Remote Viewing (RV), refers to the attempt to gather information about a distant or unseen target using paranormal means or extra-sensory perception. Typically a remote viewer is expected to give information about an object that is hidden from physical view and separated at some distance. The term was introduced by parapsychologists Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff in 1974.

Remote viewing was popularized in the 1990s, following the declassification of documents related to the Stargate Project, a 20 million dollar research program sponsored by the U.S. Federal Government to determine any potential military application of psychic phenomena. The program was terminated in 1995, citing a lack of documented evidence that the program had any value to the intelligence community.

One of the early experiments was lauded by proponents as having improved the methodology of remote viewing testing and as raising future experimental standards, but also criticized as leaking information to the participants by inadvertently leaving clues. Some later experiments had negative results when these clues were eliminated.

Remote viewing, like other forms of extra-sensory perception, is generally considered as pseudoscience due to the lack of replicable results, and of a positive theory that explains the outcomes of experiments.

History