Gertrude Schmeidler

Gertrude Schmeidler was an experimental psychologist with a PhD from Harvard University. In 1942, she conducted an experiment on anomalous mental phenomena with psychology students at City University of New York. Her analysis of the data led her to coin the terms "sheep" and "goats" to categorize individuals based on their beliefs about ESP and PK¹.

"Sheep" referred to individuals who were confident about the possible reality of ESP and PK, while "goats" referred to those who doubted the existence of any so-called anomalous mental phenomena. This explicit difference between believers and disbelievers has existed in the upper echelons of the U.S. military and intelligence communities since World War II¹.

Schmeidler's work is referenced by skeptics like Martin Gardner, who noted that psychic researchers often claimed that psychics were negatively impacted by the presence of "goats" (nonbelievers). J. B. Rhine, for example, stated that "The subtlest influences seem to disturb the operation of these [psychic] abilities... If the scientist is a disbeliever it will upset the delicate operation of the subject’s [psychic] abilities"¹.

Ingo Swann also conducted psychokinesis experiments for Gertrude Schmeidler at the City College of New York, which he referenced when communicating with Hal Puthoff about investigating the boundary between the physics of the animate and inanimate¹.