---
alias:
- Charles T. Tart
born: 1937-04-29
category: Scientists & Researchers
created: 2026-09-22
died: 2025-03-05
location: Davis, California
summary: University of California, Davis, psychologist of altered states and consultant
  to SRI's government-funded remote-viewing program who rejudged the Price series
  in 1979 against the Marks-Kammann critique.
tags:
- Person
- CharlesTart
- Parapsychology
- SRI
- UCDavis
updated: 2026-09-22
---

Charles T. Tart was born in Morrisville, Pennsylvania, on April 29, 1937, "but grew up mostly in [New Jersey](/places/new-jersey/)," a teenage radio engineer who entered the engineering program at [MIT](/organizations/massachusetts-institute-of-technology/) and, "after several personal experiences" of drugs "that produced altered states of consciousness" and after reading [J. B. Rhine](/people/j-b-rhine/), "transferred from MIT to Duke University in order to meet and be mentored by Rhine." He took his doctorate in psychology at the University of North Carolina in 1963 on "post-hypnotic suggestions to influence dreaming," did post-doctoral work with Ernest Hilgard at [Stanford University](/organizations/stanford-university/), and served 28 years on the psychology faculty of the University of California, Davis, holding concurrently a senior research fellowship at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, the Bigelow Chair of Consciousness Studies at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, a visiting professorship at the California Institute of Integral Studies, and a post as "a consultant on government funded parapsychological research at the [Stanford Research Institute](/organizations/stanford-research-institute/)." His *Altered States of Consciousness* appeared in 1969 and *Transpersonal Psychologies* in 1975; he was president of the Parapsychological Association. He died on March 5, 2025.[^1]

### The Rejudging

With Whitson, Bogart and [John Palmer](/people/john-palmer/) he published "Preliminary experiments in group 'remote viewing'" in the Proceedings of the IEEE in 1976. When [David Marks](/people/david-marks/) and [Richard Kammann](/people/richard-kammann/) argued in Nature in 1978 that cues in the transcripts explained the [Pat Price](/people/pat-price/) series, [Hal Puthoff](/people/hal-puthoff/) and [Russell Targ](/people/russell-targ/) turned the nine transcripts over to "an independent research psychologist," Tart, "for rejudging on the basis of the criteria implied by the Marks-Kammann criticism." By his own account he first tested two candidate judges on transcripts from "another successful remote-viewing series," disqualifying the one who scored at chance, "edited them to delete all references that could conceivably give any indication as to the order of the experiments," and had the judge, Phyllis Matson, rate each transcript at each site; "for seven of the nine target sites the highest correspondence rating was given to the correct transcript." "I would hypothesize that Marks and Kammann were unable to obtain significant results in their reanalysis of the subset of the Price series because their judges either lacked the necessary discriminative skills and/or were not sufficiently motivated to use them effectively." The Army's [Grill Flame Scientific Evaluation Committee](/events/grill-flame-scientific-evaluation-committee/) met "Mr. Targ/Dr. Puthoff/Dr. Tart" at SRI on July 24 and 25, 1979.[^2]

[^1]: Schwartz, Stephan A. "Charles T. Tart Obituary, 29 April 1937 - 5 March 2025." Institut Metapsychique International, April 2025. https://www.metapsychique.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Tart-VO.pdf The obituary gives his age at death as 86, which its own dates do not support.
[^2]: Puthoff, H. E., and Russell Targ, "Information Transmission in Remote Viewing Experiments: II," and Tart, Charles T., "Reanalysis of SRI Remote Viewing Experiments," January 1979, CIA-RDP96-00787R000200090017-5. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection. *Report by the Grill Flame Scientific Evaluation Committee,* December 1979, CIA-RDP96-00788R001300120001-5; Stoner, William L., memorandum of conversation, January 14, 1980, CIA-RDP96-00788R001200230017-7; Jachim, Robert J., "Information Briefing for Senator Clairborne Pell," October 6, 1982, CIA-RDP96-00788R001100320001-5. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection. Snyder, Harry L., and Arlene G. Snyder. *Summary and Critical Evaluation of Research in Remote Viewing,* Report RV-79-1, June 1, 1979, part 2, CIA-RDP96-00787R000100260003-2. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.