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	Targ and Fisher's relationship led to interactions that were covered by media (international relations, visa, etc.) This probably supports inclusion. - - ] (]) 04:03, 18 May 2014 (UTC)		Targ and Fisher's relationship led to interactions that were covered by media (international relations, visa, etc.) This probably supports inclusion. - - ] (]) 04:03, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

			During the eight months that George W. Bush had Bobby incarcerated in a Japanese jail, for playing chess in Yugoslavia, I was in constant communications with his Japanese wife and lawyer, trying to get him released to travel to Iceland, or anywhere else. I sent the Japanese a ton of personal documents about his parents and relationship to Joan, etc. I had a relationship with Bobby for 15 years, and even was involved in the struggle to get him on the plane to play in Iceland. I think you guys have a lot of nerve to challenge my relationship to a family member. And if you still have doubt about the silver experiment, you can check the article by Erik Larson in the 10/22, 1984 WSJ. "Did psychic powers give firm a killing on Wall Street." You wont like that either. You should also do due diligence by looking up Pat Price's very accurate description of spheres and a giant crane at Semipalatinsk. You will find that much more interesting the the BS that you are publishing from Marks. Price's accomplishment is all over the Internet. Have you found anyone yet, to explain the difference between randomizing the transcripts which entirely solves the "clues problem," as compared with removing clues? It looks to me as though you are very good at reading the skeptical literature, but not so interested in the scientific papers you are trashing. I had to wait until my ninth book to say we had "A physicist's proof for psychic abilities" because now the data are overwhelming. If you can't see that, it's because you haven't looked at the data. It's more fun to throw rocks and break windows.
			] (]) 05:35, 18 May 2014 (UTC)Russell.

Revision as of 05:35, 18 May 2014

Welcome

Hello, Torgownik, and welcome to Misplaced Pages. Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. If you are stuck, and looking for help, please come to the New contributors' help page, where experienced Wikipedians can answer any queries you have! Or, you can just type {{helpme}} and your question on this page, and someone will show up shortly to answer. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

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No legal action: I have absolutely no intention to raise any legal action with regard to Wiki editors having "pseudoscience" splashed all over my bio page. It will be settled in the court of public opinion, or even within Misplaced Pages. I see that the lead on the bio page has been toned down for the moment, to only one "pseudoscience." Thanks,Torgownik (talk) 16:45, 12 May 2014 (UTC)Russell Targ

Edit warring

Template:Edit warring Barney the barney barney (talk) 22:13, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

April 2014

You currently appear to be engaged in an edit war according to the reverts you have made on Russell Targ. Users are expected to collaborate with others, to avoid editing disruptively, and to try to reach a consensus rather than repeatedly undoing other users' edits once it is known that there is a disagreement.

Please be particularly aware, Misplaced Pages's policy on edit warring states:

Edit warring is disruptive regardless of how many reverts you have made; that is to say, editors are not automatically "entitled" to three reverts.
Do not edit war even if you believe you are right.

If you find yourself in an editing dispute, use the article's talk page to discuss controversial changes; work towards a version that represents consensus among editors. You can post a request for help at an appropriate noticeboard or seek dispute resolution. In some cases it may be appropriate to request temporary page protection. If you engage in an edit war, you may be blocked from editing. MrBill3 (talk) 23:33, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Remote viewing is not “pseudoscience.” Please immediately drop that inaccurate and insulting term that you have scattered throughout my Misplaced Pages bio-page. Misplaced Pages’s definition: “Pseudoscience is a claim, belief or practice which is presented as scientific, but does not adhere to a valid scientific method, lacks supporting evidence or plausibility, cannot be reliably tested, or otherwise lacks scientific status. The term pseudoscience is often considered inherently pejorative, because it suggests something is being inaccurately or even deceptively portrayed as science.” There are a number of reasons that editors at Misplaced Pages should not characterize remote viewing as pseudoscience, when it is not characterized that way by the informed scientific community. 1--In order to publish our findings in the 1976 Proceedings of the IEEE, we had to meet with the Robert W. Lucky, managing editor, and his board. The editor proposed to us that we show him how to conduct a remote viewing experiment. If it was successful, he would publish our paper. The editor was also head of electro-optics at Bell Telephone Laboratory. We gave a talk at his lab. He then chose some engineers to be the “psychics” for each of five days. Each day he hid himself at a randomly chosen location in the nearby town. After the agreed-upon five trials, the editor read the five transcripts and successfully matched each of the five correctly to his hiding places. This was significant at 0.008 (one in 5!, 5-factorial). As a result, he published our paper on “Information Transmission Over Kilometer Distances”. 2—In our 23 year program for the government at SRI, we had to carry out “demonstration of ability” tasks for the Director of CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency, NASA, and Commanding General of the Army Intelligence Command. (The names are available upon request.) For the CIA we were able to accurately describe and draw a giant gantry crane rolling on eight wheels over a large building, and draw the 60 foot gores, “slices” of a sphere, under construction in northern Russia. The sphere was entirely accurate, although its existence was unknown at the time. The description was so accurate that it became the subject of a Congressional hearing of the House Committee on Intelligence. They were afraid of a security leak. No leak was found, and we were told to “press on.” 3—Remote viewing is easily replicated and has been demonstrated all over the world. It has been the subject of several Ph.D. dissertations in the US and abroad. Princeton University had a 25 year program investigating remote viewing with more than 450 trials. Prof. Robert Jahn also published a lengthy and highly significant (p = 10-10 or 1 in ten billion) experimental investigation of remote viewing in the 1982 Proc. IEEE. 4—The kind of tasks that kept us in business for twenty-three years include: SRI psychics found a downed Russian bomber in Africa; reported on the health of American hostages in Iran; described Soviet weapons factories in Siberia; located a kidnapped US general in Italy; and accurately forecasted the failure of a Chinese atomic-bomb test three days before it occurred, etc. When San Francisco heiress Patricia Hearst was abducted from her home in Berkeley, a psychic with the SRI team was the first to identify the kidnapper by name and then accurately describe and locate the kidnap car. I was at the Berkeley police station and witnessed this event. 5—Jessica Utts is a statistics Professor at the University of California, Irvine, and is president of the American Statistical Association. In writing for her part of a 1995 evaluation of our work for the CIA, she wrote: “Using the standards applied to any other area of science, it is concluded that psychic functioning has been well established. The statistical results of the studies examined are far beyond what is expected by chance. Arguments that these results could be due to methodological flaws in the experiments are soundly refuted.… Remote viewing has been conceptually replicated across a number of laboratories, by various experimenters, and in different cultures. This is a robust effect that, were it not such an unusual domain, would no longer be questioned by science as a real phenomenon. It is unlikely that methodological flaws could account for its remarkable consistency.” 6--Whether you believe some, all, or none of the above, it should be clear that hundreds of people were involved in a 23 year, multi-million dollar operational program at SRI, the CIA, DIA and two dozen intelligence officers at the army base at Ft. Meade. Regardless of the personal opinion of a Misplaced Pages editor, it is not logically coherent to trivialize this whole remote viewing undertaking as some kind of “pseudoscience.” Besides me, there is a parade of Ph.D. physicists, psychologists, and heads of government agencies who think our work was valuable, though puzzling. Torgownik (talk) 00:14, 13 May 2014 (UTC)Russell Targ, May 12, 2014

AN/I notice

There is currently a discussion at Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. - - MrBill3 (talk) 02:08, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

You have been blocked from editing for a period of 48 hours for edit warring, and for persistently editing to try to promote a point of view, contrary to the requirement that Misplaced Pages editing be done from a neutral point of view. In addition, you should be aware that Misplaced Pages's guideline on conflict of interest strongly discourages editors from editing articles about themselves, their work, or any other subject in which they have a similar personal involvement. Once the block has expired, you are welcome to make useful contributions. If you think there are good reasons why you should be unblocked, you may appeal this block by adding the following text below this notice: {{unblock|reason=Your reason here ~~~~}}. However, you should read the guide to appealing blocks first. The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 13:06, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

Recent edit to Russell Targ

Please do not remove content or templates from pages on Misplaced Pages, as you did to Russell Targ, without giving a valid reason for the removal in the edit summary. Your content removal does not appear constructive and has been reverted. Please make use of the sandbox if you'd like to experiment with test edits. Thank you.Vieque (talk • ctb) 19:40, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

Conflict of Interest editing and Edit Warring at Russell Targ

Hello, Torgownik. We welcome your contributions to Misplaced Pages, but if you are affiliated with some of the people, places or things you have written about in the article Russell Targ, you may have a conflict of interest or close connection to the subject.

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MrBill3 (talk) 04:39, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

Your submission at Articles for creation: User:Torgownik/sandbox (April 19)

Your recent article submission to Articles for Creation has been reviewed! Unfortunately, it has not been accepted at this time.
Please read the comments left by the reviewer on your submission. You are encouraged to edit the submission to address the issues raised and resubmit when they have been resolved.

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The Ukulele Dude - Aggie80 (talk) 13:19, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

Sources

I noticed your post on BLP about getting your full background posted. Do you have a list of the sources for your laser work, or any sort of record of how much the CIA paid you for your ESP program? If so, I'd be happy to try to add in those citations and see if we can't make your bio more balanced. Anything even remotely related to WP:FRINGE gets WP editors very agitated (something I found out the hard way), but the supremacy of neutral sources will out, in my opinion. Let me know if I can help. The Cap'n (talk) 12:17, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

Talkback

Someone insists on putting the very judgmental word "pseudoscience" on the first line of my Wiki bio-page. I do not think this is appropriate. No doubt some people consider anything to do with psychic abilities as pseudoscience, the Parapsychology Association is a full member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, AAAS. And remote viewing research has been replicated world-wide. Although our work has been criticized by some, it was strongly supported by many branches of the US government for 23 years. Russell Targ, May 10, 2014 <russ at targ dot co>

Hello, Torgownik. You have new messages at Talk:Russell Targ.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

There are some potential references listed in the discussions above. Please place proposal on talk page. I hope the article on Russell Targ can be improved. - - MrBill3 (talk) 01:53, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

I am attaching some of my laser and electro-optics papers. Papers 1-6 comprise very early early laser papers and key papers later in my laser career.

The ESP program at Stanford Research Institute ran from 1972 to 1995 at a total support level of $25 million.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS OF RUSSELL TARG

Plasmas, Lasers and Electro-Optics

M. Ettinberg and R. Targ, “Observations of Plasma and Cyclotron Oscillations,” Proc. Symposium on Electronic Waveguides, Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, (April, 1958).

R. Targ and L.P. Levine, “Backward Microwave Oscillations in a System Composed of an Enectron beam and Hydrogen Gas,” Journal of Applied Physics, 32, 4, pp. 731-737, (April 1961).

1. P. Rabinowitz, S. Jacobs and R. Targ, "Homodyne Detection of Phase-Modulated Light," Proc. IRE, Vol. 50, No. 11 (November 1962).

2. R. Targ, "Optical Heterodyne Detection of Microwave Modulated Light," Proc. IEEE Correspondence, pp. 303-304 (March 1964).

R. Targ and W.B. Tiffany, "Gain and Saturation on Transverse Flowing He, N2, CO2 Mixtures," Appl. Phys. Letters, Vol. 15, No. 9 (1 November 1969).

W.B. Tiffany and R. Targ, "The Gas-Transport Laser: A New Class of High-Power Electro-Optic Devices," Laser Focus, (September 1969).

3. W.B. Tiffany, J.D. Foster and R. Targ, "Kilowatt CO2 Gas-Transport Laser,"Appl. Phys. Letters, Vol. 15, No. 3 (1969).

R. Targ and M.W. Sasnett, "Xenon-Helium Laser at High Pressure and High Repetition Rate," Appl. Phys. Letters, Vol. 19, No. 12, (15 December 1971).

Fahlen and R. Targ, "High Average Power Xenon Laser," IEEE J. Quant. Elect, Vol. QE-9, No. 6 (1973).

R. Targ, "Pulsed Nitrogen Laser at High Repetition Rate," IEEE J. Quant. Elect.Vol. QE-8, pp. 726-728, (August 1972).

R. Targ and M.W. Sasnett, "High Repetition Rate Xenon Laser with Transverse Excitation," IEEE J. Quant. Elect, Vol. QE-8, pp. 166-169, (February 1972).

4. Russell Targ, Roland Bowles, Michael Kavaya, and R. Milton Huffaker, "Coherent Lidar Airborne Windshear Sensor: Performance Evaluation," APPLIED OPTICS, 20 May 1991. (Cover).

5. James G. Hawley, Russell Targ, Michael Kavaya, Sammy Henderson, and Daniel Moerder, "Coherent Launch-Site Atmospheric Wind Sounder: Theory and Experiment, APPLIED OPTICS, August 21, 1993. (Cover).

6. Russell Targ, Bruce C. Steakley, James G. Hawley, Lawrence L. Ames, Paul Forney, David Swanson, Richard Stone, Robert G. Otto, Vassilis Zarifis, Philip Brockman, Raymond A. Calloway, Paul A. Robinson, and Sarah R. Harrell, "Coherent lidar airborne wind sensor II: flight test results at 2 µm and 10 µm," APPLIED OPTICS, 20 December 1996. (Cover). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.68.105.17 (talk) 04:09, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for your suggestions. Some of these papers are now in the article. When I get a chance I will look into the others. What I am looking for is support for their notability. As I am not an expert in the subject so I am not qualified to judge what makes a highly cited paper. It seems that over 75 citations may be a good guideline for papers in the field. Does that sound appropriate? I will see if other editors have some knowledge. I think citations in major textbooks, reviews of the subject or a description when cited that such and such paper is important or similar support inclusion in the article. It would be great if there were a book or article that describes the development of laser/laser research that explicitly describes Targ's contributions/role. I'd like to personally apologize for aggressive editing on the article, let me assure you it was based on advocacy of WP policy. I hope the article is substantially improved giving a fair description of Targ's work. - - MrBill3 (talk) 05:44, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Torgownik I recommend you sign in instead of using your IP 108.68.105.17. Do you have any reliable secondary sources that discuss your laser work i.e. books or papers not published by you. Do any physics textbooks discuss your laser work? If so can you list them? That's the sort of thing which can be used on your article to cite your laser work. So far you have not listed any. We are all well aware that you have published papers on lasers and nobody is trying to suppress this information but the problem is that it has been hard to find sources outside of your own papers that discuss your work in that field. Perhaps you can compile a list on the talk-page of the article. Goblin Face (talk) 20:27, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

May 2014

Your recent editing history at Russell Targ shows that you are currently engaged in an edit war. Being involved in an edit war can result in your being blocked from editing—especially if you violate the three-revert rule, which states that an editor must not perform more than three reverts on a single page within a 24-hour period. Undoing another editor's work—whether in whole or in part, whether involving the same or different material each time—counts as a revert. Also keep in mind that while violating the three-revert rule often leads to a block, you can still be blocked for edit warring—even if you don't violate the three-revert rule—should your behavior indicate that you intend to continue reverting repeatedly.

To avoid being blocked, instead of reverting please consider using the article's talk page to work toward making a version that represents consensus among editors. See BRD for how this is done. You can post a request for help at a relevant noticeboard or seek dispute resolution. In some cases, you may wish to request temporary page protection. Binksternet (talk) 00:54, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

I am not in an edit war. I am responding to an anonymous skeptical reviewer who is thrilled to be able to ignorantly insult and degrade my life's work. How dare he or she put "pseudoscience" on the lead on my Misplaced Pages bio page. Am I in an edit war if I don't agree that reviewers are omnipotently able to write whatever nonsense they want to put under my name? Misplaced Pages is supposed to be an encyclopedia not a soapbox.

Russell Targ. <russtarg at gmail.com.>

Remote viewing is not “pseudoscience.” Please immediately drop that inaccurate and insulting term that you have scattered throughout my Misplaced Pages bio-page. Misplaced Pages’s definition: “Pseudoscience is a claim, belief or practice which is presented as scientific, but does not adhere to a valid scientific method, lacks supporting evidence or plausibility, cannot be reliably tested, or otherwise lacks scientific status. The term pseudoscience is often considered inherently pejorative, because it suggests something is being inaccurately or even deceptively portrayed as science.” There are a number of reasons that editors at Misplaced Pages should not characterize remote viewing as pseudoscience, when it is not characterized that way by the informed scientific community. 1--In order to publish our findings in the 1976 Proceedings of the IEEE, we had to meet with the Robert W. Lucky, managing editor, and his board. The editor proposed to us that we show him how to conduct a remote viewing experiment. If it was successful, he would publish our paper. The editor was also head of electro-optics at Bell Telephone Laboratory. We gave a talk at his lab. He then chose some engineers to be the “psychics” for each of five days. Each day he hid himself at a randomly chosen location in the nearby town. After the agreed-upon five trials, the editor read the five transcripts and successfully matched each of the five correctly to his hiding places. This was significant at 0.008 (one in 5!, 5-factorial). As a result, he published our paper on “Information Transmission Over Kilometer Distances”. 2—In our 23 year program for the government at SRI, we had to carry out “demonstration of ability” tasks for the Director of CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency, NASA, and Commanding General of the Army Intelligence Command. (The names are available upon request.) For the CIA we were able to accurately describe and draw a giant gantry crane rolling on eight wheels over a large building, and draw the 60 foot gores, “slices” of a sphere, under construction in northern Russia. The sphere was entirely accurate, although its existence was unknown at the time. The description was so accurate that it became the subject of a Congressional hearing of the House Committee on Intelligence. They were afraid of a security leak. No leak was found, and we were told to “press on.” 3—Remote viewing is easily replicated and has been demonstrated all over the world. It has been the subject of several Ph.D. dissertations in the US and abroad. Princeton University had a 25 year program investigating remote viewing with more than 450 trials. Prof. Robert Jahn also published a lengthy and highly significant (p = 10-10 or 1 in ten billion) experimental investigation of remote viewing in the 1982 Proc. IEEE. 4—The kind of tasks that kept us in business for twenty-three years include: SRI psychics found a downed Russian bomber in Africa; reported on the health of American hostages in Iran; described Soviet weapons factories in Siberia; located a kidnapped US general in Italy; and accurately forecasted the failure of a Chinese atomic-bomb test three days before it occurred, etc. When San Francisco heiress Patricia Hearst was abducted from her home in Berkeley, a psychic with the SRI team was the first to identify the kidnapper by name and then accurately describe and locate the kidnap car. I was at the Berkeley police station and witnessed this event. 5—Jessica Utts is a statistics Professor at the University of California, Irvine, and is president of the American Statistical Association. In writing for her part of a 1995 evaluation of our work for the CIA, she wrote: “Using the standards applied to any other area of science, it is concluded that psychic functioning has been well established. The statistical results of the studies examined are far beyond what is expected by chance. Arguments that these results could be due to methodological flaws in the experiments are soundly refuted.… Remote viewing has been conceptually replicated across a number of laboratories, by various experimenters, and in different cultures. This is a robust effect that, were it not such an unusual domain, would no longer be questioned by science as a real phenomenon. It is unlikely that methodological flaws could account for its remarkable consistency.” 6--Whether you believe some, all, or none of the above, it should be clear that hundreds of people were involved in a 23 year, multi-million dollar operational program at SRI, the CIA, DIA and two dozen intelligence officers at the army base at Ft. Meade. Regardless of the personal opinion of a Misplaced Pages editor, it is not logically coherent to trivialize this whole remote viewing undertaking as some kind of “pseudoscience.” Besides me, there is a parade of Ph.D. physicists, psychologists, and heads of government agencies who think our work was valuable, though puzzling. 108.68.105.17 (talk) 00:17, 13 May 2014 (UTC)Russell Targ, May 12, 2014

I was asked by Wiki for some published ESP references. Because of my very poor vision, I laboriously added them in this morning. Now they have been edited out. I will not do that again. My bio page was on wiki for at least two years without "pseudoscience" Why did that insult and libel become necessary? If you don't like my references, I can tell you what else we were doing. Though I gather you have no interest in facts with regard to what SRI did for our twenty years. Since I see you always delete the fact that we had a 23 year program. Wouldn't a reader find that interesting? its a fact. Here is how we paid the rent: The kind of tasks that kept us in business for twenty-three years are the following: SRI psychics found a downed Russian bomber in Africa, confirmed in a public lecture by Jimmy Carter; reported on the health of American hostages in Iran; described Soviet weapons factories in Siberia; located a kidnapped US general in Italy; and accurately forecasted the failure of a Chinese atomic-bomb test three days before it occurred, etc. When San Francisco heiress Patricia Hearst was abducted from her home in Berkeley, a psychic with the SRI team was the first to identify the kidnapper by name and then accurately describe and locate the kidnap car. We received a commendation from the Berkeley Police Dept. But I realize that if you are convinced that remote viewing doesn't exist, nothing I say could make any difference. Misplaced Pages's bias is becoming inceasinglywell known. You can obviously print anything at all that meets your prejudices. I have no control over that. But as you continue your biased editing, Misplaced Pages will become synonymous with FOX news and other other untrustworthy surces. You get to choose.

Misplaced Pages has a rule against subjects of biographies editing against the editors who are interested in the biography. You have been doing exactly this under your Torgownik account and also under the IP address 108.68.105.17. Many of the edits you have been making are reversions of the edits others have made; this is what Misplaced Pages calls edit warring. I count five instances today:

Revision as of 04:53, May 10, 2014, UTC. Torgownik changed "pseudoscience" to "controversial field".
Revision as of 16:41, May 10, 2014, UTC. Torgownik changed "pseudoscience" to "contentious area".
Revision as of 18:14, May 10, 2014, UTC. 108.68.105.17 changed "pseudoscience" to "considered a the pseudoscience by those who have not read the published papers".
Revision as of 20:46, May 10, 2014, UTC. 108.68.105.17 changed "pseudoscience" to "controversial research area".
Revision as of 23:26, May 10, 2014, UTC. Torgownik changed "pseudoscience" to "highly controversial".

A friendly "talk" comment says (on 5/10) the reason that the page is called "Pseudoscience" is because there are "no scientific references". How about the following which are on the page, plus Robert Jahn from Princeton?. On remote viewing -—; Puthoff, H. (18 October 1974). "Information transfer under conditions of sensory shielding". Letters to Nature. Nature 251: 602–7. doi:10.1038/251602a0.

--;   Puthoff, H.E.; — (March 1976). "A perceptual channel for information transfer over kilometer distances: Historical perspective and recent research". Proceedings of the IEEE 64 (3): 329–54. doi:10.1109/PROC.1976.10113.

--; Rauscher, E.A.; — (20–22 June 2006). "Investigation of a complex space-time metric to describe precognition of the future". AIP Conference Proceedings. Frontiers of Time: Retrocausation - Experiment and Theory 863. San Diego, CA. pp. 121–46. doi:10.1063/1.2388752. and: Robert G. Jahn, "THE PERSISTENT PARADOX OF PSYCHIC PHENOMENA: AN ENGINEERING PERSPECTIVE"

Proc. IEEE,Vol. 70, No. 2, pp. 136-170, February 1982.

If you take a minute or two and glance at the edit-warring noticeboard, you will see that a lot of editors have been blocked for reverting four times in a 24-hour period. If you are blocked you will only be able to edit this user talk page for the account Torgownik, and only for the purpose of asking to be unblocked. You will not be able to edit the page Russell Targ or the talk page Talk:Russell Targ. Of course that is not what you want, so please stick to arguing your case at Talk:Russell Targ rather than changing the word "pseudoscience" one more time against consensus, which will definitely get you blocked. Binksternet (talk) 03:55, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

So, I have to assume that you are not all crazy. If I understand Mr. Binksternet correctly, the Misplaced Pages organization is telling me as the subject of your bio-page, you can say anything whatsoever on my Wiki bio-page, whether it is true or not, or in between. And if I try to change it, then you will block me for engaging in an "edit war." I am asserting that calling my life's work a "pseudoscience" is untrue, libelous, and degrading, especially on the lead line on my biography. Why is that not an obvious, malicious libelous public defamation of my character? Russell Targ. <russtarg at gmail.com.> — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.68.105.17 (talk) 04:23, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

I find that your definition of pseudoscience exactly corresponds to my understanding of Misplaced Pages's general feeling toward all of parapsychology. Your def. attached to my lead, on the Russell Targ page reads: "The term pseudoscience is often considered inherently pejorative, because it suggests something is being inaccurately or even deceptively portrayed as science." THAT IS WHY I AM REMOVING IT. If you are actually an encyclopedia and not a soap box, you should not be insulting the subject of a bio-page on the lead of the article. That is why it is a libelous accusation. Do you understand? If you are not prepared to Prove that my forty years of work is a deception, which it of course is not, then I suggest you delete your "pseudoscience". Russell Targ. russtarg at gmail.com

Letters to Nature. Nature 251: 602–7. doi:10.1038/251602a0.

-—; Puthoff, H.E.; — (March 1976). "A perceptual channel for information transfer over

kilometer distances: Historical perspective and recent research". Proceedings of the IEEE 64 (3): 329–54. doi:10.1109/PROC.1976.10113.

-—; Rauscher, E.A.; — (20–22 June 2006). "Investigation of a complex space-time metric to describe precognition of the future". AIP Conference Proceedings. Frontiers of Time: Retrocausation - Experiment and Theory 863. San Diego, CA. pp. 121–46. doi:10.1063/1.2388752.

-—; Robert G. Jahn, "THE PERSISTENT PARADOX OF PSYCHIC PHENOMENA: AN ENGINEERING PERSPECTIVE" Proc. IEEE,Vol. 70, No. 2, pp. 136-170, February 1982. Russell Targ. <russtarg at gmail.con.

Wiki asked me to add in some of my published remote viewing references. I did that this morning, at great pain, since I have very poor vision. Within an hour they were entirely edited out. Why would you do that? If refs. are of no interest, I am attaching a brief list of some of the operational remote viewing that paid our rent. The kind of tasks that kept us in business for twenty-three years are the following: And why do you keep editing out the fact that were at SRI for 23 years. Wouldn't a reader find that fact interesting. Or is that too much against the NO ESP grain for you? SRI psychics found a downed Russian bomber in Africa; Confirmed by Jimmy Carter in a public lecture at Emory University, we reported on the health of American hostages in Iran; described Soviet weapons factories in Siberia; located a kidnapped US general in Italy; and accurately forecasted the failure of a Chinese atomic-bomb test three days before it occurred, etc. When San Francisco heiress Patricia Hearst was abducted from her home in Berkeley, a psychic with the SRI team was the first to identify the kidnapper by name and then accurately describe and locate the kidnap car. I was in the police station when Pat Price did that. We received a commendation from the Berkeley police for that work. After two years on Misplaced Pages, who decided that I had to be branded as a pseudo-scientist. Does that help your brand as totally anti parapsychology. Misplaced Pages is getting a reputation for its various biases, and will be up there with FOX news as entertainment rather than information. The world of humanistic psychology and parapsychology can help you accomplish that. You have demonstrated that you have absolute control over Misplaced Pages. I understand that you can put any kind of libelous accusations all over my bio-page, and I have no appeal. But you do not control the rest of the Internet. And I understand that it's not "my" biopage it belongs to the editors who hate ESP. So I surrender to the anonymous editors. Torgownik (talk) 19:17, 11 May 2014 (UTC)Russell Targ. russtarg at gmail.com

I was asked to add remote viewing references. I added them,and they were then erased. Could someone please explain that to me? Torgownik (talk) 20:46, 11 May 2014 (UTC)Russell Targ| russtarg at gmail.com

Your parapsychological papers on remote viewing that you added to the article were removed because you did not format them properly. This was your edit here . You made a mistake by not formatting the papers properly and you made a mess of the section so they were removed. Goblin Face (talk) 15:00, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Legal threat

I have closed down the thread you opened on the help desk because I perceive your comments to be a threat to take legal action. I now require you to clarify that position please. Spinning Spark 10:47, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

I have absolutely no intention to raise any legal action with regard to Wiki editors having "pseudoscience" splashed all over my bio page. It will be settled in the court of public opinion, or even within Misplaced Pages. I see that the lead on the bio page has been toned down for the moment, to only one "pseudoscience." Thanks, Torgownik (talk) 16:47, 12 May 2014 (UTC)Russell Targ

Please stop using talk pages such as User talk: Torgownik for general discussion of the topic. They are for discussion related to improving the article; not for use as a forum or chat room. If you have specific questions about certain topics, consider visiting our reference desk and asking them there instead of on article talk pages. See here for more information. Your repeated protestations that remote viewing is not a pseudoscience, when it is the mainstream opinion of the scientific community that it is a pseudoscience, is becoming tedious, and has a too long, don't read quality. Robert McClenon (talk) 00:55, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

Well, I certainly don't want to become tedious. On the other hand, if you read my letter you might learn something interesting. Absolutely no legal threat written or implied. Cheers, Torgownik (talk) 02:39, 13 May 2014 (UTC)Russell Targ

original letter was titled "My 23 years of research at Stanford Research Institute has suddenly been defamed and libeled on my bio page" -- emphasis added. I would consider the possibility that no threat may have been intended, but accusations of libel are legal threats. You also said "I am prepared to take all necessary measures public, Internet or private to discover a path to redressing this libel" -- emphasis added again. It is more reasonable than not to assume that includes a lawsuit, especially with the continued use of the word "libel." At any rate, Misplaced Pages is an encyclopedia that summarizes mainstream scholarship, not a place to right great wrongs or promote one's work. If you have a problem with how the article presents your prior work, then blame mainstream academia, not us. Your letter only shows that US intelligence agencies desperately wasted tax payer money for decades. The US government is not the final authority on science, and any real scientist would know that. Ian.thomson (talk) 03:09, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

If you are very close to a subject, here are some ways you can reduce the risk of problems:

Avoid or exercise great caution when editing or creating articles related to you, your organization, or its competitors, as well as projects and products they are involved with.
Avoid linking to the Misplaced Pages article or website of your organization in other articles (see Misplaced Pages:Spam).
Exercise great caution so that you do not accidentally breach Misplaced Pages's content policies.

Please familiarize yourself with relevant content policies and guidelines, especially those pertaining to neutral point of view, verifiability of information, and autobiographies.

For information on how to contribute to Misplaced Pages when you have a conflict of interest, please see our frequently asked questions for organizations. You have continued to edit this article rather than propose changes on the talk page. You have continued to insert unsourced information that is contradicted by the sources. Please present any proposed changes on the talk page of the article and provide sources. MrBill3 (talk) 09:28, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

You need to understand this

These are the things you need to understand.

In matters which are within the realm of scientific investigation, Misplaced Pages follows the scientific consensus. We do not represent fringe views as if they were anything but fringe. The consensus view that remote viewing is pseudoscience, and that this characterisation applies explicitly to your work, is established from reliable independent sources. We are not going to stop representing it as pseudoscience unless and until the scientific community accepts its validity. It may be a long wait.
In arguing for the representation of this field as science rather that pseudoscience, you have consistently overstepped the boundaries of acceptable behaviour on Misplaced Pages. Please read this essay on why strong opinions like yours are a problem.
You have also issued unambiguous legal threats. You have been given some slack because we understand that biography subjects can get upset. That's not going to last much longer. We have an absolute prohibition on legal threats and the use of language implying legal threats. If you choose to go down this route, you will be banned until all such threats are withdrawn. No ifs, no buts.

Your best course of action is to stick to proposing changes, incremental ones, on the talk page. Identify a sentence, say why it's a problem according to our policies (WP:NPOV, WP:V) and propose a revised version with sources (WP:RS). These must be reliable independent sources: not fringe journals, not books by advocates. Or leave it to Brian Josephson, who seems to be capable of articulating your issues without the problems you have had.

We understand that you do not like the fact that much of your life's work is considered by most scientists to have been invalid. We sympathise. We cannot fix it, and we cannot pretend it is not the case, because our policies do not allow it. Guy (Help!) 10:05, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

You have been mentioned in connection to an edit-warring IP address

Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there is currently a discussion involving you at Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/Edit warring regarding a possible violation of Misplaced Pages's policy on edit warring. Thank you. Ian.thomson (talk) 17:13, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

Notification regarding a discussion about you on the Administrator's Noticeboard.

There is currently a discussion at Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. The thread is Russell Targ needs to be blocked, or at least topic-banned. Thank you. Ian.thomson (talk) 19:30, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

You have been blocked from editing for a period of 1 week for making an offsite posting that drove quote a number of meatpuppets to the article about you. Once the block has expired, you are welcome to make useful contributions. If you think there are good reasons why you should be unblocked, you may appeal this block by adding the following text below this notice: {{unblock|reason=Your reason here ~~~~}}. However, you should read the guide to appealing blocks first. Kevin Gorman (talk) 20:55, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

I've made two minor changes to my block message. I've first removed the reference to WP:CANVASS because it wasn't the appropriate policy as it deals with on-wiki, and second changed "your own article" to "the article about you," to better reflect reality. I'm letting the block stand because I view attracting large numbers of meatpuppets to the article about you as significantly disruptive and incompatible with the goal of building a better encyclopedia. Kevin Gorman (talk) 13:55, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

Hi Torgownik, I'm going to provisionally unblock you after I post this here. I apologize for not being more detailed in my initial block message about why I was blocking you. Please understand that I'm unblocking you because I think you can productively contribute here, not because I think my initial block was a bad block, and that lifted blocks can be reinstated.

One of the reasons I blocked you was your offsite canvassing; it brought a bunch of new editors to Misplaced Pages in a way that caused disruption. I'm not going to go in to further detail here, because I think it's covered down below. Another is because you were engaging in a practice that we generally refer to as sockpuppeting, even if incidentally, by editing from an IP address at the same time that you were editing from your main account on the same page. Socking of this fashion is bad, because it can create the impression of a consensus where none exists, and can be used to game various other rules. You were also edit-warring on the page about yourself, and made a comment that is very easily construed as a legal threat, even if you didn't mean it as such. Real legal threats are a big deal, but even perceived legal threats have a significant chilling effect on other editors, which is why we treat them harshly.

If you would like to continue to stay unblocked, there are a couple things to do that will likely make that happen. Don't encourage people to come to Misplaced Pages for the purpose of making your article look like what you wish it looked like; it won't work, and people will get cranky. Try to, as much as you can, only edit from one account - check if you're logged in to your account before you edit. Don't editwar; if you make a change a couple of times and it gets reverted, start a discussion on the talk page of the article in question, and try to reach agreement with other editors about the best way forward. And finally, don't say anything that could be construed as a legal threat. If you feel like you need to sue Misplaced Pages or particular editors over your article, you are welcome to do so - but we as a community don't believe that someone threatening legal action (or taking legal action) should be editing Misplaced Pages at the same time.

Please feel free to pop over to my talk page and ask any questions you have about Misplaced Pages policy etc, but please be aware that violating the things I initially blocked you for is likely to wind up with you blocked again - and saying something that can be construed as a legal threat again is definitely likely to end with you getting reblocked, even if you didn't actually mean it as a legal threat, so it would be good to be careful with your wording. Best, Kevin Gorman (talk) 18:10, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Your article

Torgownik, you can always contact Misplaced Pages at Misplaced Pages:Contact us - Subjects. Liz 23:44, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

Pretty sure he already has, and he will have received the standard advice to biography subjects, which I wrote. This explains how to ask for help on Misplaced Pages, and told to request changes on the Talk page. Guy (Help!) 20:58, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

Safety

Sorry to read about the block, but meanwhile, I'm just curious: how do you study precognition without hurting people? I mean the broken vase in _The Matrix_. Wnt (talk) 03:28, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

Your off Misplaced Pages rants

On the Society for Psychical Research facebook page you recently wrote "I am having a problem with Misplaced Pages. They think all remote viewing is "pseudoscience". And they have defaced my Wiki bio-page with lots of nonsense." This isn't true. Nobody has "defaced" your Misplaced Pages biography. Reliable scientific sources have been used on your Misplaced Pages bio, if you have a problem take it up with the sources, not Misplaced Pages. Goblin Face (talk) 18:11, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

Do note that he has no duty to you to explain or justify any of his off-Misplaced Pages writings here. Calling them "rants" here is just a personal attack we can do without. Please be sure to avoid what WP:OUTING describes as "opposition research". Wnt (talk) 00:55, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

On any credible definition of 'deface', this bio is being defaced by a number of editors. The fact that the material added has been taken from another source in no way alters that fact since it has been amply demonstrated by user Torgownik on the Targ talk page that the pseudoscience ascription is incorrect (of course, people with limited understanding of science may fail to appreciate the cogency of his arguments, but lack of expertise is no defence for a defacer). The point may become clearer if we consider this example. Suppose a bus timetable is posted in a public place and a member of the public considers there is an error, as some source that he considers reliable gives a different time (parenthetical comment on reliable sources: I have an app produced by a company that sells UK train tickets, one of the most popular apps for journey planning, which not infrequently generates timetables that are pure fantasy (most recent example: when asked to list trains from Plymouth to Paddington it listed 2 through trains leaving Plymouth at the same time, one arriving at Paddington at the actual scheduled time and one about 20 min. later. Only one train actually left at that time, and how one would manage to arrive 20 min, later without changing trains baffles me). If I had not learnt better by now, I might have considered this a reliable source). Our public spirited person alters the times in the belief that he is improving the timetable. But the magistrate, sentencing our friend to 2 weeks' community service for defacing the bus timetable, is unimpressed by the fact that our friend based his 'correction' on a 'reliable source'. --Brian Josephson (talk) 08:47, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

And just how is your hypothetical good Samaritan supposed to have known that the timetable is wrong? Just because he experiences a late or missed bus does not mean that those are the times the bus is supposed to run. A reliable source is needed (eg the bus company) before he should risk making a change. Your semi-hidden real-life example also does not hold water. Many trains have coaches that are decoupled at some point along their journey and then take an alternative route. See for instance, this example. So yes, it is perfectly possible that two timetable entities can leave Plymouth as a single train and arrive at Paddington as two different trains at two different times. I have no idea if that is the case or not in your example, but I would hesitate to declare the timetable nonsense without information from a reliable source with expertise in train timetables that had analysed the figures and come to that conclusion. Anyway, it does not matter whether or not you agree that that is a good methodology for building an encyclopaedia. If you want to play in this playground, those are the rules you need to follow. You are welcome to argue that the rules should be changed, but both here and article talk pages are not the appropriate place to discuss policy. Spinning Spark 16:47, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Nice try, Spinner, but it won't work. When a train splits into two there is always a warning announcement to make sure passengers get into the right carriage and there was none; neither was there any indication on the departure board at Plymouth. And the official National Rail planner doesn't show that train either, even if you do not check the box 'show only fastest trains'. And TheTrainLine makes other errors as well, e.g. claiming there was a through train on a certain journey at a weekend when there wasn't one. And one day it left out all the fast trains from London to Cambridge, which information I ignored of course as I had learned not to trust the service. Of course, my assumption was that the good Samaritan did get his information from what he thought was a reliable source. --Brian Josephson (talk) 17:07, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages is the only top-ten internet site where good Samaritans (armed with reliable sources) are even allowed make corrections to the material. Oh, by the way, if you really have to post in the middle of a thread please learn to use the right number of indents otherwise no one will be able to follow what is going on. Spinning Spark 17:20, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Do note that canvassing "which is done with the intention of influencing the outcome of a discussion in a particular way (i.e. calling fellow POV-pushing meatpuppets) is considered inappropriate," especially when it is off-site. Ian.thomson (talk) 00:59, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

Normally this applies to editors taking on-wiki disputes off-wiki. When it is an author asking for fairness about himself here, I don't think it makes a lot of sense to hold him to that standard. Especially when he's not even being allowed to edit here at the time, what duty does he have to follow policies off-wiki??? Wnt (talk) 01:04, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

The problem is that the claim the article is unfair, requires acceptance that refuted ideas are valid. Taking any request to a partisan audience in an attempt to recruit sympathetic edits, is canvassing and is inappropriate. The subject and the subject's beliefs do not affect this. Guy (Help!) 13:21, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict)(meant to also include) Please be sure to avoid what WP:GAMING describes as "Selectively 'cherry picking' wording from a policy (or cherry picking one policy to apply but willfully ignoring others) to support a view which does not in fact match policy."

WP:OUTING states "if individuals have identified themselves without redacting or having it oversighted, such information can be used for discussions of conflict of interest (COI) in appropriate forums." "Opposition research" would be digging up your or my Facebook posts for evidence that (completely hypothetical stuff like) you believing in remote viewing or me losing money to a claimed psychic. It does not include making sure that canvassing isn't going on.

Do you not care that he's basically trying to flood our site with incompetent POV-pushing meatpuppets? Disrupting the site is disrupting the site, whether it's on-wiki or off-wiki, and we have to prepare for it. Ian.thomson (talk) 01:10, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

Well, this is an exercise in dehumanization. They're incompetent because they read his site? They're POV-pushing because they have "the wrong" POV? They're "meatpuppets"... that last one I can't make sound any more ridiculous. You're setting far too nasty a tone toward people just because you don't like their perspective on science. Wnt (talk) 13:27, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

Unfortunately a couple of people (you included, Wnt) have been muddying the waters by being supportive of the edits themselves or of the editor's dignity. The problem with the canvassing is independent of the merits of the content issue discussed or the terminology used, and there is a risk with people inexperienced with Misplaced Pages, and driven by strong opinions, that they will interpret supportive comments about content as an indication of support in respect of problematic behaviour. We do need to ensure that Torgownik is in no doubt that off-site solicitations for support is disruptive and will only lead to protection of the article and talk page to control disruption.

I agree that we should avoid the use of terms of art that have aggressive overtones, such as "meatpuppet". We can say it nicely, but still link to the relevant guidelines.

There is no ambiguity here. The admin community does not give a damn, as a body corporate, whether remote viewing is valid or not, the admin community does care when partisans try to recruit sympathetic editors to articles that are already the subject of significant problems that require solid understanding of Misplaced Pages policy. It does not help, it is counter-productive and it is not going to be overlooked. Guy (Help!) 13:37, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

But he's not an ordinary partisan; he's someone interested in his own article. I mean, suppose any BLP subject who never edited Misplaced Pages even once went on the air and said his Misplaced Pages article is biased. Would you go on about how, say, Rand Paul was "violating policy" if he made a complaint like that, because of the recruitment? And prepare some kind of disciplinary process for him in advance if he ever tried to start an account? There's a big difference between when a Misplaced Pages war between liberals and conservatives spills out onto 4chan or something, and when a couple of article subjects complain about how they're portrayed. We can try to oppose the effect of the canvassing by warning people that if they were recruited to come edit, they should know this and that. But if you respond to a BLP complaining about how his article is presented by first blocking him, then holding it against him and everyone he talks to that he even dares complain about it off wikipedia... try to think about how that is going to sound to the larger audience. It risks Misplaced Pages's reputation; it gives any actual pseudoscience more credibility because pseudoscience, even when it's obviously wrong, thrives on documented evidence of censorship. Wnt (talk) 08:20, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Just as well there's no documented evidence of censorship, then. Obviously we can't do much about paranoid conspiracist nonsense.

I didn't block him, and I don't advocate banning him from the article talk page.

The problem is very simple: Targ believes he made a valid contribution to the scientific investigation of a genuine parapsychological phenomenon, whereas the scientific community thinks he wastged twenty years and a few million of Uncle Sam's dollars pursuing a chimaera. Since there is absolutely no unambiguous evidence to support the existence of psi, and Targ's group's work has been soundly debunked by reference to cues etc., this is a real-world problem that it is not our place to try to fix for him. He's never going to improve that by bringing more partisans to shi side, that will only prolong the agony.

As I say, I did not block him and I would not have done, because I don't think he properly understood in advance why what his canvassing is not acceptable. I advise you to take it up with the blocking admin. Guy (Help!) 11:27, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

How can Misplaced Pages be neutral while at the same time people dismiss everyone open to a point of view as "incompetent", dismiss even the government's pursuit of the approach as mere waste, and treat the subject as "fringe" toward itself: The "rational" agenda is too aggressive here. If you look up an article on remote viewing, or one of the researchers thereof, you should see an article that links to all the main publications on the topic (including those in sympathetic journals) We should by no means omit or downplay the reaction of scientists who reject the idea, but skepticism is not our only purpose. Explanation is our primary purpose. Wnt (talk) 12:09, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

To emphasise the last point, here is a quote from https://en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not:

Misplaced Pages is an online encyclopedia and, as a means to that end, an online community of individuals interested in building and using a high-quality encyclopedia in a spirit of mutual respect.

Note the emphasis on quality, something not achieved if a PoV with significant support among scientists is systematically blocked. --Brian Josephson (talk) 14:47, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

@Wnt:, read WP:FRINGE and WP:GEVAL, because your complaints show that you either haven't or you need to leave this issue and go complain on the talk pages of those guidelines and policies. It's science that excludes the fringe ideas, Misplaced Pages merely follows suit. The government spent the money, sure, but all the scientists who weren't getting paid to say "remote viewing exists" looked at the research and found only problems.

@Brian Josephson:, that statement is either delusional or a lie. Science universally rejects remote viewing, only a small minority of former or quasi-scientists or scientists speaking outside of their field (effectively laypersons) support remote viewing. Any mainstream source will tell you that. Per WP:FRINGE and WP:GEVAL, Misplaced Pages doesn't pretend that it's an option. I'm sorry you have a blinding and biased conflict of interest in this matter and probably can't see any reason in this matter (prove me wrong by getting WP:FRINGE, WP:GEVAL, and WP:COI through your skull), but science (and so Misplaced Pages) simply cannot find any real evidence from proper experimentation and research.

Would the two of you have us give equal validity to the idea that the world is flat? Or the idea that melanin being tied to intelligence and morality, or that idea's inverse? Or the idea that the world is controlled by lizard people who created Judaism as a scam, or even that the Jews are actively trying to take over the world and eat babies? That's the kind of bullshit y'all're asking us to include when y'all ask us to give equal validity to fringe ideas -- to give unscientific lies, delusions, and brainwashing the same treatment as academic science.

Then y'all's claim that the material is being excluded is also completely false: Misplaced Pages discusses remote viewing -- as a pseudoscience. Y'all are the ones asking for science to be excluded by siding with Targ, who only wanted to censor the outside scientific assessment of his work. Y'all are the ones trying to tear down the quality of this encyclopedia by excluding nearly all scientists' perceptions. Ian.thomson (talk) 15:56, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Certainly I would not argue for equal time for "flat Earth" on Earth. But I would argue that Flat Earth should be about flat Earth ideas. And indeed, mostly it is -- though even so I think some of the spherical Earth material would be better left to summary and covered more extensively in a different article. That article has a special excuse though, that it is seeking to refute the modern myth that the ancients believed the Earth was flat, which makes the round Earth material there at least nominally relevant, at two removes. But if someone went at that article and started taking out major references to people who believed in flat Earth because it's "pseudoscience" and those sources are "bad sources" and any editor who adds them must be "incompetent" because he "is pushing that point of view", while putting in more and more denunciations of how the ideas are wrong and turning the article into an explanation of How We Know The Earth Is Round, I would be very displeased with it. But just such treatment has been given to some of the other articles discussed here, and (as for flat Earth) it is not justified by those policies. A fringe source about science is a mainstream source about fringe. Wnt (talk) 16:23, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

But that's not really what's happening here. Targ does not believe that RV is pseudoscience, and advocates for the removal of all mentions of it as such, despite it being one of the more widely discussed examples of pseudoscience, precisely because of the work done by Targ and his colleagues, financed as it was by the US Government. Targ spins a narrative of suppression over his early work on radar, but that is a misrepresentation: the dispute was and is over the relative prominence given to the early work and the later work on RV. There is I think no significant dissent from the view that it is RV for which he is known, and without that work it is unlikely that the biographical sources establishing notability, would exist. That doesn't mean we have to put the boot in, as one or two of the more vigorous editors seem to want to do, but neither does it mean we should airbrush out the judgment of science, which is, as of now, that this work was fundamentally flawed in ways that should have been obvious to all at the time. Guy (Help!) 18:59, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

I don't know everything that Targ wants or has tried to edit. I'm not actually on board his bus - I don't follow his offsite writings and I am inclined to consider only a certain subset of alleged paranormal phenomena that I think perhaps plausibly arise from "quantum weirdness" in the brain and associated macroscopic causality violations. But let's be clear: right now the aggressive skeptics have the upper hand, and represent the most immediate threat to article balance. Both sides need to do better (in general, not speaking of this specific person) and share some of the same characteristics, but we need to develop better editing practices to have peace instead of war or conquest here. I want everybody to put down the long knives and recognize the real scientific consensus: that there is no well-established evidence for psychic phenomena, but absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, and people remain free to continue doing research, and this research can be interesting. I mean, how many times every year do we read that mainstream physicists looked for an aberration in the inverse square law or a difference between mass and inertia or some other implausible that is well outside established theory? These people have the right to do the same. To be sure, their experiments aren't as well controlled as the hardcore physicists', but they don't have the money or the manpower to match that either. Wnt (talk) 20:04, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Offsite recruiting

Please do not recruit your friends, family members, or communities of people who agree with you for the purpose of coming to Misplaced Pages and supporting your side of a debate. If you feel that a debate is ignoring your voice, remain civil, and seek comments from other Wikipedians or pursue dispute resolution. These are well-tested processes, designed to avoid the problem of exchanging bias in one direction for bias in another.

Excuse my curiosity, but where in the guidelines is telling your colleagues about how you are being treated forbidden? --Brian Josephson (talk) 18:32, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

It isn't, but canvassing for support in a Misplaced Pages dispute is, including off-wiki canvassing: known by the rather ugly term of meatpuppetry. Spinning Spark 18:48, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

If you had made a neutral statement, it would not be a problem, but you didn't. For example, the issue of the identification of remote viewing as pseudoscience has been extensively discussed, the fact that it is generally considered such is robustly sourced, and we cannot, as you have been told, represent it otherwise, without violating our policies. I do think it is disturbing that a few editors seem to be egging you on. You need to be aware that Misplaced Pages is not the place to change the public or scientific perception of things. Guy (Help!) 19:20, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

It's not clear who is being addressed here, but anyway your well-rehearsed ideas depend on a number of misconceptions. I will not waste my time going through the analysis again.
But I have a question to ask of those who criticise 'off-site recruiting'. There is a notorious individual who does engage in this practice, recruiting followers, and instructing them into how to use the guidelines to remove certain classes of material. Do you approve of this practice? If you do not, what do you suggest be done about this person and those that she has recruited to do this? --Brian Josephson (talk) 21:32, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

@Brian Josephson (talk · contribs) - the "guerilla scepticism group controlling Misplaced Pages" myth is a bizarre conspiracy theory. It perhaps isn't out of place alongside other crazy beliefs. But it's also clearly not true to anyone who knows how Misplaced Pages works. Barney the barney barney (talk) 21:47, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

You mean that video is a hoax? Thank you so much for enlightening me!
However, I thought your answer was going to be 'recruiting people to remove anything supporting parapsychology is OK, but recruiting people to put in such material is not.' I'm sure you can find a guideline that asserts that very thing. --Brian Josephson (talk) 22:04, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

WP:FRINGE, WP:UNDUE, and WP:GEVAL for starters. Asking folks to remove pseudoscientific garbage is effectively no different than asking folks to join as long as they truly adhere to WP:NPOV.

And again, the idea of the group controlling Misplaced Pages is conspiracy theory -- the video doesn't "prove" that any such group controls Misplaced Pages, only that some scientifically minded folks are tired of bullshit being the only thing people get passionate about. Ian.thomson (talk) 22:20, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

Brian, if you are talking about this video it is not a hoax . The owner of that group is Sgerbic (talk · contribs). The groups edits are entirely in line with Misplaced Pages policy, they may "recruit" people to join Misplaced Pages but they do not employ meat puppetry because they understand Misplaced Pages policies and don't all edit the same articles at the same time like Targ was requesting for people to do off-Misplaced Pages. Everything they do they recorded on their blog . They don't have many members and check their edit history - they have no "controversial" edits. What they actually do is create/edit articles for skeptical activists. It is indeed a conspiracy theory that their group is spending all their time editing paranormal or parapsychology related articles. I can't find a single parapsychology related article they have edited. They were nothing to do with the Sheldrake article and they are nothing to do with Targ's or any other parapsychologist. Goblin Face (talk) 23:02, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

Sad, sad, sad! --Brian Josephson (talk) 08:05, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

I checked this with Susan Gerbic, she confirms that this article is not a focus of GSoW and GSoW has not been involved in it. As Goblin Face says, the project exists primarily to write well-referenced articles on prominent skeptics like David H. Gorski. Guy (Help!) 09:25, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

'She would say that, wouldn't she?', as Mandy Rice-Davis would have put it. Here's comment on her recruitment video that may be closer to the truth:

Fundamentalist skeptic Susan Gerbic explains how her self-styled 'Guerrilla Skeptics' supported by the JREF and other skeptical foundations, operate to push their extreme agenda onto Misplaced Pages articles including astrology.
Gerbic's team focus on editing pages on 'fringe subjects' using biased sources such as dedicated skeptical magazines and books. Besides the paranormal, alternative medicine, spiritual and skeptical issues, astrology is also considered a fringe topic and a field where Gerbic herself, has edited on Misplaced Pages.
Contrary to the spirit and rules of Misplaced Pages, Gerbic admits to recruiting amenable new editors (known as meatpuppets). Her 90 editors (more recently claimed to be 120 in 17 languages) operate in covert collusion in secret Facebook groups. They advocate their personal beliefs by controlling Misplaced Pages articles, suppressing alternative views and by frustrating editors who do not support their extreme views.

I've not watched all of the video so I can't confirm that this is fair comment, but those remarks must have originated from something. And it is always possible that people who don't actually belong to the GS group are sympathetic and have adopted their methods. What one can say pretty categorically is that there are remarkable parallels between what is claimed in the quote above and what actually happens. --Brian Josephson (talk) 09:44, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

That comment starts: Have you ever wondered why the astrology pages on Misplaced Pages are so biased?. Yup, apparently the problem is that Misplaced Pages does not accept the validity of astrology. Some might see this as a feature, not a bug.

If you're not capable of appreciating that whoever wrote that polemic very obviously has a dog in the fight, then I can't help you. The activities of GSoW are completely transparent, and fundamentally different from the situation here. GSoW exists to recruit people to edit Misplaced Pages and build articles on subjects of common interest (and often of little interest to non-skeptics), Targ's statement exists to recruit people to support him in a content dispute. Again, if you can't see the difference then I can't help you. And describing Susan as a fundamentalist? That's funny. I mean, really funny. As in off-the-wall crazy conspiracist bullshit funny. Oh, and incidentally? GSoW are not involved here anyway, so bashing them has no relevance! Guy (Help!) 11:18, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Academic points, as are much that is said here. However, it is very possible that SG would not approve of what has been done to the Targ bio. Her activities are relevant however in that they have provided tools that less high-minded people might be tempted to make use of, and almost certainly have.
By the way, I have a sense that what has been happening here is leading to one of those (in)famous 'tipping points', and there will be interesting consequent developments. This should not be construed as a threat, by the way: the damage has been done by now and anything people may choose to do or not do at this stage in the game will have little influence on the outcome. --Brian Josephson (talk) 11:42, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Attempts to turn this subject away from the issue at stake here are disingenuous at best. Even if this guerilla sceptic group were doing something wrong, it'd be a clear case of the pot calling the kettle black. Finally, if anyone can point to them inserting POV edits or original research or whatever, we'll look into that and deal with it appropriately. Let's get back onto the subject. Barney the barney barney (talk) 16:18, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Off-wiki canvassing is as old as Misplaced Pages, as indeed are conspiracist accusations of skeptical skulduggery. It's basically the "pharma shill gambit", which is as old as public debate about quackery. As I said, Torgownik arguably did not know better, he does now, and your attempts to muddy the waters by asserting parity between editor recruitment for a shared topic area, and attempts to solicit support in an ongoing content dispute, are not appreciated, thanks all the same. Guy (Help!) 18:10, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Both Josephson and Targ like Sheldrake are believers in psychic stuff and other pseudoscience and they don't like it that Misplaced Pages does not endorse these fringe subjects, so they will find a way of complaining about it (on or off Misplaced Pages) - but whatever they do will never work because Misplaced Pages does not endorse these pseudoscientific topics because it goes with what the reliable scientific sources WP:RS on the subject, not fringe parapsychology or "psychic" journals. Robert L. Park in his book Superstition: Belief in the Age of Science has written "Josephson has a long history of endorsing claims that most scientists would pass off as pseudoscience." In this same book Park describes Targ as a "remote-viewing crackpot physicist". Now as I understand it, Josephson and Targ have both claimed Misplaced Pages is defaming Targ but the issue has nothing to do with Misplaced Pages, their real issue seems to be with the scientific sources. Like I said above if they have an issue they should take it up with the sources. Their issue is not Misplaced Pages's problem. I won't waste anymore time discussing this because it is not productive. If Targ wants to come back after his block and edit articles (or his article) appropriately then I wish him all the best. Goblin Face (talk) 18:13, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Well, yes, but that's not really the point. The issue here is trying to recruit support in a content dispute by posting an aggressively one-sided description of the dispute. We don't allow that, whoever does it. Guy (Help!) 19:02, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for allowing me to re-enter the conversation. First of FIVE PILLARS OF WIKIPEDIA: “Misplaced Pages is written from a neutral point of view: We strive for articles that document and explain the major points of view, giving due weight with respect to their prominence in an impartial tone.” Those who don’t agree are “meat puppets.” The fact is that many scientists defiantly think the remote viewing is pseudoscience. In addition, many academic scientists strongly do not agree, and think it might be important. I would say the field of remote viewing is controversial. In the Wiki conversation, there is still animated talk about "clues in transcripts of our first 1973 experiment, with Pat Price." Charles Tart at UC Davis removed the clues, and -randomized- the transcripts, and independent judging obtained the same five-sigma results as the original SRI judge. Tart’s repair and re-evaluation is very well known, and his paper in Nature is on my Wiki bio page. Tart, C.T.; Puthoff, H.E.; — (13 March 1980). "Information transmission in remote viewing experiments". Matters Arising. Nature 284: 191. doi:10.1038/284191a0. PMID 7360248. There were no clues in transcripts for the next twenty years. The fact that Misplaced Pages is still excited about temporal clues in the transcripts shows their bias.You don’t need clues when Price is NAMING the remote target: In this experimental series he correctly calls out, “Pools of water, one rectangular, one circular; Hoover Tower; a large church; a boat dock with little boats; a botanical garden with a big crosswalk, etc.” With these data, why would a Wiki editor be excited about clues in the transcript, rather than a remarkable psychic policeman? Certainly a judge wouldn’t. Torgownik (talk) 19:26, 16 May 2014 (UTC)Russell Targ

Correct. And in matters of scientific inquiry, the neutral point of view is embodied by the scientific consensus. See the specific interpretation of the foundational policy on neutrality at WP:FRINGE and the arbitration committee's findings at WP:ARBPSCI. We have been here before, many times. Your belief in the work you did is obvious, but it is not shared by the scientific community generally. Guy (Help!) 19:54, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

The scientific community generally has not studied the evidence (typical is Weinberg's assertion that because he can't think of any way in which telepathy might occur it is not worth his taking time to review the evidence; again in correspondence with Dawkins the latter admitted that he hadn't studied the evidence). Because of this, the views of 'the scientific community generally' are of startlingly little relevance and policy should take this into account. --Brian Josephson (talk) 20:09, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

The scientific community in general accepts that there is no credible evidence to review. This is the case for psi generally. The proponents have failed to make their case convincingly, prosaic explanations are more parsimonious. You know all this. Guy (Help!) 21:48, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

To take a break from all this dull policy battle: did you ever try a study where some of your readers were randomly chosen to get the sort of feedback I've seen in a documentary, where after finishing their drawings and text they visit the site and have a chance to look around and compare it with their predictions - but other readers are never, ever allowed to see what the right answer should be? This might be accomplished by having light, colorful, movable props that are brought into the site for one day. My expectation if remote viewing works is that third-party scorers with no knowledge of which person scored which site on which day, looking at the predictions as made on that day with no retroactive embellishments, should nonetheless find a significantly higher percentage of right answers from the readers who were going to see the right answer later on, but no improvement over chance for those who did not. In other words, I am especially skeptical that empty air can see without an eye. Wnt (talk) 20:17, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Josephson in my personal book collection I have over 420 skeptical books on paranormal claims which I have collected for over twenty years, these books have been written by scientists going back to the 1860s. Daniel Loxton has traced publications refuting paranormal claims going back even further to the 17th century . Please explain how scientists don't know the "evidence"? They do because if you search hard enough most paranormal or psychic claims have been debunked by various scientists that have bothered to investigate them but believers never bother to check up on this literature. Goblin Face (talk) 21:18, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Targ as written on your biography Misplaced Pages article, see Marks, D.; Scott, C. (6 February 1986). "Remote viewing exposed". Correspondence. Nature 319 (6053): 444. Online here which concludes the transcripts still contained cues. Marks and Scott 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." You seem to be endorsing a magical psychic explanation for remote viewing experiments when a natural explanation is available. As Martin Bridgstock has written (also cited on your article) "From Occam's razor, it follows that if a straightforward natural explanation exists, there is no need for the spectacular paranormal explanation: Targ and Puthoff's claims are not justified." There's nothing else that's need to be said on this. Your psychic claims have been debunked by scientists, end of story. Goblin Face (talk) 21:18, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Dear Goblin Face, I don't have Marks' article in front of me. If it is true that he says that Tart's paper was worthless because there are still clues, then he doesn't understand the judging, as I am sure you do not. Try the following: If there are significant time clues in the transcripts, then a judge can indeed determine the order of the trials, and match them to the transcripts. That is a valid criticism. Tart not only tried to remove all the clues, which he may or may not have done perfectly. But as an experimental psychology prof., I am confident that he was successful in properly -randomizing- the trial numbers and the transcript numbers. He just confirmed to me on the phone, that he did indeed do that randomization. So that even if all the clues were left in, it would be no help matching trails and transcripts. Please tell me that you understand that. Instead of just looking at your skeptical books on the shelf, why don't you take a look at some data! the picture pairs in my new book, "The Reality of ESP." Or take a look at the rv data at my website, espresearch.com. It will only hurt for a moment. Cheers, Torgownik (talk) 23:27, 16 May 2014 (UTC)Russell

Look at what Edison and Marconi did with electromagnetism. When you'll be able to do that with remote viewing/telepathy, you will have proven your case beyond any doubt. Or at least produce evidence for them comparable to the evidence for the theory of relativity. Meanwhile, you should get the million dollars from the Randi Foundation, that would give a huge boost to your credibility. About organized skepticism, that's what science is all about: prove your case beyond reasonable doubt and your theory gains scientific consensus, but if you fail to convince the organized skeptics you have lost the game. Tgeorgescu (talk) 00:22, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

Or this: take a list of US missing persons (missing for more than one year), select alphabetically first 1000 persons and you have one year to locate 800 of them (dead or alive) through remote viewing. That would be impressive. Tgeorgescu (talk) 09:58, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

Hmmm, is this how it works?

Tgeorgescu's experiment won't work, of course, because even someone who can see can still lose something when he doesn't know where to look. This is or should be off topic, because WP shouldn't care whether we think something is possible, but as long as we're at it:

Define three separate locations: a stable of preaks who know only that they are trying to remote view stuff for an experiment, an overseer's shack where the scenes are laid out and scored, and the head office. In the latter two places no one need or should have any unusual "abilities".

In the stable, you have the preaks lined up trying to sketch a scene. To reduce the risk of highly undesirable witchy incidents, they are led to think they their "ability" is to be able to see a scene that already exists remotely, and do not realize they are remembering future events. They finish their sketches which are then taken to the overseer's shack for scoring.

In the overseer's shack, the scorers set up the scenes using light, colorful, distinctive props. It shouldn't be necessary to set up the scenes while the preaks are drawing their figures or while scoring, but it avoids potentially embarrassing questions and makes it easier to grade details in unexpected cases. The overseers reduce each preak's answers to a numerical score. The list of scores is then transmitted to the head office.

The head office has developed well in advance some simple algorithm to relate the input data to a list of preaks. Simple (bad) example, if they have ten preaks, they take the five numbers 1-10 drawn in a state lottery (though with the low level of accuracy, in reality they'd want a financial market of some sort) and pick those numbered preaks to be shown the scenes, but not the others. Given this method exists, when the head office receives the scores, they see which numbers correspond to the higher scores and bet on those numbers being more likely to come up in the lotto. Later, when the input numbers are known for sure, they send the list of preaks to pick to the overseers.

Now for the whole thing to work at all, the preaks whose numbers came up have to be taken to the overseers office afterward and have their time to wander around the scenes and "see what they got right" i.e. learn the scenes so they remember them earlier. Without genuinely "balancing the equation" in this way, the preaks should have had no idea what the scenes were supposed to be, so the lotto results would have been a bust.

Now if someone wanted to prove this works, they'd "tweet" a checksum of their list of scores, then ask Amazing Randi to "tweet" a list of numbers. Then they'd tweet the actual list of scores which can be verified to have that checksum, showing that - no matter what numbers Randi picked - the scores with those numbers were usually higher than the scores without. But I do wonder if science was the goal here - this was a largely secret program with practical goals, after all... does any of this seem like it's on the right track? Wnt (talk) 15:51, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

practical shmactical, they were just setting up the premise for George Clooney to have a film 40 years later. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 15:59, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

Though obviously "further afield" than anyone here with its speculations, that was a great movie for many reasons, including knowing just where to end. I mean, you do not want to see what's on the other side of that wall. Wnt (talk) 16:08, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

As a student of things psi, I suppose you already know that I and two others successfully forecast changes in the silver commodity market (December silver) in 1982, making $120,000. We were correct 9 out of 9 trials, for four conditions, up a lot, up a little, down a lot, or down a little. Odds of one in three-hundred thousand. Published in the Wall Street Journal and in a BBC Horizon documentary on the subject. When we make $1,000,000 I expect all references to "pseudoscience" to be removed. In 1995 we were successful 11 out of 12 trials, published in the JSE. But no money was involved. Torgownik (talk) 20:48, 17 May 2014 (UTC)Russell Targ

There are people who became rich through the stock market, but in general they do not claim to have paranormal abilities. So, just making a million dollars at the stock exchange is no proof of the reality of the paranormal. A real challenge would be getting the million dollars from Randi, since he only grants it upon proving real paranormal abilities. Tgeorgescu (talk) 23:21, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

Regarding the silver market 1982 event where allegedly $120,000 was obtained from paranormal ability by the psychic Keith "Blue Harary" there has been some skepticism about this (even from Keith himself?) as there was no replication. See for example Harary, K. (1992). The goose that laid the silver eggs: A criticism of psi and silver futures forecasting. Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 86, 375–409 which asserts "that all such interpretations are based on flawed logic and misinformation about the nature and results of the original effort." . I have not read his paper but it looks interesting. The parapsychologist J. E. Kennedy who briefly mentions the event (in a 2003 paper on psi in the The Journal of Parapsychology) writes "interpersonal relationships of those involved deteriorated significantly". What does he mean by that? I then read an old article in the Skeptical Inquirer from Martin Gardner in 1989 which claims "Harary has now sued Targ over the latter's "National ESP Test" in Omni magazine, claiming that by linking his name to it, Targ has invaded his privacy and held him up to the ridicule of his peers." Whatever the outcome here was is does not look that positive. As the magician Henry Gordon wrote regarding the alleged silver market prediction "As with most psychic claims, there is little documentation to back them up". I see no documentation. It is just another unconfirmed anecdote the sort that fill's all kinds of paranormal books. Certainly not scientific repeatable evidence for anything "psychic". Nice try though! Goblin Face (talk) 02:10, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

There arguments are becoming absurd. I didn't say I am rich because I am a good investor. I said we used "associative remote viewing' nine weeks in a row to psychically determine in advance each week what the market would be doing a week in later, and posted the info to our broker, for investment. Odds of about one in a million. No. It was not my lucky day. I believe that you simply don't want to accept that series of events. James Spottiswoode, a physicist living in LA got all five of the fantasy five lotto using a similar remote viewing strategy, with several viewers. Odds of one in half a million. "Telling me that lots of people make money in the market without ESP" is stupid, head in he sand arguing that I have now dealt with for months. Dealing with Misplaced Pages is like dealing with the Russians. You guys want to diminish Me even when it is irrelevant. Why would Wiki editors keep snipping away at my early work on lasers. What's the point? The first laser operation was on May 16, 1960. I published a pioneering 1962 paper on coherent detection with lasers, which is the basis of an industry. There is a company using my stuff, called Coherent Technology. In 1963 I published work I did (with Gerald Grosof) on laser amplifiers in 1958-59 two years before before there were any lasers. Why don't you want me to be a laser pioneer. I was hired in 1957 to work on lasers, by Gordon Gould who became the patent holder for the laser in the late 1980s, based on my 1963 amplifier paper. But I don't care about that. It's just a symptom. Why would you keep deleting the indisputably interesting fact that my wife Joan Fischer Targ was the sister of the best chess player in the world. Wouldn't your Wiki readers find that interesting? Bobby Fisher and "laser pioneer" had been in my bio for at least a year before the Wiki trolls got interested me and my bio. It is indisputable that you are all snipping away at my life because you can't stand that there is world-wide interest in remote viewing. Within a decade modern physics will figure out how it works, and then you will all go away, back into your mother's basement. Why would you keep going after Bobby, my laser work, and gratuitously insulting my published remote viewing work? We all know that Marks' criticism of our first 1973 trials was answered by Tart's -randomizing- (not sanitizing) the transcripts, published in Nature. Do you know the difference? No one disputes that. But you have pages of nonsense from Marks and the absurd Amazing Randi. I don't care about that nonsense, since most people know it is not true. How many Wiki trolls have published major papers in Nature and the IEEE? No other ESP research is smeared with "Pseudoscience". Robert Jahn published 450 remote viewing trials in the Proc. IEEE describing has amazing six-sigma result in his 1982 paper. He is quietly retired, so Wiki has no interest in trashing his bio page, similarly Ed May, Marilyn Schlitz, Hal Puthoff, Stephan A. Schwartz and Dean Radin, all good remote viewing researchers, are all completely left alone. There are more than 100 published and refereed papers dealing with remote viewing. This is not the flat earth society. There are 700,000 pages on Google dealing with "remote viewing" applications. I would like you to please restore Bobby Fischer, and "Laser pioneer," because they a true part of my life, and belong on a bio page. And I would like you to get rid of the inappropriate and demeaning "pseudoscience". I would like to know what caused the recent interest by Wiki editors trashing Russell Targ's bio page. Is that a fair question? Torgownik (talk) 00:43, 18 May 2014 (UTC)Russell Targ <russ at targ.co>

"its interesting" is not the criteria for an encyclopedia. What impact did having Fischer as a brother in law have on you? What influence did having you as a brother in law make on Fischer? Without that, its just trivia. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 02:30, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

Bobby became greatly interested in psychic abilities and mind control after seeing my SRI results and the ESP teaching machine we had at home. I spent 15 years hanging out with Bobby before the match, and I was very instrumental in actually getting him on the plane to play in Iceland. (Free app from apple store known as "ESP Trainer.") It's free. You might find it interesting, developed by me for NASA. During the world championship in Iceland, the Russians took Bobby's chair apart for fear of ESP activity. I was an adult and he was a teenager when we first met. He was certainly part of my life. You may not be interested, but the Russians delayed the match for a day because of the fear of hidden ESP. He definitely affected my children to try and excel as he did. You may say it is trivial. But I spent 15 years assisting the greatest chess player the world has ever seen, to achieve his goal. It was certainly meaningful to me. Cheers, Torgownik (talk)Russell

for Misplaced Pages, we need reliable sources to have commented upon these impacts - can you point us to some? otherwise, you can write about it all you want on your personal blog and in your autobiography. But those are different beasts with different purposes and different requirements than we have here for the encyclopedia article we are writing.-- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 03:34, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

About the data for the silver experiments. I do not have the trading slips. However they were photographed by BBC in their documentary "The Case of ESP" 1983. It shows my broker going through the nine forecasts and trades one by one on camera. Very clearly documented. The film cam be seen on Google. Torgownik (talk)Russell <russ at targ.co>

I'm really not much of a student of these things, and I really appreciate this kind of interesting detail. We definitely should get in everything that there is sourcing for, including of course the synopsis of any BBC documentary. I'm sure the peanut gallery can find good sourcing for claims it wasn't persuasive, and of course they should feel free to add their sources too - but not to hold their own little tribunal about which sources are right. When people are hostile toward including the most basic duh-obvious-this-belongs-in-a-bio items like what your wife's family is, that's something seriously wrong! Wnt (talk) 03:08, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

One thing I recommend to the subject of any biography having troubles here is to explore Wikimedia Commons. It isn't necessary to actually use an item in an article to upload it to Commons. If there is anything interesting you have that you'd like to free-license, whether it's something as mundane as a snapshot of yourself (it'd be really cool to have one of you with Bobby Fischer!) or as useful as a free preprint of one of your papers, I'd love to have Commons be able to host it. Wnt (talk) 03:13, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

Brother in law

Targ and Fisher's relationship led to interactions that were covered by media (international relations, visa, etc.) This probably supports inclusion. - - MrBill3 (talk) 04:03, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

During the eight months that George W. Bush had Bobby incarcerated in a Japanese jail, for playing chess in Yugoslavia, I was in constant communications with his Japanese wife and lawyer, trying to get him released to travel to Iceland, or anywhere else. I sent the Japanese a ton of personal documents about his parents and relationship to Joan, etc. I had a relationship with Bobby for 15 years, and even was involved in the struggle to get him on the plane to play in Iceland. I think you guys have a lot of nerve to challenge my relationship to a family member. And if you still have doubt about the silver experiment, you can check the article by Erik Larson in the 10/22, 1984 WSJ. "Did psychic powers give firm a killing on Wall Street." You wont like that either. You should also do due diligence by looking up Pat Price's very accurate description of spheres and a giant crane at Semipalatinsk. You will find that much more interesting the the BS that you are publishing from Marks. Price's accomplishment is all over the Internet. Have you found anyone yet, to explain the difference between randomizing the transcripts which entirely solves the "clues problem," as compared with removing clues? It looks to me as though you are very good at reading the skeptical literature, but not so interested in the scientific papers you are trashing. I had to wait until my ninth book to say we had "A physicist's proof for psychic abilities" because now the data are overwhelming. If you can't see that, it's because you haven't looked at the data. It's more fun to throw rocks and break windows. Torgownik (talk) 05:35, 18 May 2014 (UTC)Russell.