I have never been content just going by what is in the books, choosing to live my magick instead. Such was my time at a well known South London university, where I studied psychology around 2010. Due to the lack of an occult society, and disinterest in such things among the students, it was the sceptical groups which called to me instead. In the end this granted me a perfect opportunity to live among the enemy while working on coursework for my degree. What follows here is one such essay, a somewhat scathing rebuke of parapsychology that scored the top eighty percent mark for the year.
Eighty Percent
Feeling The Future And Other Controversies
By Gavin Fox
“To Conduct An Evaluation Of Parapsychology As A Field, Utilising The Research Of Leading Parapsychologists While Also Taking Into Account The Pertinent Issues Of Fraud And Scepticism That Are Central To The Negative Perception Of The Discipline By The Wider Scientific Community.”
The following essay seeks to undertake a short evaluation of the field of parapsychology utilising current and historical research in an effort to illuminate this often misperceived and misunderstood research area. It will begin with a brief overview of the relevant terminology used by researchers active in the discipline. The main body of the essay will concentrate on conducting an in-depth evaluation of the work of two of the most controversial parapsychological researchers to date, starting with a look back at the pioneering early theories of Dr. J. B. Rhine of Duke University and ending with the recent headline-grabbing research paper presented by D. J. Bem of Cornell University. Said researchers were chosen from many possible options because it was felt that the more than half a century that separated their work would show how much, if any, the field of parapsychology had evolved, and also because of the huge media interest generated by their research when published. Following this, the possible implications for parapsychological research arising from the modern Skeptical movement will be explored before conclusions are reached and speculations as to where the wider discipline of parapsychology may be heading in the future are made.
As it is such an amorphous and multifaceted subject area, a simple working definition is hard to find. However, most researchers may agree that, at it’s very simplest, “Parapsychology is the scientific investigation of apparently paranormal mental phenomena […] also known as psi” (Moulton and Kosslyn 2008, pp. 182). Psi can be further defined as “anomalous processes of information or energy transfer, processes such as telepathy or other forms of extrasensory perception that are currently unexplained in terms of known physical or biological mechanisms” (Bem and Honorton 1994, pp 4). While most modern academic research into parapsychology concentrates upon this so-called psi factor, as it is easily measured and replicable under laboratory conditions, it can again be widened to embrace any “claims that rely on explanations that are considered to be outside of the realm of mainstream science, and do not have supportive scientific data” (Hines 2003; in Menza, Hilperts, Hindley, Marco, Santana and Vosburgh Hawk 2010, pp 165), such as religious miracles, ghosts and UFO’s. While said additional areas are not widely studied academically, they still remain the most instantly recognisable aspect of parapsychology to the general public, with a recent Gallup survey conducted in America showing that 41 percent of those surveyed believe in the existence of extra sensory perception, 31 percent believe in telepathy, and 26 percent believe in clairvoyance and precognition (Moore, 2005). Additionally, it has been shown that said public perceptions can also be of use to more mainstream psychologists working outside of the parapsychological field, touching as they do upon such diverse research areas as the fallibility of eyewitness testimony (French and Wilson 2006) and innate responses to otherwise subtle environmental stimuli (Wiseman, Watt, Stevens, Greening and O’Keeffe 2003).
However, while said additional aspects of the subject may be interesting to both the general population and psychologists alike, the majority of parapsychologists would argue that it is the nature of psi that remains at the core of their own discipline (Schoch and Yonavjak 2008), and for that reason an additional definition of the key terms utilised in the conducted research may be useful. According to Schoch and Yonavjak (2008) Psi, as a concept, can be drawn up into four loose categories: phenomena relating to extrasensory perception: telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition and retrocognition; psychokinesis: such as mind over matter and mind over biological systems; physical effects: the materialisation and dematerialisation of objects and so-called poltergeist effects produced both in the field and under controlled laboratory conditions; and finally survival studies: dealing with reincarnation and the theorised existence of the spirit world, though this final research area has fallen out of favour in recent years due to the methodological issues involved in obtaining suitable participants who claim to remember a previous existence and are willing to be studied (Schoch and Yonavjak 2008).
Telepathy can be thought of as mind to mind communication conducted without the use of the standard sensory channels, while Clairvoyance involves seeing images of distant places, people or objects in real time within the minds eye. Conversely, precognition and retrocognition describe the ability to perceive future and past events respectively in the same manner (Schoch and Yonavjak 2008). Mind over matter is the movement of real world objects without the use of physical contact through the power of the participants mind alone, and mind over biological systems, a major area of interest to both the KGB and the CIA during the cold war, is conceptually similar but involves directly effecting the physical health and well-being of another living creature (Schoch and Yonavjak 2008). Materialisation and dematerialisation of objects involves the appearance and disappearance of material items, occasionally from within sealed containers or hidden boxes, while intriguingly, poltetgeist effects may involve any of the physical anomalies described previously plus other apparitional or paranormal aspects not necessarily covered by the concept of psi (Schoch and Yonavjak 2008).
The man most instrumental in defining the previous list of theoretical concepts, and also starting the process whereby Parapsychology would go from a preserve of a few special interest groups to become a science in its own right, was Joseph Banks Rhine (1895 – 1980), of Duke University, hailed by many as the father of modern parapsychology (“Who Was J. B. Rhine?”, 2009). Indeed it was Rhine who initially coined both the terms parapsychology – in an effort to distance the subject from more mainstream psychology, and extra sensory perception – for those processes involved in anomalous information transfer (“Who Was J. B. Rhine?”, 2009). Research into the paranormal up to that point had mostly been concerned with investigating mediums as a possible means of communicating with the theorised spirit realm, but Rhine realised that unless the existence of the extrasensory abilities claimed by those psychics could initially be proven then any evidence that they may go on to provide would be highly suspect (“The history of the Rhine Research Centre”, 2010). Thus, in an effort to explore the existence of psi in within the general population, Rhine and his associates turned to Zener Cards as their core stimuli, each individual deck consisting of 25 cards grouped into five sets of five simple images: a circle, square, cross, three wavy horizontal lines and a five pointed star.
The cards proved to be quick and easy to administer under laboratory conditions, allowing for speedy completion of individual trials and the collection of vast amounts of raw data by very few researchers. The participant would be shown said cards one at a time in a random order and with the face showing the image turned away from them, before being tasked with identifying the correct card based upon intuition alone (“Who Was J. B. Rhine?”, 2009). Rhine’s studies consistently produced statistically significant results, with the number of correct guesses in some trials requiring odds of almost a million to one to occur purely as a matter of chance, and with the aforementioned successes in mind his research was deemed to be promising enough to warrant the foundation in 1935 of a specific department, the Duke Parapsychology Laboratory, within the university (“The history of the Rhine Research Centre”, 2010). Rhine and his fellow researchers would also go on to found the Journal of Parapsychology, which has remained in regular publication from its inception in 1937 to the present day (“The history of the Rhine Research Centre”, 2010), and in time the group would feel confident enough in the accumulated research to argue publicly that something of importance to the future of science had indeed been recorded at the university, laying out the case for the existence of psi in the book Extra-Sensory Perception After Sixty Years (1940).
While sceptics and critics of Rhine’s work such as the statistician William Miller (Utts 1991) would counter-claim that fraud, misinterpretation of data and less than perfect implementation of experimental procedures provided a more realistic explanation for the results as reported, by the year of the book’s publication 33 individual experiments, consisting of almost a million trials, had been successfully completed, and a full 27 of those claimed to attain statistically significant results (“Who Was J. B. Rhine?”, 2009). After said results were published Rhine and his team, seeking to build upon the impetus created by their earlier successes, began to explore other methodologies in an effort to define the existence of abilities related to, but not directly covered by, their earlier work on purely subjective psi phenomena. As a result of said paradigm shift the researchers began utilising the concept of dice rolling to test individual participants for the ability to alter seemingly random chance based physical effects through the power of the mind alone (Schoch and Yonavjak 2008). The participant, either by hand or later while utilising a simple mechanical device, threw the same two dice together twelve times during a single trial and concentrated upon influencing the outcome in such a way as to cause them to land with so called ‘high sides’, or a score of four or more on both individual dice (Schoch and Yonavjak 2008).
Of the 562 results reported by Rhine and his team, the average score stands at 5.53, some 300 total hits above the amount expected to be generated by chance alone (Schoch and Yonavjak 2008). Said results were further defended in the paper “The Psychokinetic Effect: I. The First Experiment” published by L. E. Rhine and J. B. Rhine in 1943, wherein it was clearly stated that the more obvious weaknesses in the testing methodology, such as those stemming from trick throwing or defective dice, had been corrected for early in the experimental phase (Rhine and Rhine 1943), though it was again not enough to silence the critics of his research (Schoch and Yonavjak 2008). By the time of his death in 1980 (“Who Was J. B. Rhine”, 2009), his department had broken away from the faculty of Duke University and with the help of numerous wealthy backers Rhine and his staff set up the Foundation for Research on the Nature of Man, which was renamed in his and his wife’s honour as the Rhine Research Centre in 1995 (“The history of the Rhine Research Centre”, 2010). In retrospect, Rhine had initially approached the field of parapsychology with three main aims in mind. First, he sought the introduction and implementation of standardised and progressive experimental procedures when dealing with research into the paranormal; second, he strived tirelessly to promote parapsychology as a purely academic field and a valid form of science in it’s own right; and finally both he and his team wanted nothing more than to prove the existence of psi abilities in the general population. Unfortunately, despite his best efforts Rhine was unable to achieve any of these goals within his lifetime (Schoch and Yonavjak, 2008).
Arguably, of those who would go on to follow in Rhine’s footsteps, it is the recent work of D. J. Bem designed to explore the possible existence of precognition, or as previously described the theorised ability to predict the future through other than natural means, that would prove to be the most instantly controversial. Bem originally came to the notice of the public when he published the paper entitled “Feeling the Future: Experimental Evidence for Anomalous Retroactive Influences on Cognition and Affect” in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in early 2011; a respectable peer reviewed journal which recognised the controversy that Bem’s work would go on to generate by printing a lengthy introduction to the piece calling for balanced evaluation of such ‘fringe’ psychological studies earlier in the same issue. Methodologically, Bem’s experiments into precognition were technically much more complex than those of Rhine and his team, building upon the earlier work of parapsychologists such as Radin (1997) and Bierman and Scholte (2002) which seemed to show the possibility of a psi related ‘presentiment effect’, or measurable state of mental and physical arousal generated within the physiology of the participant anything up to a few seconds before the presentation of critical stimuli.
Bem argued that if such a precognitive reaction indeed existed, then it would make the most sense in an evolutionary context if it was tied to two of the more important aspects of human genetic fitness, reproduction and threat avoidance, and could therefore be easily measured should a random sequence of such stimuli be presented during an experimental trial (Bem, 2011). Of the nine separate experiments that are covered in Feeling the Future, the first two explore this intriguing evolutionary aspect through having the participant choose between a series of pairs of curtained off images presented on a computer screen, and theorises that the hits for the erotic images in the first experiment would be higher than average while those for the threatening and violent images utilised during the second would be significantly lower, as the subconscious mind tried to avoid them entirely through precognitive means. The remaining seven experiments highlighted in Bem’s paper go on to explore possible precognitive effects through existing psychological experiments run in reverse, essentially relying on procedures which allowed the participant to make trial-critical decisions before any priming or habituation took place as opposed to afterwards as is usually expected. Under these conditions, precognition would, Bem argues, be proven if significantly higher results were scored by participants in a reversed group against a generally accepted chance value of 50%, or if significantly faster reaction times were scored on trials where either retroactive habituation or priming took place against those where it did not.
Yet it was not the methodology involved in Bem’s research which would prove to be so divisive for his chosen audience, but the quantity of supposedly significant results reported across the nine separate experiments contained within the pages of Feeling The Future. Said results broke down accordingly: 50 male and 50 female undergraduate students took part in Experiment 1: Precognitive Detection of Erotic Stimuli, and over the 100 reported test sessions a significant 53.1% identified the correct position of the images before they were revealed, 3.1% more than that assumed by chance alone. 43 Male and 107 female undergraduates took part in Experiment 2: Precognitive Avoidance of Negative Stimuli, and of the 150 sessions a significant 53.5% successfully avoided the presentation of disturbing images through correctly guessing the target image. 31 male and 69 female undergraduates took part in Experiment 3: Retroactive Priming I, and of the 97 reported error free sessions significantly faster reaction times of up to 15.0 milliseconds were shown on those trials where the priming occurred after the participant had made their choice. 43 male and 57 female undergraduates took part in Experiment 4: Retroactive Priming II, utilising an identical procedure, and of the 99 reported error free trials significantly faster reaction times of 16.5 milliseconds were shown under the reversed priming condition. 37 male and 63 female undergraduates took part in Experiment 5: Retroactive Habituation I, and of the 100 reported trials a significant 53.1% of participants successfully selected the images that they would later be subliminally exposed to.
63 male and 87 female undergraduates took part in Experiment 6: Retroactive Habituation II, and of the 150 reported trials, those replicating the procedure previously utilised in Experiment 5 showed a significant preference of 51.8% for the target images, while the addition of erotic stimuli within the same experiment lowered the percentage of correct answers to a non-significant 48.2%. However, when the latter was combined with the former the results of the entire experiment were still considered by Bem to be significant overall. 60 male and 140 female undergraduates took part in Experiment 7: Retroactive Induction of Boredom, and of the 200 reported trials involving a procedure essentially the same as that previously outlined in experiments 5 and 6 but aimed at making the participant choose images other than those that they would eventually be presented with at the following habituation stage, only a non-significant 49.1% of correct selections were recorded. 36 male and 64 female undergraduates took part in Experiment 8: Retroactive Facilitation of Recall I, and once a complex statistical procedure was applied to the data, one essentially involving weighing the answers which would appear on the retroactively administered word list versus those that would not, slightly significant results were achieved. 16 male and 34 female undergraduates took part in Experiment 9: Retroactive Facilitation of Recall II, utilising an almost identical procedure as Experiment 8, and of the 50 reported trials almost twice as many seemed to be significant than in the previous experiment (Bem, 2011).
In all, Bem claimed an almost perfect run of eight significant psi related results across the full nine experimental procedures involving a total sample size of just over 1000 participants. (Bem, 2011). However, even cursory scrutiny of the manner in which Bem collected his samples and calculated the results presented in Feeling the Future highlights the same problems of experimenter fraud and misinterpretation of data that originally dogged Rhine and his team many years before (Alcock, 2011; also Utts, 1991). For example, it is generally frowned upon to make changes to the experimental procedure during live trials and merge the resulting raw data into a single pool for further analysis, as even the smallest methodological change during testing can easily influence the eventual results in unforeseeable ways, yet during most of the nine reported experiments Bem does just that (Bem, 2011). Alcock (2011) argues that said anomalous methodological changes may actually arise from there being two or more original sets of raw data collected in more than one separate experiment and merged into a single data set by Bem after he realised that neither of these initial experiments would prove to be significant in their own right, a move that can only be considered to be outright experimenter fraud. While said accusation is a strong one, finding concrete evidence to the contrary is difficult as Bem only presented the merged data for each experiment, therefore making any comparison between individual versions of the overall experimental conditions impossible.
Alcock (2011) goes on to further highlight another serious error in Bem’s handling of the results presented in Feeling the Future, that arising from conducting a sequence of multiple statistical tests without correcting for the inevitable skewing that will arise from such multiple calculations as applied to a single grouping of data. For example, the raw data from Experiment 1: Precognitive Detection of Erotic Stimuli was subjected to several t tests without any correction for said errors, and as such what might have only been a small, inconsequential mistake was further compounded with each subsequent statistical layer (Alcock, 2011; also Wagenmakers, Wetzels, Borsboom and van der Maas 2011). Indeed, when said error is corrected for the results as reported across the eight previously significant experiments actually become non-significant, leading Alcock (2011) to wonder if the statistical error may again have been deliberate in an effort to produce a strong perceived psi effect where there truly was none. However, no matter how either deliberately or accidentally flawed Bem’s research may actually prove to be once all nine of his experiment’s are independently replicated elsewhere, it is hard to agree with Alcock’s eventual conclusion that Feeling the Future serves no purpose, not for parapsychologists, the general public or science as a whole (Alcock, 2011), as if nothing else it highlights the very real problems of fraud, misinterpretation of data and even the less than positive reception that such fringe ideas receive from the scientific mainstream. All of these are important points deserving of further exploration and debate, and as such Bem’s work, as that of Rhine before him, will no doubt go on to become an important cornerstone of parapsychological research in the future, albeit perhaps for very different reasons than he might have hoped.
To conclude, it is intriguing to note just how little has changed within the realms of parapsychology since the days of Rhine and his team, and just how seriously both those sceptical of, and promoting belief into, anomalous events take their particular view of the whole debate. While it has proven far beyond the scope of this essay to show even a few of the individual strands of research that make up this most ersatz of disciplines, it is hoped that enough evidence has been presented to highlight the fact that while the methodology has become increasingly complex, the underlying conceptual basis as outlined by Rhine in the early years of the 20th century has remained very much the same. It is all too easy to see parapsychology as a failed discipline, an evolutionary dead-end from psychology’s earliest days and better relegated to some form of forgotten intellectual scrapheap, yet to do this would be to fly in the face of the reasoned and open enquiry that has typified psychological research of all kinds, and modern science as a whole. However, as positive and supportive as the previous statement may initially seem, the responsibility for changing both the public and scientific perceptions of parapsychologists as at best deluded or at worst charlatans lies firmly at the feet of the researchers themselves, while the debate as to exactly how Bem (2011) and Rhine (1940; also 1943) arrived at their highly significant results when other, more rigorous and sceptical members of the scientific community attempting a replication of the individual experiments would struggle to do the same will no doubt continue long into the future.
Supplementary to this, the problems of perceived experimenter fraud are further compounded by two interrelated issues relating to researcher isolationism that must be actively addressed in the future so as to bring parapsychology firmly into the scientific mainstream. Firstly, in a move perhaps harking back to Rhine’s initial split from Duke University to set up his own institute dedicated purely to the study of psi in all its forms in an environment free of academic agendas, many parapsychologists still work outside of a standard university setting and receive funding from private backers to continue their research. Such independent laboratories may be viewed as in some way less stringent in their methodology than university departments, and freelance parapsychologists less honest in their claims as a result. Many such researchers would counter argue that while university-based parapsychologists find it difficult to get their papers published, as highlighted by the controversy caused when the Journal of Personal and Social Psychology chose to feature Bem’s Feeling the Future (2011), the problems with publication faced by researchers tied instead to private institutes are even more acute, with very few of the mainstream peer reviewed periodicals willing to take them seriously.
Thus to counter this problem, such journals should adopt a more open submissions policy than they are currently perceived by parapsychologists as having, and offer assurances that they are willing to take each and every paper on its own merits as a piece of stand alone research as opposed to making a sweeping judgement based purely upon its subject matter. To its credit, this was indeed the stance that the Journal of Personal and Social Psychology took with Bem, though it still received much in the way of negative press for doing so. The second issue relating to researcher isolation is perhaps more subtle, but equally damaging. Mainstream scientists, be they sceptical or otherwise, tend not to work with parapsychologists, instead only crossing into the field briefly should the opportunity to conduct an experimental replication to prove researcher fraud or methodological errors arise. Such behaviour can only widen the gulf between the two camps, as each perceives the other as in some way hostile to their beliefs or ideas, and while funding issues may well preclude direct group work involving both those from private and academic institutions in the majority of cases, such a pooling of skills and resources may well be the only real future for a discipline that currently sits firmly on the fringes of the science that gave birth to it all those years ago awaiting its chance to shine.
Cited Works And References
Alcock, J. (2011). Back From the Future: Parapsychology and the Bem Affair. Retrieved online.
Bem, D. J. (2011). Feeling the Future: Experimental Evidence for Anomalous Retroactive Influences on Cognition and Affect. Journal of Personal and Social Psychology, 100, 407-425.
Bem, D. J. and Honorton, C. (1994). Does Psi Exist? Replicable Evidence for an Anomalous Process of Information Transfer. Psychological Bulletin, 115 (1) 4-18.
Bierman, D. J., & Scholte, H. S. (2002). Anomalous anticipatory brain activation preceding exposure of emotional and neutral pictures. Paper presented at the meeting of the Parapsychological Association, Paris, France.
French, C. C. and Wilson, K. (2006). Incredible Memories – How Accurate are Reports of Anomalous Eevents? European Journal of Parapsychology, 21 (2), 166-181.
Menza, L., Hilperts, K., Hindley, L., Marco, C., Santana, A. and Vosburgh Hawk, M. (2010). Exposure to Science Is Not Enough: The Influence of Classroom Experiences on Belief in Paranormal Phenomena. Teaching of Psychology, 37, 165-171.
Moore, D. W. (2005). Three In Four Americans Believe In The Paranormal. Retrieved online.
Moulton, S. T. and Kosslyn, S. M. (2008). Using Neuroimaging to Resolve the Psi Debate. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 20 (1), 182-192.
Radin, D. I. (1997). Unconscious perception of future emotions: An experiment in presentiment. Journal of Scientific Exploration, 11, 163–180.
Rhine, L. E. and Rhine, J. B. (1943). The Psychokinetic Effect: I. The First Experiment. Journal Of Parapsychology, 7, 20-43.
Rhine, J.B., Pratt, J.G.; Smith, Burke M; Stuart, Charles E; and Greenwood, Joseph A. (1940). Extra-Sensory Perception After Sixty Years, Holt: New York.
Schoch, R. M. and Yonavjak, L. (2008). The Parapsychology Revolution, Penguin: London.
Utts, J. (1991). Replication and Meta-Analysis in Parapsychology, Statistical Science, 6 (4) 363-403.
Unknown Author (2010). The history of the Rhine Research Centre. Retrieved online.
Unknown Author (2009). Who was J. B. Rhine? Retrieved online.
Wagenmakers, EJ., Wetzels, R., Borsboom, D., & van der Maas, H. (2011). Why psychologists must change the way they analyze their data: The case of psi. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 100, 426-432.
Wiseman, R., Watt, C., Stevens, P., Greening, E. and O’Keeffe, K. (2003). An investigation into Alleged ‘Hauntings’. British Journal of Psychology, 94, 195-211.
The Accelerated Chaote 