Challenge to Psi

Many people, impatient with man's mental limitations, insist that he has a whole set of hidden abilities that have long been ignored. In one such school are University of London Mathematician S. G. Soal and Duke University Psychologist Dr. Joseph B. Rhine, who term themselves parapsychologists.* They use sets of dice and packs of cards bearing numbers, letters or symbols, say that certain subjects can guess card identities or control the roll of dice beyond mathematical probability--even from a great distance. Their explanation: there exists in the human makeup a mysterious force called psi (from the Greek letter q) which carries powers of extrasensory perception (telepathy or clairvoyance) and psychokinesis (direct action of the mind on matter).

In the last 15 years, the work of the parapsychologists has been getting increasing attention in scientific journals. Last week, however, a scientist declared war on the extrasensory-perception school, and said it was time other scientists did likewise. Wrote Dr. George R. Price, a University of Minnesota medical research associate, in Science, journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science: "The findings . . . are dependent on clerical and statistical errors and unintentional use of sensory clues, and . . . all extrachance results not so explicable are dependent on deliberate fraud or mildly abnormal mental conditions."

Ten-Day Warning. Price was a believer in parapsychology himself until he read (somewhat belatedly) David Hume's An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. (Wrote Hume in the first half of the 18th century: "No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavours to establish.") Now convinced that there is no scientific basis for ESP (extrasensory perception), Price challenges its champions to put people who claim to read cards at a distance or penetrate into the future to some practical work, for example, "designing a procedure to give a ten-day warning of a nuclear bomb explosion."

Price obviously does not think that his challenge will be met. He scoffs at alleged proofs of the existence and powers of psi. "There is no plausible way to explain these details except in terms of special intelligent agents--spirits or poltergeists or whatever one wishes to call them . . . Parapsychology . . . still bears in abundance the markings of magic."

Just One Experiment. He disputes methods used to arrive at psi findings, suggests that all the tests could be frauds, possibly worked by "arguing that much good to humanity could result from a small deception designed to strengthen religious belief." If the findings of experimenters like Rhine and Soal are valid, says Price, they are "of enormous importance . . ." "As scientists." he asks, "what sort of evidence for ESP should we demand?" His answer: "Just one experiment that does not have to be accepted simply on a basis of faith in human honesty." His recommendation: apply Hume's precept with a controlled test before a committee of twelve prominent men, all but one hostile to parapsychology, "so that scientists . . . would be prepared to believe in psi phenomena in preference to believing that the entire committee was dishonest or deluded."

From his laboratories at Durham, N.C., where for more than 25 years he has been testing theories and assembling statistics about "ESP-prone" subjects, Dr. Rhine fired an angry volley at Price's article, asked "whether a hundred or more research scientists ... are so stupid as to indulge in a gigantic hoax involving the hiring of confederates and such."

It did not take extrasensory perception to deduce that a lively battle had been joined and more fireworks were to come.

* From psychology, the study of the mind, and the Greek prefix para, meaning "beyond."

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