Weird science loses its home

Nestled in the austere depths of the E-Quad, a laboratory decorated vibrantly with new-age posters, experimental apparatus and stuffed animals welcomed visitors into its quirky, old-fashioned atmosphere for 28 years.

Until Tuesday, that is. That's when University staff dismantled the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) lab, and its doors were closed for good.

The lab's research evinces the same sense of wonder as its interior decorations. It explored phenomena outside the imagination of most engineers: the ability of the conscious mind to directly influence the physical world.

"Percy over there knows about a whole world of smells that we miss out on," lab manager Brenda Dunne said, referring to the black labrador allowed to roam the office. "We believe that the world of science has not gotten the whole picture."

Over the course of its almost three-decade existence, the PEAR lab, founded by aeronautical engineering professor emeritus Robert Jahn '51, worked to publicize a massive quantity of empirical evidence intended to confirm the seriousness and credibility of its research.

"We have grown older and could deal with a more relaxed form of existence," Jahn said of his feelings about the laboratory's closure. "There is a law of diminishing returns, and we have received little of anything new but have long proved the point we set out to."

Jahn, 76, will retire this year, after a 35-year career at the University. He was dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science from 1971 until he founded the PEAR lab in 1979.

Of the functions established for PEAR by its founder, the one the laboratory gave the most attention was analysis of humans' ability to shift a pattern of random events generated by a machine, he said. These "random event generators" (REGs) included fountains that scatter water randomly and devices that detect radioactive decay.

Support nonprofit student journalism. Donate to the ‘Prince’. Donate now »

"Over the years we have gone through tens of millions of these events, and we have seen consistent but small deviations in the pattern expected," Dunne said.

One alumna who worked in the lab remembered being convinced that the research happening there was serious science. "I was impressed with how rigorous they were, how serious they were with the methodology they used," Jensine Andresen '86 said. She worked in the PEAR lab for four years as an undergraduate and wrote a civil engineering junior paper on research she conducted there.

The lab, which received almost no funding from the University, survived on private donations, with an eclectic range of sponsors including McDonnell Douglas founder James McDonnell '21, former Detroit Tigers owner John Fetzer and Prince Hans Adam II of Liechtenstein, Jahn said. Many such supporters have passed away since the PEAR lab's creation, including McDonnell and Fetzer, preventing the researchers from updating much of their equipment.

"A large fraction of these [sponsors] have died in a short period of time," Jahn said. "In [PEAR's] heyday we would spend upwards of half a million dollars per year."

Looking toward the future

Get the best of the ‘Prince’ delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe now »

Though the PEAR lab is being dismantled, researchers interested in doing similar work have bought much of the lab's equipment.

Garret Moddel, a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Colorado at Boulder, was one buyer.

Moddel will continue testing the effect of physical variables such as temperature and sound on the statistical anomalies identified during PEAR's research, in addition to the natural causes of these phenomena. He began this line of research as a side project after overcoming initial doubts five years ago, he said.

"I was the biggest skeptic to begin with," Moddel said. "I realized that there was a conflict between my own experiences and [the PEAR study's] logic, and that I must choose logic, as my brain could easily be fooling itself."

A former PEAR researcher, John Valentino, founded the company Psyleron in 2005 to help feature the lab's research by making relevant products such as random event generators and informational media available to the public and other researchers.

"They've got some really good empirical data, but it's considered by our social norms to be a taboo topic," Valentino said. "I hope in the future that people will be able to do their own experiments and make their own decisions."

Critics of the PEAR lab's research abound, however. At the forefront of those within the scientific community is Robert Park, a physics professor at the University of Maryland and member of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. He wrote "Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud" and has studied the credibility of a variety of "questionable" studies over the past 25 years.

"Work in [PEAR's] area has been going on in a scientific fashion for as long as 2,000 years, but has not convinced anybody but its true believers," Park said. "I followed the [PEAR] laboratory over the years, and as the scientific community goes it was an embarrassment, but there was no outcry against it."

Other researchers were undecided about the lab's credibility. Princeton molecular biology professor Eric Wieschaus, a 1995 Nobel Prize winner, said he is hesitant to comment on the lab's methodology.

Jahn said he supports constructive criticism of his research but added that skeptics are rarely knowledgeable enough about his research to make judgments.

"Every piece of scientific research needs its piece of scientific criticism, but that only works when the critic is well informed, fair and objective," he said.

Dunne said the level of criticism the PEAR lab has received helped keep researchers there alert about the professional standard of their studies.

"There is a certain advantage to being unpopular," she said. "It makes you very careful because there is always someone to jump out at you and say, 'Ha!' "