Global Consciousness Project

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The Global Consciousness Project, also called the EGG Project, is the most significant of current scientific research projects into parapsychology. Based at Princeton, the project researches into the theory that the human consciousness may create or otherwise influence objective reality by means undetectable via current scientific sensors.

Working on the assumption that while the field of an individual's consciousness is too small to be measurable, the combined field of a large number of people who are experiencing similar thoughts or feelings is measurable, the GCP research suggests that such a field exists.

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Research

Their research works by examining the output of hardware random number generators located around the world. The remote devices have been dubbed Princeton Eggs, where EGG is short for electrogaiagram, a play of words on electroencephalogram and Gaia [1]. The current theory holds that events that have a significant human impact affect the randomness of these generators in a statistically significant way.

Roger D. Nelson started by reviewing two decades of experiments from the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Lab (PEAR) which repeatedly show that random event generators (REG's) seem to be intentionally influenced to bring about a less random sequence of data - in other words, that human intention can reduce natural entropy and create greater coherence within a random series of events.

In an experimental approach to this question, investigators have examined the outputs of electronic noise-based, truly random number generators (RNG) before, during and after highly focused or coherent group events. The group events studied included intense psychotherapy sessions, captivating theater presentations, religious rituals, popular sports competitions, like Football World Cup, and high-interest television broadcasts like the Academy Awards (Bierman, 1996; Blasband, 2000; Nelson, 1995, 1997; Nelson et al, 1996, 1998a, 1998b; Radin, 1997; Radin et al, 1996;)

Results of these studies allegedly suggest that mind and matter are entangled in some fundamental way, and in particular that focused mental attention in groups is associated with non-random fluctuations in streams of truly random data.

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Criticism

The methodology of the Global Consciousness Project has been questioned. Most of this criticism centers on how the data are selected and interpreted. Critics emphasize that spikes and fluctuations are to be expected in any random distribution of data, and point out that there is no set time frame for how close a spike has to be to a given event to find a correlation. For example, on September 11, it was alleged that spikes that occurred hours before the attacks were themselves caused by the attacks, bizarrely implying backwards causality or subconscious mass precognition. Proponents say that a hypothesis test is fully defined before the data are examined.

Another criticism is that there is no objective criterion for determining whether an event is significant. Events are seemingly arbitrarily selected post-hoc, and only the data from that time period are observed. Data from other time periods are ignored, whether or not they may display similar fluctuations. This allows opportunity for selection bias. The GCP denies that they take advantage of this opportunity.

A third problem is that there is no correlation between degree of significance and type or magnitude of fluctuations observed. Since the GCP has posited that confluence of emotion and mental state in the world cause data deviation in their random number generators, one would expect a greater global awareness to magnify the results proportionately, but this has not been observed -- the GCP tends to find their correlation whether the global event under consideration affected a few hundred or a few hundred million individuals. Proponents call a correlation of effect size with the number of people engaged a "research question" and say that preliminary results suggest there may be a small correlation, but that effect size depends on multiple factors.

Finally, it has also never been satisfactorally explained through what mechanism random number generators would respond to human thoughts, even theoretically. There are two distinct claims: The claim that some sort of global consciousness field exists is being tested by assuming an even more unbelievable (and quite independent) claim that this global consciousness affects random number generators. It is highly suspicious that this particular method is being used to measure the posited "global consciousness," especially since, if one were to attempt to find meaning in a meaningless string of numbers, the data set from random number generators would be exactly the place to start. Random number generators function by applying algorithms to white noise. No analysis of white noise itself has ever found a correlation or pattern corresponding to meaningful world events. Proponents dismiss this criticism as irrelevant.

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