicely, but still link to the relevant guidelines.

There is no ambiguity here. The admin community does not give a damn, as a body corporate, whether remote viewing is valid or not, the admin community does care when partisans try to recruit sympathetic editors to articles that are already the subject of significant problems that require solid understanding of Wikipedia policy. It does not help, it is counter-productive and it is not going to be overlooked. Guy (Help!) 13:37, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

But he's not an ordinary partisan; he's someone interested in his own article. I mean, suppose any BLP subject who never edited Wikipedia even once went on the air and said his Wikipedia article is biased. Would you go on about how, say, Rand Paul was "violating policy" if he made a complaint like that, because of the recruitment? And prepare some kind of disciplinary process for him in advance if he ever tried to start an account? There's a big difference between when a Wikipedia war between liberals and conservatives spills out onto 4chan or something, and when a couple of article subjects complain about how they're portrayed. We can try to oppose the effect of the canvassing by warning people that if they were recruited to come edit, they should know this and that. But if you respond to a BLP complaining about how his article is presented by first blocking him, then holding it against him and everyone he talks to that he even dares complain about it off wikipedia... try to think about how that is going to sound to the larger audience. It risks Wikipedia's reputation; it gives any actual pseudoscience more credibility because pseudoscience, even when it's obviously wrong, thrives on documented evidence of censorship. Wnt (talk) 08:20, 16 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Just as well there's no documented evidence of censorship, then. Obviously we can't do much about paranoid conspiracist nonsense.

I didn't block him, and I don't advocate banning him from the article talk page.

The problem is very simple: Targ believes he made a valid contribution to the scientific investigation of a genuine parapsychological phenomenon, whereas the scientific community thinks he wastged twenty years and a few million of Uncle Sam's dollars pursuing a chimaera. Since there is absolutely no unambiguous evidence to support the existence of psi, and Targ's group's work has been soundly debunked by reference to cues etc., this is a real-world problem that it is not our place to try to fix for him. He's never going to improve that by bringing more partisans to shi side, that will only prolong the agony.

As I say, I did not block him and I would not have done, because I don't think he properly understood in advance why what his canvassing is not acceptable. I advise you to take it up with the blocking admin. Guy (Help!) 11:27, 16 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

How can Wikipedia be neutral while at the same time people dismiss everyone open to a point of view as "incompetent", dismiss even the government's pursuit of the approach as mere waste, and treat the subject as "fringe" toward itself: The "rational" agenda is too aggressive here. If you look up an article on remote viewing, or one of the researchers thereof, you should see an article that links to all the main publications on the topic (including those in sympathetic journals) We should by no means omit or downplay the reaction of scientists who reject the idea, but skepticism is not our only purpose. Explanation is our primary purpose. Wnt (talk) 12:09, 16 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

To emphasise the last point, here is a quote from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not:

Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia and, as a means to that end, an online community of individuals interested in building and using a high-quality encyclopedia in a spirit of mutual respect.

Note the emphasis on quality, something not achieved if a PoV with significant support among scientists is systematically blocked. --Brian Josephson (talk) 14:47, 16 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Wnt:, read WP:FRINGE and WP:GEVAL, because your complaints show that you either haven't or you need to leave this issue and go complain on the talk pages of those guidelines and policies. It's science that excludes the fringe ideas, Wikipedia merely follows suit. The government spent the money, sure, but all the scientists who weren't getting paid to say "remote viewing exists" looked at the research and found only problems.

@Brian Josephson:, that statement is either delusional or a lie. Science universally rejects remote viewing, only a small minority of former or quasi-scientists or scientists speaking outside of their field (effectively laypersons) support remote viewing. Any mainstream source will tell you that. Per WP:FRINGE and WP:GEVAL, Wikipedia doesn't pretend that it's an option. I'm sorry you have a blinding and biased conflict of interest in this matter and probably can't see any reason in this matter (prove me wrong by getting WP:FRINGE, WP:GEVAL, and WP:COI through your skull), but science (and so Wikipedia) simply cannot find any real evidence from proper experimentation and research.

Would the two of you have us give equal validity to the idea that the world is flat? Or the idea that melanin being tied to intelligence and morality, or that idea's inverse? Or the idea that the world is controlled by lizard people who created Judaism as a scam, or even that the Jews are actively trying to take over the world and eat babies? That's the kind of bullshit y'all're asking us to include when y'all ask us to give equal validity to fringe ideas -- to give unscientific lies, delusions, and brainwashing the same treatment as academic science.

Then y'all's claim that the material is being excluded is also completely false: Wikipedia discusses remote viewing -- as a pseudoscience. Y'all are the ones asking for science to be excluded by siding with Targ, who only wanted to censor the outside scientific assessment of his work. Y'all are the ones trying to tear down the quality of this encyclopedia by excluding nearly all scientists' perceptions. Ian.thomson (talk) 15:56, 16 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Certainly I would not argue for equal time for "flat Earth" on Earth. But I would argue that Flat Earth should be about flat Earth ideas. And indeed, mostly it is -- though even so I think some of the spherical Earth material would be better left to summary and covered more extensively in a different article. That article has a special excuse though, that it is seeking to refute the modern myth that the ancients believed the Earth was flat, which makes the round Earth material there at least nominally relevant, at two removes. But if someone went at that article and started taking out major references to people who believed in flat Earth because it's "pseudoscience" and those sources are "bad sources" and any editor who adds them must be "incompetent" because he "is pushing that point of view", while putting in more and more denunciations of how the ideas are wrong and turning the article into an explanation of How We Know The Earth Is Round, I would be very displeased with it. But just such treatment has been given to some of the other articles discussed here, and (as for flat Earth) it is not justified by those policies. A fringe source about science is a mainstream source about fringe. Wnt (talk) 16:23, 16 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

But that's not really what's happening here. Targ does not believe that RV is pseudoscience, and advocates for the removal of all mentions of it as such, despite it being one of the more widely discussed examples of pseudoscience, precisely because of the work done by Targ and his colleagues, financed as it was by the US Government. Targ spins a narrative of suppression over his early work on radar, but that is a misrepresentation: the dispute was and is over the relative prominence given to the early work and the later work on RV. There is I think no significant dissent from the view that it is RV for which he is known, and without that work it is unlikely that the biographical sources establishing notability, would exist. That doesn't mean we have to put the boot in, as one or two of the more vigorous editors seem to want to do, but neither does it mean we should airbrush out the judgment of science, which is, as of now, that this work was fundamentally flawed in ways that should have been obvious to all at the time. Guy (Help!) 18:59, 16 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know everything that Targ wants or has tried to edit. I'm not actually on board his bus - I don't follow his offsite writings and I am inclined to consider only a certain subset of alleged paranormal phenomena that I think perhaps plausibly arise from "quantum weirdness" in the brain and associated macroscopic causality violations. But let's be clear: right now the aggressive skeptics have the upper hand, and represent the most immediate threat to article balance. Both sides need to do better (in general, not speaking of this specific person) and share some of the same characteristics, but we need to develop better editing practices to have peace instead of war or conquest here. I want everybody to put down the long knives and recognize the real scientific consensus: that there is no well-established evidence for psychic phenomena, but absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, and people remain free to continue doing research, and this research can be interesting. I mean, how many times every year do we read that mainstream physicists looked for an aberration in the inverse square law or a difference between mass and inertia or some other implausible that is well outside established theory? These people have the right to do the same. To be sure, their experiments aren't as well controlled as the hardcore physicists', but they don't have the money or the manpower to match that either. Wnt (talk) 20:04, 16 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Offsite recruiting[edit]

Please do not recruit your friends, family members, or communities of people who agree with you for the purpose of coming to Wikipedia and supporting your side of a debate. If you feel that a debate is ignoring your voice, remain civil, and seek comments from other Wikipedians or pursue dispute resolution. These are well-tested processes, designed to avoid the problem of exchanging bias in one direction for bias in another.

Excuse my curiosity, but where in the guidelines is telling your colleagues about how you are being treated forbidden? --Brian Josephson (talk) 18:32, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It isn't, but canvassing for support in a Wikipedia dispute is, including off-wiki canvassing: known by the rather ugly term of meatpuppetry. Spinning Spark 18:48, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

If you had made a neutral statement, it would not be a problem, but you didn't. For example, the issue of the identification of remote viewing as pseudoscience has been extensively discussed, the fact that it is generally considered such is robustly sourced, and we cannot, as you have been told, represent it otherwise, without violating our policies. I do think it is disturbing that a few editors seem to be egging you on. You need to be aware that Wikipedia is not the place to change the public or scientific perception of things. Guy (Help!) 19:20, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It's not clear who is being addressed here, but anyway your well-rehearsed ideas depend on a number of misconceptions. I will not waste my time going through the analysis again.
But I have a question to ask of those who criticise 'off-site recruiting'. There is a notorious individual who does engage in this practice, recruiting followers, and instructing them into how to use the guidelines to remove certain classes of material. Do you approve of this practice? If you do not, what do you suggest be done about this person and those that she has recruited to do this? --Brian Josephson (talk) 21:32, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Brian Josephson (talk · contribs) - the "guerilla scepticism group controlling Wikipedia" myth is a bizarre conspiracy theory. It perhaps isn't out of place alongside other crazy beliefs. But it's also clearly not true to anyone who knows how Wikipedia works. Barney the barney barney (talk) 21:47, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You mean that video is a hoax? Thank you so much for enlightening me!
However, I thought your answer was going to be 'recruiting people to remove anything supporting parapsychology is OK, but recruiting people to put in such material is not.' I'm sure you can find a guideline that asserts that very thing. --Brian Josephson (talk) 22:04, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

WP:FRINGE, WP:UNDUE, and WP:GEVAL for starters. Asking folks to remove pseudoscientific garbage is effectively no different than asking folks to join as long as they truly adhere to WP:NPOV.

And again, the idea of the group controlling Wikipedia is conspiracy theory -- the video doesn't "prove" that any such group controls Wikipedia, only that some scientifically minded folks are tired of bullshit being the only thing people get passionate about. Ian.thomson (talk) 22:20, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Brian, if you are talking about this video it is not a hoax [2]. The owner of that group is Sgerbic (talk · contribs). The groups edits are entirely in line with Wikipedia policy, they may "recruit" people to join Wikipedia but they do not employ meat puppetry because they understand Wikipedia policies and don't all edit the same articles at the same time like Targ was requesting for people to do off-Wikipedia. Everything they do they recorded on their blog [3]. They don't have many members and check their edit history - they have no "controversial" edits. What they actually do is create/edit articles for skeptical activists. It is indeed a conspiracy theory that their group is spending all their time editing paranormal or parapsychology related articles. I can't find a single parapsychology related article they have edited. They were nothing to do with the Sheldrake article and they are nothing to do with Targ's or any other parapsychologist. Goblin Face (talk) 23:02, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Sad, sad, sad! --Brian Josephson (talk) 08:05, 16 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I checked this with Susan Gerbic, she confirms that this article is not a focus of GSoW and GSoW has not been involved in it. As Goblin Face says, the project exists primarily to write well-referenced articles on prominent skeptics like David H. Gorski. Guy (Help!) 09:25, 16 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

'She would say that, wouldn't she?', as Mandy Rice-Davis would have put it. Here's comment on her recruitment video that may be closer to the truth:

Fundamentalist skeptic Susan Gerbic explains how her self-styled 'Guerrilla Skeptics' supported by the JREF and other skeptical foundations, operate to push their extreme agenda onto Wikipedia articles including astrology.
Gerbic's team focus on editing pages on 'fringe subjects' using biased sources such as dedicated skeptical magazines and books. Besides the paranormal, alternative medicine, spiritual and skeptical issues, astrology is also considered a fringe topic and a field where Gerbic herself, has edited on Wikipedia.
Contrary to the spirit and rules of Wikipedia, Gerbic admits to recruiting amenable new editors (known as meatpuppets). Her 90 editors (more recently claimed to be 120 in 17 languages) operate in covert collusion in secret Facebook groups. They advocate their personal beliefs by controlling Wikipedia articles, suppressing alternative views and by frustrating editors who do not support their extreme views.

I've not watched all of the video so I can't confirm that this is fair comment, but those remarks must have originated from something. And it is always possible that people who don't actually belong to the GS group are sympathetic and have adopted their methods. What one can say pretty categorically is that there are remarkable parallels between what is claimed in the quote above and what actually happens. --Brian Josephson (talk) 09:44, 16 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

That comment starts: Have you ever wondered why the astrology pages on Wikipedia are so biased?. Yup, apparently the problem is that Wikipedia does not accept the validity of astrology. Some might see this as a feature, not a bug.

If you're not capable of appreciating that whoever wrote that polemic very obviously has a dog in the fight, then I can't help you. The activities of GSoW are completely transparent, and fundamentally different from the situation here. GSoW exists to recruit people to edit Wikipedia and build articles on subjects of common interest (and often of little interest to non-skeptics), Targ's statement exists to recruit people to support him in a content dispute. Again, if you can't see the difference then I can't help you. And describing Susan as a fundamentalist? That's funny. I mean, really funny. As in off-the-wall crazy conspiracist bullshit funny. Oh, and incidentally? GSoW are not involved here anyway, so bashing them has no relevance! Guy (Help!) 11:18, 16 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Academic points, as are much that is said here. However, it is very possible that SG would not approve of what has been done to the Targ bio. Her activities are relevant however in that they have provided tools that less high-minded people might be tempted to make use of, and almost certainly have.
By the way, I have a sense that what has been happening here is leading to one of those (in)famous 'tipping points', and there will be interesting consequent developments. This should not be construed as a threat, by the way: the damage has been done by now and anything people may choose to do or not do at this stage in the game will have little influence on the outcome. --Brian Josephson (talk) 11:42, 16 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Attempts to turn this subject away from the issue at stake here are disingenuous at best. Even if this guerilla sceptic group were doing something wrong, it'd be a clear case of the pot calling the kettle black. Finally, if anyone can point to them inserting POV edits or original research or whatever, we'll look into that and deal with it appropriately. Let's get back onto the subject. Barney the barney barney (talk) 16:18, 16 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Off-wiki canvassing is as old as Wikipedia, as indeed are conspiracist accusations of skeptical skulduggery. It's basically the "pharma shill gambit", which is as old as public debate about quackery. As I said, Torgownik arguably did not know better, he does now, and your attempts to muddy the waters by asserting parity between editor recruitment for a shared topic area, and attempts to solicit support in an ongoing content dispute, are not appreciated, thanks all the same. Guy (Help!) 18:10, 16 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Both Josephson and Targ like Sheldrake are believers in psychic stuff and other pseudoscience and they don't like it that Wikipedia does not endorse these fringe subjects, so they will find a way of complaining about it (on or off Wikipedia) - but whatever they do will never work because Wikipedia does not endorse these pseudoscientific topics because it goes with what the reliable scientific sources WP:RS on the subject, not fringe parapsychology or "psychic" journals. Robert L. Park in his book Superstition: Belief in the Age of Science has written "Josephson has a long history of endorsing claims that most scientists would pass off as pseudoscience." In this same book Park describes Targ as a "remote-viewing crackpot physicist". Now as I understand it, Josephson and Targ have both claimed Wikipedia is defaming Targ but the issue has nothing to do with Wikipedia, their real issue seems to be with the scientific sources. Like I said above if they have an issue they should take it up with the sources. Their issue is not Wikipedia's problem. I won't waste anymore time discussing this because it is not productive. If Targ wants to come back after his block and edit articles (or his article) appropriately then I wish him all the best. Goblin Face (talk) 18:13, 16 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Well, yes, but that's not really the point. The issue here is trying to recruit support in a content dispute by posting an aggressively one-sided description of the dispute. We don't allow that, whoever does it. Guy (Help!) 19:02, 16 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for allowing me to re-enter the conversation. First of FIVE PILLARS OF WIKIPEDIA: “Wikipedia is written from a neutral point of view: We strive for articles that document and explain the major points of view, giving due weight with respect to their prominence in an impartial tone.” Those who don’t agree are “meat puppets.” The fact is that many scientists defiantly think the remote viewing is pseudoscience. In addition, many academic scientists strongly do not agree, and think it might be important. I would say the field of remote viewing is controversial. In the Wiki conversation, there is still animated talk about "clues in transcripts of our first 1973 experiment, with Pat Price." Charles Tart at UC Davis removed the clues, and -randomized- the transcripts, and independent judging obtained the same five-sigma results as the original SRI judge. Tart’s repair and re-evaluation is very well known, and his paper in Nature is on my Wiki bio page. Tart, C.T.; Puthoff, H.E.; — (13 March 1980). "Information transmission in remote viewing experiments". Matters Arising. Nature 284: 191. doi:10.1038/284191a0. PMID 7360248. There were no clues in transcripts for the next twenty years. The fact that Wikipedia is still excited about temporal clues in the transcripts shows their bias.You don’t need clues when Price is NAMING the remote target: In this experimental series he correctly calls out, “Pools of water, one rectangular, one circular; Hoover Tower; a large church; a boat dock with little boats; a botanical garden with a big crosswalk, etc.” With these data, why would a Wiki editor be excited about clues in the transcript, rather than a remarkable psychic policeman? Certainly a judge wouldn’t. Torgownik (talk) 19:26, 16 May 2014 (UTC)Russell Targ[reply]

Correct. And in matters of scientific inquiry, the neutral point of view is embodied by the scientific consensus. See the specific interpretation of the foundational policy on neutrality at WP:FRINGE and the arbitration committee's findings at WP:ARBPSCI. We have been here before, many times. Your belief in the work you did is obvious, but it is not shared by the scientific community generally. Guy (Help!) 19:54, 16 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The scientific community generally has not studied the evidence (typical is Weinberg's assertion that because he can't think of any way in which telepathy might occur it is not worth his taking time to review the evidence; again in correspondence with Dawkins the latter admitted that he hadn't studied the evidence). Because of this, the views of 'the scientific community generally' are of startlingly little relevance and policy should take this into account. --Brian Josephson (talk) 20:09, 16 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The scientific community in general accepts that there is no credible evidence to review. This is the case for psi generally. The proponents have failed to make their case convincingly, prosaic explanations are more parsimonious. You know all this. Guy (Help!) 21:48, 16 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

To take a break from all this dull policy battle: did you ever try a study where some of your readers were randomly chosen to get the sort of feedback I've seen in a documentary, where after finishing their drawings and text they visit the site and have a chance to look around and compare it with their predictions - but other readers are never, ever allowed to see what the right answer should be? This might be accomplished by having light, colorful, movable props that are brought into the site for one day. My expectation if remote viewing works is that third-party scorers with no knowledge of which person scored which site on which day, looking at the predictions as made on that day with no retroactive embellishments, should nonetheless find a significantly higher percentage of right answers from the readers who were going to see the right answer later on, but no improvement over chance for those who did not. In other words, I am especially skeptical that empty air can see without an eye. Wnt (talk) 20:17, 16 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Josephson in my personal book collection I have over 420 skeptical books on paranormal claims which I have collected for over twenty years, these books have been written by scientists going back to the 1860s. Daniel Loxton has traced publications refuting paranormal claims going back even further to the 17th century [4]. Please explain how scientists don't know the "evidence"? They do because if you search hard enough most paranormal or psychic claims have been debunked by various scientists that have bothered to investigate them but believers never bother to check up on this literature. Goblin Face (talk) 21:18, 16 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Targ as written on your biography Wikipedia article, see Marks, D.; Scott, C. (6 February 1986). "Remote viewing exposed". Correspondence. Nature 319 (6053): 444. Online here [5] which concludes the transcripts still contained cues. Marks and Scott wrote "considering the importance for the remote viewing hypothesis of adequate cue removal, Tart’s failure to perform this basic task seems beyond comprehension. As previously concluded, remote viewing has not been demonstrated in the experiments conducted by Puthoff and Targ, only the repeated failure of the investigators to remove sensory cues." You seem to be endorsing a magical psychic explanation for remote viewing experiments when a natural explanation is available. As Martin Bridgstock has written (also cited on your article) "From Occam's razor, it follows that if a straightforward natural explanation exists, there is no need for the spectacular paranormal explanation: Targ and Puthoff's claims are not justified." There's nothing else that's need to be said on this. Your psychic claims have been debunked by scientists, end of story. Goblin Face (talk) 21:18, 16 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Dear Goblin Face, I don't have Marks' article in front of me. If it is true that he says that Tart's paper was worthless because there are still clues, then he doesn't understand the judging, as I am sure you do not. Try the following: If there are significant time clues in the transcripts, then a judge can indeed determine the order of the trials, and match them to the transcripts. That is a valid criticism. Tart not only tried to remove all the clues, which he may or may not have done perfectly. But as an experimental psychology prof., I am confident that he was successful in properly -randomizing- the trial numbers and the transcript numbers. He just confirmed to me on the phone, that he did indeed do that randomization. So that even if all the clues were left in, it would be no help matching trails and transcripts. Please tell me that you understand that. Instead of just looking at your skeptical books on the shelf, why don't you take a look at some data! the picture pairs in my new book, "The Reality of ESP." Or take a look at the rv data at my website, espresearch.com. It will only hurt for a moment. Cheers, Torgownik (talk) 23:27, 16 May 2014 (UTC)Russell[reply]

Look at what Edison and Marconi did with electromagnetism. When you'll be able to do that with remote viewing/telepathy, you will have proven your case beyond any doubt. Or at least produce evidence for them comparable to the evidence for the theory of relativity. Meanwhile, you should get the million dollars from the Randi Foundation, that would give a huge boost to your credibility. About organized skepticism, that's what science is all about: prove your case beyond reasonable doubt and your theory gains scientific consensus, but if you fail to convince the organized skeptics you have lost the game. Tgeorgescu (talk) 00:22, 17 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Or this: take a list of US missing persons (missing for more than one year), select alphabetically first 1000 persons and you have one year to locate 800 of them (dead or alive) through remote viewing. That would be impressive. Tgeorgescu (talk) 09:58, 17 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hmmm, is this how it works?[edit]

Tgeorgescu's experiment won't work, of course, because even someone who can see can still lose something when he doesn't know where to look. This is or should be off topic, because WP shouldn't care whether we think something is possible, but as long as we're at it:

Define three separate locations: a stable of preaks who know only that they are trying to remote view stuff for an experiment, an overseer's shack where the scenes are laid out and scored, and the head office. In the latter two places no one need or should have any unusual "abilities".

In the stable, you have the preaks lined up trying to sketch a scene. To reduce the risk of highly undesirable witchy incidents, they are led to think they their "ability" is to be able to see a scene that already exists remotely, and do not realize they are remembering future events. They finish their sketches which are then taken to the overseer's shack for scoring.

In the overseer's shack, the scorers set up the scenes using light, colorful, distinctive props. It shouldn't be necessary to set up the scenes while the preaks are drawing their figures or while scoring, but it avoids potentially embarrassing questions and makes it easier to grade details in unexpected cases. The overseers reduce each preak's answers to a numerical score. The list of scores is then transmitted to the head office.

The head office has developed well in advance some simple algorithm to relate the input data to a list of preaks. Simple (bad) example, if they have ten preaks, they take the five numbers 1-10 drawn in a state lottery (though with the low level of accuracy, in reality they'd want a financial market of some sort) and pick those numbered preaks to be shown the scenes, but not the others. Given this method exists, when the head office receives the scores, they see which numbers correspond to the higher scores and bet on those numbers being more likely to come up in the lotto. Later, when the input numbers are known for sure, they send the list of preaks to pick to the overseers.

Now for the whole thing to work at all, the preaks whose numbers came up have to be taken to the overseers office afterward and have their time to wander around the scenes and "see what they got right" i.e. learn the scenes so they remember them earlier. Without genuinely "balancing the equation" in this way, the preaks should have had no idea what the scenes were supposed to be, so the lotto results would have been a bust.

Now if someone wanted to prove this works, they'd "tweet" a checksum of their list of scores, then ask Amazing Randi to "tweet" a list of numbers. Then they'd tweet the actual list of scores which can be verified to have that checksum, showing that - no matter what numbers Randi picked - the scores with those numbers were usually higher than the scores without. But I do wonder if science was the goal here - this was a largely secret program with practical goals, after all... does any of this seem like it's on the right track? Wnt (talk) 15:51, 17 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

practical shmactical, they were just setting up the premise for George Clooney to have a film 40 years later. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 15:59, 17 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Though obviously "further afield" than anyone here with its speculations, that was a great movie for many reasons, including knowing just where to end. I mean, you do not want to see what's on the other side of that wall. Wnt (talk) 16:08, 17 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

As a student of things psi, I suppose you already know that I and two others successfully forecast changes in the silver commodity market (December silver) in 1982, making $120,000. We were correct 9 out of 9 trials, for four conditions, up a lot, up a little, down a lot, or down a little. Odds of one in three-hundred thousand. Published in the Wall Street Journal and in a BBC Horizon documentary on the subject. When we make $1,000,000 I expect all references to "pseudoscience" to be removed. In 1995 we were successful 11 out of 12 trials, published in the JSE. But no money was involved. Torgownik (talk) 20:48, 17 May 2014 (UTC)Russell Targ[reply]

There are people who became rich through the stock market, but in general they do not claim to have paranormal abilities. So, just making a million dollars at the stock exchange is no proof of the reality of the paranormal. A real challenge would be getting the million dollars from Randi, since he only grants it upon proving real paranormal abilities. Tgeorgescu (talk) 23:21, 17 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding the silver market 1982 event where allegedly $120,000 was obtained from paranormal ability by the psychic Keith "Blue Harary" there has been some skepticism about this (even from Keith himself?) as there was no replication. See for example Harary, K. (1992). The goose that laid the silver eggs: A criticism of psi and silver futures forecasting. Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 86, 375–409 which asserts "that all such interpretations are based on flawed logic and misinformation about the nature and results of the original effort." [6]. I have not read his paper but it looks interesting. The parapsychologist J. E. Kennedy who briefly mentions the event (in a 2003 paper on psi in the The Journal of Parapsychology) writes "interpersonal relationships of those involved deteriorated significantly". What does he mean by that? I then read an old article in the Skeptical Inquirer from Martin Gardner in 1989 which claims "Harary has now sued Targ over the latter's "National ESP Test" in Omni magazine, claiming that by linking his name to it, Targ has invaded his privacy and held him up to the ridicule of his peers." Whatever the outcome here was is does not look that positive. As the magician Henry Gordon wrote regarding the alleged silver market prediction "As with most psychic claims, there is little documentation to back them up". I see no documentation. It is just another unconfirmed anecdote the sort that fill's all kinds of paranormal books. Certainly not scientific repeatable evidence for anything "psychic". Nice try though! Goblin Face (talk) 02:10, 18 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

There arguments are becoming absurd. I didn't say I am rich because I am a good investor. I said we used "associative remote viewing' nine weeks in a row to psychically determine in advance each week what the market would be doing a week in later, and posted the info to our broker, for investment. Odds of about one in a million. No. It was not my lucky day. I believe that you simply don't want to accept that series of events. James Spottiswoode, a physicist living in LA got all five of the fantasy five lotto using a similar remote viewing strategy, with several viewers. Odds of one in half a million. "Telling me that lots of people make money in the market without ESP" is stupid, head in he sand arguing that I have now dealt with for months. Dealing with Wikipedia is like dealing with the Russians. You guys want to diminish Me even when it is irrelevant. Why would Wiki editors keep snipping away at my early work on lasers. What's the point? The first laser operation was on May 16, 1960. I published a pioneering 1962 paper on coherent detection with lasers, which is the basis of an industry. There is a company using my stuff, called Coherent Technology. In 1963 I published work I did (with Gerald Grosof) on laser amplifiers in 1958-59 two years before before there were any lasers. Why don't you want me to be a laser pioneer. I was hired in 1957 to work on lasers, by Gordon Gould who became the patent holder for the laser in the late 1980s, based on my 1963 amplifier paper. But I don't care about that. It's just a symptom. Why would you keep deleting the indisputably interesting fact that my wife Joan Fischer Targ was the sister of the best chess player in the world. Wouldn't your Wiki readers find that interesting? Bobby Fisher and "laser pioneer" had been in my bio for at least a year before the Wiki trolls got interested me and my bio. It is indisputable that you are all snipping away at my life because you can't stand that there is world-wide interest in remote viewing. Within a decade modern physics will figure out how it works, and then you will all go away, back into your mother's basement. Why would you keep going after Bobby, my laser work, and gratuitously insulting my published remote viewing work? We all know that Marks' criticism of our first 1973 trials was answered by Tart's -randomizing- (not sanitizing) the transcripts, published in Nature. Do you know the difference? No one disputes that. But you have pages of nonsense from Marks and the absurd Amazing Randi. I don't care about that nonsense, since most people know it is not true. How many Wiki trolls have published major papers in Nature and the IEEE? No other ESP research is smeared with "Pseudoscience". Robert Jahn published 450 remote viewing trials in the Proc. IEEE describing has amazing six-sigma result in his 1982 paper. He is quietly retired, so Wiki has no interest in trashing his bio page, similarly Ed May, Marilyn Schlitz, Hal Puthoff, Stephan A. Schwartz and Dean Radin, all good remote viewing researchers, are all completely left alone. There are more than 100 published and refereed papers dealing with remote viewing. This is not the flat earth society. There are 700,000 pages on Google dealing with "remote viewing" applications. I would like you to please restore Bobby Fischer, and "Laser pioneer," because they a true part of my life, and belong on a bio page. And I would like you to get rid of the inappropriate and demeaning "pseudoscience". I would like to know what caused the recent interest by Wiki editors trashing Russell Targ's bio page. Is that a fair question? Torgownik (talk) 00:43, 18 May 2014 (UTC)Russell Targ <russ at targ.co>[reply]

"its interesting" is not the criteria for an encyclopedia. What impact did having Fischer as a brother in law have on you? What influence did having you as a brother in law make on Fischer? Without that, its just trivia. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 02:30, 18 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

'the criteria' -- what kind of English is that? Being comprehensive is one criterion, certainly (see http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/encyclopedia). --Brian Josephson (talk) 08:55, 18 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Bobby became greatly interested in psychic abilities and mind control after seeing my SRI results and the ESP teaching machine we had at home. I spent 15 years hanging out with Bobby before the match, and I was very instrumental in actually getting him on the plane to play in Iceland. (Free app from apple store known as "ESP Trainer.") It's free. You might find it interesting, developed by me for NASA. During the world championship in Iceland, the Russians took Bobby's chair apart for fear of ESP activity. I was an adult and he was a teenager when we first met. He was certainly part of my life. You may not be interested, but the Russians delayed the match for a day because of the fear of hidden ESP. He definitely affected my children to try and excel as he did. You may say it is trivial. But I spent 15 years assisting the greatest chess player the world has ever seen, to achieve his goal. It was certainly meaningful to me. Cheers, Torgownik (talk)Russell

for Wikipedia, we need reliable sources to have commented upon these impacts - can you point us to some? otherwise, you can write about it all you want on your personal blog and in your autobiography. But those are different beasts with different purposes and different requirements than we have here for the encyclopedia article we are writing.-- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 03:34, 18 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

About the data for the silver experiments. I do not have the trading slips. However they were photographed by BBC in their documentary "The Case of ESP" 1983. It shows my broker going through the nine forecasts and trades one by one on camera. Very clearly documented. The film cam be seen on Google. Torgownik (talk)Russell <russ at targ.co>

I'm really not much of a student of these things, and I really appreciate this kind of interesting detail. We definitely should get in everything that there is sourcing for, including of course the synopsis of any BBC documentary. I'm sure the peanut gallery can find good sourcing for claims it wasn't persuasive, and of course they should feel free to add their sources too - but not to hold their own little tribunal about which sources are right. When people are hostile toward including the most basic duh-obvious-this-belongs-in-a-bio items like what your wife's family is, that's something seriously wrong! Wnt (talk) 03:08, 18 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

One thing I recommend to the subject of any biography having troubles here is to explore Wikimedia Commons. It isn't necessary to actually use an item in an article to upload it to Commons. If there is anything interesting you have that you'd like to free-license, whether it's something as mundane as a snapshot of yourself (it'd be really cool to have one of you with Bobby Fischer!) or as useful as a free preprint of one of your papers, I'd love to have Commons be able to host it. Wnt (talk) 03:13, 18 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

No problem including good sources, however credulous. But we do not look at favoured examples and conclude that it's not pseudoscience, because that would be WP:OR. We have good sources for the term pseudoscience and the problem here the same as for all "psi" claims: there is no remotely plausible mechanism by which this could work, and no decent evidence that clairvoyance and other purported "psi" abilities exist - properly blinded and controlled experiments which are not run by proponents, pretty much never back the claims. You'll get pseudoscience removed when the scientific community concludes it's not pseudoscience, which requires that it can be reliably independently replicated by non-believers. The suggestion above is good: when you've claimed the JREF million dollars, you'll have a better chance. Marks, Gardner, Wiseman and Hines all describe it as pseudoscience, I'm afraid that overwhelms the claims by the inventor that it is not. The BBC sources date back to the early popular interest following declassification, they are fine to include but clearly superseded by the later failed replications and other methodological criticisms. There's also the rather obvious fact that if it genuinely, reliably and repeatably worked, we would not even be having this argument. Guy (Help!) 11:15, 18 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Wnt, there are some BBC programmes (as well as programmes by other UK TV channels) that take the view that there is good evidence for psi. There's absolutely no point in indicating what they are though, as even without being psychic we can predict that a reason (suddenly not RS, favoured example ... you name it) will be found for not including it. --Brian Josephson (talk) 14:25, 18 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Well, just because this article has been hit with a crusade doesn't mean that it can't be rebalanced again. We have some strong issues and should be able to turn the tide on this, provided we do so judiciously. Wnt (talk) 15:03, 18 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

What about a section on the popular press? What is the consensus on adding some discussion of the general (non scientific) reaction to and discussion of Targ's work? Although not scientific support and possibly dated this is material directly relevant to the subject of the article. Targ and his work were of interest to the general public. A separate section discussing popular reaction might be a way to include some content advocates are seeking while not presenting material as serious scientific consideration. A key to remember is that the article on Targ should remain tightly focused on Targ, more general discussion of RV belongs in that article. I'd like to see a new section with comments on this proposal. - - MrBill3 (talk) 15:21, 18 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Brother in law[edit]

Targ and Fischer's relationship led to interactions that were covered by media (international relations, visa, etc.) This probably supports inclusion. - - MrBill3 (talk) 04:03, 18 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Reference: Sands, David R. (31 August 2004). "Kin boosts Fischer's bid to gain German passport". The Washington Times – via HighBeam Research. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |subscription= ignored (|url-access= suggested) (help) - - MrBill3 (talk) 06:20, 18 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Good. I'd also see it in the following terms. The question is simply this: is the fact that Targ's brother-in-law was Bobby Fischer an interesting fact? I think many people would find the connection interesting (it is probably why the relationship between Dirac and Wigner was included), and if this is so this is sufficient reason for inclusion. --Brian Josephson (talk) 08:28, 18 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

During the eight months that George W. Bush had Bobby incarcerated in a Japanese jail, for playing chess in Yugoslavia, I was in constant communications with his Japanese wife and lawyer, trying to get him released to travel to Iceland, or anywhere else. I sent the Japanese a ton of personal documents about his parents and relationship to Joan, etc. I had a relationship with Bobby for 15 years, and even was involved in the struggle to get him on the plane to play in Iceland. I think you guys have a lot of nerve to challenge my relationship to a family member. And if you still have doubt about the silver experiment, you can check the article by Erik Larson in the 10/22, 1984 WSJ. "Did psychic powers give firm a killing on Wall Street." You wont like that either. You should also do due diligence by looking up Pat Price's very accurate description of spheres and a giant crane at Semipalatinsk. You will find that much more interesting the the BS that you are publishing from Marks. Price's accomplishment is all over the Internet. Have you found anyone yet, to explain the difference between randomizing the transcripts which entirely solves the "clues problem," as compared with removing clues? It looks to me as though you are very good at reading the skeptical literature, but not so interested in the scientific papers you are trashing. I had to wait until my ninth book to say we had "A physicist's proof for psychic abilities" because now the data are overwhelming. If you can't see that, it's because you haven't looked at the data. It's more fun to throw rocks and break windows. Russell --Torgownik (talk) 05:35, 18 May 2014 (UTC).[reply]

I agree. It's a fact that doesn't take up too much space, and apparently it's a WP:NOTINHERITED (which is WP:NOTPOLICY but that's ignored). Essentially, torgownik (talk · contribs) it comes down to the ideal that a Wikipedia article is a prize given to deserving individuals, and therefore you cannot be "deserving" by being related to someone, and therefore any mentions of your relations must be removed. It's silly and infantile, but that's Wikipedia for you. Barney the barney barney (talk) 10:10, 18 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

"its interesting" is not the measurement for encyclopedia content. the efforts and impact on his release and travel, on the other hand, if appropriately documented, would be appropriate. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 12:51, 18 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

As TRPoD said, "it's interesting" is not the standard for encyclopedic content. But if something has been notable enough for substantial coverage in the press it should certainly be considered. Also an article should provide enough information to give a reader a reasonably complete understanding of it's subject. I think an this article shows both media attention and provides understanding of the subject. Wallace, Bruce (30 July 2004). "Jailed chess legend says he's German". The Record (Special from the Los Angeles Times). Bergen Co., NJ – via HighBeam Research. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |subscription= ignored (|url-access= suggested) (help)

'Bobby has said a number of really disgraceful anti-Semitic, un-American things,' said Targ, who has been estranged from Fischer since separating from his sister, Joan, in 1992. 'He has disgraced himself as an American. But nobody else involved in that chess match has been punished. As a lifetime member of the American Civil Liberties Union, I don't think he should be in prison for playing chess. And as his brother-in-law, I feel honor-bound to help him,' Targ said.

This article shows continued media attention on the relationship. Nicholas, Peter (21 September 2009). "Chasing the king of chess". Los Angeles Times. There was significant coverage of Targ's activities on behalf of Fischer at the time, if someone wants more refs they are available. - - MrBill3 (talk) 13:26, 18 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Significant minority opinion[edit]

I think Marks 1981 piece published by Nature and Alcock's 1988 analysis published by the National Academies Press provide the explanations that the mainstream scientific consensus rests on. I'd be interested in later papers with publication by major reliable publishers that present another view and something demonstrating significant consideration by scientists or academics of notable repute. That RV has been considered pseudoscience by mainstream science is well documented, but if substantial debate is occurring in the academic community it warrants mention at least as a significant minority opinion published in reliable sources. - - MrBill3 (talk) 06:36, 18 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Here's a reference (a U. of Texas Ph.D. thesis rather than a book) that seems to fit the bill (no pun intended!): "Is physicalism "really" true?" by Paul H. Smith, dated 2009. Here the evidence for RV and other paranormal claims is analysed in considerable detail. In the light of what has been said here, it is worth quoting this extract:

When the first edition of Marks’ and Kamman’s Psychology of the Psychic was published in 1980, there may have been some reason to question the original remote viewing research and replications, since there was still only a relatively small number of 212 trials (certainly not yet even 200) available in only a few publicly accessible studies. However, by the time Marks published the second edition of the book in 2000 (some years after Kamman’s death), there was much less justification – and justification has grown even less in the intervening years since that time.

--Brian Josephson (talk) 08:22, 18 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The opinions of the parapsychologist or "psychic" Paul H. Smith were already suggested by the banned Wikipedia user Ben Steigmann on Targ's facebook page [7]. It's not a reliable source and it represents an extreme minority fringe opinion. You can contact Paul here but he has not been active on Wikipedia for a few years Phsmith (talk · contribs). Read his user page - he is a president of the non-profit "International Remote Viewing Association" founded by Targ and others. He is not a scientist, has close connections to Targ and is certainly not "neutral" on this subject. Goblin Face (talk) 10:02, 18 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I thought Ph.D. theses (if accepted by the university) are normally considered reliable. You surprise me! But I know by now that wikipedia is a surreal operation. I prefer the opinions of the University of Texas at Austin, a highly esteemed institution I believe. I see w'pedia says The university has been labeled one of the "Public Ivies," a publicly funded university considered as providing a quality of education comparable to those of the Ivy League. --Brian Josephson (talk) 11:13, 18 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The fact that the "other voices" consist of a single thesis paper, for a philosophy degree, reinforces that there is no "significant minority" voice within the scientific community that is not being represented in our article.-- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 12:48, 18 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'm afraid that Heidegger said something like "If you carefully choose your assumptions, you get able to prove anything." So much for philosophy establishing objective facts. Not that philosophers would be a priori unable to identify objective facts, but as long as there is freedom to pick their assumptions, philosophy cannot provide anything similar to scientific consensus. Tgeorgescu (talk) 14:14, 18 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

And had Heidegger been a frustrated wikipedia editor, he'd have been saying similar things about w'pedia, e.g. 'if you carefully choose your interpretation of the rules, you can make a w'pedia article come out any way you like'. --Brian Josephson (talk) 14:29, 18 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The suggestion that a single PhD thesis in psychology constitutes significant serious discussion in the academic community of the scientific validity of RV seems disingenuous. Claims that interpretation of WP PAG is being stretched to achieve the POV of particular editors are likely to WP:BOOMERANG. I hope that some more substantial serious academic debate can be found and pointed to. The inclusion of significant minority views as due improves articles. It is notable that since the Nature article in the 1970s it doesn't seem the major academic journals have found RV research suitable for publication. - - MrBill3 (talk) 15:32, 18 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Well, there is an official statement from Jimbo on quackery which might apply here, namely "If you can get your work published in respectable scientific journals - that is to say, if you can produce evidence through replicable scientific experiments, then Wikipedia will cover it appropriately." Besides there were arbitrations upon pseudoscience which state what counts as pseudoscience for Wikipedia, see Wikipedia:ARBPS#Principles. So, no, we don't handle Mr. Targ differently than other scientists who offered no plausible explanation for the claims and whose experiments cannot be independently reproduced. If someone is needing to be convinced that the parapsychology isn't pseudoscience that is the scientific community; convince the scientific community and Wikipedia will diligently record the sweeping change in scientific consensus. Tgeorgescu (talk) 15:24, 18 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Any word of a successor program?[edit]

One of the biggest detractions from remote viewing is that the program was cancelled in 1995. But ... how often do spy agencies announce the cancellation of programs? The only other example I can think of is with mass surveillance - every other year a news story comes out about some program, they say they cancelled it, libertarians rejoice, and then a couple of years later they find out that a bigger, more invasive program doing the same thing was added or in place already.

The need for a more technologically advanced successor program, run by computer programmers, would have been obvious enough by 1995. Something like [8] points out that web-based experiments rapidly surpass any others as a means of getting recruits to studies... and that's voluntary recruits. You look at where any major internet site is (generally one of the server farms in northern Virginia) and there's generally a building of some agency known to do spying right next door. This gives the U.S. government a lot of power to intercept web sessions and replace content on the fly, yet I've not seen a single story busting them for doing this yet. But that power would be ideal for this kind of study. Say they have 100,000 precs who read Google News front page now and then. If the price of silver went up, they replace one of the top articles with a trial update about some lady who cooked her baby in a microwave, if down, one about anti-aging research. The day before that, they look at how many of those people Googled about microwaves or babies (compared to the long-term profile they have on everyone based on IP/MAC/user-agents), and how many about health topics.

I'm thinking at some point someone should have let something slip, and there'd be a way for WP to legitimately help disseminate some interesting facts. Wnt (talk) 14:56, 18 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, Torgownik. We welcome your contributions to Wikipedia, but if you are affiliated with some of the people, places or things you have written about in the article Russell Targ, you may have a conflict of interest.

All editors are required to comply with Wikipedia's neutral point of view content policy. People who are very close to a subject often have a distorted view of it, which may cause them to inadvertently edit in ways that make the article either too flattering or too disparaging. People with a close connection to a subject are not absolutely prohibited from editing about that subject, but they need to be especially careful about ensuring their edits are verified by reliable sources and writing with as little bias as possible.

If you are very close to a subject, here are some ways you can reduce the risk of problems:

Avoid or exercise great caution when editing or creating articles related to you, your organization, or its competitors, as well as projects and products they are involved with.
Avoid linking to the Wikipedia article or website of your organization in other articles (see Wikipedia:Spam).
Exercise great caution so that you do not accidentally breach Wikipedia's content policies.

Please familiarize yourself with relevant content policies and guidelines, especially those pertaining to neutral point of view, verifiability of information, and autobiographies.

For information on how to contribute to Wikipedia when you have a conflict of interest, please see our frequently asked questions for organizations. Propose changes on Talk first. MrBill3 (talk) 17:27, 18 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

OTHER OPINIONS: If you Wikipedia editors have any tiny spark of integrity, you should include the following, which is the other half of the famous CIA sponsored AIR report, which I am sure you all know about. Jessica Utts is a statistics Professor at the University of California, Irvine, and is president of the American Statistical Association. In writing for her part of a 1995 evaluation of our work for the CIA in the AIR report, she wrote: “Using the standards applied to any other area of science, it is concluded that psychic functioning has been well established. The statistical results of the studies examined are far beyond what is expected by chance. Arguments that these results could be due to methodological flaws in the experiments are soundly refuted.… Remote viewing has been conceptually replicated across a number of laboratories, by various experimenters, and in different cultures. This is a robust effect that, were it not such an unusual domain, would no longer be questioned by science as a real phenomenon. It is unlikely that methodological flaws could account for its remarkable consistency.” I will be looking for some part of this to appear on my bio page. If not, I will just assume that you have no interest at all in presenting the truth. Torgownik (talk) 20:53, 18 May 2014 (UTC)Russell[reply]

Jessica Utts similar to yourself is a big believer in psychic topics, her position does not represent the mainstream scientific consensus. Utts is a parapsychologist and when it comes to psychic stuff most of her papers are published in paranormal journals, not science. Ray Hyman has refuted her paranormal claims [9], [10]. There is no reason to mention it on your article, she is mentioned elsewhere on Wikipedia (including the main remote viewing article). Goblin Face (talk) 21:58, 18 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I would like you to please think about what you have just written. Is it the purpose of Wikipedia to denigrate psi on the Internet? Jessica Utts is unquestionably a world-class scientist who is interested in the statics of psi research. You seem to be saying that because she is not a psi antagonist like all the other Wiki reviewers, then she may not comment of my bio page. This is pretty serious, if you are saying that only the skeptical position can be represented on Wikipedia. Torgownik (talk) 22:32, 18 May 2014 (UTC)Russell[reply]

Dear Wikipedia, I have carefully read your comments above. Let me make certain that I understand your position. You have said that the well-known lifelong retired skeptic Ray Hyman can write anything he likes on my bio page, to denigrate and ridicule remote viewing. But Jessics Utts, an internationally respected president of the American Statistical Assn. may not comment because she is not a skeptic, even though she and Hyman co-wrote the AIR document you are quoting from, on my bio page. I understand, of course, that it is really your bio page. Please tell me if I have that right? At the moment there is No non-skeptical voice on this supposedly informative bio page. Does that represent Wikipedia's balanced and neutral view from the so-called "five pillars" of a good encyclopedia? Or is there simply an agreed upon Wiki policy to trash anything that sounds psychic? Torgownik (talk) 23:22, 18 May 2014 (UTC)Russell[reply]

Should I just give up? Goblin Face said that the trouble with my work is that there is no replication. Don't I know what the scientific method is? I replied that six years after my big paper in the 1976 IEEE Robert Jahn at Princeton did a much larger study with hundreds of students as viewers, and got significant of a billion to one. A thousand times more significant than we reported. Six sigma instead of 4 sigma. Goblin said, "I am done talking with you. No one ever replicated Jahn's 1982 IEEE work!" This seems endless John's research has never been criticized. He and we didn't repeat the errors of the 1974 Nature paper. So what's the problem with Jahn's IEEE paper as a Wiki reference? Jahn, R., The persistent paradox of psychic phenomena: An engineering perspective, 1982, Proceedings of the IEEE, 70, pp. 136-170. Torgownik (talk) 20:08, 19 May 2014 (UTC)Russell[reply]

Warning[edit]

You are welcome to fix unambiguous and uncontroversial errors of fact on your article. You may not directly add material that is or is likely to be contentious. You already know this, so consider this a warning: if you continue to add contentious material to the article Russell Targ (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) then you may be blocked from editing. Guy (Help!) 22:07, 18 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Jessica Utts similar to yourself is a big believer in psychic topics, her position does not represent the mainstream scientific consensus. Utts is a parapsychologist and when it comes to psychic stuff most of her papers are published in paranormal journals, not science. Ray Hyman has refuted her paranormal claims [9], [10]. There is no reason to mention it on your article, she is mentioned elsewhere on Wikipedia (including the main remote viewing article). Goblin Face (talk) 21:58, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

I would like you to please think about what you have just written. Is it the purpose of Wikipedia to denigrate psi on the Internet? Jessica Utts is unquestionably a world-class scientist who is interested in the statics of psi research. You seem to be saying that because she is not a psi antagonist like all the other Wiki reviewers, then she may not comment of my bio page. This is pretty serious, if you are saying that only the skeptical position can be represented on Wikipedia. Torgownik (talk) 22:32, 18 May 2014 (UTC)Russell

Dear Wikipedia, I have carefully read your comments above. Let me make certain that I understand your position. You have said that the well-known lifelong retired skeptic Ray Hyman can write anything he likes on my bio page, to denigrate and ridicule remote viewing. But Jessics Utts, an internationally respected president of the American Statistical Assn. may not comment because she is not a skeptic, even though she and Hyman co-wrote the AIR document you are quoting from, on my bio page. I understand, of course, that it is really your bio page. Please tell me if I have that right? At the moment there is No non-skeptical voice on this supposedly informative bio page. Does that represent Wikipedia's balanced and neutral view from the so-called "five pillars" of a good encyclopedia? Or is there simply an agreed upon Wiki policy to trash anything that sounds psychic? Torgownik (talk) 23:22, 18 May 2014 (UTC)Russell

I am well convinced that the Utts article needs to be referenced. I haven't decided precisely how to present it yet. It should be clear that the American Institutes for Research had both Utts and Hyman write on the SRI experiments. Now I personally find Utts' presentation rather frustrating on reading it, because she says that the methodological flaws in the 1973-1975 experiments were corrected, but doesn't seem to say exactly when they were corrected and what the good data set is, and then goes on to calculate statistics based on runs in which cues might have been responsible for all or much of the effect. Nonetheless, the way that Wikipedia usually does things is that we look at a reliable source and print what they say, rather than evaluating it for ourselves. I see no earthly harm in saying Utts said this and Hyman said that.

I should add that by far the most intriguing part of Utts' article was her description of "remote staring" or "remote observation" experiments. Conceptually, this would appear to work at what might or might not be called the "retrocognitive" end of a backward transmission of memory, which otherwise seems neglected in the published research. The experiment, in which the viewer has a monitor turned on and off randomly, seems like it at least could be very well controlled. The article currently doesn't cover RO, and that's a deficiency we should fix. And of course, there's the aspect that everyone knows the "feeling of being watched", which in an ideal world would save a person from being dismissed out of hand before the data is in.

Now I'm sorry, but I do also have to ask -- an ideal population under controlled conditions, not likely to be complicit in the potential schemes of a crooked experimenter, would be a group of goats kept around for research or training at some nearby facility where their reactions could be observed. Now that I realize it would actually make sense: Did anyone really try remote staring at goats? Wnt (talk) 07:36, 19 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

WHAT DID JESSICA WRITE: No matter how passionate the anti-ESP bias of Wikipedia, the following is the statement you should quote, to parallel the nonsense of Ray Hyman from the same report. Here is what Jessica wrote in her introduction to the AIR report describing our work at SRI. Jessica Utts is a statistics Professor at the University of California, Irvine, and is president-ELECT of the American Statistical Association. In writing for her part of a 1995 evaluation of our work for the CIA, she wrote: “Using the standards applied to any other area of science, it is concluded that psychic functioning has been well established. The statistical results of the [SRI] studies examined are far beyond what is expected by chance. Arguments that these results could be due to methodological flaws in the experiments are soundly refuted.… Remote viewing has been conceptually replicated across a number of laboratories, by various experimenters, and in different cultures. This is a robust effect that, were it not such an unusual domain, would no longer be questioned by science as a real phenomenon. It is unlikely that methodological flaws could account for its remarkable consistency.” I think you should quote this, as the only affirmative thing on the entire page. You couldn't have a more authoritative source than Utts. It is part of the same report that you quote with such glee from Ray Hyman. Torgownik (talk) 15:56, 19 May 2014 (UTC)Russell[reply]

On my bio page there is an editorial request for a citation pertaining my paper on "Coherent detection with Lasers." That citation is already on the bottom of page, as the first laser paper, with Rabinowitz et al. Under the Precognition heading. There is a statement saying approximately that "there is no reference to Targ's claim that money was made using ESP in the silver futures market." The truth is that The The Wall Street Journal wrote a long article about this experimental series. Also NOVA in 1984. In the WSJ, Erik Larson, "Did Psychic Powers Give Firm A Killing In The Silver Market?" Wall Street Journal, October 22, 1984. Torgownik (talk) 16:41, 19 May 2014 (UTC)Russell[reply]

Targ - do you know what the scientific method is? You know science is about repeatability, right? :) Well those remote viewing experiments that Utts talks about were never independently replicated, certainly not by neutral scientists and many of them contained methodological flaws or sensory leakage issues (see James Alock and Ray Hyman's comments on this). If those experiments really had been replicated and did not contain flaws then science would have embraced psychic remote viewing, and the subject of remote viewing would be all around the world in the top scientific journals not in pseudoscientific parapsychology ones. As you know (you don't need to be a psychic to know this) no such thing has happened. Ray Hyman explains the situation When we examine the basis of Utts’s strong claim for the existence of psi, we find that it relies on a handful of experiments that have been shown to have serious weaknesses after undergoing careful scrutiny, and another handful of experiments that have yet to undergo scrutiny or be successfully replicated. What seems clear is that the scientific community is not going to abandon its fundamental ideas about causality, time, and other principles on the basis of a handful of experiments whose findings have yet to be shown to be replicable and lawful." [11] As it currently stands we already have other articles that mention this i.e. Stargate Project and I don't think we need Hyman or Utts sourced to your article. However, sources on the silver market will be added at some point as some have been located. Goblin Face (talk) 18:17, 19 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

(ec)Well, I'm starting with [12], which explains who Utts is and gives the overall conclusion of the report. Where your quote is concerned, I'd prefer to be able to work it in with some back and forth between Utts and the skeptics on specific experiments, i.e. to show that trial X addressed the complaints and was cleared by Utts as methodologically sound, and I haven't worked out which that is true of at this point. Wnt (talk) 18:22, 19 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Dear Goblin Face. Yes. I do know what the scientific method is. I worked thirty years in aerospace and published dozens of papers in the best non-esp journals With regard to the repeatability of remote viewing: I have cited several times on these pages, the 34 page review paper by Dean Robert Jahn, head of plasma physics at Princeton University, in the Feb. 1982 Proc. IEEE, describing his experimental protocol of remote viewing as a function of time in the future. In 450 remote viewing trials he publishes an overall probability of one in billion. "THE PERSISTENT PARADOX OF PSYCHIC PHENOMENA: AN ENGINEERING PERSPECTIVE." He found remote viewing to have an accuracy that is time independent. That's why physicists find it so interesting. Our 1076 IEEE paper has a formal remote viewing experiment with LIFE photographer Hella Himmid. The double blind, randomized results are even more significant than Pat Price's trials criticized by Marks. No one has ever criticized our work with Hella. Odds of one in a million. Our IEEE paprer is a replication of the much criticized work in the 1974 Nature paper, with even better results. There are many dozens of replications in JASPR, and Proc. SSE, etc. Does that answer your question? Torgownik (talk) 18:54, 19 May 2014 (UTC)Russell[reply]

Targ, I respect your early scientific work and I wish you the best of luck with Wikipedia and your psychic studies but I will no longer be communicating with you over these matters. The fringe sources that you suggest will not be included in your Wikipedia article never ever, because it is not reliable sources, it is pseudoscience and against Wikipedia policy. You repeatedly cite the same pseudoscience over and over - if you bothered to read the scientific literature you would realize all the psychic stuff you are citing has been debunked. Robert G. Jahn similar to yourself may have done some early physics work and should be respected for this, but he gave that up to be a parapsychologist and his work on parapsychology has been described by physicists as an "embarrassment" (check the sources on his article for this i.e. Professor Robert L. Park and Milton Rothman). None of his parapsychology experiments have been replicated by the scientific community. All of his psychic studies at the PEAR lab contained flaws (See Park's criticisms). You can read about this in various scientific sources that debunk paranormal claims (see Massimo Pigliucci's book on pseudoscience). Let's not waste anymore time discussing this as it is not productive. Goblin Face (talk) 19:41, 19 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Should I just give up? Goblin Face said that the trouble with my work is that there is no replication. Don't I know what the scientific method is? I replied that six years after my big paper in the 1976 IEEE Robert Jahn at Princeton did a much larger study with hundreds of students as viewers, and got significant of a billion to one. A thousand times more significant than we reported. Six sigma instead of 4 sigma. Goblin said, "I am done talking with you. No one ever replicated Jahn's 1982 IEEE work!" This seems endless John's research has never been criticized. He and we didn't repeat the errors of the 1974 Nature paper. So what's the problem with Jahn's IEEE paper as a Wiki reference? Jahn, R., The persistent paradox of psychic phenomena: An engineering perspective, 1982, Proceedings of the IEEE, 70, pp. 136-170. Torgownik (talk) 20:08, 19 May 2014 (UTC)Russell Torgownik (talk) 20:11, 19 May 2014 (UTC)Russell[reply]

WARNING: Good I am ready for a warning. For the past several weeks I have been correcting my start at Lockheed on my bio page. I am absolutely certain that I started work at the Lockheed R&D Lab in Palo Alto in 1985, right after I was released from the hospital. Wiki insists it is 1986. Why would you do that? As soon as I correct it back to 1985, some passionate editor changes it to the incorrect year. I think this is indicative of much of the mindless insane editing I see frequently on my bio page. You keep claiming on the bio page that there is No evidence for our silver forecasting. Yet you will not look at the lengthy Wall Street Journal citation to the silver forecasting. Why is that. You keep claiming that there were no replication. Yet you will not look at the formidable replication by Robert Jahn in the IEEE. I would like an answer to these questions please. Torgownik (talk) 23:48, 19 May 2014 (UTC)Russell[reply]

I was able to find these sources, sort of [13][14]. But a summary of the silver forecasting that I'd make wouldn't be altogether favorable, since both sources agree that after the nine predictions, some people lost a kaboodle of money on the next two going wrong. Beyond that (just speculation; I wouldn't add it) how monotonic was the price move on silver? With silver, weren't there long periods when you could just about count on it going up every week? Even though I've tended to credit the existence of precognition (e.g. as an explanation for free will), to be honest, the ability of Delphi Associates to actually collect a commission when they were right, coupled with the limited nature of the data, leaves me needing a lot more convincing. (My desire here is to persuade you to do this convincing) Wnt (talk) 05:13, 20 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. We were successful for the nine trials in year one. The following year the investor wanted to do trials twice a week. That meant that the viewer didn't get feedback for trial one, until after he did trial two. That did not work. So its like we have a powerful machine with a loose screw. That doesn't mean that there is no machine. In 1995 we did remote viewing for the future of silver, in which Jane katra, a PhD healer and I were the viewers. We went 11 correct our of 12 trials.no money traded. Published in the JSE. Torgownik (talk) 06:12, 20 May 2014 (UTC)Russell[reply]

Interesting - thanks. But you know I have to ask - anyone reading would want to know - if this approach works, why not trade money on it, run it year in and year out with lots of readers in a Google-sized corporation, until you're richer than Plutus? And prove its validity at the same time. Wnt (talk) 06:20, 20 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

As a result of our silver forecasting success, many other people followed that path. Hal Puthoff made about $250,000 using associative remote viewing ARV, with several viewers to support his kid's school. Physicist James Spottiswooode in LA correctly picked all the numbers for the "Fantasy Five, with a large group of cooperating viewers.". And a 250 person Organization, IRVA.org, International Remote Viewing Association meets annually in Las Vegas to discuss applications of remote viewing in markets, police work, sporting events which have a better payoff than markets, and finding lost children. You are welcome to attend. As for me, I found California real estate less risky than the futures market, even with RSP' Torgownik (talk) 15:26, 20 May 2014 (UTC)Russell[reply]

With regard to the IRVA organization, it was formed in 1995 by Hal Puthoff and me, and about twelve of the army officers retired from the Fort Meade remote viewing group created by Army Intelligence in 1978. There is an interesting dichotomy: At SRI I trained six intelligence officers to become the seed people for an army psychic corp that lasted more than fifteen years 1978-1995, finding downed Russian planes, locating kidnapped officers, spying on the construction of a giant USSR sub, etc. There is a well documented history of this Ft. Meade organization created by General Thompson of Army Intelligence Command INSCOM. Joe McMoneagle, an outstanding intelligence officer and remote viewer, received the Legion of Merit award for more than 150 intelligence events he generated. See Joe on Wikipedia. While all this is going on, the Wikipedia trolls who are trashing my bio site have only 100% negative things to say about the very existence of remote viewing. I think that is pretty crazy. What alternate universe are they living in? All Wikipeia is interested in is the clues in our very first remote viewing experiment with Pat Price, where he was such a good viewer, he most of the time Named the target, so a Judge hardly need to look for clues. Torgownik (talk) 16:17, 20 May 2014 (UTC)Russell[reply]

From Wikipedia in the other universe: "Joe McMoneagle was known as "Remote Viewer No. 1" in the US Army's psychic intelligence unit at Fort Meade, Maryland.[1] At his retirement McMoneagle earned his Legion of Merit for his last 10 years of service, including 5 years of work in SIGINT, SIGnals INTelligence, and 5 years in the RV program.[2][3][4][5] According to McMoneagle, remote viewing is possible and accurate outside the boundaries of time.[9] He believes he has remote-viewed into the past, present, and future and has predicted future events. Among the subjects he claims to have remote-viewed are a Chinese nuclear facility,[confirmed] the Iranian hostage crisis, the Red Brigades, and Muammar Qadhafi.[1] He writes that he predicted the location and existence of the Soviet "Typhoon"-class submarine in 1979, and that in mid-January 1980, satellite photos confirmed those predictions [yes they did]. Joe was also formally tested at SRI, with great success and his commanding Colonel as outbound beacon person at the target site. Torgownik (talk) 17:39, 20 May 2014 (UTC)Russell[reply]

Of everything you said, the part we could address most immediately is the very interesting bit about "finding downed Russian planes, locating kidnapped officers, spying on the construction of a giant USSR sub, etc." The AIR report said that "In no case had the information provided ever been used to guide intelligence operations. Thus, Remote viewing failed to produce actionable intelligence." Now on close examination, these two statements might not be mutually contradictory, e.g. if the Army psychic corp (do we have an article on them??) was never actually listened to, but it seems more likely that if good sources cite your side of the story they probably can be contrasted directly with the report to indicate that it was more controversial than the impression I had before. Wnt (talk) 19:38, 20 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The problem you have, is the one that the CIA wanted you to have as they were disbanding the program, for internal CIA reasons in 1995. The reviewers for the AIR report were allowed to look Only at the last two years of unclassified work done long after Hal, Pat, Hella and I left the program. An SRI physicist Gary Langford found the downed Russian Backfire bomber in the jungle of Zaire, working with the director of DIA, Dale Graf a physicist. Confirmed in a public talk by President Carter in 1995 at Emory Universoty. Joe McMoneagle described and accurately drew the Typhoon, a brand new huge class Russian sub six months before first launch out of a sealed building a quarter mile from the sea. Graf was also in to that work done at Ft. Meade. These are described in my book, "The reality of ESP," and Paul Smith's book, "Reading the enemy's mind." They are also all over the Internet. The singular most important evet for the SRI program was Pat Price's 1974 description of a Russian weapons factory in Semipalatinsk. Price described and drew a huge 8-wheeled gantry crane, and a 60-foot sphere under construction in the building under the crane. The director of CIA John McMahon who gave us that target at a demonstration of ability task. If we could describe that target he would support our program, because no one in the West knew the answer. Pat did his deception from Geo-coordinates. I was his interviewer as he drew the crane and the sphere. The drawings were so accurate that we had a Congressional investigation looking for leaks. Of course no leaks were found. It was this kind of info that kept CIA paying us for 23 years. All of these data are know in the intelligence community as "first intelligence" - data that no one knew until we told them. But as you and I know, Wikipedia is utterly uninterested in any of this data. They would much rather talk about Marks' transcript clues from 1973. Wikipedia is like FOX television evaluating Affordable Health Care. "My God somebody in Toledo died! Let's kill the program." I hope ypu find this useful Pat also found the car that kidnapper Patricia Hearst, after he identified the kidnapper from a police mug book. I was with him in the Berkeley police station. I could tell you much more, if anyone is interested. For example, we told that Ambassador Richard Queen was about to be released from the Iran hostage situation two days before it occurred. We did that for the Nave Chief of Staff, who came to SRI to see what we were doing. I was the interview. All we had to go on, was a sealed envelope containing a second envelope with a photo. That resulted on our first Nave contract. But I know WIKI would rather talk about clues on transcripts. Torgownik (talk) 20:57, 20 May 2014 (UTC)Russell Torgownik (talk) 21:06, 20 May 2014 (UTC)Russell[reply]

If the AIR report only looked at data from after you left the program, then that would be a very good argument for saying it isn't relevant to your biography. Even as it is, the step of moving much of the material to the remote viewing article seems well justified, especially since you can't be blamed for unjustifiably and (they say) "pseudoscientifically" carrying forward the SRI research when you had gotten out of it 13 years previously. But looking over the 1995 report [15] as cited in the article, it seems like Hyman is describing a long period of time, and I'm not getting anything relevant for "two", "2", or "years" when searching it. Are you sure this is the one? Wnt (talk) 21:28, 20 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know what report you are describing. The events 1-4 above, were done in the early years of the program, and happened as I describe them. I was not personally involves with the plane or the sub. But Gary and I have found a US plane crashed in the US Southwest just a week before Langford found the Zaire plane. Dale Graf from DIA came to SRI from DC to do the interviewing himself, because my top secret clearance was not sufficient. I have very recently, extensively interviewed All the players in these events for a new book. Torgownik (talk) 21:53, 20 May 2014 (UTC)Russell[reply]

Utts and Hyman were totally familiar with our data as reported in our 1976 IEEE paper describing the remote viewing protocol with Price, and the cleaned up protocol with Hammed. You might be interested to know that although Hella was brought into the program as a "control" because she had never done anything like remote viewing, her overall performance was statistically more significant than Price's. 10-5, vs. 10-6.(No clues!). Torgownik (talk) 22:04, 20 May 2014 (UTC)Russell[reply]

Dear Wnt, Thank you very much for all your thoughtful work. This is a huge improvement, in the direction of describing what actually happened, and who I think I am. If you wish, you could correctly add that the two CIA guys came with a shocked security man from the NSA. It would also be very nice to see a word from Jessica Utts, who (as you know) did not agree with Ray Hyman about the reality of remote viewing.

Other than that, I can live with the remaining errors. Torgownik (talk) 03:16, 21 May 2014 (UTC)Russell[reply]

Health effects[edit]

In the discussion above, I assume that Army unit is the Special Forces "Operation Jedi"? I see that [16] describes Michael Echanis suffering from a heart injury during a remote staring experiment. Were there other cases recognized of adverse health effects among experienced remote-viewers, whether extrinsic from foreseeing/causing a harmful event (premature death, death of loved ones by accidents, etc.) or intrinsic arising from damage to free will (anhedonia, major depression)? Did anyone do long-term followup of any kind on the "experienced remote viewers" versus those with chance scores? Wnt (talk) 20:20, 20 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

ANI notice[edit]

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. Guy (Help!) 23:02, 20 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Requested change to article[edit]

Requested change and addition: "In 1972 Puthoff and Targ tested remote viewer Ingo Swann at SRI, where Swann described and drew a plan view of a National Security Agency facility in Virginia, and retired policeman Pat Price looked inside and read Secret code words. This experiment led to a visit from two employees of the CIA's Directorate of Science and Technology and an NSA security agent. The result was a $50,000 CIA-sponsored project." This is widely reported and 100% true as it occurred. The events are described in "Mind Reach" by Targ and Puthoff, 1977. I am not passionate about these additions. They just give some incite, and complete the story.

Torgownik (talk) 16:12, 21 May 2014 (UTC)Russell[reply]

Based upon what sources? --Ronz (talk) 20:47, 21 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

With Ingo Swann at some point we're going to have to tackle the elephant in the room, namely, the role of Scientology in the SRI and Project Stargate. According to the Washington Post and confirmed I think by our articles, both Puthoff and Swann were very high level leaders in Scientology, OT VI and OT VII respectively, the blog site hosting that archived article says. [17] Dealing responsibly with that result requires us to figure out the possibility of conflict of interest here. It's worth noting that just a few years later Scientology became notorious for having gone through a huge number of supposedly secure offices in Washington, most notably stealing 10 feet of files from the IRS about their tax case. [18] So for a fact like this, I'm afraid that I don't have that much confidence in experimenter or experiment. The Post actually quoted Swann as saying that Scientology had 14 clears in SRI, including one of the lab assistants. As I understand it you yourself have never been a member, but you have to understand that to an outsider it is easy to picture that you could have been unwittingly deceived by the group for its own ends. I think this is definitely interesting and notable, and I want to document it well, and if I can't document it well I certainly can document it poorly, but I could really appreciate a clue here. Wnt (talk) 20:59, 21 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

FEAR AND REMOTE VIEWING: Yes. Thanks for the thoughtful note. If psi is pursued in a secretive, fearful or repressive environment people can become quite fearful and stressed, etc. Our people at SRI did not show any such bad effects. I have taught thousands of people remote viewing in large public workshops, in a supportive, loving and spiritual environment. I have received many letters and e-mails thanking me for enriching and giving them new spacious lives. In my lifetime acquittance with rv, I have not dealt with any who had a bad experience as a result of learning rv from me. If you learn it in the CIA or the Army, that may be a different story. I Know that the Russians had a hard time teaching rv in Moscow during the Cold War. Torgownik (talk) 05:39, 22 May 2014 (UTC)Russell[reply]

SCIENTOLOGY IS A WICKED ORGANIZATION. Pat Price, Ingo Swann and Hal Puthoff were all Scientologists. Hella Hammid, Keith Harary and Russell Targ were decidedly not. Hal and I worked together closely for ten years. As a Jew, I have never been eager to enter into arguments about other people's religion. Hal was well aware that Hella and I was not sympathetic to Scientology. However, we had lots of other problems, raising money, keeping viewers, SRI and customers happy. Hella Hammid and Joe McMoneagle are just as accurate and reliable as Pat and Ingo. In formal experiments Hella was the Most statistically significant viewer of any on the program. The conclusion is that you don't have to be a Scientologist to be a remote viewer. There were fifteen remote viewers at Ft. Meade working day to day doing operational tasks for the army. Scientology gives a psychic person permission to use his ability. As we know, ESP abilities are forbidden and repressed in this country. Not forbidden in places like, Iceland, The Netherlands or Brazil, so you find lots more psychics. For example Holland didn't burn any witches. Torgownik (talk) 22:23, 21 May 2014 (UTC)Russell[reply]

Interesting. A way to get to the bottom of it all: Can you recommend a full dramatis personae of all the people in SRI, Stargate, and Operation Jedi? Also, how many were working on psi full time? Is it known how many were working on more conventional projects at the same time? Wnt (talk) 02:22, 22 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

PEOPLE IN THE PROGRAM: People at SRI: There were Hal Puthoff, Russell Targ, Hella Hammid, Ingo Swann Ed May, Keith Harary, Pat Price. The key army guys were Joe McMoneagle, Mel Riley, Paul Smith and Skip Atwater, Col. Scotty Watt, General Burt Stubblebine. I feel that we are getting pretty far a field from a Wikipedia bio page. If you want to add something, may I suggest the NSA participation if the project SCANATE caper with Ingo and Pat. But that's up to you. My big interest was in cleaning up the site. Many thanks, 108.68.105.17 (talk) 05:54, 22 May 2014 (UTC)Russell[reply]

I should add that to be honest, as my questions about safety above have intimated, I think (as an individual decision) repressing psi makes a lot of sense. As Laozi said, "Foreknowledge is Tao blossoming; it is also the flower of folly. The truly wise seek the center, not the surface; take the fruit, leaving the flower." While admittedly Rick Rescorla did prevent many deaths, you still have to wonder whether the future would have happened differently, even the attacks not occurring, if he had never seen it. The same of the author of Futility, or the Wreck of the Titan. Understanding psi is very appealing from the point of view of trying to understand the one paranormal phenomenon everyone believes in, namely our consciousness and free will; only proving an explicit causality violation (at least as seen from a subjective frame) can explain this. But I can't be sure that even the understanding isn't potentially dangerous, because understanding the human soul might be the bridge toward harming it.

At the experimental level, it is worth considering that the Diocletian persecution, the most infamous event of its kind until perhaps modern North Korea, was triggered by the observation of his court soothsayers that they could not predict the future because of Christians crossing themselves nearby. It would be an interesting meeting of two accused and sometimes guilty branches of "pseudoscience", the study of psi and the study of prayer, to see if indeed this interaction can be shown to occur. There is a certain symmetry between faith as confidence in the future and precognition as knowledge of the future. Wnt (talk) 03:44, 22 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

SILVER FORECASTING CITATION: Dear Wnt, If one more addition could be made to my bio page, I would like to add the brief Wall Street Journal citation to the Precognition paragraph about silver futures. The Wiki editor says there in no conformation to what I write in "Mind Race." I think it is silly to create a paragraph just to say that something didn't happen. There was a lengthy published article that I would like to see -cited- just to answer the Wiki critic who says there is no confirmation. The article is: "Erik Larson. “Did Psychic Powers Give Firm a Killing in the Silver Market?” The Wall Street Journal, Oct. 22, 1984." Torgownik (talk) 17:49, 22 May 2014 (UTC)Russell[reply]

I haven't gotten to that yet, first trying to get some of the source detail to remote viewing. It is still really, really incomplete and I fear I may have made a hash of some of the stuff I added, but I feel like part of the problems we've been having in describing the results is that there's a whole pyramid of history and methodology that they need to sit on top of to be stable, which nobody's gotten around to. I think it would be useful for you to add some more general background content about the Stargate Project on that article yourself - at least the detractors can't say it's COI for you to give background about other people and general ideas, programs, etc., and it's clearly an area you have some expertise in. Wnt (talk) 02:04, 23 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

STARGATE: Six years into the SRI program in 1978, the US Under Secretary of defense Walter LaBergwe and the commanding general of INSCON Intelligence Command, Burt Stubblebine directed SRI to help the army set up an independent group of remote viewers at Ft. Meade, Maryland. Puthoff and Targ had responsibility for instructing the six army officers in the protocol for remote viewing. After six rv trials for each of six officers, they achieved 19 first place matches, where only 6 would be expected by chance, out of the 36 trials, in a formal double blind protocol. The probability of this success is more significant than one in a hundred thousand. Targ was responsible for most of the one-on-one rv trining in this effort. The officers then went back to Ft. Mead to train a dozen others. Among their many notable successes was the description of a huge new Typhoon class Soviet submarine under construction in a building in northern Russia, six months before its launch. Joe McMoneagle was the viewer. Upon his retirement, he received a Legion of Merit Award from the army "for his more than 100 specific contributions to intelligence." The program ran continuously, providing day to day tactical information to many government agencies from 1978 to 1995. Many have commented that it is unlikely that the government would have maintained the StarGate operation for seventeen years, if they were not providing anything useful. Torgownik (talk) 02:49, 23 May 2014 (UTC)Russell[reply]

If I can cite a good source this material seems appropriate to put in. However, I should emphasize that for content to stick we should really have very specific sourcing - for example, even a quote "100 specific contributions to intelligence" does not assert that Moneagle didn't gather intelligence to merit the award by some non-psychic means. Also, we have a bit of a Ship of Theseus problem here. There were different experiments, different techniques, different people, different agencies funding things, different contractors, different code names, and different readers. In some cases (as with the AIR report that you said only covered two years, and in which indeed I'm not finding any reference to the 1978 test) these distinctions may be very important, and statements made about one may not apply to the other. So we really need to nail down the details and sources every time. Wnt (talk) 15:47, 23 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

STARGATE SOURCES: With regard to Joe's Legion of Merit, you can find that on the Internet. I think that the number is greater than 100. Since his intel gathering was only at Stargate it should be clear. Before that he was breaking into buildings. A good Stargate source is Paul Smith's book, "Reading the Enemy's Mind: America's psychic espionage program." Major Smith was the official historian of the program. With regard to training, I was the person who sat with the six officers and introduced them to the process of remote viewing. I did most of the interviewing for the program, for the first decade. I describe the 1978 test in detail in my book, "The Reality of ESP." It was classified until 1995. And once again, I was the one who ran the test. So this was its first disclosure. There were six officers, each doing six rv's. You would expect each to get one first place match by chance. The result with 19 first place matches was remarkable, and was the basis for the continuance of the program. It showed that we could train ordinary, talented officers. Hal and I had chosen chose 6 our of 30 the previously month, at Ft. Meade to start. We chose whom we considered the most talented or gifted, based of our experience. Joe's Legion of Merit is shown in its entirety on page 288 of his book, "Memoirs of a Psychic Spy." But it does not show the 100 items of intelligence that I quoted earlier. I have seen that in print. But I cannot give you a citation. But you can quote he award which is quite forthcoming and remarkable. Torgownik (talk) 16:39, 23 May 2014 (UTC)Russell[reply]

The Legion of Merit Award is the second highest award that the U.S. Army can make during peace time. It was given to remote viewer Joe McMoneagle, with the approval of US Congress, for his brilliant psychic work. The citation reads: “While with his command, he used his talents and expertise in the execution of more than 200 missions, addressing over 150 essential elements of information. These EEI contained critical intelligence reported at the highest echelons of our military and government, including such national level agencies as the Joint Chief’s of Staff, DIA, NSA, CIA, DEA, and the Secret Service, producing crucial and vital intelligence unavailable from any other source.” This is the document I had seen many times before. But I don't know the primary source, sorry to say. Torgownik (talk) 18:18, 23 May 2014 (UTC)Russell[reply]

Final warning[edit]

You have a conflict of interest and have been told numerous time that you should NOT be making self promotional edits [19] to the article.

Make suggestions on the talk page and wait for a consensus to be generated and a neutral party to implement. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 19:34, 24 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I changed "1 KiloWatt" laser to the correct description "a kilowatt" laser. I described my 1962 paper with Gordon Gould as the "first paper on coherent detection", which is also correct, and significant since a whole field came from that work, including my Lockheed work 30 years later. Torgownik (talk) 19:55, 24 May 2014 (UTC)Russell[reply]

you also did that , but in the link provided [20] you proclaimed your work the "first" . Now stop editing the article voluntarily before you are forced to do so. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 19:58, 24 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Your submission at Articles for creation: User:Torgownik/sandbox (May 28)[edit]

Your recent article submission to Articles for Creation has been reviewed! Unfortunately, it has not been accepted at this time.
Please read the comments left by the reviewer on your submission. You are encouraged to edit the submission to address the issues raised and resubmit when they have been resolved.

If you would like to continue working on the submission, you can find it at User:Torgownik/sandbox.
To edit the submission, click on the "Edit" tab at the top of the window.
If you need any assistance, you can ask for help at the Articles for creation help desk, or on the reviewer's talk page.

Thank you for your
contributions to Wikipedia!

Please remember to link to the submission!

You can also get real-time chat help from experienced editors.

Skr15081997 (talk) 15:57, 28 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hello! Torgownik, I noticed your article was declined at Articles for Creation, and that can be disappointing. If you are wondering or curious about why your article submission was declined please post a question at the Articles for creation help desk. If you have any other questions about your editing experience, we'd love to help you at the Teahouse, a friendly space on Wikipedia where experienced editors lend a hand to help new editors like yourself! See you there!

Possible advice on how to edit your article[edit]

If you create a free blog on websites such as blogspot.com an you will have many advantages.

You will be able to write what you want about yourself and your work.
No one will be able to modify what you write about yourself.
It remains indefinitely (-as long as Google Inc. is alive and continues the blog service -)
It is easy to create and free.

After gaining consensus with fellow Wikipedians- You will then be able to copy certain material from your blog onto your Wikipedia article, and cite to your own blog as a source, as long as it meets with WP:ABOUTSELF standards and other users agree. Caseeart (talk) 22:10, 28 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding the last point: After gaining consensus with fellow Wikipedians- You will then be able to copy certain material from your blog onto your Wikipedia article, and cite to your own blog as a source, as long as it meets with WP:ABOUTSELF standards and other users agree. It reads to me like it would be super-easy for Torgownik to get his blog material added to WP but that isn't the case.

First, copying something word-for-word from another source is discouraged to avoid WP:PLAGIARISM. Second, Torgownik has a WP:COI with respect to the Russell Targ article and so should not make this kind of edit to it, as that edit would almost certainly be considered a controversial one. Taking all this into account, your last point would be better stated:

You will then be able to make a request on the Russell Targ Talk page that certain material from your blog be added to the Russell Targ article, citing your blog as a source per WP:ABOUTSELF. Consensus on the sourcing and weight of the proposed addition must be achieved before the material can be added to the article.

-Ca2james (talk) 03:17, 31 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Atari in your bio[edit]

I consider this a coi violation. If you would like it added, make a case on the talk page. --Ronz (talk) 19:15, 30 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Again, please use the article talk page rather than trying to add it again as you did here --Ronz (talk) 15:23, 2 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Same goes with this and this. --Ronz (talk) 00:59, 3 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#User:Torgownik at Russell Targ[edit]

Dear Torgownik: Hello there! My name is Tristessa, and I'm a friendly neighbourhood Wikipedia administrator with experience in dispute resolution who came across the thread on the Administrators' noticeboard regarding your biography, Russell Targ, and the edits that you've made to it. I'm also a fellow scientist — though, I should add, much less experienced than you in physics! It's good to meet you, and I hope I can provide a calm and friendly voice to talk to in all of this.

Firstly, everything else aside, I can completely understand how frustrating this experience must be for you. I also think that the way that people have explained Wikipedia policies to you has been, at times, somewhat combative and unhelpful. What I'd like to do for you is to find a way that we can incorporate your concerns regarding the article's content, whilst being able to work within Wikipedia policy and in a way that receives broad consensus from other editors. I'm certain that "editing uphill" with changes to your biography that are rejected by other editors must, no doubt, be an extremely thankless task and one that is, as I'm certain you've already observed, not working.

Perhaps I might propose a thought experiment to illustrate what is going on? Imagine that you are a peer reviewer working for a prestigious academic journal in physics (perhaps the Journal of Physics B), and you're reviewing a paper that I've written on a new discovery in laser science. Quite possibly, my research team would have been working on the paper for many months, or maybe many years, and I'll be absolutely convinced as a result that my hypotheses, data and interpretation are all sound as a result, for I will have invested a lot of work in it. I could well have come up with an important discovery that may well have ensured my IEEE fellowship were it properly presented, and my view may be completely correct. But, if in the paper I made unproven assertions about the merits of my invention without reference to reliable sources in the literature to back up my claims, even if you found something in the article that you considered groundbreaking you would insist that I go back and edit it before you could consider it suitable for publication. Were I to describe myself in that paper as a "laser pioneer", irrespective of my credentials (or lack thereof) on the subject, you would probably think it somewhat out of place.

Now, Wikipedia articles, and contributions to Wikipedia articles, are no different. What is written in a Wikipedia article is not a matter of opinion — we call this articles having a neutral point of view — in that assertions have to have a reliable basis on which to be constructed. Sourcing the information is therefore done against a reliable source. As with any encyclopedia article, the goal is to present an academic analysis of the subject rather than to present what the subject (or proponents of the subject) wish to state. With regard to the "pseudoscience" term on the article, it is indeed encyclopedic to include it, as academic opinion clearly is present to back up that assertion — it's not a personal reflection. Just as you would expect Britannica to word a biography in an encyclopedic tone, and nor would you expect biography subjects to insert factual assumptions about a subject's life without evidence, nor can you expect Wikipedia to do so with your biography.

So, for every event and fact about your life, you must bear two things in mind: the first is that there must be a reliable primary source (see WP:RS) to state that it happened, or that it is true; and secondarily that the information included must present that reflected in reliable sources. You may be able to edit Wikipedia, but that does not grant imprimatur for the article to be the way that you want it to be.

I believe others have already directed you to the Wikipedia:Conflict of interest guidelines, and whilst there is no Wikipedia policy prohibiting the editing of articles by article subjects, I have found in my long history of Wikipedia dispute resolution that it never ends well. It is often said that a person who represents themselves in court has a fool for a client, and there is a tendency I believe for the same to be true in notable subjects editing their own Wikipedia entries, because it is virtually impossible to step outside of one's own mind when doing so.

Could we possibly come to an arrangement whereby that you propose changes that you wish to make to the Russell Targ biography to the article's talk page, Talk:Russell Targ, for others to review and implement (aside from obvious vandalism?) Best regards, --Tristessa (talk) 18:53, 1 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your suggestions,

I currently have three items that I think are suitable for addition to the bio page.

One is essential to deal with, since it is a deliberate misrepresentation by Wikipedia editors, and the other two are just matters of fact. The editors correctly state that psychologist Ray Hyman wrote that the SRI work was flawed and of no use. BUT his article in the AIR report for the CIA was paired with a very positive article by the president-elect of the American Statistical Assn., Jessica Utts, who said strongly that our work was valid. I have been proposing that Utts' paragraph should be paired with Hyman's. Not to reference Utts' conclusion, misrepresents the findings of the AIR report, and highlights the biased reporting of Wikipedia with regard to psi research. I have printed the Utts comments several times in this discussion. The second item pertains to an experiment in which we foretasted changes of the silver commodity market nine times in a row. The results were published in a parapsychology journal and in the Wall Street Journal. On my bio page the Wiki editors say that there is No evidence for our experiment. Conceivably they editors could wish for better proof, but I am certainly offering evidence. And the actual brokerage trade sheets are shown in the 1983 BBC Horizon film, The Case of ESP, which is available on Google. It is a lie to say that there is no evidence, just as it a lie to print Hyman and omit Utts. I have provided all this data. Finally, there is a mention of my little company, Delphi Assocs. which sponsored the silver experiments. We also worked for famous electronics game co. Atari Inc., for three years designing ESP video games. We were very well paid for our three years work. If you mention that we consulted for companies, why not mention what we were actually doing? Thanks for your consideration. -- Torgownik (talk) 19:50, 1 June 2014 (UTC)Russell[reply]

Hello there, Russell! Thank you so much for your reply.

I think it could be considered encyclopedic and notable (I believe) to include the fact that an endorsement by Utts was provided for this experiment, even if subsequent sources (and, indeed, the academic mainstream) criticised the methodology that you used in your study, since it is contextually relevant to the time at which your study was published. Of course, I need not remind you that it must be stated as a simple fact that the endorsement took place, versus being used a case for altering the balance of the article in that it does not negate the opinion from other sources that the research was flawed, if you see what I mean. I might well try my hand at writing some proposed text that I will post on the article's talk page to illustrate how this might be included.

On the subject of Delphi Associates, and Atari, we would need reliable sources that qualify under the criteria of Wikipedia:Reliable sources to describe these. Can you perhaps help in finding sources that meet those requirements? If so, and if that information is suitably of encyclopedic notability as per Wikipedia:Notability, then I will also look into how this could be integrated in a neutral way. --Tristessa (talk) 21:47, 1 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Here is what Jessica Utts wrote in her part of the AIR report for the CIA. Jessica Utts is a statistics Professor at the University of California, Irvine, and is president-elect of the American Statistical Association. In writing for her part of a 1995 evaluation of our work for the CIA, she wrote: “Using the standards applied to any other area of science, it is concluded that psychic functioning has been well established. The statistical results of the studies examined are far beyond what is expected by chance. Arguments that these results could be due to methodological flaws in the experiments are soundly refuted.… Remote viewing has been conceptually replicated across a number of laboratories, by various experimenters, and in different cultures. This is a robust effect that, were it not such an unusual domain, would no longer be questioned by science as a real phenomenon. It is unlikely that methodological flaws could account for its remarkable consistency.” Torgownik (talk) 23:50, 1 June 2014 (UTC)Russell[reply]

Tristessa: I'm very glad to see you take interest in this article. I made my own "compromise" summary of the AIR report [21], to which the response was for it to be removed from the article entirely. There are some people pushing on this article very hard to try to take out anything that doesn't serve a dismissive point of view. I don't really know why, either - even when I give them a suggestion that I'd expect a real skeptic to run with (the potential role of Scientology) they have no interest in that either. They just want an article that doesn't say anything, except it's all pseudo-science and the program was found to be worthless in 1995 (though Targ left in 1982!) Which is very frustrating because no matter what you think of remote viewing scientifically, the organizations and people involved were extremely notable and worthy of serious study. Wnt (talk) 00:25, 2 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Torgownik As you can see I just added info onto your bio article about your complaints and disagreements with Wikipedia users over your article. This will enable readers of the article to identify prejudice. (If other users will agree not to remove the material I added).

As you see - Even though there are clear disagreements between you and other users we were not allowed to write that in your article. We were only able to add your complaints because I found it in a source outside of Wikipedia.[22]

Wikipedia has less to do with reality. It has more to do with what various sources write about a subject. It gives priority to mainstream sources regardless if it is true or not.

Even this source I disagree with much of what was written - but my opinion about this dispute has nothing to do with Wikipedia. Caseeart (talk) 06:37, 2 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Tristessa, Thank you for your willingness to step in as an uninvolved editor/admin. While I have been extensively involved I do my best to advocate for WP policy. I have done quite a bit of research to provide sources for and add some of the content that Targ has stated he felt should be included (for example support for the notability and inclusion of some of the details of his work in lasers). Perhaps you could weigh in on Talk:Russell Targ/Archive 4#Targ's involvement with Fischer, what's due. Targ has indicated that he feels his relationship/association with Fischer should be in the article. I think a number of sources support this and there is discussion of what to include (or not) your opinion would be valued (by me at least). The discussion of adding content based on the Doubtful News article is likely to be interesting also (as I am sure it will develop). Again thanks for your efforts. - - MrBill3 (talk) 08:07, 2 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Physics of precognition[edit]

I apologize for doing too little to help -- they certainly are determined. To be honest, I have taken to dodging this sort of conflict more often than fighting it because when you spend ten times more effort fighting them than writing, they win; the creativity to come up with new things to work on and the freedom to move outside of an opponent's financial field of interest are some of the few advantages that inclusionists have. Even so, I was wondering if you might consider contributing materials you've written about, or working or commenting on, retrocausality, Wheeler-Feynman absorber theory, Abraham-Lorentz force, or other topics potentially related to the physics of precognition. I see reference to some mailing list comments you've been making at [23]... it would be useful to get some publicly available presentations of this sort of thing.

I'm thinking that fundamentally all psi should need to be based on some sort of encoding (memory) that can preserve a pure quantum state for a period of years. Somehow, it would have to be possible to code the memory at the end of this state and access it at the beginning, with normal memory reconsolidation transforming the precognitive memory into a normal one after the first access. (Feedback from the normal memory to the precognitive one, creating an acausal event, would be the basis of free will) But what kind of chemical basis inside the neuron can hold a pure quantum state un-fooled-around-with for that long? I have a hard time believing Penrose about the microtubules - they seem far too labile. Also, is there any indication of where in the brain at least the recall happens, i.e. did any of your readers report getting headaches in part of one side of the head as a result of the abnormal bloodflow? Wnt (talk) 00:45, 2 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

TALK PAGE: The talk page is worthless, if I receive no reply. Just the erasure of what I write.

You are happy to denigrate my father, who was a most distinguished NY editor and publisher for fifty yeas. Why can't we include The Godfather among his other junky books? He actually created that book. Why can't we include the Wall Street Journal citation of my silver futures forecasting, instead of saying that there is no citation? And what's wrong with including Jessica Utts saying that the work at Stanford was done correctly? Such editing gives Wikipedia a terrible reputation, even among people who are not ESP enthusiasts. Such obviously biased writing is anti science.

Torgownik (talk) 21:33, 3 June 2014 (UTC)Russell[reply]

I saw this response. No need to repeat it.

I don't believe anyone is denigrating your father. More importantly, I don't believe anyone means to.

The article is about you, and the mention of your father is there to show how your father's interests in parapsychology influenced you. It seems an appropriate summary of the Gardner reference as it relates to you (though Gardner is focusing on your daughter).

Have I been involved with any of the other concerns that you bring up? I don't recall, so I'll withhold comment at this time as I would need to review discussions which I don't believe I was a participant. --Ronz (talk) 23:40, 3 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

July 2014[edit]

Hello, I'm MrBill3. I noticed that you made a change to an article, Russell Targ, but you didn't provide a reliable source. It's been removed and archived in the page history for now, but if you'd like to include a citation and re-add it, please do so! If you need guidance on referencing, please see the referencing for beginners tutorial, or if you think I made a mistake, you can leave me a message on my talk page. Please provide a source which states the information you wish to include. MrBill3 (talk) 16:57, 26 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You currently appear to be engaged in an edit war according to the reverts you have made on Russell Targ. Users are expected to collaborate with others, to avoid editing disruptively, and to try to reach a consensus rather than repeatedly undoing other users' edits once it is known that there is a disagreement.

Please be particularly aware, Wikipedia's policy on edit warring states:

Edit warring is disruptive regardless of how many reverts you have made; that is to say, editors are not automatically "entitled" to three reverts.
Do not edit war even if you believe you are right.

If you find yourself in an editing dispute, use the article's talk page to discuss controversial changes; work towards a version that represents consensus among editors. You can post a request for help at an appropriate noticeboard or seek dispute resolution. In some cases it may be appropriate to request temporary page protection. If you engage in an edit war, you may be blocked from editing.
You have been warned about this repeatedly. You have now twice in a short time introduced information not in the references. Bring this to the talk page of the article and make a case. MrBill3 (talk) 17:26, 26 July 2014 (UTC) I am not arguing that ESP is real, or other provocative items. I am just providing the actual dates during which I was a graduate student in physics at Columbia, which were 1954 to 1956. Why is that a reason to block me? Cheers Russell Torgownik (talk) 17:43, 26 July 2014 (UTC)torgownik[reply]

I am Russell Targ, and not arguing that ESP is real, or other provocative items. I am just providing the actual dates during which I was a graduate student in physics at Columbia University, which were 1954 to 1956. Why is that a reason to block me? Cheers Russell Torgownik (talk) 17:43, 26 July 2014 (UTC)torgownik

Content on WP must come from published reliable sources. This has been explained repeatedly. - - MrBill3 (talk) 20:10, 26 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I doubt that there is any published record, since I left Columbia to work in plasma physics at Sperry Gyroscope Co. in 1956, without obtaining an advanced degree. I was a graduate student from 1954 when I graduated from Queens College, until I went to work at Sperry two years later. Since I am now sixty years past that, it obviously doesn't make any difference, unless you wish to fill out the record, which was my intention. Russell Targ

Torgownik (talk) 22:07, 26 July 2014 (UTC)torgownik[reply]

If no reliable source has seen fit to publish information it does not belong on WP. This has also been explained multiple times, please see the core Wikipedia policy Verifiability. The source we do have states, "done some graduate-level work at Columbia but left before completing his PhD." I think the current content is best left as it is. Please propose changes on talk rather than editing directly. - - MrBill3 (talk) 22:26, 26 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

All it takes is for some journalist to publish a biography of Targ, stating these wished-for details. Targ could even engage a journalist, that is, see if a journalist will write such a biography. After the piece is published, we can "fill out the record" using the new source. Binksternet (talk) 22:30, 26 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed, of course it would have to be an established journalist and published in a reliable source. The due weight given might be subject to some discussion, especially if it were a paid for PR piece. On the other hand if a good biography was published in a high quality source it would be useful for improving the article. I would think there might be a high quality source that would find Targ a good subject for a biographical piece. I sincerely hope one is published soon. To wait for obituaries would be sad and it would be nice if Targ received a serious write up he could read.

On a side note it is also a little sad that the scientific understanding of parapsychology is so under developed. I suspect there is more complexity in the workings of the universe than currently recognized and elements of Targ's research may one day be incorporated into a wider understanding, or maybe not, that is the wonder of reality and science. Although issues with methodology have been raised I believe Targ intended to perform scientific study of parapsychology and serious study of a subject deserves recognition. It is on the work of those who first endeavor to examine a subject that knowledge about it is built whether the eventual findings concur or not. - - MrBill3 (talk) 00:09, 27 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

This issue is now settled. As you can read in the article's talk page, the author of the book that talked of Targ leaving Columbia without getting a PhD has informed me that he got his information from a source that (i) made no mention of a PhD (ii) refers to 2 years' graduate study. Combining the 2 years with the starting date mentioned in one of the refs. confirms Targ's dates which may therefore be regarded as reliably sourced — though I have to point out that on other pages it is considered in order for a biographee to add non-contentious information. --Brian Josephson (talk) 21:24, 30 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Your draft article, User:Torgownik/sandbox[edit]

Hello Torgownik. It has been over six months since you last edited your WP:AFC draft article submission, entitled "sandbox".

The page will shortly be deleted. If you plan on editing the page to address the issues raised when it was declined and resubmit it, simply edit the submission and remove the {{db-afc}} or {{db-g13}} code. Please note that Articles for Creation is not for indefinite hosting of material deemed unsuitable for the encyclopedia mainspace.

If your submission has already been deleted by the time you get there, and you want to retrieve it, copy this code: {{subst:Refund/G13|User:Torgownik/sandbox}}, paste it in the edit box at this link, click "Save page", and an administrator will in most cases undelete the submission.

Thanks for your submission to Wikipedia, and happy editing. JMHamo (talk) 19:34, 13 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]