THE CHICKEN-HEARTED

New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 946, 27 September 1957, Page 11

THE CHICKEN-HEARTED

Sir-The claims of parapsychology are based on the statistical treatment of a biased selection of the results of many experiments. The first weakness is the difficulty of controlling experiments where nothing can be measured except the number of events observed. The second is that the experimenter should be skilled in both mathematics and psychology, almost incompatible traits in a single personality. A third weakness is the state of the science of statistical mathematics, which is still in its infancy. If anyone thinks that only simple arithmetic is involved, he can test telekinesis by tossing a penny and praying for heads. Common sense tells us that if we toss five heads running our next toss.is more likely to be a tail. Statistics appear to support this by showing that the probability of five heads in five tosses is one in, 32, while the probability of six heads in six tosses is only one in 64. Yet philosophy tells us that the coin has no memory, and that at the sixth toss the chances of a head or tail are exactly equal, as with any other toss. Figures support the claims of parapsychology, but figures can lie, and scientists can deceive themselves. Strangely enough, the statistical proof of clairvoyance is accepted by the same sort of mind which dismisses the statistical proof of the connection between cigarette smoking and lung cancer, showing that superstition and conservatism are compatible traits of personality. The difference is that lung cancer and cigarette smoking are facts which can be connected statistically, while clairvoyance is a mere statistical artefact. More important, knowledge of the cancer-smoking connection can be. useful to humanity, while telepathy, clairvoyance and telekinesis have never been put to any practical use, and, if they could be used they would only increase human misery and chaos, —

VARIAN J.

WILSON

(Timaru).