CIA's long history of embracing pseudoscience from Uri Geller to dowsing

A new LessWrong blog post compiles declassified CIA documents showing the agency's surprising credulity toward pseudoscience. The CIA tested spoon-bender Uri Geller over eight days and concluded he demonstrated 'paranormal perceptual ability in a convincing manner.' It funded three years of computer-assisted dowsing research, claiming psychic functioning could 'significantly reduce average search time' for hidden targets. A 30-page document on the 'Gateway Experience' and hemi-sync technology endorsed the theory that the human mind is a hologram attuned to a universal hologram via energy exchange, citing fringe neuroscientist Karl Pribram and physicist David Bohm.

The post also notes the agency's ongoing reliance on polygraph screening for all employees despite decades of research showing it cannot reliably distinguish truth from lies. The author speculates that the few scientists willing to conduct these experiments tend to be true believers in the theories being tested, leading to faulty experimental designs. This pattern mirrors similar pseudoscience infiltration in the late Soviet Union and 1990s Russia, where a commission chairman blamed corruption. The analysis serves as a cautionary tale about institutional bias and the seduction of exotic intelligence tools.