Two Experts, One Data Set, Two Conclusions

The CIA closed Star Gate in 1995 after commissioning an outside evaluation from the American Institutes for Research, whose report drew on two named specialists chosen to represent both sides of the argument: Jessica Utts, a statistics professor sympathetic to a psi interpretation, and Raymond Hyman, a psychologist and prominent skeptic of parapsychology. Working from the same body of remote-viewing trial data, Utts concluded the statistical evidence supported the reality of some anomalous perceptual effect, and Hyman concluded the anomalies, however statistically unusual, had not been shown to be genuinely psychic in origin rather than an artifact of methodology. Both agreed the program had produced no result of practical intelligence value, and the CIA terminated it on that basis regardless of the theoretical disagreement.

The Utts-Hyman split has become one of the most cited episodes in psi research precisely because it shows two qualified reviewers, working from identical data under a shared evaluation process, unable to agree on whether an effect existed at all, a vivid illustration of how contested the statistical evidence in this field remains even among specialists who accept the raw numbers.