Discovery Lab Answers

Garret Moddel — Experiments and Data

Garret Moddel is an electrical engineer at the University of Colorado Boulder whose experimental work spans several distinct research areas — psi phenomena, zero-point energy (ZPE), and the theoretical intersection of thermodynamics with anomalous effects. The sources retrieved for this question cover four main threads.

1. Associative Remote Viewing and Stock Market Prediction

Smith, Laham, and Moddel (2014) conducted a study in which ten inexperienced remote viewers used an associative remote viewing (ARV) protocol to predict the direction of the Dow Jones Industrial Average ^[4]. The core finding: participants correctly described the target images in seven out of seven attempts, a result the authors report as statistically significant at p < .01 by binomial probability test ^[4]. Investments made on the basis of those predictions produced a reported financial gain. The paper frames ARV as having practical-applications potential and argues that using naïve viewers reduces concerns about experimenter effects or subject selection bias ^[4].

For context, the paper also reviews prior ARV market-prediction work. Puthoff’s earlier experiment using seven naïve viewers yielded a hit rate of 127 correct out of 202 individual viewings (p < 1.6 × 10⁻⁴), and a separate large-scale effort by Kolodziejzyk across 5,677 trials produced a hit rate of 52.65% against a chance expectation of 50%, reaching z = 4.0 ^[4]. These are cited by Smith et al. as precedents, not as Moddel’s own data.

2. Machine-Mediated Remote Viewing

A 2014 conference presentation by Maddocks and Moddel reported an initial study and replication of “machine-mediated remote viewing” — asking whether psi effects could be transmitted or detected via a machine interface ^[1]. A conference report notes that while the results appeared promising on first inspection, questions about methodology arose during discussion ^[1]. The retrieved excerpt does not contain the specific statistics from that work; the full paper would need to be consulted for those figures.

3. Belief and Psi Performance (Card Guessing)

Walsh and Moddel (2007) ran a Zener card clairvoyance study designed to test whether belief modulates psi performance ^[6]. Twelve subjects each guessed 100 hidden cards. Participants were divided into four groups crossing prior belief (believer / nonbeliever) with the type of argument presented beforehand (pro-psi / anti-psi).

Only group (i) reached significance against chance ^[6]. ANOVA across the four groups returned an insignificant p-value overall ^[6]. The group-difference analysis found that the gap between believers and nonbelievers (p = 0.076) was larger than the gap between those given pro-psi versus anti-psi arguments (p = 0.34), which the authors interpret as suggesting initial belief has a stronger effect than belief induced by argument ^[6]. The paper explicitly acknowledges the reliance on a small N and flags that successful psi experiments often depend on “gifted subjects” who may not maintain performance across labs ^[6].

4. Zero-Point Energy Experiments

Moddel (2022) reports laboratory work on harvesting zero-point energy (ZPE) using Casimir cavities and related device architectures ^[3]. The paper describes fabricated devices that appear to produce power and states that an in-depth investigation of nine possible artifacts found no artifact that could explain the observed results ^[3]. The author also notes that a rigorous quantum model (Ford, 2022) can account for observed conductance changes due to an adjoining Casimir cavity, but does not explain the power production ^[3]. The paper frames this as frontier physics territory, explicitly engaging the second law of thermodynamics as a potential impediment — a theme also present in Moddel (2004), which theorizes on entropy and “subtle interactions” and explores whether anomalous effects might be consistent with thermodynamic constraints ^[5]. Sheehan (2020) cites a personal communication from Moddel (2019) regarding steady-state temperature differences as a “soft violation” of the second law ^[2].

5. Theoretical Framework

Moddel’s 2004 paper in the Journal of Scientific Exploration develops a thermodynamic framing for psi-type interactions, arguing that thermal fluctuations in neural networks could, in principle, provide a mechanism for information transfer, and examining under what conditions subtle interactions might be consistent with — or violate — the second law ^[5]. This theoretical thread connects his ZPE physics work to his psi research program.

Skeptical critiques

What critics argue. The machine-mediated remote viewing presentation prompted methodological questions at the 2014 Parapsychological Association conference itself, with concerns raised during the post-presentation discussion about whether the apparently promising results held up under scrutiny ^[1]. More broadly, the seven-of-seven ARV stock prediction outcome in Smith et al. (2014) rests on a very small number of binary trials — with seven binary outcomes, the sequence space is limited and the statistical power to rule out chance is constrained by sample size, not just the p-value ^[4].

What the experimental data show. Smith et al. (2014) report p < .01 by binomial test for the seven-of-seven outcome and note actual financial gains from option trades made on the predictions ^[4]. Walsh and Moddel (2007) find significance only in one of four groups (p = 0.028, two-tailed), with the overall ANOVA across groups not reaching significance ^[6]. For ZPE power production, Moddel (2022) reports that no identified artifact explains the observed output, while acknowledging that the quantum model available at the time of writing did not yet account for it ^[3].

Analysis. The ARV experiment’s headline result is statistically significant by the authors’ own metric, but the small trial count (N = 7 binary decisions) means that independent replication across larger series is the natural next step the data call for. The belief-modulation study’s significant effect is isolated to one cell in a four-group design, with the overall group comparison not significant — a pattern the authors themselves note, and one that would require replication to distinguish a genuine moderator effect from a multiple-comparison artifact in a small sample. Independent replication of both experiments outside Moddel’s group has not been documented in the sources retrieved for this question.

For broader context on remote viewing and ARV research, see the Phenomena section and the Studies section at ESP-Nexus.