---
category: Other
summary: Gérald Messadié was the editor of *Science et Vie*, a top French science
  journal.
tags:
- Person
---

Gérald Messadié was the editor of *Science et Vie*, a top French science journal. In February 1960, his journal published an expanded version of [Jacques Bergier](/people/jacques-bergier/)'s story about a secret government [ESP](/concepts/extrasensory-perception/) program, titled "The Secret of the Nautilus"[^1].

Messadié stated in an interview that his information for the article came from Bergier and "other sources," who confirmed the story on condition of anonymity. The article identified [J. B. Rhine](/people/j-b-rhine/) of the [Duke University Parapsychology Laboratory](/organizations/duke-university-parapsychology-laboratory/) as the civilian scientist assigned to the project, reporting a high success rate for telepathic communication[^1].

Despite the [U.S. Navy](/organizations/us-navy/)'s denial of the story as a hoax, Messadié's publication contributed to the widespread attention given to the alleged ESP experiments aboard the USS Nautilus. This, in turn, had significant real-world consequences, as the [Soviets](/places/soviet-union/) used the news to stimulate their own [parapsychology](/concepts/parapsychology/) research. [Leonid L. Vasilev](/people/leonid-l-vasilev/), Russia's leading ESP researcher, claimed that Soviet parapsychology research was stimulated by the *Nautilus* reports[^1].

[^1]: Jacobsen, Annie. *Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis*. Little, Brown and Company, 2017.