Jessica Utts
From the UAP Encyclopedia, the open encyclopedia of UFO and UAP history · 👤 Person
Contents 6
| Type | Person |
|---|---|
| On the Timeline | 1 event, 1995 |
Jessica Utts (born 1952) is an American statistician and professor at the University of California, Irvine, who served as president of the American Statistical Association in 2016. She is known in UFO and paranormal circles for her 1995 evaluation of the U.S. government's remote-viewing research, in which she concluded that the evidence supported psychic functioning.[1]
Career
Utts earned her PhD in statistics from Pennsylvania State University in 1978. She spent many years at the University of California, Davis, where she helped found its statistics programme, before moving to UC Irvine, where she chaired the statistics department. She is known for her work on statistics education and wrote the textbook Seeing Through Statistics.[1][2]
Parapsychology
Utts became interested in parapsychology during a sabbatical at Stanford University and later spent a year as a visiting scientist at SRI International, where government-funded remote-viewing research had been carried out.[1]
1995 evaluation
In 1995 the American Institutes for Research appointed Utts and psychologist Ray Hyman to evaluate the remote-viewing program funded by the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency. Utts concluded that the statistical results supported the existence of psychic functioning. Hyman agreed that the effects were statistically significant but called her conclusion premature. The program was ended after the review found it had not been useful for intelligence. Critic David Marks argued that Utts's earlier joint publications with remote-viewing researcher Edwin May raised questions about her independence.[1][3]
Honours
Utts is a fellow of the American Statistical Association and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, and received the ASA's Founders Award in 2009.[1]
On the UAP Timeline
- End of Stargate (1995) (30 June 1995) — The CIA ends Star Gate, its remote viewing program.
References
- Jessica Utts — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- "Jessica Utts Elected 111th ASA President", Amstat News (Jul 2014) · magazine.amstat.org · archived copy
- Michael Mumford, Andrew Rose and David Goslin, "An Evaluation of Remote Viewing: Research and Applications", American Institutes for Research (1995) · web.archive.org · archived copy
This page was last edited on 29 October 2026. Articles are written in our own words from the sources listed under References; disputed claims are attributed to the people who made them.
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