Criticisms of ESP
Mr. Soal is not the only person who has criticized the American ESP technique and results. But he is the person most competent to criticize, as, individually, it is probable that he has made more ESP experiments than any other person, and knows much more about the subject. He is also by profession a mathematician, and the proper evaluation of ESP results is largely a question of mathematics and statistical method.
When Extra-sensory Perception was published in this country in 1935 several scientists and pseudo-scientific journalists accepted the book at its face value and, with uninformed enthusiasm, wrote glowing accounts of the new psychic miracles. The same thing happened in America. But with the realization that the Duke successes could not be repeated in other quarters, notably in London, some of these scientific writers repented of their early enthusiasm and wished they had kept silent.
It would be impossible in this chapter to give a full list of critical articles pointing out the fallacy of the Duke results and criticizing the American technique. The most convincing criticism will come when Soal publishes his important report on his many years' repetition of Rhine's experiments. But in order that the reader can realize the nature of the scientific hostility to the American tests, I will cite a few examples.
At a convention of the American Psychological Association in New York in April, 1938, Dr. Steuart Henderson Britt, of George Washington University, stated that the official ESP cards as sold to the public in America could be read from the backs, either by sight or touch, owing to too heavy printing or other defects. He proceeded to 'read' correctly twenty-four cards out of a pack of twenty-five, with faces unseen. At the same meeting Dr. F. H. Lund stated that he had tested 596 students with ESP cards and had found no paranormality among them. 'L.A.E.,' who cites these facts, remarks in a letter to the Two Worlds(that he had experimented with more than 200 subjects, making more than 500,000 calls, and not one 'can even remotely compare with Dr. Rhine's amazing results.'
Professor Chester E. Kellogg of McGill University wrote a scathing article, on the Duke tests and attacks them from a new angle: 'Since Dr. Rhine's reports have led to investigations in many other institutions, it might seem unnecessary to prick the bubble, as the truth eventually will out and the craze subside. But meanwhile the public is being misled, the energies of young men and women in their most vital years of professional training are being diverted into a side issue, and funds expended that might instead support research into problems of real importance for human welfare.'
Again, Dr. Eugene Adams, of Colgate University, says: 'I have completed a series of more than 20,000 individual card-guessing tests of the sort that Dr. Rhine has conducted at Duke University.... My tests involved thirty different persons and were designed to test clairvoyance, telepathy and the two in combination. I used the same cards that Rhine did.... My results were negative. No individual scored beyond chance expectation, nor did the average combined scores exceed normal expectancy.' Professor Kennedy, of Stanford University, reports similar failures, after testing 100 students. Professor Henlein, of Florida State College for Women, carried out 125,000 guesses with only chance results; while James C. Crumbaugh, of Dallas University, made 75,000 tests without success. The chief critic of Rhine's methods in this country, apart from Soal, is Professor R. H. Thouless, of Cambridge University. In a long review of Extra-sensory Perception he remarks: 'It will be gathered that Dr. Rhine's procedure is by no means free from objection, and that his presentation [of results] is open to the much graver objection that the experimental methods are quite inadequately reported.' Dr. Thouless himself has carried out between 6,000 and 7,000 experiments in Glasgow, without success paranormally. To sum up, in no country has official scientific opinion yet accepted Dr. Rhine's results.
Mechanical ESP
Among the critics of the Rhine technique in America are Professor Walter G. Pitkin and Mr. John Mulholland. They contend that the extraordinary runs of 'good' guesses achieved by some of Dr. Rhine's subjects need not necessarily be 'extra-sensory' at all, but due to pure chance. They consider that the number of trials made by Rhine and his friends is not yet great enough to determine whether chance does, or does not, account for the many 'good' runs.
Professor Pitkin and Mr. Mulholland decided to see what pure chance would bring by eliminating the human factor and invited the International Business Machines Corporation, of New York, to assist them in determining whether 'the right answers recorded by the parapsychologists' subjects relate to the total answers in a manner significantly different from similar coincidences of events mechanically produced.' They wished 'to see a full intercorrelation worked out between total guesses, right and wrong, in the Rhine experiments, and a large series made mechanically.'
So the Corporation ran 200,000 numbered cards through their machines. The first 100,000 were white, 'and each card carried digits from one through five. There was an even distribution of those digits. 20,000 cards carried one; 20,000 two, and so on. The white cards were mechanically shuffled and run through a machine which printed the numbers on paper in the order in which they happened to come. The second 100,000 cards were red, and these also had an equal distribution of the first five digits. These, too, were mechanically shuffled, and their numbers were printed on the paper.'
When the experiment was finished, the two printed columns of numbers, one column from the white and one column from the red, were compared. 'Just as with Dr. Rhine's test, there was one chance in five of the pair of digits in any given line being the same - that is, matching. But, with our test, there was no possible chance of mind-reading or clairvoyance as a factor.'
Professor Pitkin and his colleague got some amazing results. 'For instance, there were as many as thirty-two lines of figures in sequence without one matching pair. Of course, by chance we might expect to get six matching pairs. Again, there would be runs of matching pairs. Professor Pitkin made a most astonishing discovery about these runs. Runs of five matching pairs in sequence fell 25 per cent below theoretical frequency, while runs of six rose to 25 per cent above theoretical frequency. Runs of seven jumped still higher to 59 per cent above chance expectancy, and with runs of eight we went to 780 per cent above theoretical frequency....
Another amusing freak deviation from theoretical distribution was that in the first 40,000 pairs there were almost three times as many runs of five as there were in the next 60,000 while with the runs of six it was just the reverse. And neither of these series of runs was to be expected... Totalling the number of "correct guesses" in each thousand of our pure-chance run, we found that 24,000 came within 2 per cent of mathematical expectancy; 30,000 went above and 46,000 went below theoretical chance. The total number of pairs in the entire 100,000 was less than 2 per cent away from what was to be expected. The total, by the way, was under mathematical expectancy.' I am indebted to Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons (the publishers) and to Mr. John Mulholland for permission to cite this most interesting test, which is recorded in full in the latter's Beware Familiar Spirits (1938).
The Zener Cards
The early ESP cards as used by Rhine and his colleagues at Duke were originally hand-made. As even playing-cards when made commercially are never mechanically perfect, it is obvious that the early home-made ones were unsuitable for critical work.
The first commercially printed E. S. P. cards were, I think, those which I had made for me by Messrs. Plafair of London in November, 1934, for the Soal experiments in the laboratory of the University of London Council for Psychical Investigation, and which are still in use. They have on their faces the Zener symbols: rectangle, star, plus sign, circle, and wavy lines. The backs are of a uniform 'playing-card' design.
In 1937 the official Duke University Zener cards were put on the American market. They were of two kinds, plain and coloured symbols. The backs of both kinds were similar in design, but different in colour (blue and brown respectively). These cards, complete with instructions, were issued commercially and could be purchased at any news stand at 10 cents per pack. Later, a boxed 'set' of two packs of cards, instruction book, and scoring pad, were offered to the public for $1.75 complete.
When I received a pack of the commercial ESP 'official' cards I had a shock. I found that through employing an unsuitable design on the reverse of the cards, the stamping die had so cut the pattern (lines and circles) that some of the cards could be recognized from the backs. In other words, parts of the pattern varied on some cards. I found that, in five minutes, I could recognize ten of the cards from the backs, just as Dr. Britt demonstrated in New York. Another fault with these cards is that the pattern is not a symmetrical one (i.e. uniform either end) on account of the photograph and lettering in the centre. This lends itself to manipulation on the part of unscrupulous subjects.
The outcry against being able to read the Duke cards from the backs was met by Rhine advising experimenters to cover them over with something when being used - a vital precaution that Soal had been taking with my Plafair cards in every experiment he had ever made. But in the directions sold with the Duke cards, or in the Stuart and Pratt handbook issued with them, not a word of warning is given about screening the backs of the cards when testing for ESP On the contrary, on page 12 of the handbook(57) permission is given to look at the backs: 'Sit where you cannot see the faces of the cards. You may close your eyes or look off into space, or even look at the backs of the cards'. It is obvious that some results obtained with these unscreened cards may be valueless. To my knowledge, neither cards nor handbook have yet been withdrawn. In fact there is a sort of defence of the cards in the Journal of Parapsychology, of which Professor McDougall and Dr. Rhine are editors, Under the heading 'ESP Card Imperfections' it is stated that 'since it is much easier to set up simple experimental precautions than to attempt to produce a "perfect" commercial ESP card, it is doubtful whether improvements are at present feasible.'
A National Test
When I read the above curious statement, I determined to produce a card which could not easily be read from the back except by a hyperaesthete, and the back of which was the same whichever way one held it. The result is illustrated on page 186. I named them the 'Telepatha' cards, and they are made by Messrs. Waddington and marketed by Messrs. George Newnes, Ltd., London. The pattern of the backs was specially designed to dazzle the eyes of any subject who attempted to obtain visual clues or indicia from the backs of the cards. The symbols on the faces of the cards are X-sign, = sign, triangle, spot, and crescent. The 'Telepatha' card set comprises two packs each of twenty-five cards, with both plain and coloured symbols, an instruction book, and scoring pad.
In an article in John o' London's Weekly I suggested that a national test should be held in Great Britain in an effort to ascertain if good telepathic subjects could be found in this country. Mr. Frank Whitaker, the editor of John o' London's Weekly, thought well of the idea and in the next issue of his journal, a great national competition was launched. Professor J. C. Flugel, Mr. S. G. Soal and I were asked to supervise the arrangements, my 'Telepatha' cards being chosen for the tests. The most stringent laboratory conditions were imposed on the competitors. The competition is in full swing as I write these lines.
Price's 'Telepatha' Cards, with Dazzle Backs
To the uninitiated, testing subjects for ESP may sound a simple job; in reality it is a most difficult and complicated one. To be an efficient experimenter, one should be a conjurer, psychologist, and mathematician rolled into one. The pitfalls are many.
To begin with, there may be collusion between experimenter and subject. Or the latter may be able to exchange his own prepared pack ('stacked' cards) for those of the person testing, or see the reflection of card faces in mirror, pictures, or shiny table-top. Codes, visual or aural, might be used between the subject and any person in the room able to see either backs or faces of the cards. Marked, dirty, stained, cracked, or used cards would provide the subject with clues, if they were not screened. Bad shuffling of cards on the part of the tester would increase the 'good' guesses if the subject - consciously or unconsciously - remembered their order. In addition, there is always the possibility of experimental error, faulty recording, mal-observation, faked records, or sheer lying on the part of the experimenter or his assistants.
Mr. S. G. Soal, in an illuminating address to the Ghost Club on March 15, 1938, related many of the snags in ESP work. He pointed out that even in the most perfect commercial cards there is always some small speck or irregularity, made either mechanically or in printing, visible to good normal eyesight. And many more markings, etc., would be visible to a person like Marion, whose feats due to hyperaesthesia of the various senses (especially that of touch) have to be seen to be believed. A person has only to see or recognize one card in a pack of twenty-five to send up his average from a chance score of five to an extra-chance score of six. Marion was able to pick out in the light a card that he had never seen, but had touched only once in the dark.
Another source of error is the careless handling of a pack of cards so that the subject sees the bottom one. There again his average would rise to six. It is also possible for a perfectly honest experimenter, by unconscious whispering, slight bodily movements, change in breathing rate, or other indicia, unconsciously to convey to the equally honest subject when a card is called correctly. The subject might then be aware, subconsciously, when five of one symbol (the full set) had been called, and would refrain - also subconsciously from calling that symbol again. This would send up his average score above chance. That is why a screen between experimenter and subject is necessary. Preferential mental associations (and 'pattern habits') must also be taken into account. All these 'snags' and many others are detailed in Mr. Soal's paper, which should be read by those wishing to conduct experiments in ESP
Before I conclude this story of ESP and its recent dramatic developments, I must reiterate that the successes of Dr. Rhine and his colleagues at Duke University have not yet been accepted by official science in any country. Dr. Rhine himself has published two highly provocative works in which he claims to have demonstrated scientifically that clairvoyance and telepathy are faculties possessed by many people in America. All that is now needed to complete the trilogy is a volume telling us how we can reproduce the Duke 'miracles' on this side of the Atlantic.
Conjuring and Collusion
I have said little in this chapter about the possibilities of conjuring and collusion in obtaining high ESP scores. Many methods will suggest themselves to the reader. But one system, not so well known, is published by Mr. Theo Annemann in an article 'Was Professor J. B. Rhine Hoodwinked?' This is called the 'mental count' and has been used in various conjuring tricks for many years.
In some ESP telepathic experiments, the 'percipient' (receiver) is in one room, and the 'agent' (sender) is in another. By means of a telegraph key and sounder, the agent signals to the percipient when he is thinking of a symbol.
Collusion could be accomplished in the following way, even when the shuffling of the cards and the conditions of the test were under the control of the investigators:
Previous to the experiment, both sender and receiver practise counting mentally and in unison by means of a metronome or loud-ticking clock. With very little practice, their mental counts absolutely synchronize. The counting is always from one to five.
By pre-arrangement between sender and receiver, each symbol is allotted a certain number: e.g. a circle would be one, a cross two, a star three, and so on. The first card turned up by the agent is a five to one chance against the symbol being guessed correctly by the percipient. But immediately after the agent presses the telegraph key for the first time, both agent and percipient begin counting mentally 1-2-3-4-5-1-2-3-4-5-1-2-3- etc. If the agent's next card is, say, a star (three), he stops mentally counting at this number and taps the telegraph key. The percipient also stops counting mentally when he hears the sounder, and he, like the agent, has also arrived at three; and of course, as three is a star he calls 'star' - which is correct. Then they start counting again with the next card. With a little practice, twenty-four out of the twenty-five newly shuffled cards could be called correctly. It is obvious that the principle of the 'mental count' could be applied to other phases of ESP technique.
The article above was taken from Harry Price's "Fifty Years of Psychical Research"
(1939, Longmans, Green & Co.)
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