It's always a joy to see a new publication on Remote Viewing. The title of Marilyn Isabelle Schmidt's recently released book suggests a somewhat more scientific treatment of the subject and lo and behold this is what we get.
        
Presented as her doctoral dissertation at California Institute for Human Science and subsequently published by Fenestra, the text is an objective trawl through thirty-odd years of Remote Viewing research interspersed with the occasional authorial aside.

Essentially Schmidt is an advocate of Remote Viewing research and a 'true believer', factors no doubt attributable to her comprehensive study of the field and somewhat limited experiences with `public domain` RV instructor Michael Eakin. At no point in her dissertation however does one get the feeling that this is a book on viewing written by a remote viewer. Instead one gets the sense of someone with an immense interest in the subject sifting several thousand pages of research papers and statistical results into a condensed, palatable log. Which is all fair and well...this is a theoretical investigation after all.
                                               

The first quarter of the book leads us through by now familiar terrain encompassing the various roles that psi has played in the development of human history. Shamanism, Swedenborg, JB Rhine etc...you get the picture. It's neatly done, though I did find myself wondering when exactly we were going to get to Remote Viewing; imagine a text on the principles of Basketball beginning with a ninety page explanation on the origins of sport itself. Still, it's nice to see the same old faces cropping up yet again as evidence for the existence of an underlying transcendental realm from which etc etc etc

From here we move rather abruptly on to a review of various research papers conducted at SRI, SAIC, within the USSR and by various other individual experimenters too numerous to mention. Essentially each review consists of the title of the investigation and a rough summary of its results. Many of these will be familiar to well-read viewers with a knowledge of the studies of Targ, Radin, Spottiswood et al, but there are reports of many more papers on a bewildering array of aspects, from Attitudes and expectancies in ESP scoring to A meta-analytic comparison of the sensitivity of direct hits and sums of ranks as outcome measures for free-response studies. Quite. This is serious stuff.

What IS refreshingly pleasant about this book is the sheer amount of RV research detailed within. Nowhere else have I seen such a huge volume of scientific research on the subject condensed into such digestible chunks. Sure I occasionally got lost amidst certain statements of statistical significance, but then 98% of all statistics bore the living pants off me. At least it's always an easy skip to the next lump of text.

What this book ISN'T is a subjective exploration of the writer's experiences with Remote Viewing. Don't come here looking for smiles...this is stern scientific appraisal from start to finish, not only of RV but of the methods by which experimental viewing is conducted. It is however one more step in the direction of a modern science that encompasses psi in an investigative capacity and as such Schmidt is to be applauded.

Am I any closer to a theoretical understanding of the processes behind Remote Viewing? Not really, no. I came to the same conclusions as Schmidt a few months ago, but these conclusions were largely arrived at by years of dedicated Remote Viewing. Science may need its peer reviews and its fuzzy sets and its research papers but we viewers largely know the arena and parameters of our viewing, what causes us to nail a target square or wonder off into the ether with a dummy in our mouth. Still, the reported results of certain studies have nevertheless set this particular viewer thinking...who'd have guessed that Vitamin A had such an effect on viewing outcome? (A qualitative appraisal of anomolous cognition following a liquidised carrot enema, Wincin, 2001.) 

As dry as they may be books like Schmidt's remain necessary bricks in the parquet floor of scientific progression and as such this reviewer believes she has done an excellent job. Like I said earlier though, you won't be digging this one out at parties...unless you're very weird indeed.