Dean Radin

Dean Radin (/ˈreɪdɪn/; born February 29, 1952) is an American parapsychologist and chief scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) in Petaluma, California, where he conducts experimental research on psi phenomena. His work applies statistical and experimental methods to phenomena including telepathy, precognition, psychokinesis, and the relation of consciousness to quantum mechanics, and he is the author of several books including The Conscious Universe (1997), Entangled Minds (2006), Supernormal (2013), and Real Magic (2018). Radin's paranormal claims have been widely criticized by skeptics and mainstream scientists, who have charged that he embraces pseudoscience and misunderstands the nature of science.

Education and academic career

Following an early career in classical violin, Radin earned an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and both a master's degree in electrical engineering and a doctorate in educational psychology from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. He subsequently worked at Bell Labs, and conducted research at Princeton University's Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) lab, GTE Laboratories, the University of Edinburgh, SRI International, Interval Research Corporation, and the Boundary Institute, and was a faculty member at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He became Chief Scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences and later president of the Parapsychological Association, and he serves as co-editor-in-chief of the journal Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing. Radin was elected president of the Parapsychological Association in 1988, 1993, 1998, and 2005.

Parapsychology

Radin's approach emphasizes meta-analysis of the peer-reviewed database on psi phenomena. In The Conscious Universe he compiled results across thousands of laboratory experiments and argued that, when aggregated, evidence for psi effects — particularly presentiment, ganzfeld telepathy, and random number generator anomalies — achieves levels of statistical significance that would be considered definitive in other areas of science. He has argued that the evidence is not the problem; the problem is the "taboo" surrounding the subject within mainstream science. Radin maintains that parapsychology is as repeatable as any scientific discipline, while characterizing it as "elusive, subtle and complex" and "difficult to replicate."

Radin and his colleagues have suggested that small-scale studies have produced a "genuine psychokinetic effect," but critics including psychologists David B. Wilson and William R. Shadish, writing in Psychological Bulletin, have criticized claims by Radin and his associates that human minds can psychically influence random number generators, arguing that parapsychologists "need to go beyond statistics and explain how the mind might influence a computer, then test that prediction."

The physicist Robert L. Park has written, "No proof of psychic phenomena is ever found. In spite of all the tests devised by parapsychologists like [Robert G.] Jahn and Radin, and huge amounts of data collected over a period of many years, the results are no more convincing today than when they began their experiments." Skeptic Chris French criticized Radin for selective historical overview of parapsychology and for ignoring clear evidence of fraud, recounting that the medium Florence Cook was caught in trickery and that two of the Fox sisters confessed to fraud — facts Radin did not mention. Ray Hyman has written that many parapsychologists openly admit that the evidence for parapsychology is "inconsistent, irreproducible, and fails to meet acceptable scientific standards."

Radin has appealed to quantum mechanics as a mechanism, claiming it can explain the non-locality and backward causality associated with psi phenomena — claims described by mainstream physicists as pseudoscientific. He has written that not all people experience paranormal phenomena because they block such signals through the process of latent inhibition.

Philosopher and physicist Jason Jorjani has cited Radin specifically as one of the researchers who attempted to build a physics framework adequate to explain psi data: "No one's been able to come up with a physical model that can explain telepathy and clairvoyance and precognition... Dean Radin, somebody who came from out of the physics community relatively recently, tried to model psi in a rigorous enough framework to accommodate quantum theory."

Books

While Radin's books have been reviewed favorably by Publishers Weekly and Kirkus Reviews, independent reviews by scientists and skeptics have often been negative.

The Conscious Universe

A critical review of The Conscious Universe: The Scientific Truth of Psychic Phenomena (1997) was published by the British mathematician I. J. Good in Nature. Good charged that Radin ignored known hoaxes in the field, made statistical errors, and overlooked plausible non-paranormal explanations for parapsychological data, including flaws in Radin's method for evaluating the file drawer effect. Radin replied to Good in a follow-up correspondence in Nature, arguing that Good had misinterpreted a reference to a probability value; Good replied that most readers would not arrive at the same interpretation, and would be surprised to learn that by "more than a billion trillion," Radin meant more than 10100. Good further noted that the file-drawer effect does not account for intentional fraud, as was probably the case with prominent ESP proponents such as Samuel Soal, nor is there any real means of estimating such "intellectual, observational or ethical lapses" within ESP.

In 2002, Victor J. Stenger gave a criticism of The Conscious Universe that aligned with Good's arguments — that Radin had not performed the file-drawer analysis correctly, made fundamental errors in his calculations, and ignored non-paranormal explanations. Philosopher and skeptic Robert Todd Carroll published a thirteen-page chapter-by-chapter critique noting that Radin had not cited the skeptical literature on parapsychology and that Radin had ignored "the many hoaxes and frauds that dot the landscape in the history of psi research."

Entangled Minds

Entangled Minds: Extrasensory Experiences in a Quantum Reality (Paraview/Pocket Books, 2006) was reviewed critically by Robert Todd Carroll in The Skeptic's Dictionary for promoting paranormal interpretations of quantum mechanics that mainstream physicists reject.

Supernormal

Supernormal: Science, Yoga, and the Evidence for Extraordinary Psychic Abilities (2013) argues for psychic phenomena, linking them to the siddhis of yoga-related legend. Publishers Weekly described it as "unfocused and opaque at times" but "nevertheless an admirable attempt to bridge the gap between the scientific and the spiritual realm." Kirkus Reviews was more positive, calling it "certainly not for everyone, but a smart reminder that we haven't got the whole scene covered." Dale DeBakcsy, writing for Skeptical Inquirer, criticized the work as "misrepresenting report data, lowering success criteria, and playing a somewhat loose game with how rigorously confidence information is presented" — particularly Radin's treatment of forced-choice recognition meta-analyses, where extreme variations were dropped and the spread of effect sizes was not reported.

Real Magic

In Real Magic: Ancient Wisdom, Modern Science, and a Guide to the Secret Power of the Universe (Harmony Books, 2018), Radin argues that practices historically classified as magic — divination, intention, theurgy — correspond to real effects documented in laboratory settings, and that the quantum measurement problem provides a theoretical opening for understanding how consciousness could interact with the physical world. He draws on quantum entanglement, non-locality, and double-slit experiment anomalies to build a science-compatible framework for what traditions have called magic.

Other books

The Noetic Universe (Random House, 2011) ISBN 9781446438886 — British edition of The Conscious Universe.
Entangled Minds, second edition (Simon & Schuster, 2009) ISBN 9781439187937.

Institute of Noetic Sciences

IONS was founded in 1973 by Edgar Mitchell, the Apollo 14 astronaut who reportedly experienced a spontaneous noetic experience during his return from the Moon that he said transformed his understanding of consciousness and its relationship to the cosmos. Mitchell described perceiving, with sudden clarity, that consciousness itself was the fundamental substrate of the universe. IONS has since become an institutional home for consciousness research bridging scientific methodology and phenomena reported across human spiritual traditions; Radin has served as its chief scientist for many years.

Notes

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