[4] In 1967, Puthoff earned a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Stanford University with a thesis, "The stimulated Raman effect and its application as a tunable laser".
[15][16] According to Terence Hines: Geller turned out to be nothing more than a magician using sleight of hand and considerable personal charm to fool his admirers.
[17]Psychologists David Marks and Richard Kammann attempted to replicate Puthoff and Targ's remote viewing experiments.
[18][19] Terence Hines has written: Examination of the few actual transcripts published by Targ and Puthoff show that just such clues were present.
[22] Marks and Kamman concluded: "Until remote viewing can be confirmed in conditions which prevent sensory cueing the conclusions of Targ and Puthoff remain an unsubstantiated hypothesis.
[24] In 1985, Puthoff founded The Institute for Advanced Studies at Austin (IASA), later incorporated under EarthTech International, Inc., in 1991, which pursues energy generation and propulsion research.
[25] Puthoff and EarthTech were granted a US Patent[26] in 1998, with claims that information could be transmitted through a distance using a modulated potential with no electric or magnetic field components.
[38] The hypothetical devices discussed in these articles are capacitors, multiple layers of charged conductors sufficiently close for the short-range Casimir force to compress the structure.
[39] Massimo Pigliucci called Puthoff's hopes to extract zero-point energy as running contrary to the laws of physics: "a proposition... that violates basic principles of thermodynamics and that is considered pseudoscience by credentialed physicists.