Table Of ContentE SP ^ ^ H
and
P A R A PSYCHOLOGY
A CRITICAL RE-EVALUATION
C.E.M. HANSEL
ESP and Parapsychology:
A Critical Reevaluation
C. E. M. Hansel
IS
Prometheus Boohs
Buffalo, New York 14215
Published by Prometheus Books
1203 Kensington Avenue
Buffalo, New York 14215
Copyright © 1980 by Prometheus Books
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 79-56361
ISBN 0-87975-119-3 (cloth)
ISBN 0-87975-120-7 (paper)
Printed in the United States of America
Contents
Preface v
PART ONE 1
I The Origins of Psychical Research 3
2 The Subject Matter of Psychical Research 11
3 Examining the Evidence 19
4 Early Investigations 29
5 Accounts of Strange Experiences 43
6 Spiritualism 55
7 Summary to Part One 73
PART TWO 81
8 Salad Days at Duke University 85
9 The Years of Controversy 1934-1940 99
10 The Pearce-Pratt Experiment 111
II The Pratt-Woodruff Experiment 125
12 The Soal-Goldney Experiment 141
13 The Telepathic Welsh Schoolboys 169
14 Psychokinesis 189
15 Group Experiments 199
16 Research Behind the Iron Curtain 205
17 Summary to Part Two 211
iii
iv Contents
PART THREE 215
18 Testing ESP with a Machine 217
19 Psychical Research at SRI 237
20 Telepathy in Dreams 243
21 The Challenge of Chance 255
22 The Miracle Men 261
23 Uri Geller at SRI 277
24 Mind-Reach 291
25 Summary to Part Three 297
PART FOUR 305
26 Conclusions 307
Suggestions for Further Reading 317
Index 319
Preface
In 1966, ESP: A Scientific Evaluation was published with the aim of evaluating
research on ESP and other reputedly psychic phenomena. Since then new experi
ments have been reported and the feats of men such as Uri Geller have received
wide publicity. The aim here is to examine all the experiments and to make a
further evaluation in the light of any new features that have emerged.
In the earlier book the material was taken in its historical perspective. It was
stressed that this is necessary in order to give understanding of the nature of the
research and of the claims that have been made. For this reason much of the
original material has been retained, since no reason could be found to change what
has already been written. New developments have, however, arisen in the case of
some of the earlier experiments and these have been updated where necessary.
I would like to acknowledge my indebtedness again to all those who collab
orated with me when I was preparing my earlier book, in particular to Professor
Emeritus R. T. Birge and to Mr. Martin Gardner. Thanks are also now due to Mr.
Kenneth Heuer, formerly Science Editor at Charles Scribner’s Sons, for his expert
advice and encouragement.
For assistance when preparing this new volume my thanks are due to Dr. E. G.
Dingwall, Dr. Trevor H. Hall, and to Dr. Christopher Scott. In addition I would
like to thank Mr. Francis Hitchin for the loan of published material. I am also most
grateful to Professor Paul Kurtz for making publication possible.
Finally, I am indebted to my wife, Gwenllian, who has spent many laborious
hours correcting the manuscript and proofs, and who has maintained extensive
records and reference material.
v
PA R T O NE
1 The Origins of Psychical Research 3
The Foundation of the Society for Psychical Research 4
Attitudes toward ESP 5
2 The Subject Matter of Psychical Research 11
Sensory and Extrasensory Perception 11
Measuring Information Gain 13
Transmitting a Message 14
Telepathy 14
Clairvoyance 15
Precognition 16
Psychokinesis 17
Spontaneous Data 17
3 Examining the Evidence 19
The Amount of Evidence 19
The Effects of Error and Trickery 21
Initial Assumptions 22
The Statistical Evaluation of an Experiment 22
Exploratory and Conclusive Methods 24
Conclusive Experiments Before 1965 25
Experiments After 1965 27
1
2 ESP and Parapsychology: A Critical Reevaluation
4 Early Investigations 29
British Research 29
The Smith-Blackbum Experiments 30
Characteristics of Early Experiments 33
Muscular Movements 34
Mental Habits 35
Recording Errors 35
The Brugmans Experiment 35
Some Telepathy Experiments 36
Coover’s Research 39
5 Accounts of Strange Experiences 43
The Apparition Seen by Sir Edmund Hornby 44
Some Other Strange Happenings 47
Causes of “Inexplicable Happenings’ ’ 50
6 Spiritualism 55
Physical Mediums 55
Mental Mediums 64
7 Summary to Part One 73
Margery Crandon 75
1
The Origins of
Psychical Research
Most persons learn through experience that awareness of objects in the world
outside them arises through the use of the senses. Scientific knowledge explains
how this comes about—we see an object because light is reflected from it into our
eyes—and also makes clear, indirectly, the conditions under which seeing cannot
take place—light is necessary for vision; therefore, without it, we cannot see.
Personal experience also tells us that our thoughts remain private unless
expressed by voice or action. Another person’s thoughts can be guessed, but few
would claim to be able to know them as they would if the person were thinking
aloud. There are exceptions. On the stage, men appear to see when blindfolded and
to read thoughts; but such performances are classified as magic, and it is known
that the magician uses tricks that enable him to appear to do what common sense
says is impossible.
During the past 50 years, however, the public has become aware of reports
that abilities such as clairvoyance and telepathy have been demonstrated in the
laboratory by means of rigorously controlled experiments. These claims are
puzzling to many persons who are interested in natural processes and scientific
experimentation, for the investigators appear to have established, by means of
carefully planned experiments and conventional statistical analyses, the reality of
phenomena that conflict with well-established principles.
Experimental evidence has been produced for four such processes to date: 1
1. Telepathy, a person’s awareness of another’s thoughts in the absence of any
communication through sensory channels.
3
4 ESP and Parapsychology: A Critical Reevaluation
2. Clairvoyance, knowledge acquired of an object or event without the use of the
senses.
3. Precognition, knowledge a person may have of another person’s future
thoughts (precognitive telepathy) or of future events (precognitive clairvoy
ance).
4. Psychokinesis, a person’s ability to influence a physical object or an event,
such as the fall of a die, by thinking about it.
Since the first three of these processes involve an act of perception or
cognition and also because they are, by definition, independent of activity in the
sense organs, each is commonly referred to as a kind of extrasensory perception,
or ESP.
It will be seen that these four terms are restatements in systematic language of
beliefs that have long been a part of folklore and superstition. Telepathy is a new
name for mind reading; clairvoyance for second sight; precognition for divination
or premonition; and psychokinesis is another name for levitation or for the process
whereby a man thinks, for example, that he can get good weather for his holiday by
praying for it. For this reason, the experiments, if they can be relied on, would
imply that much of what has in the past been regarded as superstition must now be
included in the domain of natural science.
The Foundation of the Society for Psychical Research
Preoccupation with these beliefs was responsible for the emergence at the end of
the nineteenth century of psychical research, in which the study of ESP and other
related phenomena became an organized discipline. At that time, there was a great
deal of speculation about the possibility of strange new human powers. Stories of
extraordinary happenings that seemed to contravene accepted scientific principles
were popular, just as they are today. In the latter half of the nineteenth and well into
the twentieth century, much publicity was given to spiritualist mediums, who
supposedly received messages from the dead and whose exploits attracted con
siderable scientific interest.
But, at that time science displayed a unity in that when a new discipline, such
as biology, revealed facts involving new types of processes, they were always
consistent with other scientific knowledge. Thus, principles of physics and chem
istry operated in the new discoveries of biology. As D’Arcy Thompson (1860-
1948), the Scottish biologist, wrote, “ . . . no physical law, any more than gravity
itself, not even among the puzzles of stereo-chemistry, or of physiological surface-
action and osmosis, is known to be transgressed by the bodily mechanism.” 1
In the realm of the senses, the eye was found to employ principles known to
optics and the ear to contain mechanisms that might be expected from the study of
sound. Messages were transmitted along nerve fibers from the sensory organs to
