ESP Controversy

Although psi has been the object of scientific investigation for over a hundred years, the existence of psi is still doubted, particularly by scientists who are unfamiliar with the body of research in parapsychology. To parapsychologists, the arguments over the existence of psi are only relevant insofar as they are based on the logic of the scientific method as applied to the data accumulated from experimental and case history research studies. Arguments to the contrary from otherwise reputable scientists who simply refuse to admit the existence of psi remind me of their earlier colleagues who refused to look through Galileo's telescope.

J. B. Rhine and his colleagues' (1940) response to that line of argument was:
 
"It is true that we depend greatly upon the plausibility and rational acceptability of a new hypothesis even in the evaluation of the experimental evidence for it. Nevertheless, it must be recognized that we have come, in the development of scientific method, to the point where the method itself rates higher than the rational picture of the universe which has grown up by the aid of the method. In other words, we have come to realize that although scientific method has itself occasional weaknesses and imperfections and although investigators do make mistakes, yet the experimental results have a higher Probability of being correct than the rational deductions of a given scientific philosophy of any particular period or school. The history of science has shown repeated adjustments in the Scientific philosophies of different periods of history under the impact of new experimental evidence. In practically every instance, it is the scientific philosophy that has given way and not the experimental evidence. It is by appeal to experiment that defects in reasoning are discovered."

There is really no need to chase one's tail discussing psi's existence - provided that both critics and proponents limit their arguments to the scientific method and the experimental evidence. If the debunkers of parapsychology still fail to come to terms with the arguments for psi's existence, then the reasons must lie not in the nature of the arguments but in the imagined or feared implications of psi.

The first experimental evidence for the existence of psi to receive the serious attention of the scientific community at large was the publication of Extra-Sensory Perception in 1934 by J. B. Rhine. During the five-year period following the announcement of Rhine's discovery, approximately 60 critical articles by 40 authors were published, primarily in the American psychological literature. Fifty experimental studies were. also reported during this period, and two-thirds of those represented independent efforts to repeat the Duke University work in other laboratories (Honorton 1976).

In 1940, J. B. Rhine and his colleagues published the classic parapsychology text, Extra-Sensory Perception after Sixty Years, which detailed the 35 different criticisms made of the ESP experiments. These criticisms dealt with the use of statistics, with the selection of subjects, with the guessing behavior of the subjects during experiments, with target randomization procedures, with experimental recording errors, with sensory leakage, and with experimenter incompetence. Rhine and his colleagues found that, for the most part, the experimental criticisms were valid. Of 145 experimental reports that had been published between 1880 and 1940, only six were so well controlled that they were not open to alternative explanations critical of the ESP interpretation. The parapsychology experimenters quickly modified their procedures to accommodate these criticisms. Thus, by 1940, there was general agreement within the scientific community as to what constituted a good ESP experiment (Honorton 1976).

Honorton, C. Has science developed the competence to confront the claims of the paranormal? In J.D. Morris, W. G. Roll, and R.L. Morris (Eds.), Research in parapsychology, 1975, Metuchen, NT: Scarecrow Press, 1976.

Rhine, J.B. Extrasensory perception. Boston: Boston Society for Psychical Research, 1934.

Rhine, J.B., Pratt, J.G., Stuart, C.E., Smith, B.M., and Greenwood, J.A. Extra-sensory perception after sixty years. New York: Henry Holt, 1940.