Looking for the magic shortcut

In today's blast from the past, the Miami Herald reports on newly declassified papers revealing that the CIA tried to use psychic "remote viewing" to spy on Iran. The CIA's foray into parapsychology first became public in the 1990s. The Skeptic's Dictionary entry on remote viewing covers the major events and players, with an extensive reading list for further details and debunking.

Despite the extremely low-quality results, the CIA persisted with the remote viewing program for 24 years. There's a striking parallel between it and the NSA's current obsession with accumulating mountains of surveillance data. The NSA program has no notable successes either, yet it continues onward. Both promised the hope of spying without having to put human beings into mortal peril, but both could only persist in the complete absence of any scientifically motivated accountability.