The 2011 Warcollier Prize

2011 Warcollier Research Award granted by IRVA/IRIS

Explorations into Remote Viewing Microscopic Organisms

Lance Beem, Ph.D., Debra Katz, M. Morse

ABSTRACT: In this double-blind, free-response, exploratory experiment, 39 remote viewers used their intuitive skills and training to describe a Bacteriophage, which is a virus that attacks bacteria. Viewers submitted 83 sessions, producing 3,263 descriptors to be analyzed through the use of four methods and levels of analysis, including an innovative “big data” method of adding all perceptions together to find the top repeating words with the idea that this might provide insights into the undisclosed research question: “What triggers replication?” Remote Viewers also provided dozens of detailed sketches containing high correspondence to known models of Phages. Researcher 1, Lance Beem, is a biologist specializing in plant pathology, physiology, entomology, and nematology for the past 30 years, in addition to being a remote viewer himself. He recruited expert virologists over a two-year period and reported his interactions with them. Five of 16 virologists who were personally approached agreed to participate as raters. Additionally, all 39 viewers participated in an extensive biographic survey evaluating past experience, methodologies, preparation techniques, number of words used in a session, time spent on sessions, etc. This project’s proposal was the first recipient of the IRVA/IRIS Warcollier Award (2011). It was preceded by two years of preliminary experiments involving thousands of double-blind forced-choice trials in which remote viewers attempted to identify the presence of the Tomato Mosaic Virus in plants. About 60 people were involved.

Presentations:
  2012 IRVA Conference, 2012 Parapsychological Association (PA) conference,
  2012 SSE conference, 2017 University of West Georgia Spark conference.

Publications:
  The Phage, Aperture, 26, – Fall Winter, pp 42-49;
  Eight Martini’s magazine, April, 2017, Issue #15

Link to published articles:
  https://debralynnekatz.academia.edu/research