Britain’s military spent taxpayers' money to test out “remote viewing” as recently as 2002, only to conclude the technique had little value.

According to the BBC documents secured through the Freedom of Information act show the MoD initially sought to recruit professional psychics to take part in the research, failing to foresee that the pros tend to steer clear of men in white coats.

The research, the cost of which was a vertigo inducing £18,000 apparently, was seen as a ringing endorsement for psychic warfare, with the volunteers managing a “close guess” at the contents of the envelope just 28 per cent of the time.

Why the UK wasted thousands of pounds of tax payers’ money investigating remote viewing is a mystery. After all, the US military has already wasted millions of dollars of their taxpayers’ cash conducting its own table tapping research, without much to show for it. Not even a WMD or two.

Perhaps something spooked Whitehall into thinking the Americans were, after all, able to remotely view and even control people thousands of miles away, for example in a small sidestreet near the Palace of Westminster. But this is patent nonsense, at least according to the voices in our heads.®

Related stories

• Fire marshal quits over psychic emails (26 March 2007)
• UK patent rules to be overhauled (14 March 2007)
• SkyNet 5 blasts into space (12 March 2007)
• Princeton ESP lab shuttered in bad week for irrationality (13 February 2007)
• If whales can communicate by telepathy, why can't humans? (10 February 2007)
• Psychic museum closes due to unforeseen circumstances (9 February 2007)
• Uri Geller secures Elvis's first house (16 May 2006)