Jessica Utts (born 1952) is an American statistician and professor known both for prominent leadership in mainstream statistics and for long-standing involvement in parapsychology, particularly research and evaluation related to “remote viewing” and other alleged psi phenomena. Within ufology and adjacent subcultures, Utts is frequently cited as an establishment-credentialed authority who argued that certain experimental findings suggest the existence of anomalous information transfer. Her name appears repeatedly in debates about government-sponsored psychic espionage research, the scientific status of psi, and the reliability of statistical inference in controversial domains.
Utts built her academic identity primarily as a statistician and educator, publishing widely used textbooks and advocating for statistical literacy. Her credibility in public discourse stems from this dual profile: she is simultaneously a mainstream statistics figure (with professional leadership and awards) and a parapsychology advocate. This combination made her unusually influential in disputes where critics argue that extraordinary claims collapse under proper statistical scrutiny, while proponents argue the opposite—that careful statistical reasoning reveals small but real effects.
Utts is not a UFO field investigator in the classical “sightings and trace evidence” tradition. Her relevance to ufology is indirect but substantial: UFO culture has long overlapped with claims about psychic perception, government secrecy, and alternative intelligence methods. Remote viewing, in particular, became a durable mythos within UFO communities because it offers a narrative of “classified perception” that supposedly bypasses physical distance and official denial. In that landscape, Utts is often positioned as the statistician who legitimized remote viewing with formal arguments and official-panel language, thereby strengthening the broader cultural story that hidden capabilities and hidden knowledge exist.
During the early stage of her involvement, Utts became connected to parapsychology research networks where statistical design and analysis are central concerns. Parapsychology has historically faced accusations of methodological weakness and selective reporting; proponents therefore place high value on statistical argumentation, replication logic, and meta-analysis. Utts’s early work helped define the pro-psi case in statistical terms: emphasizing aggregate effects, methodological improvements over time, and the distinction between “lack of mechanism” and “lack of evidence.”
Utts’s public prominence within anomalous-phenomena discourse was solidified by the 1995 evaluation of the U.S. government’s remote viewing program (commonly associated with the Stargate Project). In the panel’s split conclusions, Utts represented the position that the data contained evidence consistent with psychic functioning, while skeptical counterparts argued the results were not operationally useful and could be explained by methodological and interpretive weaknesses. The “two-report” structure became culturally important: proponents cite Utts’s conclusions as proof that the scientific case was stronger than popularly assumed, while skeptics cite the termination of the program and critiques of replicability as decisive.
In parallel with this psi-related prominence, Utts continued building mainstream stature in statistics education and professional service. This dual prominence made her a particularly strategic citation for remote viewing advocates: she could be introduced not as a niche parapsychologist but as a high-level statistician who “looked at the data and said it was real.”
In later years, Utts has continued to publish, lecture, and participate in public-facing discussions about psi evidence, controversies, and scientific standards. A recurring theme in her later framing is that contentious fields often improve through adversarial critique: skeptics identify weaknesses; proponents respond with improved protocols; the evidential dispute becomes a driver of methodological refinement. This rhetorical stance places her within a broader philosophy of science narrative that treats psi research as a stress-test for scientific inference rather than as mere fringe belief.
The U.S. Government Remote Viewing Program (Stargate-era evaluation, 1995): Utts is closely associated with the pro-psi interpretation that experimental results showed evidence of psychic functioning, even amid disputes about usefulness and replication.
Ganzfeld and other parapsychology protocol controversies: her commentary and analyses are frequently invoked in arguments over whether improved controls strengthened or weakened the case for psi.
Utts’s public stance is broadly that the statistical record across multiple lines of parapsychology research suggests an effect that is unlikely to be explained entirely by chance, error, or fraud, though she acknowledges methodological challenges and the difficulty of producing universally persuasive demonstrations. She often emphasizes cumulative evidence, arguing that critics focus too heavily on individual study imperfections while ignoring persistent aggregate patterns.
Utts has been criticized by skeptics on several fronts: claims that parapsychology results are driven by questionable research practices, selective reporting, and inadequate independent replication; arguments that operational intelligence usefulness is the relevant standard (not laboratory significance); and concerns that evaluators can be socially or professionally entangled with the research communities they assess. The remote viewing program’s termination is frequently presented as an institutional verdict against utility, even as proponents maintain that “lack of utility” does not equal “lack of effect.”
Utts’s influence extends beyond academic publishing through interviews, public lectures, conference appearances, and online video presentations that translate statistical reasoning for general audiences. In the remote viewing world, her arguments are frequently treated as “permission structure”—a way for believers to frame psi as evidence-based rather than faith-based. In UFO-adjacent contexts, her work is often pulled into broader narratives of government secrecy, unconventional research programs, and hidden capabilities.
Utts’s legacy is defined by her dual identity. To mainstream statistics audiences, she is a major educator and professional leader. To anomalous-phenomena audiences, she is one of the most credentialed and persistent statistical defenders of psi evidence. This combination ensured that, regardless of one’s conclusion, debates over remote viewing and parapsychology could not be dismissed as purely non-technical: they became, in part, arguments about what statistical evidence can and cannot establish in controversial scientific domains.