Nature reports (subscription) that the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) lab is finally closed down by its founder, Robert G. Jahn, the former Dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science. In the 28 years that it operated it pursued, their web site says,

rigorous scientific study of the interaction of human consciousness with sensitive physical devices, systems, and processes common to contemporary engineering practice.

Nature puts what the lab did more clearly as investigating "whether people can alter the behaviour of machines using their thoughts." But Nature seems to be a little confused about the real questions involved in this event. It says that "the closure highlights a long-running question: how permissive should science be of research that doesn't fit a standard theoretical framework, if the methods used are scientific?"

Is that really the question? The confusion comes from the bit about "scientific method". The same label enters the lab's self-description, augmented by the adjective "rigorous". However, these labels all ignore that the scientific method is basically an extension of the good old method of "trial and error", or as Popper insisted, "trial and elimination of error".

What the lab did, and other similar enterprises do, is only half the story, namely, the trial part. What's seriously missing is the part of elimination of error. The lab did not ask "the wrong questions" as Nature's headline claims (what does that mean anyway?): it refused to accept that the answers they were giving were false by the evidence collected by themselves and others. They refused to accept the almost trivial fact that whatever they found or didn't find were explained categorically better by competing theories.