by Stephan A. Schwartz, S. James P. Spottiswoode, Edwin C. May, Ph.D., and Jessica Utts, Ph.D
ABSTRACT
The primary goal of this protocol is to use an Anomalous Cognition (AC) technology to accelerate research breakthroughs concerning the cause, treatment, and prevention of disease states. The goal of testing whether, and to what extent, AC occurred in the course of the protocol is a secondary objective. Quantitative analysis has shown that the magnitude of this form of subtle human performance meets, or exceeds, the magnitude of many phenomena known to experimental psychology. To understand the structure of this study the reader should conceptualize it as an exercise in creating a collective meta-mind. The Respondents and their AC derived information, are analogous to the intuitive component of the individual mind, while the researchers serve the function of the analytical component. The protocol is an attempt to create on a macro level the same breakthrough process reported by individuals historically acknowledged for their creative genius. It employs a consensual protocol design developed over the course of some 15 years, the premise of which is that successful application of AC is, in many respects, an engineering problem centering on a bad signal-to-noise ratio. Unlike a purely statistical laboratory experiment, where the analysis of the data is the study’s end product, in an applied experiment of this kind the collection and analysis of the data is only a midpoint. Much as an MRI unit guides physicians in their choice of action, so the AC data seeks to help researchers to develop new approaches and hypotheses. The protocol and analysis method described in this paper was designed to sacrifice potential opportunities for statistical power as it pertained to the study’s second objective, the testing of whether, and to what extent, AC occurred in the course of the project, in order to maximize the chance of catching information pertinent to the project’s principal goal of using an AC technology to accelerate research breakthroughs concerning the cause, treatment, and prevention of a disease process is. Given these parameters we felt the best analysis design was to be found in fuzzy-set theory.
