[Psychokinesis] [ESP (extrasensory perception)]
This is one of the world's oldest and best known foundations devoted to paranormal study. A non-profit organization based in Durham, North Carolina, the Center applies scientific methods toward the exploration of extrasensory perception and psychokinesis as valid human capabilities.
Rhine Research Center is located next door to Duke University, and it owes its existence to Duke and one of its most fascinating academics. In 1927, Dr. J. B. Rhine (1895-1980) began conducting studies of psychic phenomena in the university's psychology department. Originally planning a career as a minister, Rhine was educated as a botanist. He didn't become interested in the paranormal until he attended a lecture given by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Along with his wife, biologist Louisa E. Rhine, and Duke psychology department chairman Dr. William McDougall, he amassed a huge volume of trailblazing research into possible hidden powers of the mind.
By the time Rhine established the Duke University Parapsychology Laboratory in 1935, his work had already garnered nationwide attention. He coined the term "extrasensory perception," and for decades he and his wife were regarded the leading authorities on ESP. Rhine was the first experimenter to perform psychic testing using Zener cards (with their now-familiar five symbols of circle, square, star, plus sign and wavy lines), which were developed for him by his Duke colleague Dr. Karl Zener.
Rhine took his studies away from Duke in 1962, with the establishment of the Foundation for Research on the Nature of Man (FRNM). He felt that an independent, privately-funded organization would afford the controversial field of parapsychology the scientific freedom it required and deserved.
Rhine is often popularly remembered as the man who "proved" that psychic powers existed. While he did collect some compelling test results that indicated statistically unlikely accuracy among his subjects, subsequent examinations of his work have concluded that procedural flaws and probability loopholes invalidate any claims of proof.
Nonetheless, Rhine is generally well-respected today -- even by skeptics like James Randi -- for his pioneering spirit and devotion to scientific fact. Rhine did his share of debunking and was not apologetic about it; in fact, his expose of a fake spiritualist led to Rhine's denouncement by his original inspiration, Arthur Conan Doyle.
In honor of the 100th anniversary of J. B. Rhine's birth, FRNM was rechristened as the Rhine Research Center in 1995. In addition to its continuing studies into ESP and psychokinesis, the Center regularly offers classes and lectures to students and the general public, and is kept busy by visitors, letters and phone calls asking about all things psychic.
Dr. Richard S. Broughton, the Center's current Director of Research, describes a typical encounter with a journalist in his book Parapsychology: The Controversial Science (Ballantine, 1991). Broughton sums up Rhine Research Center's reason for being in the following response to the oft-asked question of whether he believes in what his organization studies:
"No,
I don't believe in it,' I replied, and then I watched the reporter's face take
on a familiar perplexed look. Of course I then had to explain to the startled
reporter that I regard 'belief' as something appropriate in matters of faith,
such as in religious questions, but not in matters of science. One's religious
beliefs might require what theologians would call a 'leap of faith' precisely
because there is no evidence to support them. As a scientist I do not take leaps
of faith with my subject matter. I study the evidence." To learn more, visit
the
Rhine Research Center's web site.
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Have you ever sat in your car at traffic lights, willing the light to turn green? Or stared at a slot machine, trying to create a match with wishful thinking? According to the results of recent psychokinesis experiments, you should keep trying. Researchers at universities and private laboratories around the world now say that psychokinesis -- the ability to affect inanimate and remote objects with mental powers -- is a proven phenomenon.
Proving the effect is one thing; explaining the cause is another. Most often, researchers place PK in a quantum physics context, where the physical world has less to do with reality than with our perception of that reality. "One interpretation of the results," Broughton says, "is that human consciousness is the ultimate reality. Data isn't real until subjects perceive it. Further, subjects can alter reality when they perceive it.".
The "perception is reality" school of thought grew when physicists studied the nature of electrons and noticed that they exhibited both particle-like and wave-like behavior. The duality led to the uncertainty principle: The more scientists studied one aspect of an electron, such as its position, the less precisely they could know something else, such as its momentum.
In his book Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos, Dennis Overbye explains how physicist Niels Bohr applied the uncertainty principle to electron experiments: "The electron had no position or momentum before it was measured. In some sense the electron itself did not exist before it made its mark on a laboratory apparatus." Bohr said electrons were like waves, smeared across space, going around corners and through walls. Theoretically, if enough particles could exhibit wave-like behavior, a baseball could pass through a plate glass window without harm to either.
Overbye writes: "At the moment of actual scrutiny of an electron or a baseball, Bohr concluded, the wave function magically 'collapsed' to a specific answer to whatever question was being asked. But the scientist had to ask -- otherwise nature didn't answer."
PK researchers say it is the person observing the REG machine and willing the line to move that makes the line move. Broughton says the results of his experiments don't appear to indicate a mental force tweaking the atoms in his machines. Rather, he says, the human consciousness is inserting information in the machine, affecting its probability.
Jahn and Dunne agree, saying that consciousness, not external reality, is the ultimate factor in any observation. Therefore, the consciousness of the observer can alter the behavior of waves and particles... even in machines.
Dunne explains that one of their REG machines generates a random line across the screen. "Like flipping a coin, you have no way to predict the outcome. As the operators use their intent to interact with the machines, the distribution seems to reflect a few more heads or tails. The probability of its output may only change from .50 (fifty/fifty odds) to .49 or .48, but it is a measurable change.
"Just how it occurs we don't know," she says. "It's as if information has been introduced and the entropy thereby reduced. And distance doesn't seem to matter. If the operator is a foot from the machine or around the world, the results are the same.
"So it's not the classical model theorizing magnetic radiation from the brain or something. It's not a physical force. It's more a matter of altering the fundamental information content than changing the machine itself. Somehow, operators combine their intention with a sense of self-extension, as if they were part of the machine. The division between operator and machine grows blurry. It's like a system and its component parts -- operator plus machine -- somehow producing the results."
At the turn of the century, scientific theory held that matter and energy were separate. Einstein proposed that they were two forms of the same thing. "I think matter and mind might also be of the same energy," says Radin. "When you focus your mind on a physical device, some aspect of yourself becomes identical with some piece of matter. Some people can automatically put a lot of english on a bowling ball, for instance, because they're part of the hall. With a random generator, there's less inertia and it's easier to move. You can place your mind in it and make it do something."
In the British
Broadcasting Corporation's television show, Heretics of Science, Robert Jahn
said, "It may just be that, beyond the odd logical analytical dimensions of
the human mind, there is a whole other pattern of softer, intuitive spiritual
capabilities that connect it in this wave-mechanical way with a universe that
also has its own spiritual wave-mechanical dimensions. And it is in that universe
of interaction, the spiritual part of human consciousness with the spiritual
part of the universe, that these anomalies seem to manifest themselves."
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Extrasensory perception, commonly called ESP, is perception occurring independently of sight, hearing or other sensory processes. ESP is divided up into telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition. The existence of ESP and other paranormal powers such as telekinesis, are disputed, though systematic experimental research on these subjects, known collectively as psi, has been ongoing for over a century in parapsychology.
Most of the evidence for ESP is anecdotal and is dismissed by skeptics as based on trickery by mentalists, selective thinking, retrospective falsification, wishful thinking, poor grasp of probabilities and of the law of truly large numbers, gullibility, ignorance of cold reading, subjective validation, or fraud. The following case is typical of those cited as proof of ESP. It is unusual only in that it involves belief in a psychic dog, rather than a psychic human. The dog in question is a terrier who has achieved fame as having ESP as exhibited by his ability to know when her owner, Pam Smart, is deciding to come home while she is away on a shopping trip or some such business. The dog's name is Jaytee and has been featured on several television programs in England, where the dog lives, and elsewhere, including the United States. It was claimed by some of those showing the psychic dog running to a window facing the street that the dog was doing so at precisely the moment his owner was deciding to come home from some miles away. Had not two scientists, Dr Richard Wiseman and Matthew Smith of the University of Hertfordshire, tested the dog under controlled conditions, this story might have passed on unchallenged into the annals of ESP lore. The scientists synchronized their watches and set video cameras on both the dog and its owner. Alas, several experimental tries later, they had to conclude that the dog wasn't doing what had been alleged. He went to the window, alright, and did so quite frequently, but only once did he do so near the exact time his master was preparing to come home and that case was dismissed because the dog was clearly going to the window after hearing a car pull up outside his domicile. Another supportive case was dismissed, even though the dog went outside at the time her owner was deciding to return home, but it was decided that the dog went outside to vomit, not to greet her mistress.
Much of the belief in ESP is based upon apparently unusual events that seem inexplicable. However, we should not assume that every event in the universe can be explained. Nor should we assume that what is inexplicable requires a paranormal (or supernatural) explanation. Maybe an event can't be explained because there is nothing to explain. For example, I had a dream that I came into a room where my best friend was seated with his back towards me. He had died of a cerebral hemorrhage five weeks earlier. Does this dream need to be explained? Why? If I had had the dream five weeks before he died, would it have needed explanation then? Does my dream need to be explained? If it does, I think several explanations are plausible which do not require any reference to ESP.
Most ESP
claims do not get tested, but parapsychologists have attempted to verify the
existence of ESP under controlled conditions. Some of them, like Charles Tart,
claim success, but have been charged with confirmation bias, among other things.
Others, such as Susan J. Blackmore, claim that years of trying to find experimental
proof of ESP have failed to turn up any proof of indisputable, repeatable psychic
powers. Psychologists like Ray Hyman, who have thoroughly investigated parapsychologal
studies, have concluded that there is little there besides fraud, error, incompetence,
and statistical legerdemain. Others claim that the gansfeld experiments, the
CIA's remote viewing experiments and attempts to influence randomizers at Princeton
Engineering Anomalies Research have produced evidence of ESP.
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