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New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 947, 4 October 1957, Page 11

Sir,-So considerable are the distortions in the correspondence concerning J. B. Rhine’s experiments that I am be, ginning to wonder if the have, in fact, read Rhine. And as R.M.D. rightly says, he has been given examples from the whole gamut of para-normal experience. In general, most criticisms of Rhine’s experimental work have depended on alleged falsification of figures. The following press release was made by the American Institute of Mathematical Statistics, at Indianapolis in 1937, and is quoted in Reach of the Mind, t. B. Rhine, page 132: "Dr Rhine's investigations have two aspects, experimental and statistical. On the experimental side, mathematicians of course have nothing to say. On the statistical side, however, recent mathematical work has established the fact that, assuming that the experiments have been properly performed, the statistical analysis is essentially valid. Jf the Rhine investigation is to be fairly

attacked, it must be on other than mathematical grounds." Professors Reiss, psychologist, Hunter College, New York, and Soal, English mathematician, independently undertook experimental work in ESP with the express purpose of disproving it once and for all; indeed, Dr Soal was one of Rhine’s most vigorous cfitics and had written and lectured forcefully condemning the case for ESP. Both were convinced by their own experiments of the validity of the test phenomena and both collaborated with Rhine in further research. Anyone reading New Frontiers of the Mind or Reach of the Mind could scarcely fail to be impressed by the elaborate test precautions taken to guard against fraud or unconscious sensory clues. In any other experimental field such overwhelming evidence as has been obtained over a period of many years,

resulting from work undertaken with detailed scientific care, would have been accepted long ago. R.M.D. in his original letter-which I unfortunately do not have by me-refer-red disparagingly, I believe, to Duke University as a small institution to which an oilman’s name (and money) had been given. This is*the sort of red herring which the cluttered critic trails. I have an aerial photograph of Duke University and would not describe it as small; and it was William McDougall, the eminent psychologist, not the oilman, who was responsible for the establishment of the Parapsychology Department-one section of a not inconsiderable academic centre. In conclusion, I would like to state that I (here in Hamilton) acted as subject in a series of long-range clairvoyance tests with a colleague of Dr Rhine’s at Duke University. The ESP cards were spread on a small couch and exposed for eight hours, and at any period during this time I recorded my guesses on a test chart. These showed statistically significant results. Stencil copies of my own marked recotd sheets were returned to me. Distance rather rules out the possibility of sensory clues, The acceptance of the validity of ESP as demonstrated in properly conducted researches, is a widening of our conception of the natural, and not an uncritical belief in the supernatural. It has been

fairly demonstrated that a majority of people display this perception to a greater or lesser degree.

P.

(Hamilton).