Discovery Lab Answers

Stephan A. Schwartz is a parapsychology researcher whose work spans applied remote viewing, archaeological field expeditions, intention effects on biological and physical systems, and applied consciousness studies in policy and health contexts. The sources retrieved for this question are weighted toward his recent theoretical and editorial writings rather than primary experimental reports, so what follows draws on both those sources and the ESP-Nexus pages curated on his work, with the scope of each claim noted.

Experiments

Schwartz’s most distinctive experimental contribution is the applied remote viewing program he directed through the Mobius Society, which he founded. Rather than laboratory card-guessing or standard forced-choice paradigms, his program sent remote viewers to target real-world locations — archaeological sites and underwater environments — and used the consensus across multiple viewers’ responses to guide excavation and survey decisions ^[3]. This field-deployment model is the methodological signature of his career.

In the domain of intention effects, Schwartz conducted infrared spectroscopy studies examining whether the hands of therapeutic practitioners could produce measurable alterations in water samples. The ESP-Nexus page on his nonlocal consciousness work describes statistically significant changes in infrared spectra, with the strongest effect — using zinc selenide internal reflection elements as the measurement substrate — yielding p = 0.0004 for treated versus calibration control samples.

He also ran a series of twelve wine-tasting experiments in which groups of seven participants tasted wine from a single bottle decanted into two identical carafes — one the focus of intentioned awareness by meditators, one serving as a control. Eleven of twelve sessions produced a majority preference for the treated carafe, with one session ending in a tie; the exact binomial p-value reported on the ESP-Nexus page is 0.00049.

His theoretical and review writings discuss the broader remote viewing literature, including large-scale programs and the analysis of consensus trends in viewer data ^[3], though in those pieces he is synthesizing and contextualizing rather than reporting new experimental trials.

Schwartz also co-authored obituaries of Charles T. Tart ^[1][2], situating himself within the community of researchers who worked on altered states, out-of-body experiences, and consciousness science — fields adjacent to but distinct from his core experimental program.

Methodology

The applied remote viewing protocol Schwartz developed rests on several design features that distinguish it from standard laboratory psi research. Viewers work independently, without knowledge of each other’s responses, and their verbal descriptions and drawings are collected before any ground-truth information is provided ^[3]. An analysis phase then establishes consensus within the data — identifying convergent observations across viewers — and separates low-a-priori-probability observations (specific, verifiable details unlikely to arise by chance description) from generic ones. Schwartz draws an explicit analogy to methods used in intelligence analysis, investigative journalism, and social survey science ^[3].

For the intention-effects studies, the design paired treated and control samples (water exposed to practitioners’ hands versus untreated controls, or intentioned versus non-intentioned carafes of wine), with measurement by independent instrumentation (infrared spectroscopy) or blind sensory evaluation by naïve tasters. The use of zinc selenide internal reflection elements as the measurement substrate was a specific methodological choice aimed at increasing measurement sensitivity.

The wine-tasting protocol used identical carafes to blind tasters to condition assignment, with a pre-specified majority-preference criterion across twelve replications — a within-experiment replication structure rather than a single large-sample design.

Data

The retrieved sources do not contain a consolidated table of trial counts, hit rates, z-scores, or effect sizes from Schwartz’s experimental program in a form that can be reported here without risk of misattribution. The ESP-Nexus pages supply the figures noted above — p = 0.0004 for the strongest infrared spectroscopy comparison, and binomial p = 0.00049 across the twelve wine-tasting sessions — but the retrieved excerpts for this question do not carry the surrounding trial-level data (sample sizes, raw hit counts, or effect size metrics) that would allow a fully grounded table.

For the remote viewing archaeological and marine work, ^[3] describes the consensus-analysis process and accuracy evaluation framework, but the retrieved excerpt does not contain the quantitative accuracy figures from those field expeditions. The source notes that hundreds of papers are listed and available under Schwartz’s name across academic databases ^[3], and the retrieved excerpts represent a portion of that record.

What the sources do establish qualitatively: the remote viewing consensus methodology produced results that guided successful field excavations; the intention-effects studies on water and wine yielded p-values in ranges the authors describe as statistically significant; and the theoretical framework Schwartz applies treats intention as a measurable variable distinct from placebo or expectation effects.

Skeptical critiques

The sources retrieved for this question do not include published criticism of Schwartz’s experimental work by named critics in a form that meets the attribution standard required here — no critique is cited by author and year in either the numbered sources or the ESP-Nexus pages retrieved. The ESP-Nexus page on his nonlocal consciousness and intention effects work does contain a “Skeptical critiques” section, and that page is the appropriate place to read that engagement: Nonlocal consciousness and intention effects.

For his broader profile, including the archaeological remote viewing program and consciousness-policy work, the full scientist hub is at Stephan A. Schwartz.