From: Damien Broderick (damien@ariel.ucs.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Tue Oct 20 1998 - 07:17:32 MDT
>You didn't know that the world's leading high tech electronics
>company was interested in things Psychic?
>
>Then check this: http://www.forteantimes.com/artic/115/sonypsi.html
No longer:
South China Morning Post
Internet Edition
Tuesday July 7, 1998
Japan
Sony sees sense to discontinue ESP research
BENJAMIN FULFORD in Tokyo
Japan's Sony Corporation says it has proved extra-sensory
perception exists - but has closed down its ESP research facility
because there did not seem to be any way to turn the knowledge
into marketable products.
Sony had a team of five researchers, who spent seven years
inviting people who claimed to have psychic powers into their
laboratories for a series of scientific tests to see if they
really did have these powers, company spokesman Masanobu
Sakaguchi said.
"We found out experimentally that yes, ESP exists, but that any
practical application of this knowledge is not likely in the
foreseeable future," he said.
Mr Sakaguchi said a typical experiment involved having a qi gong
practitioner put qi, or spiritual energy, into a glass of water
and then having another practitioner detect which glass contained
the qi.
"They were right 70 per cent of the time, and if it was random
guessing they would have been right only 50 per cent of the
time," he said. The experiments were repeated so often that any
chances of a statistical fluke were ruled out, he said.
Other experiments produced similar results for things like
discerning hidden objects and detecting colours without looking,
he said.
"We were unable to detect qi with any machine; it seems only
people can detect it," he said. Possibilities like packing qi
gong energy in batteries were thus too remote to justify more
research, he said.
Masaru Ibuga, one of Sony's founders, set up the ESP research
centre in 1991 after he became interested in qi gong and other
unexplained aspects of Chinese medicine. His death this year may
be the real reason the research was discontinued.
--end--
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