I'm glad this thread has come back now to serious discussion. The question in the title of the thread is legitimate, same as for instance a question like 'why has God not prevented this?' can be discussed seriously. Kat has given one possible though not very convincing answer (to the first question), namely those who did know didn't talk about it openly.

One of the most unexpected aspects of this thread was Amos making fun of psychic 'predictions' in a truly skeptical way. I really loved reading these posts, Amos.

However, I also saw what I consider a double-standard of argumentation re scientific proof. I know it from too many public and private discussions. In this thread, it is clearest in Amos' posts:

the psyche completely disobeys the unidirectionalnature of time on which physical proof methods depend

There have been documented cases under strict research conditions of remote viewing, and the remote influence by intention of buried sensors (see the Puthoff and Targ series of experiments conducted at Stanford Research...)

Now, what Targ and Puthoff did was experimenting under (presumably) controlled conditions, they counted successes and compared the number with chance level, they used a 'physical proof' method and published in 'Nature'.

Why do you cite research you consider supportive, Amos, if you think that the psyche completely disobeys laws that are assumed to hold by those using physical proof methods? If that thought is correct you are right in not accepting research evidence to the nonexistence but at the same time there is no use in citing supportive evidence for it should be as irrelevant as unsupportive is in your thinking.

I encounter this double-standard very often. A person I met cited evidence for the effect of some herbs. The evidence was completely in the physical proof tradition: The number of successes was counted and compared with a control. When it was pointed out to her that the research cited has some flaws and the controls were not adequate and that other reasearch had not found any positive effect, she quickly fell back into the 'well it has real effects, but by the poor methods of so called science can't show them'.

Cite scientific research that is supportive and claim that the phenomenon is inaccessible for science when unsupportive evidence is mentioned. That's the way I have encountered too often to be fooled by it.

Just for the record:
(1) Targ and Puthoff are not taken very serious now even in the parapsychological community. They had too many flaws in their experimental set-ups. The verdict 'the Laurel and Hardy of Psi-research' (Randi) is a bit unfair though.
(2) Rick: Shippi is Shipi actually
(3) Peg: That modern quantum physics is supportive of metaphysical claims more than on a completely superficial level of similarity of words (in the sense of 'All is relative', even Einstein has found) is the opinion of a tiny minority. For another view read e.g. Victor J. Stenger, The Unconscious Quantum: Metaphysics in Modern Physics and Cosmology, 1995.

Wolfgang