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Department at Duke University [9]
.
For more
than thirty years,
significant
work was carried
out
at Rhine’s Duke University Laboratory,
To
examine
the existence
of paranormal perception,
he used
the
now-famous ESP cards
containing
a
boldly printed picture of
a
star,
cross,
square,
circle,
or
wavy
lines.
Subjects were asked
to
name
the order of
these
cards
in
a
freshly shuffled deck of twenty-five
such cards.
To
test
for
telepathy,
an experimenter would
look at
the
cards
one
at
a
time,
and
a
subject
suit-
ably separated
from the
sender would attempt
to determine which card was
being viewed.
Dr.
Rhine
together with Dr.
J.
G.
Pratt carried out
thousands
of ex-
periments
of
this
type under widely varying conditions
[10].
The
statis-
tical
results
from
these
experiments
indicated
that
some
individuals
did
indeed possess
a paranormal perceptual ability
in
that
it was possible
to
obtain an arbitrarily high degree of improbability by continued
testing of
a
gifted
subject.
The work of Rhine has been challenged on many grounds,
however,
includ-
ing accusations
of improper handling of
statistics,
error,
and
fraud.
With
regard
to
the
statistics,
the general consensus
of
statisticians
today
is
that
if
fault
is
to
be
found
in Rhine’s work,
it would have
to
be on other
than statistical
grounds
[11],
With regard
to
the accusations
of
fraud,
the most celebrated
case
of criticism of Rhine’s work,
that of G.
R.
Price
[12],
ended
17 years after
it began when
the accusation of
fraud was
re-
tracted by
its author
in an article entitled
’’Apology
to Rhine
and
Soal,”
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published
in
the
same
journal
in which
it was
first put
forward
[13].
It
should also
be
noted
that parapsycho logical researchers
themselves
recently exposed
fraud
in
their own
laboratory when they encountered
it
[14],
At
the end
of
the
1940s, Professor
S.
G.
Soal,
an English mathemati-
cian working with
the
SPR,
had carried
out hundreds
of card guessing exper-
iments
involving
tens
of
thousands
of calls
[15],
Many
of
these experi-
ments were
carried out
over extended distances.
One
of
the most notable
experiments was
conducted with Mrs.
Gloria
Stewart between London and
Antwerp.
This
experiment gave
results whose probability of occurring by
-8
chance were
less
than
.
With
the publication of Modern Experiments
in Telepathy by
Soal
and Bateman
(both of whom were
statisticians),
it
appeared
that card guessing experiments produced significant
results,
on
the average.’
1.
The most
severe criticism of
all
this work,
a criticism difficult
to
defend against
in principle,
is
that
leveled by
the well-known British
parapsychological
critic C.E.M.
Hansel
[17],
who began his examination of
the ESP hypothesis with
the
stated assumption,
"In view of
the
a priori
arguments against
it we know
in advance
that
telepathy,
etc.,
cannot oc-
cur."
Therefore,
based on
the
"a priori unlikelihood"
of ESP,
Hansel's
*
Recently,
some
of
the early Soal experiments have been criticized
[16].
However,
his
long-distance experiments
cited here were
judged
in
a double-
blind
fashion of
the
type
that escaped
the criticism of
the early experi-
ments
.
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examination of
the
literature centered primarily on
the possibility of
fraud,
by subjects
or
investigators.
He reviewed
in depth
four experi-
ments which he
regarded
as providing
the
best evidence
of ESP:
the Pearce-
Pratt distance
series
[18];
the Pra tt-Woodruf f
[19]
series,
both conducted
at Duke;
and
Soal's work with Mrs.
Stewart
and Basil
Shackleton
[15],
as
well
as
a more
recent
series by Soal and Bowden
[20].
Hansel
showed,
in
each
case,
how
fraud could have
been committed
(by
the experimenters
in
the
Pra tt-Woodruf f and Soal-Bateman
series,
or by
the
subjects
in
the Pearce-
Pratt and Soal-Bowden experiments).
He
gave
no direct evidence
that
fraud
wa
committed
in
these
experiments,
but
said,
"If
the result could have
arisen through
a
trick,
the experiment must
be
considered unsatisfactory
proof of ESP,
whether
or not
it
is
finally decided
that
such
a
trick was
in fact used"
[17,
p.
18].
As discussed by Honorton
in
a review of
the
field
[21],
Hansel's
conclusion after
241 pages of careful
scrutiny there-
fore was
that
these experiments were
not "fraud-proof"
and
therefore
in
principle
could
not
serve
as
conclusive proof of ESP.
Even among
the
supporters
of ESP research and
its
results,
there
re-
mained
the consistent problem
that many successful
subjects eventually
lost
their ability and
their
scores
gradually drifted
toward chance
results.
This
decline
effect
in
no way erased
their previous astronomical
success;
but
it was
a disappointment
since
if paranormal perception
is
a
natural
ability,
one would
like
to
see
subjects
improving with practice
rather
than getting worse.
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One
of
the
first
successful attempts
to overcome
the decline
effect
was
in Czechoslovakia
in
the work of Dr.
Milan Ryzl,
a
chemist with
the
Institute
of Biology of
the Czechoslovakian Academy of Science
and
also
an amateur hypnotist
[22].
Through
the
use of hypnosis,
together with
feedback and reinforcement,
he developed
several outstanding subjects,
one
of whom,
Pavel
Stepanek,
has worked with experimenters
around
the
world
for more
than
ten years.
Ryzl’s pioneering work came
as
an answer
to
the
questions raised by
the 1956 CIBA Foundation conference
on extrasensory perception.
The CIBA
Chemical Company has annual meetings on
topics
of
biological
and chemical
interest,
and
that
same year
they
assembled
several
prominent para-
psychologists
to have
a
state-of-the-art conference
on ESP
[23].
The con-
ference concluded
that
little progress would
be made
in parapsychology re-
search until
a
repeatable
experiment could
be
found;
namely,
an experiment
that different experimenters
could
repeat
at will
and
that would reliably
yield
a
statistically
significant result.
Ryzl had
by
1962 accomplished
that
goal.
His primary contribution
was
a decision
to
interact with
the
subject
as
a person,
to
try
to build
up his
confidence
and ability.
His protocol depended on "working with"
rather
than "running"
his
subjects.
Ryzl's
star
subject,
Pavel
Stepanek,
has produced highly
significant results with many contemporary researchers
[24]!-[29]«
In
these
experiments,
he was
able
to
tell with sixty percent
reliability whether
a hidden card was
green
side
or white
side
up,
yield-
ing statistics
of
a million
to
one with only
a
thousand
trials.
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