Word: esp.
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...dynamic patterns of behavior" (Gestalt psychology). An endless dispute goes on over the value and significance of I. Q. tests. At present a major trouble focus is the research carried on at Duke University by Joseph Banks Rhine, by which Dr. Rhine claims to have proved the existence of "ESP'' (extrasensory perception). Dr. Rhine-some of whose admirers have compared him to Abraham Lincoln, and others to Sigmund Freud and Charles Darwin rolled into one-invented a famous test in which subjects are asked to "guess." one by one, the cards of a special deck whose faces they...
...astronomical probability figures given by ESP advocates, in order to rule out chance, do not prove that ESP exists. The science of probability is extremely controversial; moreover, science does not use probability to prove the existence of something which is otherwise undemonstrated...
...psychologists, uncomfortably seated in a hotel ballroom, this aptly delivered diatribe evoked thunderous applause. The chairman genially announced, ''Mr. Rogosin has stuck his neck out," asked for comment. It quickly appeared that there were at least a half-dozen psychologists in the room who still thought ESP might be a reality. These arose, one by one, to criticize the critic. One charged him with not approaching the problem in a neutral spirit, with making his own arbitrary definitions of Science and Truth...
Next day Dr. Steuart Henderson Britt of George Washington University in another address said, that while he was willing to leave the mathematics of ESP to the mathematicians, he was not willing to overlook the fact that Rhine had not published all his scores, or the possibility that some of his subjects had juggled the results to please their mentor. He asserted that ESP cards are so heavily printed that the designs can be told either by sight or by touch from the back, proved this point when he correctly read 24 out of 25 ESP cards whose faces...
...Frederick Hausen Lund of Temple University announced that he had tried ESP experiments under rigid control (cards beyond reach and out of sight) on 596 students, found no instance of significantly high scoring...