THE CHICKEN-HEARTED
Sir,-It is difficult to decide just where to start criticising R.M.D.’s rather splenetic attack on those who are attempting to investigate, albeit with small success, the fields of parapsychology and extra sensory perception. Leaving out his attack on Dr Rhine, which scarcely warrants notice, on Duke University, whose results he assures us are suspect because it was named after a successful oilman, and his appeal to "Authorities" who support his view (although he does not tell us how anyone can be an authority on something which he says does not exist), we are left with his complaint that "scientific" investigation has failed to confirm Rhine’s results. This is rather like approaching an accountant and asking him if his work confirms Mr Hoyle’s latest cosmological theories. Perhaps R.M.D. would tell! us which branch of science he considers competent to study E.S.P., and by what criteria the results are to be examined. His reference to the "cold, hard facts of physics" merely obscures the issue since many of these facts had to be discovered before the science could exist. A science can only function on the basis of reproducible experimental fact, which history shows us had to be discovered by someone who was prepared to stand a deal of criticism, abuse, and persecution for flying in the face of accepted scientific dogma. Perhaps R.M.D. would like to prevent investigation in any field which he considers to be outside the class of science, but progress can hardly be achieved by sticking religiously to the well-worn track of "scientific knowledge" and ignoring happenings which do not suit our particular set of beliefs. A number of prominent scientists (Kelvin amongst them) have been ruined
by the furious attacks of their smallminded contemporaries, for going on record to the effect that they have witnessed events inexplicable in the light of scientific belief. To R.M.D.’s frontiers -"ignorance, illiteracy, superstition and sentiment" we must add "the closed
mind."
STUDENT
(Wellington).
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 943, 6 September 1957, Page 11
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324THE CHICKEN-HEARTED New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 943, 6 September 1957, Page 11
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