Parapsychology tries to distinguish itself from run-of-the-mill psychics and reports of paranormal phenomena by its emphasis on science. If parapsychology is to make any of it respectable, it is through rigorous scientific testing. This is complicated by the fact that most belief in paranormal phenomena is based upon anecdotes and personal experiences — neither critical reasoning nor science are very much involved. Introducing science has, therefore, proved difficult.
Some haven’t welcomed the introduction of science to spiritualist and paranormal matters. One of the great supporters of mediums and spiritualists, British journalist W.T. Stead, ridiculed the Society for Psychical Research for trying to apply scientific standards to the experience of contact with the dead.
The study of parapsychological phenomena is generally performed in one of two ways: through large-scale experiments done with large numbers of people in search of a few statistical anomalies, or through the study of specific and allegedly extraordinary individuals who appear to demonstrate a great deal of power. Among those who do the first sort, statistical evidence is believed to be the only way to provide solid and unassailable proof of psychic powers; among those who do the second type, it is believed that the best way to understand such phenomena is to study it in its most extreme examples.
Before these two types of laboratory research developed, almost all of the evidence for psi phenomena came from personal anecdotes. Early studies of psi also relied very heavily on anecdotes, but even these researchers became quickly aware of both the limitations and the flaws of anecdotes and moved to establish a firmer foundation for what they believed would be a productive scientific field.
Parapsychological research has been around for over a century. The original British Society for Psychical Research was founded in 1882. Serious and extensive work has been done in both American and Britain for a century now — and what do people have to show for it? The one thing that might serve to prove the existence of psychic phenomena, a repeatable ability to move objects or learn information at a distance, is today as elusive as it was in 1882.
Although the SPR was originally formed as an alliance between mediums and spiritualists on the one side and credulous scientists on the other, this alliance was not destined to last long. It wasn’t that the scientists suddenly got wise to the fraud; rather, it was merely that the two groups differed on the interpretations of the phenomena.
The spiritualists believed that the powers manifested were proof of an afterlife, even though they didn’t always try to incorporate their ideas into traditional religious conceptions of the afterlife. The scientists, however, treated such explanations as insufficiently materialistic and instead attributed events that occurred over the course of seances to unrecognized powers within the mediums rather than as stemming from spirits. Thus were born the ideas of power such as telekinesis and telepathy.
Just as serious is the long history of fraud and deception in the field of parapsychology. Fraud was a constant companion of spiritualism and the attempt to engage in systematic, scientific study of paranormal powers completely failed to leave it behind. One would think that by focusing on science the researchers would make an effort to weed out the deception, but that doesn’t appear to have been the case.
Many famous researchers have not only been fooled by fraudulent psychics, but they have even participated in deliberate cover-ups in order to hide the fact that they were fooled. For example, the eminent Joseph Banks Rhine, one of the most important researchers into parapsychology, wrote in “The Hypothesis of Deception” (Journal of Parapsychology, 1938):
- “We do not feel that any good purpose could be served by the exposure, a la Houdini, of these instances. ...In a word, a research project in ESP does not become of conclusive scientific importance until it reaches the point at which even the greatest will-to-deceive can have no effect under the conditions. This criterion is the very threshold of the research field. It leaves us under no obligation to concern ourselves wither with the ethics of the subjects or with the morbid curiosity of a few individuals.”
No obligation to make sure that no one can cheat or commit fraud? I don’t know whether Rhine was just trying to rationalize his own inability to conduct real science or he if really did believe that his controls were so solid that it wasn’t possible for anyone to actually cheat him. I tend to suspect something like the former is more likely true because even when fraud was discovered in his laboratory, he avoided admitting it openly.
