---
category: Scientists & Researchers
created: 2026-09-22
location: Princeton, New Jersey
relations:
- fn: 3
  role: manager, Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research
  start: 1979
  type: reported_to
  with: '[[Robert Jahn]]'
- fn: 4
  role: officer
  type: member_of
  with: '[[Society for Scientific Exploration]]'
summary: Chicago remote-viewing experimenter who from 1979 ran Robert Jahn's privately
  funded Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research laboratory.
tags:
- Person
- Parapsychology
- RemoteViewing
- PEAR
- Princeton
updated: 2026-09-22
---

Brenda J. Dunne, of the Midwest Parapsychological Research Institute at Mundelein College in [Chicago](/places/chicago/), published with John P. Bisaha a series of precognitive remote-viewing experiments in the Chicago area from 1977, presented as replications of the [Stanford Research Institute](/organizations/stanford-research-institute/) work; in them she travelled as the "agent" to target sites chosen at random from a pool of more than a hundred.[^1] Harry and Arlene Snyder's review of June 1, 1979, for the Defense Department's [Grill Flame Scientific Evaluation Committee](/events/grill-flame-scientific-evaluation-committee/) criticized the earlier versions for nonrandom pairing of subjects, inconsistent monitoring and unspecified instructions to judges, and called the 1978 paper "essentially a verbatim version" of the 1977 one "in spite of the later copyright."[^2]

### PEAR

By 1979 [Robert Jahn](/people/robert-jahn/) had started the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research laboratory at Princeton University and hired Dunne to run it, and in 1987 they published *Margins of Reality.*[^3] Jahn relied on private donations of more than ten million dollars, the first and largest from James S. McDonnell of McDonnell Douglas. PEAR published more than sixty research reports, most in the journal of the Society for Scientific Exploration, of which Jahn and Dunne were officers; it announced its closure in 2007. "Many PEAR Tree members who are science faculty members will not reveal themselves publicly," Dunne told the *[New York Times](/organizations/new-york-times/).*[^4]

[^1]: Dunne, Brenda J., and John P. Bisaha. "Precognitive Remote Viewing in the Chicago Area: A Replication of the Stanford Experiment." *Journal of Parapsychology* 43, March 1979, pp. 17-30, CIA-RDP96-00787R000200080023-9. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.
[^2]: Snyder, Harry L., and Arlene G. Snyder. "Summary and Critical Evaluation of Research in Remote Viewing," Report RV-79-1, Systemetrics, Inc., June 1, 1979, as reproduced in the *Report by the Grill Flame Scientific Evaluation Committee,* December 1979, CIA-RDP96-00788R001300120001-5. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.
[^3]: Schultz, Steven. "Robert Jahn, pioneer of deep space propulsion and mind-machine interactions, dies at 87." Princeton University, School of Engineering and Applied Science, November 30, 2017.
[^4]: Carey, Benedict. "A Princeton Lab on ESP Plans to Close Its Doors." *New York Times,* February 10, 2007.