Episode 1612: Robert Bigelow | The Brogan Report

Introduction

Episode 1612, featuring aerospace entrepreneur Robert Bigelow, aired on February 25, 2021. Bigelow is the founder of Bigelow Aerospace and Budget Suites of America, a genuinely successful businessman who has worked with NASA on expandable space habitats. However, he has also spent decades and tens of millions of dollars funding pseudoscientific research into UFOs, remote viewing, psychokinesis, and the survival of human consciousness after death — and this episode served as a three-hour platform for those fringe beliefs with minimal scientific scrutiny.

TL;DR: Bigelow presented remote viewing, psychokinesis, and consciousness survival after death as scientifically established phenomena, citing discredited research and anecdotal evidence. Rogan offered some skepticism on specific claims but largely allowed Bigelow to promote pseudoscience unchallenged, lending the credibility of a successful businessman to ideas that have been thoroughly rejected by mainstream science.

Who is Robert Bigelow?

Robert Bigelow is a Las Vegas-based billionaire who made his fortune in real estate and the hotel industry through Budget Suites of America. He founded Bigelow Aerospace, which developed expandable space habitat technology and held NASA contracts — legitimate aerospace work that gives him genuine credibility in that domain.

However, Bigelow has simultaneously spent decades funding fringe research:

In 1995, he founded the National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDSci) to study ufology and paranormal phenomena (Wikipedia)
In 1996, he purchased Skinwalker Ranch in Utah for $200,000 to investigate alleged paranormal activity (Wikipedia)
He gave millions to the University of Nevada during the 1990s to study telepathy, clairvoyance, and the possibility of life after death (Scientific American)
In 2020, he founded the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies (BICS) and offered $1.8 million in prize money for essays arguing for the existence of life after death (Mystery Wire)

Bigelow has no scientific credentials. His expertise is in real estate and aerospace engineering, not neuroscience, physics, or any field relevant to consciousness research.

Problem 1: Remote Viewing Presented as Established Science

Bigelow claimed that remote viewing — the alleged psychic ability to perceive distant locations through mental means alone — is scientifically proven. He stated that clairvoyance, telepathy, psychometry, and remote viewing “are all real, and they have all world-class performers in every one of those things.” He cited CIA and Army programs as proof of the phenomenon’s validity.

What the Science Actually Says

The CIA’s Stargate Project (1972-1995) spent $20 million investigating remote viewing before being terminated. The program’s final evaluation, commissioned from the American Institutes for Research, concluded that remote viewing had not been shown to have value in intelligence operations (CIA Reading Room)
Professor Ray Hyman, who conducted the independent review, found the results were not replicable and suffered from methodological flaws, including insufficient controls against sensory leakage and confirmation bias
The National Research Council concluded in 1988 that there was “no scientific justification from research conducted over a period of 130 years for the existence of parapsychological phenomena” (National Academies Press)
Bigelow’s personal anecdote about hiring a remote viewer who gave him accurate “underground information” is unfalsifiable testimony, not evidence

Rogan’s Role

Rogan did express some skepticism here, noting he had “done an experiment on a show that I had, and it wasn’t effective at all.” However, he immediately qualified this by suggesting “that could have been that the person that was doing the remote viewing was a fraud, that maybe there are people that do have that ability” — effectively leaving the door open to pseudoscience rather than applying consistent skepticism.

Problem 2: Psychokinesis Claims Without Evidence

Bigelow discussed alleged psychokinesis (PK) — the ability to move objects with the mind — presenting it as a real phenomenon with “world-class performers.”

He cited videos of Nina Kulagina, a Soviet woman who allegedly moved objects telekinetically during the Cold War. These demonstrations have been widely criticized by skeptics as likely involving hidden magnets or threads, and were never conducted under properly controlled scientific conditions (Skeptical Inquirer)
He referenced Princeton’s PEAR Lab (Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research), which claimed subjects could influence random number generators through mental intention. The PEAR Lab closed in 2007 after failing to produce replicable results. Independent analyses found the statistical effects were tiny and likely attributable to methodological flaws (New York Times)

Rogan’s Role

Rogan did push back on the Kulagina video, noting “my problem…I can’t see below the table…you can move things around with fuckery.” This was a genuine moment of skepticism. However, he did not extend this healthy doubt to Bigelow’s broader claims about psychokinesis being real.

Problem 3: Afterlife and Consciousness Survival Claims

Bigelow framed the survival of consciousness after death as a legitimate scientific question with strong existing evidence. He presented his Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies — which offered $1.8 million in prize money for essays arguing consciousness survives death — as serious scientific inquiry.

What Skeptics and Scientists Say

Philosopher Keith Augustine published an extensive critical analysis of the BICS essay contest in the Journal of Scientific Exploration, arguing that the winning essays “failed to meet their directive to provide ‘hard evidence beyond a reasonable doubt’ of the survival of human consciousness” (PhilPapers)
Augustine characterized the contest as epitomizing “much of what’s wrong with the current state of survival research,” noting that “limiting one’s inquiry to attempts to only collect data that might confirm survival is one of the chief hallmarks of pseudoscience”
An independent analysis found that 65.5% of the winning essays had low strength of scientific evidence, with only 20.5% rated as having high strength (ResearchGate)
The scientific consensus in neuroscience is that consciousness is a product of brain activity. There is no peer-reviewed evidence published in mainstream neuroscience journals demonstrating consciousness surviving brain death

Problem 4: Skinwalker Ranch and Paranormal Claims

Bigelow discussed his ownership of Skinwalker Ranch and the alleged paranormal phenomena there as though they were established facts, without acknowledging that his own research team found essentially nothing.

What Actually Happened at Skinwalker Ranch

Colm Kelleher, who led the NIDSci investigation for Bigelow, admitted: “After several years of family trauma and of focused NIDS investigation, we managed to obtain very little physical evidence of anomalous phenomena” (Wikipedia)
Skeptical investigator Robert Sheaffer noted that the previous owners, who lived on the property for 60 years, reported no supernatural events, suggesting the Sherman family may have invented the stories before selling the ranch to Bigelow (Skeptical Inquirer)
In 1996, skeptic James Randi awarded Bigelow a tongue-in-cheek Pigasus Award for “the funding organization that supported the most useless study of a supernatural, paranormal or occult claim”
In 2023, ufologist Barry Greenwood characterized Skinwalker Ranch as “always in the business of selling belief and hope”

Problem 5: The Hal Puthoff Connection

Bigelow’s research network includes Hal Puthoff, who was referenced in the context of remote viewing research. Puthoff is a physicist who became notorious for validating the claims of alleged psychic Uri Geller in the 1970s — experiments that were later thoroughly debunked when magician James Randi demonstrated how Geller’s tricks could be replicated through simple sleight of hand (Nature, 1974).

Puthoff is also a former practitioner of Scientology who reached the highest “Operating Thetan” level, and has promoted Scientology’s E-meter as a legitimate scientific instrument. His involvement in Bigelow’s research programs raises serious questions about the rigor of the methodology employed.

The Wealth-as-Credibility Problem

This episode illustrates a recurring pattern on the JRE: a guest’s financial success in one domain is treated as lending credibility to their claims in completely unrelated fields. Bigelow built a legitimate real estate and aerospace empire, but his billions do not make remote viewing, psychokinesis, or afterlife survival any more scientifically valid.

As Scientific American reported, Bigelow is part of a pattern where “wealthy UFO fans helped fuel fringe beliefs” by using personal wealth to bypass the scientific peer review process and fund research that mainstream institutions would not support (Scientific American).

Credit Where Due

Rogan did show some genuine skepticism during this episode:

He questioned the Kulagina psychokinesis footage, noting the possibility of trickery
He acknowledged his own failed remote viewing experiment
He expressed doubt about hypnotic regression and the creation of false memories

These moments of skepticism are commendable. The problem is that they were isolated rather than applied consistently to Bigelow’s broader claims.

Real-World Harm

While the immediate harm from claims about remote viewing and afterlife may seem limited compared to medical misinformation, there are real consequences:

Financial exploitation: Psychic mediums and practitioners of “remote viewing” charge vulnerable, grieving people for services that have no scientific basis
Erosion of scientific literacy: Presenting pseudoscience as legitimate science on a platform reaching millions of listeners undermines public understanding of how science works
Misallocation of resources: The Department of Defense gave Bigelow $22 million from 2008 to 2011 to investigate UFOs and paranormal phenomena at Skinwalker Ranch — taxpayer money spent on pseudoscience (Scientific American)
Normalization of magical thinking: Treating remote viewing and psychokinesis as real phenomena contributes to a broader culture of credulity that makes people more susceptible to other forms of misinformation