SRI shielded room & Deep Quest submarine RV
🎓 Academic research
SRI International · Mobius’s Stephan Schwartz · submersible Taurus · USA, off Catalina Island CA · 1972–1977
SRI’s RV experiments ran in a double electromagnetic shield; in 1977 ‘Deep Quest’ had viewers describe land targets from a submarine hundreds of feet down where seawater blocked all radio, and the leaders claimed success.
VerdictSupporters use it to argue psi isn’t electromagnetic; sceptics note loose judging.
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Vasiliev Faraday-cage experiments
🎓 Academic research
Leningrad Brain Institute · USSR · 1930s
Subjects in a lead chamber / Faraday cage were still ‘remotely suggested’ to sleep.
VerdictThe USSR concluded telepathy can’t be electromagnetically shielded; never independently replicated.
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The sheep-goat effect
🎓 Academic research
City College of New York, Gertrude Schmeidler · USA · 1943
ESP believers (‘sheep’) scored slightly above chance, disbelievers (‘goats’) slightly below — ‘disbelief’ acting like a shield.
VerdictMeta-analyses show a weak but persistent effect, also explicable by motivation and response bias.
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Sceptic-vs-believer joint experiments (Wiseman × Schlitz)
🎓 Academic research
Hertfordshire’s Wiseman · IONS’s Schlitz (British J. Psychology 2006) · UK · USA · 1997–2006
Using the same ‘sense of being stared at’ setup, Schlitz got positives, Wiseman negatives; in the 2006 round both got negatives.
VerdictSuggests the experimenter’s belief can ‘shield’ or ‘create’ an effect — the experimenter effect.
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MIT tinfoil-hat shielding test
🔬 Achieved by science
MIT student study (Rahimi et al.) · USA · 2005
A network analyser measured tinfoil hats’ radio shielding and found they amplified signals in some government bands.
VerdictA tongue-in-cheek study: ‘anti-mind-reading hats’ have no scientific basis.
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