Robert Lucky

Robert Lucky was a Bell Labs scientist and the editor of the prestigious Proceedings of the IEEE electrical engineering society journal. He initially hesitated to publish Hal Puthoff and Russell Targ's paper on remote viewing in 1976. However, after Puthoff and Targ visited Bell Labs to answer questions from skeptical scientists, Lucky was impressed.¹

He eventually conducted some of his own informal remote viewing experiments and became convinced of its reality, stating, "Psychic stuff is really not much more far-fetched than some of the physics behind the laser." His decision to publish the paper in a respected scientific journal contributed to the growing, albeit controversial, recognition of remote viewing within the scientific community.¹

The Army's Grill Flame Scientific Evaluation Committee visited him at Bell Labs in Holmdel on September 8, 1979, and recorded a different account: "At Bell we spoke with Dr. Robert Lucky, the man who probably started the whole (serious) PSI debate. He did this during his tenure as editor of the IEEE Journal 'Proceedings', by publishing the now famous Targ and Puthoff article." "Bell has no on-going PSI research and given conservative management's feelings against the subject, never will." "Dr. Lucky believes that SRI does not have a bona fide scientific approach. He feels that good research is necessary, but should be carried out by a group of fully qualified scientists and engineers, with very tight experimental protocols." "In 1975, Dr. Lucky attempted a series of six RV tests, following the SRI protocol. Using in-house Bell volunteers, the tests were for the most part failures. But, enough correlations of Subject transcript to actual target were present in one or two trials, that he calls the whole thing ambiguous. He concluded that the issue should be pursued further, but Bell's management called it quits." "Lucky commented that he once proposed to Targ and Puthoff that they allow a 'debugger' like Randy the Magician to watch an SRI RV session. They refused on the grounds that no one believes them anyhow, and did not feel that permitting an extremely vocal critic to intrude into their lives/work would accomplish anything." He held that "legitimate, scientific research should be going on, but the best approach is to do it openly, perhaps with a sponsor like NSF."²