Did Joseph Banks Rhine innocently receive a “rooking” in some of his Duke University experiments in Extra-Sensory Perception? Is it possible that two of his “best” subjects, close enough in companionship to later marry, conceived of a simple method by which they might outwit conditions imposed by the professor?
The tests followed by Professor Rhine over a period of seven years resulted in world wide publicity and comment from learned mathematicians and psychologists. Students of the University were drawn upon to take part. Can it be that college prankishness and the lure of acclaim led them, at times, to “put one over” on their mentor?
The Jinx asks regarding these points because through its editor it is ready to duplicate, or better, a series of tests made with George Zirkle and Sara Ownbey (now Mrs. Zirkle). This publication is for mystery artists who entertain. Subscribers expect tricks. They get tricks. And so we reveal how magicians can get scores as good as campus caperites, under the same conditions as imposed by erudite savants of learning, and attempt to prove by inference, avoiding libel laws as much as possible, the collusion necessary to deceive an always avid reading public, to whom a representative of a leading University is “tops”.
Professor J.B. Rhine, though under the supervisory eye of Dr. William McDougall, formerly of Harvard, is still not a magician nor en rapport with the subterfuges of our profession. Would you, you, or you investigate a subject explainable by chemistry, then present a record to the world, and not have had AT ALL times a competent chemist present? And is it mere coincidence that we are selecting the experiments of Zirkle-Ownbey?
In Prof. Rhine’s book New Frontiers of the Mind, and from which we have taken, without permission, the accompanying photographs, the now much publicized researcher into psychic realms states “The greatest amount of really amazing work in telepathy was performed by Zirkle, and it was done DURING THE PERIOD WHEN MISS OWNBEY WAS BOTH SENDER AND EXPERIMENTER.“
So much for that. Let’s try our hand at the same thing. A deck of 25 cards is used. There are 5 designs repeated five times. A circle, cross, three wavy lines, square and star. The sender holds a well shuffled packet and looks at each design as turned up. The receiver, or as Prof. Rhine terms, experimenter, concentrates several rooms away, the material connection between the two being a telegraphic key in one room and a sounder in the other. This is to “inform” the receiver by a single click, that the sender is concentrating. And does it? We’ll say it does!
Beforehand, over a glass of beer, or while talking about getting married and such, two conspirators might get a “kick” out of evolving the following procedure. Number the five designs 1-2-3-4-5.
The investigators, confident in their knowledge of percentage if not in magical peccancies, shuffle the 25 card pack and place it before the sender. He concentrates upon the first design he turns over. Then he taps once upon the key. In a distant room the sounder clicks. The receiver calls out a design. It’s one chance in five. BUT, immediately the words leave their lips (supposing it to be a woman) she starts a MENTAL count of 1-2-3-4-5-1-2-3- etc., while, upon hearing the selection, the sender ALSO STARTS A MENTAL COUNT in the same tempo as previously learned by both with the aid of a metronome, or loud ticking clock. During this mental counting, which takes longer than reading about it, the sender turns up his next design. He looks at it. The count between both continues. AND HE PUSHES DOWN THE KEY WHEN NEXT HE IS AT THE NUMBER (from 1 to 5) REPRESENTING THE DESIGN AT WHICH HE IS LOOKING!
The receiver can stall as long as she likes. That’s for effect. Scientific investigators will stand for plenty of that – but don’t try it in front of audiences wanting to be entertained. They want results in time to make the 5:15 for home.
When she does call the design, the mental count starts again between both to the same end. So it continues through the 25 cards. Theoretically, 24 cards should be named correctly with a 1 out of 5 chance on the first. Practically there is a slippage. HOWEVER, THE RECORDS WILL SHOW AN AMAZING LIFT OVER WHAT IS CONSIDERED NORMAL, normal being but 5 out of 25.
The mental count was originated by Charles Morritt, of England. He used it for many complicated tests, but almost immediately it fell into disuse because few couples could master the unison angle up to the excessive counts necessary. For years this principle has been bandied about but never professionally. Such performers HAVE to be right consistently. Rhine pupils are only WANTED to be above the 1 / 5 average. The mental count thus can come into its own.
Has it? The mental count is one of the very few mystical principles not to be challenged. Only the operators can give the answer. We may assume – we cannot prove. In the Zirkle-Ownbey experiments stimulants and depressants played (what was considered) an important part. According to the book, such drugs were given only to one of the two at a time. Sodium amytal is a depressant (it tends to dissociate a subject) so therefore would act as a break on the mental counting and throw the system out of gear.
A stimulant would act the opposite. What we would like to know is a result of BOTH subjects getting the SAME drug at the SAME time. It may or may not be significant that in other tests with the same (Zirkle-Ownbey) subjects, but under radically different conditions, the tabulations dropped far below what was recorded under the above conditions. Why? No chance to cheat a bit, and giggle about it later over the acceptable two-burner in a couple of rooms for two but not run as cheaply as for one?
Dr. Steuart Henderson Britt of George Washington University has publicly stated that while he is willing to leave the mathematics of ESP to the mathematicians, he is not willing to overlook the fact that Prof. Rhine has not published all his scores, or the possibility that SOME OF HIS SUBJECTS HAD JUGGLED THE RESULTS TO PLEASE THEIR MENTOR.
Knowing that it is possible, we heartily subscribe to that viewpoint. Has Professor J.B. Rhine been hoodwinked?
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