Jessica Utts (born 1952) is a parapsychologist and statistics professor at the

University of California, Irvine The University of California, Irvine (UCI or UC Irvine) is a public land-grant research university in Irvine, California. One of the ten campuses of the University of California system, UCI offers 87 undergraduate degrees and 129 graduate and p ...

. She is known for her textbooks on statistics and her investigation into

remote viewing Remote viewing (RV) is the practice of seeking impressions about a distant or unseen subject, purportedly sensing with the mind. Typically a remote viewer is expected to give information about an object, event, person or location that is hidden ...

Robert Todd Carroll Robert Todd Carroll (May 18, 1945 – August 25, 2016) was an American author, philosopher and academic, best known for The Skeptic's Dictionary. He described himself as a naturalist, an atheist, a materialist, a metaphysical libertarian, and a ...

. (2003). '' The Skeptic's Dictionary: A Collection of Strange Beliefs, Amusing Deceptions, and Dangerous Delusions''. Wiley. pp. 331-333.

Statistics education

In 2003, Utts published an article in ''

American Statistician ''The American Statistician'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed scientific journal covering statistics published by Taylor & Francis on behalf of the American Statistical Association. It was established in 1947. The editor-in-chief is Daniel R. Jeske, ...

'', a journal published by the

American Statistical Association The American Statistical Association (ASA) is the main professional organization for statisticians and related professionals in the United States. It was founded in Boston, Massachusetts on November 27, 1839, and is the second oldest continuous ...

, calling for significant changes to collegiate level statistics education. In the article she argued that

curricula In education, a curriculum (; : curricula or curriculums) is broadly defined as the totality of student experiences that occur in the educational process. The term often refers specifically to a planned sequence of instruction, or to a view ...

do a fine job of covering the

mathematical Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...

side of statistics, but do a poor job of teaching students the skills necessary to properly interpret statistical results in scientific studies. The argument continues that common errors found in

news article An article or piece is a written work published in a print or electronic medium. It may be for the purpose of propagating news, research results, academic analysis, or debate. News articles A news article discusses current or recent news of eith ...

s, such as the common misinterpretation that

correlative In grammar, a correlative is a word that is paired with another word with which it functions to perform a single function but from which it is separated in the sentence. In English, examples of correlative pairs are ''both–and, either–or, nei ...

studies show causation, would be reduced if there were significant changes made to standard statistics courses. In 2016, Utts served as the 111th president of the

. She is a

Fellow of the American Statistical Association Like many other academic professional societies, the American Statistical Association (ASA) uses the title of Fellow of the American Statistical Association as its highest honorary grade of membership. The number of new fellows per year is limited ...

, and also a Fellow of the

Institute of Mathematical Statistics The Institute of Mathematical Statistics is an international professional and scholarly society devoted to the development, dissemination, and application of statistics and probability. The Institute currently has about 4,000 members in all parts ...

Investigation of remote viewing

In 1995, the

American Institutes for Research The American Institutes for Research (AIR) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan behavioral and social science research, evaluation and technical assistance organization based in Arlington, Virginia. One of the world's largest social science research organ ...

(AIR) appointed a panel consisting primarily of Utts and

Ray Hyman Ray Hyman (born June 23, 1928) is a Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Oregon in Eugene, Oregon, and a noted critic of parapsychology. Hyman, along with James Randi, Martin Gardner and Paul Kurtz, is one of the founders of the ...

to evaluate a project investigating

for

espionage Espionage, spying, or intelligence gathering is the act of obtaining secret or confidential information ( intelligence) from non-disclosed sources or divulging of the same without the permission of the holder of the information for a tang ...

applications, the

Stargate Project Stargate Project was a secret U.S. Army unit established in 1978 at Fort Meade, Maryland, by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and SRI International (a California contractor) to investigate the potential for psychic phenomena in military an ...

, which was funded by the

Central Intelligence Agency The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian intelligence agency, foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gat ...

and

Defense Intelligence Agency The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) is an intelligence agency and combat support agency of the United States Department of Defense, specializing in defense and military intelligence. A component of the Department of Defense (DoD) and th ...

, and carried out initially by

Stanford Research Institute SRI International (SRI) is an American nonprofit organization, nonprofit scientific research, scientific research institute and organization headquartered in Menlo Park, California. The trustees of Stanford University established SRI in 1946 as ...

and subsequently by SAIC.

David Marks David Lee Marks (born August 22, 1948) is an American guitarist who is best known for being an early member of the Beach Boys. While growing up in Hawthorne, California, Marks was a neighborhood friend of the original band members and was a freq ...

; Richard Kammann. (2000). '' The Psychology of the Psychic''. Prometheus Books. pp. 71-74. A report by Utts claimed the results were evidence of psychic functioning, however Hyman in his report argued Utts' conclusion that ESP had been proven to exist, especially precognition, was premature and the findings had not been independently replicated. According to Hyman "the overwhelming amount of data generated by the viewers is vague, general, and way off target. The few apparent hits are just what we would expect if nothing other than reasonable guessing and subjective validation are operating." Funding for the project was stopped after these reports were issued. Jessica Utts also co-authored papers with the parapsychologist Edwin May, who took over Stargate in 1985. The psychologist

noted that as Utts has published papers with May "she was not independent of the research team. Her appointment to the review panel is puzzling; an evaluation is likely to be less than partial when an evaluator is not independent of the program under investigation." Utts is on the executive board of the International Remote Viewing Association (IRVA)."About IRVA"
International Remote Viewing Association.

Publications

Books

* ''Seeing Through Statistics, 3rd edition'' (2005) - The use of statistical methods to solve real world problems, and to gain understanding from the application of statistics in addition to simply calculating them. * ''Mind On Statistics, 4th edition'' (2012), with R.F. Heckard - Textbook for an introductory statistics course, with emphasis on understanding the use of statistics in everyday life.

Papers

*Utts, J. (1988). ''Successful replication versus statistical significance''. Journal of Parapsychology, 52(4): 305-320. *Radin, D. and J. Utts. (1989). ''Experiments investigating the influence of intention on random and pseudorandom events''. Journal of Scientific Exploration, 3(1): 65-79. *Utts, J. (1989). ''Randomness and randomization tests: A reply to Gilmore''. Journal of Parapsychology, 53(4): 345-351. *May, E. C., J. M. Utts, B. S. Humphrey, W. Luke, T.J. Frivold, and V. V. Trask. (1990). ''Advances in Remote Viewing'', Journal of Parapsychology, 54(3), 193-228. *Hansen G. P., J. M. Utts, and B. Markwick. (1992). ''Critique of the PEAR remote viewing experiments''. Journal of Parapsychology, 56(2), 97-113. *Utts, J. (1993). ''Analyzing free-response data--a progress report''. In ''PSI Research Methodology--A Reexamination'', ed. L. Coly and J. D. S. McMahon, Parapsychology Foundation, New York, 71-83. *Utts, J. (2018). ''An Assessment of the Evidence for Psychic Functioning''. Journal of Parapsychology, 82: 118-146.

References

External links

Jessica Utts's UC Irvine page

{{DEFAULTSORT:Utts, Jessica 1952 births Living people American women statisticians Fellows of the American Statistical Association Fellows of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics Parapsychologists People from Davis, California Remote viewing University of California, Davis faculty University of California, Irvine faculty Presidents of the American Statistical Association 21st-century American women Statistics educators