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• A5
Parapsychologists Fire Back at a NationalAcademy Report
That Called Field Unscientific and Experiments Flawed
later enlarged Sor Juana's English-speak-
ing audience with translations; Sor Juana
Inis de la Cruz: Poems (Bilingual Press,
1985) and A Woman ofGenius : The Intel-
lectual Autobiography of Sor Juana Inis
de la Cruz (Lime Rock Press,
1982). Ms.
PeUen, a professor off Spanish at the Uni-
versity
of
Missouri
at
Columbia,
also
translated Mr.
Paz’s Sor Juana for Har-
vard.
The Sor Juana revival will continue next
year, when, for example, as part of its se-
ries on Latin American Literature and Cul-
ture, Wayne State University Press plans
to publish Toward a Feminist Understand-
ing ofSor Juana Inis de la Cruz, edited by
Stephanie Merrim, an associate professor
of Hispanic studies at Brown,
No Access to Formid Education
Ms. Merrim’s book will address an issue
to which she says Mr. Paz pays insufficient
attention—Sor Juana's relation to writing
by other women.
Untold Sisters: Hispanic Nuns in Their
Own Works,
a
literary study of nuns
in
Spain and in Spanish holdings in the New
World during the 16th, 17lh, and 18th cen-
turies, will also shed light on that matter.
Edited by Ms. Arena! of Staten Island and
Stacey Schlau of WestChester University
of Pennsylvania,
it is scheduled for publi-
cation by the University of New Mexico
Press in 1989.
The
pivotal
event,
scholars
seem
to
agree, will be the appearance of Mr. Paz’s
study in tandem with Mr. Trueblood’s an-
thology.
The anthology contains Sor Juana's best
works
in
poetry
and
in
prose—“First
Dream” and “Reply to Sor Philothea,” re-
spectively—as well as a variety of her oth-
er writings, including some excerpts from
The Divine Narcissus, one of her several
plays.
As Mr. Paz shows, those achievements
came against considerable odds.
Juana was born out of wedlock, proba-
bly in 1648, in a village southeast of the city
of Mexico (now Mexico City). At about the
age of 10 she was sent to live with an aunt
in the city.
By necessity—as a woman, she had no
access
to
a
formal
education—she
was
largely
self-taught.
Jibe nonetheless
pro-
Continued on Page A8
By DAVID L. WHEELER
Parapsychologists, who investigate such
phenomena
as
extrasensory
perception,
have
fired
back
at a National
Research
Council committee that said their field
is
unscientific and their experiments poorly
conducted.
Parapsychologists
study
psychological
phenomena not readily explainable by the
existing
laws of science. They
believe
some experiments they frequently conduct
demonstrate
unexplainable
effects
that
point to the possible existence of telepathy
or the power of mind over matter. A report
by a National Research Council commit-
tee, however, said those experiments had
been completely Inconclusive and any pos-
itive results were due to methodological
(laws, or “dirty test tubes.”
Parapsychologists consider the reputa-
tion of their field and its future support to
be at stake and they have been trying to
discredit
the National Research Council
report, “Enhancing Human Performance;
Issues,
Theories,
and
Techniques,”
re-
leased last year by the National Academy
Press ( The Chronicle, December 9, 1987).
The U.S. Army commissioned the report
WASHINGTON
A group of scientists, journal
editors,
lawyers,
university
administrators,
and
federal policymakers convened by the In-
stitute of Medicine made a series of recom-
mendations Last week that could give uni-
versities a bigger role in encouraging prop-
er scientific conduct.
A number of reports of scientific fraud
this year triggered Congressional
investi-
gations of some specific cases and prompt-
ed suggestions that the federal government
should more actively audit the research
it
pays for. Scientists who fear Buch interfer-
ence in research and who have some con-
cerns of their own about ethics in science
to see
if some performance-improvement
techniques developed
outside
the
main-
stream of science, such as bicfccdback,
sleep learning, and extrasensory percep-
tion, might have some value for soldiers.
‘No Scientific Justification’
Not all of the report dealt wkh parapsy-
chology, but
it said there was “no scien-
tific justification from research conducted
over a period of
1 30 years for the existence
of parapsychological phenomena.”
Dean
I. Radin,
a research psychologist
at Princeton University and the president
of the Parapsychological Association, says
the parapsychologists expected a some-
what negative report but felt the National
Research Council committee had gone to
extremes—including
the
attempted
sup-
pression of evidence favorable to parapsy-
chology—to try to debunk parapsychologi-
cal research.
“Reports like the one by the National
Research Council tend to influence people
who might be
interested
in funding
this
work,” says Mr. Radin. “They are not in-
terested in ridicule any more than anyone
else is.”
arc beginning to re-examine their research
practices. Some universities are also tak-
ing a oew look at their promotion and ten-
ure policies to see
if the policies are en-
couraging rapid-fire publication that could
be promoting bad science.
The Institute of Medicine, which is part
of the National Academy of Sciences, has
put together a committee on scientific re-
sponsibility that
is preparing a report for
the National Institutes of Health. The com-
mittee organized last week’s workshop, at
which
speakers
expressed
widely
diver-
gent views on what to do about preventing
scientific misconduct—not just the blatant
Continued on Page A 10
Dean L Radin; “Report* like the one
by the National Rstaarch Council
tend to Influence people who might be
Interested in funding this work."
Ray Hyman, a professor of psychology
at the University of Oregon and one of two
people on the research council’s commit-
tee who
evaluated
parapsychology,
de-
scribes
the
parapsychologists'
criticisms
of the committee’s report as “kind of sil-
ly."
Some Experiment* Worth Following
“The parapsychologists
should be
re-
joicing,” he says. “This was the
first gov-
ernment committee
that
said
their work
should be taken seriously.”
The report recommended that the Army
continue to “monitor” some parapsycho-
logical
research
and
occasionally
visit
some laboratories, including one at Prince-
ton University. The committee said the re-
search worth following included “Ganz-
feld” experiments intended to measure te-
lepathy and experiments in which research
subjects try to mentally force a random-
number-generating device to emit numbers
that are not random.
Mr. Hyman says the parapsychologists
Continued on Page AiO
Universities Urged to Set Clearer Policies
on ‘Gray Areas’ of Scientific Misconduct
RESEARCH NOTES
Bones of the ‘Supcrsaunis’; Superconductivity Advance; Professionals and Part-Time Work
A fl*W worker sketch** a fossJI thst r«*»rclwr* uy belongs
to the gigantic “Supersaurus” dinosaur.
Researchers
from
Brigham
Young
University have
unearthed
what
they
say
is the
largest complex of dinosaur
pelvic bones that have ever been
dis-
covered.
The massive
fossils include
several
fused vertebrae and the pelvic bones of
what was believed to be a plant-eating
Supersaurus dinosaur.
The Brigham Young researchers esti-
mated that the dinosaur measured 120
feet
in length and weighed between 20
and 30 tons when
it died some 135 mil-
lion years ago.
The complex of bones, which meas-
ured 73 inches by 52 inches, was uncov-
ered August
at Dry Mesa Quarry
near Della, Colo.
Researchers
said the new
find was
important because it would help to set-
tle the debate over how Supersaurus
was related to a smaller dinosaur known
as Diplodocus.
—kim a. McDonald
Superconductor Advance
Reported at U. of Arkansas
Two researchers at the University of
Arkansas at Fayetteville have reported
a
safer method of making
a thallium-
based
high -temperature superconduc-
tor.
a
material
that,
when
chilled,
is
capable of transmitting electricity with
no resistance. Thallium, a poisonous el-
ement used in rat poisons, appears to be
a necessary element in the preparation
of superconductors with the most desir-
able properties.
A
thallium-barium-calcium
copper
Continued on Page A8
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Reproduced with perwission
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Further reproduction prohibited.
A10
ParJij?;
The Chronicle of Higher Education
•
September 14, 1988
\jedj For Rqljease 2q00/Q8/08
: CIA-!
ro\
sycl
logists Respond to Criticism ofra
00789R002200270001 -8
Continuedfrom Page A5
are pushing for acceptance by other
researchers too soon. Many parapsy-
choiogigus are well trained, he says,
but are often not following widely ac*
cepted st andards for experiments. “1
think their experiments should be an
embarrassment
to them,"
he
says.
"They reed to go back to their lab*
oratories and clean up their act."
The
I’arapsychological
Associa-
tion. which has about 250 members,
has replied to the research council’s
committee with a 29-page critique of
its report.
Large Body of Findings Cited
The
critique
says
the
"commit-
lec'g
conclusion
far
outstrips
the
scope of its investigation.
.
.
. Para-
psychologists
have
accumulated
a
large body of experimental findings
that (a) suggest important new means
of human interaction with their envi-
ronment and (b) cannot be plausibly
attributed
to
known
conventional
mechanisms."
In one kind of experiment, cited
both by many parapsychologists and
by their critics as being the best work
parapsychologists
have
done,
re-
search subjects are placed in a reclin-
ing
chair
in
a
soundproofed room
with “white noise" piped into tbeir
ears and goggles or halves of Ping-
Pong balls placed over their eyes so
they see a uniform field of light. The
blandness of their sensory environ-
ment
puts them
into
a
reportedly
pleasant,
altered
mental
state,
or
"Ganzfeld."
Some
parapsycholo-
gists believe this state makes the re-
search
subjects more
receptive
to
telepathic messages.
In a separate room, a researcher
selects a videotape or a
still picture
from a group and shows another re-
search subject in image, which he or
she tries to transmit mentally to the
person in the Ganzfeld state. After a
set time, the “receiver," or person in
the Ganzfeld state,
is brought out of
the
state
and
is shown
the
same
group of videotapes or pictures.
The receivers are asked to pick the
image that most clotelyvelaiet to the
images that were in their mind during
the Ganzfeld
state.
If the
receiver
picks the image that the sender was
shown,
it is considered a "hit” or a
positive result.
Testa Called Poorly Designed
The experiments vary
in their ex-
act design, but Mr. Ratlin says that,
taken as
a group, they demonstrate
that "information can be transmitted
in ways we don't understand yet."
The Ni*.c. committee's Mr. Hy-
man attributes research results indi-
cating (eUpathy oc other paranormal
communication
to
poorly
designed
experiments. He says
that,
if para-
normal
communication
is
to
be'
proved, experimenters
first have to
be certain that the selection of images
is completely random. No such proof
is given in Ganzfeld experiments, he
says, and poor methods of randomly
selecting an image are used, such as
hand shuffling.
He
also
says
the
experimenters
should use two sets of the same im-
ages—be they Mill pictures or video-
tapes—so the “Bender" cannot mark
the
picture
in
a way a “receiver"
might notice. Mr. Hyman says other
cue* also might make
it possible for
receivers to dctecl winch image was
used unless the experimenter has two
sets of images.
In a second kind of common para-
psychology experiment,
research
subjects
try
mentally
to
influence
machines that generate numbers ran-
domly. In the usual version of these
experiments,
an
electronic
device
generates a random series of zeroes
and ones, and the subject of the ex-
periment
tries to push
the
string of
numbers mentally either in the direc-
tion of more zeroes or more ones.
Mr. Kadin, who has analyzed 597
random number-generator
experi-
ments done by 68 researchers, says
the results indicate that the random-
number generators are somehow be-
ing
influenced away from random-
ness
“The statistics indicate that the re-
sults
are
so far away from chance
that chance is not a possible explana-
tion," he says, "Pm not saying
it's
something psychic, but there is some
artifact
there. And so
far
I
haven’t
been able to find any normal artifact
that might explain the results."
Once again, Mr. Hyman says tl*e
parapsychologists don
t have enough
proof that the random-number gener-
ators are really random, and without
that proof he says the experiments
are meaningless.
The
parapsychologists
also
had
some political quarrels with
l he Na-
tional
Research
Council's
report.
They
charged
that
the
committee
chairman had asked the author of a
background paper commissioned for
the report to withdraw his conclusion
that
the
Ganzfeld experiments
are
methodologically sound.
The
chairman,
John
A.
Swets,
chief scientist at
Boll Dcranck and
Newman, a Cambridge, Mass., con-
sulting firm, says he did ask Robert
Rosenthal, a professor of social psy-
chology at Harvard University, if he
would
eliminate
his
conclusions
Scholarship
about the Ganzfeld experiments from
his paper. Mr. Swets says the com-
mittee preferred
its own analysis of
the
Ganzfeld
experiments.
"We
thought
the
quality
of our analysis
was
better, and we didn’t see much
point in putting out mixed signals,"
says Mr.
Swets.
"I
didn’t
feel we
were obliged to represent every point
of view."
Mr. Rosenthal
said be thought
it
was “ inappropriate” of Mr. Swets to
ask him and Monica J. Harris, a grad-
uate student, to withdraw their con-
clusions about the Ganzfeld experi-
ments. The
conclusions were
ulti-
mately kept in the background paper
but not included in the report.
Makeup of Committee Criticized
'flic parapsychologists also say the
committee was unfairly stacked with
avowed
critics
of
parapsychology
and
should have
had
at
least one
parapsychologist on it.
Mr
Swets
says
the
committee
didn’t have any members who were
advocates
for
the
performance-en-
hancement methods being evaluated.
Mr, Hyman, who is a cognitive psy-
chologist interested in the subject of
human
error,
says
he
has
written
about
parapsychology since the
I950’s. “I’m one of the few critics
who knows them, who reads their lit-
erature, and who goes to their con-
ventions."
He says he is neutral. "1 don’t care
about
parapsychology,"
he
says.
"To me it’s a very dull topic."
Even ifparapsychologists discover
the existence of special mental pow-
ers outside of what
is now known,
Mr.
Hyman
says
he
believes
the
powers will be so elusive and so sub-
tle that they can’t be controlled.
If
anything, he says, parapsychologists
will only find a “cosmic hiccup."
Copies
of
the
Para psychological
Association's critique, “Reply to the
National Research Council Study on
Parapsychology," are
available
for
$2 from the Para psycho logical Asso-
ciation, P.O. Box
12236, Research
Triangle Park, N.C. 27709.
New this fall. From ACE/Macmillan.
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Foreword by Fred M. Hechinger
This groundbreaking book explores the shadowy underworld of higher
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Filled with dozens oF real-world examples, their book is an extraordinary
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Then* more: a clear, concise guide to whal accreditation means: help
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"An essential guide for anyone who wants lo learn how to distinguish
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Policies on ScientificMisconduct
Continuedfrom Page A5
fabrication of data,
but
sloppy
re-
search practice*.
Despite the differences, six panels
that met for two days came up with
some specific recommendations
for
preventing misconduct and poor re-
search practice*. The panels recom-
mended that universities have:
* Specific policies requiring scien-
tists
to keep data
to
support
pub-
lished papers and encouraging scien-
tists
to give the data to others who
want to check their results.
Guidelines for the heads of lab-
oratories and the mentors of research
trainees
about
their
responsibilities
to
trainees.
Such guidelines would
make
sure
students
and
trainees
knew who was supposed to be train-
ing them and whom they could turn
to for help. Some training in the eth-
ic*
of
science
and
good
research
practices might also be required.
Written policies making
it clear
that those who
are not
directly
in-
volved with research should not be
named as the authors of scientific pa-
per*.
The
policies
would
end
the
practice in some laboratories of auto-
matically making the head of a lab-
oratory
an
author on
every paper
coming out of the laboratory.
Arnold
S.
Reiman,
editor of the
New England Journal of Medicine,
spoke in support of a larger role for
the institutions where scientists arc
based.
“Institutions
have
to
take
more of a role
in making sure good
publication practices are followed,"
he said. "We editors cannot possibly
investigate and insure the validity of
every author's name on each paper."
An enhanced role for universities
and other research institutions was
not
supported
by everyone
at
the
workshop.
Some scientists argued that the en-
couragement of good research prac-
tices should come from the laborato-
ry itself, without outside interference
by the university.
The
Institute of Medicine
work-
shop was intended
to look
at “gray
areas" where blatant fraud
is not in-
volved but where research practices
might
still be questionable.
William Raub. deputy director of
the
National
Institutes
of
Health,
said much attention had been given
to big scientific sins, such as plagia-
rism, but less attention had been giv-
en to the
little sins— sloppy record-
keeping.
poor
supervision
of
re-
searchers,
selective
reporting
of
data,
publishing
the
same
data
in
many journals, and
the
use of the
"least publishable unit."
That term refers to scientists who
write papers the moment they have
enough
significant
data,
instead of
waiting to confirm those data or ex-
pand on them.
“There
is no apparent consensu*
on how bad these aina arc, what the
standard*
should
be,
or
If
there
should
be
standards,"
said
Mr.
Raub.
—DAVID L. WHEELEX
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