Journal Of Parapsychology

The design for the experiment was simple: a man performed a standard test of extra-sensory perception (ESP), attempting to guess what symbols were illustrated on a series of concealed cards, and a dog (a ’supposedly non-psychic’ miniature dachshund) was rewarded with a chocolate every time the man guessed correctly. The dog was thus motivated to improve the man’s performance by psycho-kinetic (PK) means. The results showed that the man’s results did indeed improve, but the best results of all were obtained when the dog performed the ESP test on its own. The conclusion was that further research was needed.

Schmidt was a physicist who has specialized in parapsychology. He was born in Danzig, Germany, February 21, 1928. He was educated at the University of Göttingen (M.A., 1953) and the University of Cologne (Ph.D. Physics, 1958). He moved to North America in 1964 as a visiting lecturer at the University of British Columbia and stayed to become senior research physicist at Boeing Science Research Laboratory (1966-69) and a resident associate at the Institute of Parapsychology (1969-70). In 1970 he was named director of the institute, a position he held until 1973. In recent years, Schmidt became associated with The Mind Science Foundation in San Antonio, Texas, which was first founded by Tom Slick.