Russell Targ

Russell Targ (born April 11, 1934) is an American physicist, parapsychologist and author.

Biography

Targ was born in Chicago. He is the son of publisher William Targ. Russell was married to Joan Fischer Targ (sister of world chess champion Bobby Fischer), who died in 1998. Russell and Joan had a daughter, Elisabeth Targ, who was a psychiatrist, and two sons Alexander, a physician, and Nicholas, an attorney. In 2003, Targ married artist Patricia Kathleen Phillips.

Targ was introduced to the paranormal by his father who had published the work of Erich von Däniken.

Targ received a Bachelor of Science in physics from Queens College in 1954 and did graduate work in physics at Columbia University. From 1986 to 1998 Targ worked in electro-optics as a senior staff scientist at the Lockheed Missiles and Space Company.

Targ who is legally blind is an avid motorcyclist and has published a memoir on his experiences as a "blind biker".Vorlage:Sfn

Parapsychology

In 1972 Targ joined the Stanford Research Institute (SRI), (now SRI International), founded by Harold E. Puthoff, as a senior research physicist where the two conducted research into psychic abilities and their operational use for the U.S. intelligence community, including the CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency and Army Intelligence. These abilities are referred to collectively as "remote viewing". Targ and Puthoff both expressed the belief that Uri Geller, retired police commissioner Pat Price and artist Ingo Swann all had genuine psychic abilities.Vorlage:Sfn They published their findings in Nature and the Proceedings of the IEEE.Vorlage:SfnVorlage:Sfn Targ left SRI in 1982. The program was declassified and abandoned in 1995 after the American Institutes for Research found that the program failed to provide any useful intelligence. David Marks concluded, "evidence for the operational value of remote viewing does not exist, even after more than two decades of research." A report by the United States National Research Council (NRC) concluded, "there should remain little doubt that the Targ-Puthoff studies are fatally flawed".

Targ and Puthoff stated that their studies of Geller at the SRI demonstrated that Geller had genuine psychic powers, though flaws were found with the controls in the experiments and Geller was caught using sleight of hand on many other occasions. According to Terence Hines:

The psychologists David Marks and Richard Kammann attempted to replicate Targ and Puthoff’s remote viewing experiments. In a series of thirty-five studies, they were unable to replicate the results so investigated the procedure of the original experiments. Marks and Kammann discovered that the notes given to the judges in Targ and Puthoff's experiments contained clues as to which order they were carried out, such as referring to yesterday's two targets, or they had the date of the session written at the top of the page. They concluded that these clues were the reason for the experiment's high hit rates. Terence Hines has written:

It was revealed that subjects were able to match the transcripts to the correct locations using only the cues provided. When these cues were eliminated the results fell to a chance level.Vorlage:SfnVorlage:Sfn Marks was able to achieve 100 per cent accuracy without visiting any of the sites himself but by using cues.Vorlage:Refn James Randi has written controlled tests by several other researchers, eliminating several sources of cuing and extraneous evidence present in the original tests, produced negative results. Students were also able to solve Puthoff and Targ's locations from the clues that had inadvertently been included in the transcripts.

Marks and Kamman concluded: "Until remote viewing can be confirmed in conditions which prevent sensory cueing the conclusions of Targ and Puthoff remain an unsubstantiated hypothesis." In 1980, Charles Tart claimed that a rejudging of the transcripts from one of Targ and Puthoff’s experiments revealed an above-chance result. Targ and Puthoff again refused to provide copies of the transcripts and it was not until July 1985 that they were made available for study when it was discovered they still contained sensory cues.Vorlage:SfnVorlage:Sfn Marks and Christopher Scott (1986) 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."

Simon Hoggart and Mike Hutchinson described Targ as willing to believe and his research "for the most part, a sorry study in the range of human credulity."

Works

Books authored

• Russell Targ: Limitless Mind: A Guide to Remote Viewing and Transformation of Consciousness. New World Library, San Francisco 2004, ISBN 978-1-57731-413-4. 
• Russell Targ: Do You See What I See: Memoirs of a Blind Biker. Hampton Roads, Charlottesville, VA 2010, ISBN 978-1-57174-630-6. 
• Russell Targ: The Reality of ESP: A Physicist's Proof of Psychic Abilities. Quest Books, Wheaton, IL 2012, ISBN 978-0-8356-0884-8. 

Books co-authored

• Russell Targ, Harold Puthoff: Mind Reach: Scientists Look at Psychic Abilities. Dell, 1977, ISBN 978-0-224-01424-3. 
• Russell Targ, Keith Harary: The Mind Race: Understanding and Using Psychic Abilities. New English Library, 1984, ISBN 978-0-450-06104-2. 
• Russell Targ, Jane Katra: Miracles of Mind: Exploring Nonlocal Consciousness and Spiritual Healing. New World Library, 1998, ISBN 978-1-57731-070-9. 
• Russell Targ, Jane Katra: The Heart of the Mind: How to Experience God Without Belief. New World Library, 1999, ISBN 978-1-57731-041-9. 
• Russell Targ, James Hurtak: End of Suffering: Fearless Living in Troubled Times...Or, How to Get Out of Hell Free. Hampton Roads, 2006, ISBN 978-1-61283-114-5. 

Journal articles

On lasers and wind shear

• P. Rabinowitz, S. Jacobs, R. Targ, G. Gould: Homodyne detection of phase-modulated light. In: Proceeding of the IRE. 50. Jahrgang, Nr. 11, November 1962, S. 2365. 
• W.B. Tiffany, R. Targ, J.D. Foster: Kilowatt CO2 gas‐transport laser. In: Applied Physics Letters. 15. Jahrgang, Nr. 3, 1969, S. 91-3, doi:10.1063/1.1652920. 
• R. Targ, M.J. Kavaya, R.M. Huffaker, R.L. Bowles: Coherent lidar airborne windshear sensor: Performance evaluation. In: Applied Optics. 30. Jahrgang, Nr. 15, 1991, S. 2013–26, doi:10.1364/AO.30.002013. 
• R. Targ, L. Ames: Lidar wind sensing at cruise altitude for flight-level optimization. Air Traffic Control Technologies II, April 8–12, 1996. Band 2737. SPIE, Orlando FL 27. Mai 1996, doi:10.1117/12.241057. 
• R. Targ, B.C. Steakley, J.G. Hawley, L.L. Ames, P. Forney, D. Swanson, R. Stone, R.G. Otto, V. Zarifis, P. Brockman, R.S. Calloway, S.H. Klein, P.A. Robinson: Coherent lidar airborne wind sensor II: Flight test results at 2 µm and 10 µm. In: Applied Optics. 35. Jahrgang, Nr. 36, 1996, S. 7117–27, doi:10.1364/AO.35.007117. 

On remote viewing

• R. Targ, H. Puthoff: Information transfer under conditions of sensory shielding. In: Nature. 251. Jahrgang, 18. Oktober 1974, S. 602–7, doi:10.1038/251602a0. 
• H.E. Puthoff, R. Targ: A perceptual channel for information transfer over kilometer distances: Historical perspective and recent research. In: Proceedings of the IEEE. 64. Jahrgang, Nr. 3, März 1976, S. 329–54, doi:10.1109/PROC.1976.10113. 

On precognition

• E.A. Rauscher, R. Targ: Investigation of a complex space-time metric to describe precognition of the future. Frontiers of Time: Retrocausation - Experiment and Theory. Band 863. San Diego, CA, S. 121–46, doi:10.1063/1.2388752. 

External links

• ESPResearch.com - Russell Targ's site