- Joseph Banks Rhine
Joseph Banks Rhine (
September 29 ,1895 –February 20 ,1980 ) (usually known as J. B. Rhine) was a pioneer ofparapsychology . Rhine founded the parapsychology lab atDuke University , the "Journal of Parapsychology ", and the Foundation for Research on the Nature of Man.Biography
Joseph (J.B.) Rhine was the second of four children born to Samuel Ellis Rhine and Elizabeth Vaughan Rhine in Waterloo, Pennsylvania. Samuel Rhine had been educated in a Harrisburg business college, had taught school and later been a farmer and merchant. The family moved to
Marshallville, Ohio when Joseph was in his early teens. A bright and strong-willed boy, Rhine grew up with a love of the outdoors.He was educated at
Ohio Northern University and theCollege of Wooster , after which he enlisted in the Marine Corps, being stationed in Santiago where he became a sharpshooting champion. Afterwards, he enrolled at theUniversity of Chicago , where he received his master's degree in botany 1923 andPh.D. in botany in 1925. He taught for a year at Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research, in Yonkers, N.Y. Afterwards, he enrolled in the psychology department at Harvard University, to study for a year with Professor William McDougall. In 1927 he moved toDuke University to work under Professor McDougall. There, after he and his wife were impressed by a lecture given byArthur Conan Doyle exulting the scientific proof of communication with the dead. Rhine later wrote, "This mere possibility was the most exhilarating thought I had had in years." cite book|title=ESP, Seers & Psychics: What the Occult Really Is|authorlink=Milbourne Christopher|first=Milbourne|last=Christopher|publisher=Thomas Y. Crowell|year=1970|isbn=0690268157] "Sixty Years of Psychical Research : Houdini and I Among the Spirits", by Joseph Rinn, Truth Seeker, 1950 ] Rhine began the studies that helped develop parapsychology into a branch of science, looking upon it primarily as a branch of "abnormal psychology".Based in
Durham , Rhine's next work had two aspects: one was lab experiments designed to probe the actuality or lack thereof of the Lamarckian theory of inherited characteristics in animals; the other was fieldwork that brought scrutiny, healthy skepticism, and rigor of data analysis to investigations of psychic mediums.Rhine tested many students as volunteer subjects in his research project. His first exceptional subject in this ESP research was Adam Linzmayer, an economics undergraduate at Duke. In the spring of 1931, Linzmayer scored incredibly high in preliminary Zener-card tests that Rhine ran him through; initially, he scored 100% correct on two short (nine-card series) tests that Rhine gave him. Even in his first long test (a 300-card series), Linzmayer scored 39.6% correct scores, when chance would have been only 20%. He consecutively scored 36% each time on three 25-card series (chance being 20%). However, over time, Linzmayer's scores began to drop down much closer to (but still above) chance averages. Boredom, distraction, and competing obligations, on Linzmayer’s part, were conjectured as possible factors bearing on the declining test results. Linzmayer's epic run of naming 21 out of 25 took place in Rhine's "car".
The following year, Rhine tested another promising individual, Hubert Pearce, who managed to surpass Linzmayer’s overall 1931 performance. (Pearce’s average during the period he was tested in 1932 was 40%, whereas chance would have been 20%). Pearce was actually allowed to handle the cards most of the time. He shuffled and cut them.
The most famous series of experiments from Rhine's laboratory is arguably the ESP tests involving Hubert Pearce and J. G. Pratt, a research assistant. Pearce was tested (using Zener cards) by Pratt, who shuffled and recorded the order of the cards in the parapsychology lab 100 yards from where Pearce was sitting in a campus library cubicle. Pearce's overall score in guessing the order of the unseen cards was twice as good as chance. Repeating the experiment some days later, with 250 yards distance between them, the score was again well above chance. Rhine refused to use blank cards, as suggested by Houdini's close friend Joseph Rinn.
In 1934, drawing upon several years of cautious and rigorous lab research and statistical analysis, Rhine published the first edition of a book titled "Extra Sensory Perception", which in various editions was widely read over the next decades.
In the later 1930s, Rhine investigated “psychokinesis” – again reducing the subject to simple terms so that it could be tested, with controls, in a laboratory setting. Rhine relied on testing whether a subject could influence the outcome of tossed dice – initially with hand-thrown dice, later with dice thrown from a cup, and finally with machine-thrown dice.
In 1940 Rhine published a book, "Extra-Sensory Perception After Sixty Years", that summarized his own work and the work of earlier “psychic researchers” who had attempted to be methodical, painstaking, and scientific in their (very different from Rhine’s) approach, one emphasizing field work. Rhine invited his critics – scientists and academics who had debated or criticized his work, or even criticized Rhine himself – to contribute chapters to the book; only three did, and only one maintained an adamant criticism. During the War years, Rhine lost most of his male staff members to war work or the military. He carried on, though, and after the War he had occasion to study some dramatic cases outside the lab.
Rhine’s wife, Dr. Louisa Rhine, pursued work that complemented her husband’s in the later 1940s, gathering information on spontaneous ESP reports (experiences people had, outside of a laboratory setting).
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