THE CHICKEN-HEARTED

New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 945, 20 September 1957, Page 11

THE CHICKEN-HEARTED

Sir,-I eriticised J. B. Rhine’s New Frontiers, and your correspondents leap to the defence of Eastern philosophy, yoga, hypnotic phenomena (whatever they may be), paranormal cognition, and what have you. All I was ridiculing was the nature of the procedures he employed, the validity of the data obtained, and the soundness of the assumptions drawn. Rhine preferred testing those who were avowedly interested in getting "good" results, and he found the very worst kind of investigator was the intellectual academic, the doubting type that checks, and rechecks, and has a cold, inhuman interest in facts. He admits he did not oversee most of his experiments, and he discarded results that showed the subject did what he calls "less than chance." His data, even if it were valid, no more proves E.S.P. than it proves that a fairy whispered in the subject’s ear, Dr Rhine, like "Student" and J. C. Hayes, is fond of comparing Dr Rhine with great scientists of the past whose discoveries were at first greeted with scorn. But merely being laughed at doesn’t make you right. Their demonstrations worked just as well in the presence of sceptics as of believers, "The solemnest ptolemist who ever feared a fact has to admit when once he puts

his eye to a telescope, any telescope, anywhere, in anyone’s presence, thatdespite anathemas, Dominicans, doctors, dungeons and edicts-Jupiter has the satellites that. Galileo said it had." And this is just the sort of demonstration that Dr Rhine, and those who believe in clairvoyance, won’t--and can’t-give. Hundreds of thousands of tests, with Rhine’s own cards, in five of the larger Universities failed to find anyone who was clairvoyant. To use "Student’s" words, the "reproducible experimental fact" is that Dr Rhine’s clairvoyance cannot be reproduced experimentally. Until it can, anywhere, any time, we are justified in scoffing at those people who prefer to believe in the supernatural rather than the natural. When the parapsychologists can regularly demonstrate phenomena that cannot be duplicated by a good professional magician, then will be the time for me to recant. © :

R.M.

D.

(Masterton).

Sir,-Unfortunately two impressive degree lists do not prove extra-sensory perception; especially when L. J. Bendit’s wife is clairvoyant. It is a fact that many scientists, especially workers in the field of the exact sciences, reject E.S.P. In the August 26, 1955, issue of Science, G. R. Price, a medical researcher, presented a pretty telling case against E.S.P. The ensuing discussion showed that, despite many years of ardent evangelism, parapsychologists have not convinced the U.S. scientific community. Price argues roughly as follows: If a phenomenon is incapable of plausible mechanistic explanation, then extreme scepticism is necessary for, (1) fraud has been associated with miracles; (2) such fraud is very difficult to detect; (3) E.S.P. is incapable of such explanation so we must demand a fraud-proof test; (4) analysis of one of the most reputable series of tests shows fraud is quite practicable. So far as spontaneous phenomena, mediums, etc., are concerned, even the protagonists of laboratory E.S.P. aeree that the evidence is of little value. Price wryly notes the decline in the more spectacular doings in the medium’s cabinet since the exposures by Houdini and Dunninger. In these fields a conjurer is often a better observer than a

scientist.

C. W.

WAITE

(Auckland).