Herb Mertz studied mechanical engineering at Princeton University under Dean Robert J. Jahn, who shortly thereafter formed the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) Laboratory. The lab studied the possibility that the human mind can affect the functioning of sensitive electronic equipment. Mertz was an early consultant to the lab, helping with some of the instrumentation and was a subject in experiments at various times throughout the course of the lab's 27-year history.

In 2004, three years before the PEAR lab closed, Mertz and colleague John Valentino started Psyleron Inc. to develop newer versions of some of the PEAR lab's most successful equipment. The first product was a random event generator (REG) also called a random number generator (RNG). This device gives the equivalent of "perfect" coin tosses based on quantum processes, meaning that it reliably produces the same number of heads as tails overall. REG research shows that more subjects than chance would predict are able to significantly shift the output of the REG by consciously intending to produce more heads or more tails. This finding suggests that consciousness can shape reality by bending the course of events toward a desired outcome.

The Psyleron device is now used in laboratories around the world, as well as for anyone else interested in exploring the nature of consciousness. Mertz trained himself on the device for over a decade in order to discover and explore the states of mind that achieve this mind-over-matter impact. The Selection Effect (2020) is a personal narrative that chronicles what he learned in the process.

Mertz has lectured on his work in the U.S. and Canada and is a featured speaker of a popular course taught at Columbia University Graduate School of Education in New York. Mertz hosts a blog on consciousness research at the site [...].