Helmut Schmidt (parapsychologist)

Schmidt was born in Danzig, Germany. He was educated at the University of Göttingen (M.A., 1953) and obtained a Ph.D. in physics from University of Cologne in 1958. He taught theoretical physics at universities in America, Germany and Canada. In the 1960s Schmidt carried out experiments into clairvoyance and precognition. In the early 1970s he pioneered research into the effects of human consciousness on machines called random number generators or random event generators at the Rhine Research Center Institute for Parapsychology. He was appointed Research Director of the Institute in 1969. Schmidt initially conducted experiments with electronic random event generators of either a flashing red or green light. Subjects would attempt to make one illuminate more than the other by psychic means. Schmidt reported success rates of 1–2% above what would be expected at random over a large number of trials. He has been credited by critics of parapsychology as the researcher with the most sophisticated approach to the methodological design of parapsychological experiments. ==Reception==

Critics have written Schmidt's experiments in parapsychology have not been replicated. Schmidt worked alone with no one checking his experiments. He was accused of being a careless experimenter. The psychologist C. E. M. Hansel found flaws in all of Schmidt's experiments into clairvoyance, precognition and psychokinesis. Hansel found that necessary precautions were not taken, there was no presence of an observer or second-experimenter in any of the experiments, no counterchecking of the records and no separate machines used for high and low score attempts. There were weaknesses in the design of the experiments that did not rule out the possibility of trickery. There was little control of the experimenter and unsatisfactory features of the machine employed. According to the physicist Victor Stenger "While Schmidt claims positive results, his experiments also lack adequate statistical significance and have not been successfully replicated in the thirty-five years since his first experiments were reported." The psychologist James Alcock wrote that he found "serious methodological errors" throughout Schmidt's work which rendered his conclusions of psychokinesis untenable. This included criticism of Schmidt acting both as experimenter and subject and lack of clarification and detail from his reports such as the possibility of optional stopping during the experiments. Schmidt has also drawn criticism for endorsing the psychic claims of Uri Geller. ==See also==