The infamous ESP laboratory at Princeton University is shutting down after thirty years. The Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Laboratory has explored whether human consciousness can affect machines like digital random number generators. Needless to say, their efforts and results have been controversial and pissed off a lot of people at the university. From the New York Times:
The laboratory has conducted studies on extrasensory perception and telekinesis from its cramped quarters in the basement of the university’s engineering building since 1979. Its equipment is aging, its finances dwindling.
“For 28 years, we’ve done what we wanted to do, and there’s no reason to stay and generate more of the same data,” said the laboratory’s founder, Robert G. Jahn, 76, former dean of Princeton’s engineering school and an emeritus professor. “If people don’t believe us after all the results we’ve produced, then they never will…”
The study of telekinesis and related phenomena, Dr. Jahn said, will carry on.
“It’s time for a new era,” he said, “for someone to figure out what the implications of our results are for human culture, for future study, and – if the findings are correct – what they say about our basic scientific attitude.”
Previously on BB:
• Measuring global consciousness Link
• Wired News on Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Link (Thanks, Marina Gorbis!)