Dean Radin doesn't doubt that a watched pot boils.
But the senior scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences in Petaluma thinks it's worth asking if it does so as quickly as an unwatched one.
A longtime researcher in parapsychology, Radin has spent decades studying the capacity of human thought to shape external reality.
In fact Radin is conducting an experiment that's akin to mentally watching the proverbial pot: If someone fixes their "mind's eye" inside a sealed device that shoots a particle of light, can they change how the photons behave?
So far, the research shows "statistically significant" evidence that a person can seemingly alter a photon's path with their thoughts, Radin said.
"This experiment is producing results that are consistent with the idea that the mind is interacting with the system," Radin said. "It's beyond chance."
It's not your typical research, but the Institute of Noetic Sciences — which is dedicated to exploring the bounds of consciousness — is not your typical science center, as supporters and critics alike point out.
Not for nothing did Dan Brown — author of "The Da Vinci Code" and other best-sellers intrigued with hidden truths — place the Petaluma institute in the center of the plot for his 2009 book, "The Lost Symbol."
But unlike the mysterious societies that populate Brown's books, there's little hidden about the not-for-profit institute, which conducts regular tours, opens itself up to the media and presents its scientific research for scrutiny, knowing skeptics will come with sharpened knives.
Today it's inviting the public to its annual holiday open house from 2 to 5p.m. at its hilltop retreat center at 101 San Antonio Road outside Petaluma.
"Anybody's welcome," said Marilyn Schlitz, president and CEO of the institute, which has a $4.5 million budget funded by donations, grants, rents and other income.
An introduction to the institute might start with the huge portraits of Gandhi and Einstein that gaze on newcomers to IONS' offices in downtown Petaluma.
Since its founding in 1973 by Apollo astronaut Edgar Mitchell, the institute has prided itself on following the traditions exemplified by both portraits, bringing scientific rigor to the provinces of thought and consciousness.
"The institute for me has always been a place where those two things are constantly interwoven," said Cassandra Vieten, a clinical psychologist and IONS' director of research. "You can have a deep exploration into the inner realm of intuition and intention and meditation and profound spirituality, but it's bringing the lens of Western science to those experiences."
Fans include George Zimmer, founder and CEO of the Men's Warehouse chain of clothing stores, who is a board member and credits the institute for reinforcing his view of the connection between spirit and matter. Stacey Lawson, a San Rafael businesswoman running for Congress, is another member of the board.
Of course, the institute has plenty of detractors too, those who think it's earned its mention on the website Quackwatch, which keeps an eye out for frauds and fools.
"They promote lots of silly ideas," Stephen Barrett, a medical doctor who operates the site, wrote in an email last week.
Robert T. Carroll, a retired college philosophy teacher and author of "The Skeptic's Dictionary," has been similarly dismissive, repeatedly laying into the science behind Radin's writings.
"(W)hat Radin is peddling is quantum gibberish," he wrote in a 2009 review of the scientist's book "Entangled Minds."
Certainly some of the institute's interests are inherently dubious to people who think IONS is encroaching on areas more appropriate for science fiction than science. For example, the institute recently concluded a multiyear study funded by the National Institutes of Health that examined whether healers praying at a distance can aid patients recovering from surgical wounds.
But the institute's leaders stress they bring clear-eyed analysis to such projects. Indeed, in a forthcoming paper, they acknowledge finding no difference among patients who were recipients of healing thoughts and those were who weren't.
"We're not just trying to forward some agenda," Vieten said. "We're really going to study it and if there's a negative or null result we're going to report it. We want to find out just as much about when things don't work as when they do."
Other institute projects seem as familiar as the mind-body wellness programs that have become so common at rec centers, gyms and workplaces. But even there, there's a connection between efforts like the wound study.
"It seems different, but the thread is that consciousness matters," Vieten said.
For eight years, for example, the institute has collaborated with COTS, which provides emergency and transitional housing for Petaluma homeless.
The joint program — "At Home Within" — provides COTS' clients with meditation, yoga, music and other stress-reducing classes, designed to add calm and focus to students' lives.
Vieten said it's led to marked improvements among those who take the classes compared with those who don't. The program earned a grant from the Nathan Cummings Foundation to fund the creation of a manual so other shelters can follow.
"The research apparently is really, really encouraging that it does meaningfully help people," said John Records, COTS executive director and a donor to the institute.
Such wellness programs may now be increasingly commonplace, Schlitz said, but it's largely because of groups like IONS, pushing the idea when it wasn't acceptable.
"Forty years ago when the institute was first being conceived, mind-body medicine was heresy," Schlitz said. "The idea that our thought or our beliefs or our emotions had any impact on our immune system was completely anathema to conventional medicine and conventional science."
For the institute's members and supporters, it's possible the taboos they study today may be considered common wisdoms tomorrow.
Radin likens the institute's research to Benjamin Franklin experimenting with electricity centuries ago, with no clue those "electric sparks" would one day run the world.
"We're studying the equivalent of mental sparks," Radin said. "And where it leads, we're not smart enough to know yet."
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