American Institutes for Research

Type: Private - Not-for-Profit
On the web: http://www.air.org
Employees: 1,175

The American Institutes for Research (AIR) lives and breathes to enhance human performance. The not-for-profit organization conducts behavorial and social science research on topics related to education, health research and communication, individual and organizational performance, and usability. Clients, including several federal agencies, use AIR's research to help develop policies. The organization has an ongoing major initiative to provide tools to improve education both in the US and internationally, particularly in disadvantaged areas. John Flanagan, who developed the Critical Incident Technique personnel-selection tool to identify human success indicators in the workplace, founded the company in 1946.

Key numbers for fiscal year ending September, 2007:
Sales: $228.8M

Officers:
President and CEO: Sol H. Pelavin
VP, Finance and Director, Corporate Business Office: Robert M. Bussjaeger
VP, External Relations and Public Policy: Mary Anne Schmitt-Carey

American Institutes for Research (AIC) is an independent not-for-profit corporation founded in 1946 by John C. Flanagan that conducts research in the behavioral and social science. Over the years it has become a large operation with several offices on both coasts. Though not known for any participation in psychical research or parapsyhcology, in 1995 AIC was plunged into the middle of a major controversy when it was asked to assemble a panel for a review of Project STAR GATE, the program of government-sponsored research on parapsychology.

AIC invited Ray Hyman, a respected psychologist from the University of Oregon with a long history of statements critical of parapsychological research, and Jessica Utts, a statistician from the University of Californria-Davis, who had written favorably on psychic phenomena. In addition, Dr. Lincoln Moses an Emeritus Professor at Stanford University, AIC president David A. Goslin, and two senior scientists from AIC participated in the review. The panel were given a variety of research data on remote viewing, the major technique utilized and investigated by Project STAR GATE. Utts prepared a report suggesting that a statistically significant demonstration of a psychic effect was revealed in the study. Hyman critiqued that reports suggesting that the positive results had not been shown to be from the operation of psychic phenomena. They then looked at the gathering of intelligence data through remote viewing that was seen as quite different than the laboratory experiments. The panel concluded that the use of remote viewing in intelligence gathering had, at best, limited applications. These ambiguous results were considered negative enough that Operation STAR GATE was closed and much of the material accumulated made public.

The AIC report was criticized by Edwin May, a physicist who have overseen much of the actual research, who complained that the best material had been withheld form the panel.

Sources:

Operation Star Gate. http://www.parascope.com/articles/starGateDocs.htm. April 19, 2000.