Extra-Sensory Perception: Part II. The Experimental Results: Chapter 3. A General Survey

A General Survey

The investigation of extra-sensory perception at Duke University has now been going on for more than three years, and has come to include well over 90,000 trials. To give a comprehensive report of these trials, with a proper account of procedure, conditions and results, would make a large volume. Much summarizing must, therefore, be done in order to present the results in a reasonably readable form. It seems best to present first merely a narrative sketch of the main lines of the research and to state the general results; and, following this chapter, to give more detailed accounts of the principal subjects who produced the results and of the special experiments conducted. Those who wish to skip these fuller chapters may do so by going on from the end of this one to Chapter 9.

During the Spring of 1931 another of my students, Mr. Charles E. Stuart, now an assistant in our Department, carried out some observations on extra-sensory perception, mainly card-guessing, sometimes with subject in trance and sometimes with one in the waking condition. In some of the experiments there was, as with those of Dr. Lundholm and myself, a combination of the telepathic and clairvoyant conditions. He, too, used cards with 5 geometric designs as the basis for the guessing for about half of these tests. Out of a total of 1,045 trials made on 15 students, 495 were made on the geometric figures, with a probability of 1/5 per trial, giving a chance expectation of 99 in all. His subjects actually got 147 correct, a positive deviation of 48, which is 8 times the probable error and means an average of 7.4 per 25 guesses. There were two other types of tests given by Stuart, also yielding above chance. But, again, with this brief item for the completion of the chain of development, we will leave the details of Stuart's work for the next chapter and for a later chapter entirely devoted to his more important later results with himself as subject.

Now we return to Linzmayer. Late in May, 1931, he was given 45 card-guessing trials in very light hypnosis (which was as deep as he could go) and called 21 correct as against chance expectation of 9. In the few days we could work with him after this and before his leaving the campus with the close of the year, he brought his total trials up to 600,

The greatest event of the academic year 1931-32 was the work of Mr. C. E. Stuart, who was mentioned above as conducting a number of tests on his student friends. Meanwhile he had added to the work already mentioned about 900 more, yielding 257 or 77 above chance, 9.7 times the

We repeated on Pearce the sodium amytal experiment made on Linzmayer, using only 6 gr. this time. This would be equal to about half what Linzmayer had taken, allowing for weight differences. Pearce was not incoherent and irrational, but was quite sleepy. He could, however, keep himself awake and could converse intelligently. He made effort several times to re-integrate himself, once even washing his face with cold water. At the beginning his scoring fell off at once, yielding 5, 4, 3 for the first three runs of 25 each. Then he "pulled himself together" and got 10 on the next. The average for 325 trials is 6.1 in 25, as against

In the early fall Mr. Pearce returned to Duke and we went hard at it again. We were particularly desirous of increasing the "D.T." totals. (These are obtained by calling down through the shuffled pack without touching the cards, leaving the pack unbroken until the end.) These soon reached the 1000 mark and the significance rose still farther beyond the range of question. At the "1000" milestone, the deviation was about 12 times the probable error and the average run per 25 was 7.5. One feature of interest here was the apparent difficulty shown in scoring high in the center of the pack, which kept the scoring lower than Pearce's other ("B.T.") work.

Another experiment of interest was the effect of the stimulant drug, caffein. Under the influence of the drug treatments the deviation or gain above chance expectation was doubled over what it had been for the preceding part of the period. The rise of deviation was actually from 44% of chance expectation to 98%. (See Chapter 12.)

The effect of the presence of strangers upon Pearce's scoring was more carefully measured and found to be highly reliable; i.e., at first he would drop to "chance". But in every case he rose again, while the visitor waited, to his original level. He stayed down longest with a magician present, but he rose again before the magician left—and "mystified the mystifier", who, himself, failed to score above the chance average in 75 trials given him.

But I was at this time pressing Pearce on the point of telepathic perception or thought-transference. I mentioned above that he would drop in score when any one tried to help him by looking at the cards. I then began to work behind the screen so he would not know when I did or did not look. The data came out about the same for a while, whether I looked or not. But all at once he seemed to be utilizing telepathic perception in the unscreened tests made in the same general period, since, when without the screen, I looked at the card, he got very high scores, and fell lower when I ceased. He thereafter showed, even behind the screen, a marked advance in scoring with the added "telepathic" condition. Then I gave him a "pure telepathy" (P.T.) test, in which the agent merely chose at random an image of one of the five symbols on the cards. No cards or objective figures were used. This ruled out clairvoyance as commonly regarded. Pearce began, after some failures, to achieve real success with the "P.T." (pure telepathy) condition, with different agents. His first 950 trials yielded 269 or 79 above. This is 9.6 times the p.e. It is an average of 7.1 in 25, low for Pearce but not unusual for the beginning of a new experiment. This discovery in my best clairvoyant subject of a "pure telepathy" ability also impressed me as of great theoretical importance.

Meanwhile, the results were piling up at a rapid rate. With Pearce alone there were over 10,000, with Stuart another 10,000 and there were six others. Scepticism among colleagues was abating. They had only to come and see. And several students were becoming interested. During the fall of 1932 a number of girl students very kindly tested themselves for extra-sensory perception and, out of perhaps 10 or 12, there were 3 that stood out strikingly. These were Miss Sara Ownbey, a graduate student in our Department, Miss May Frances Turner and Miss June Bailey. All three have since done dependably high scoring over long series.

Miss May Frances Turner, during the academic year 1932-33, made the large total of 5,125 trials, mostly unwitnessed, with the average per 25 of 8.4 hits. This gives her work a value of deviation from chance expectation divided by p.e. of 35, which is a most remarkable value statistically. Her ability, too, lies in both phases of extra-sensory perception, the telepathic and the clairvoyant. In fact, she has about the same standing for the two, an average of 9.0 for "P.C." and one of 9.4 for "P.T." She, like Miss Bailey, does not yet do so well at the D.T. calling (solid pack, untouched) and this has lowered both general averages somewhat.

The best subject on the D.T. work is Miss Sara Ownbey. Her average on 1,425 trials under D.T. conditions is 7.8 hits per 25 calls. On the total for the year of 1,975 trials, P.C. and P.T., she averages 8.9 per 25, and her positive gain (+307 ±12) is 26 times the probable error,—again, a tremendous value. Miss Ownbey also does well in both branches of this mode of perception. Her P.T. average is 8.1, her D.T. 7.9 and her other P.C. work averages 11.6 in 25. (P.C. includes both D.T. and B.T.; in B.T. the card is removed from the top of the pack after being called.) She has hardly gotten well started on P.T. work as yet, however, and most probably will improve her P.T. score, bringing it nearer the P.C., as others have done. Her own telepathic perception has really been neglected, due to the fact that she is an excellent agent and has served mostly with others in that capacity.

Again in the spring of ’33, Linzmayer kindly gave us an opportunity to work with him further. But this time he fell still lower in his rate of scoring, averaging now only 5.9 per 25 on the 3,000 trials he took part in. This systematic decline is surprising, all the more so since he is so keen to improve in his E.S.P. ability. Even so his results are significant, the 3,000 trials yielding a positive deviation 7.5 times the p.e.

But the most interesting feature was the fact that Linzmayer yielded significant results on the P.T. condition also, averaging 6. per 25 for 1,000 trials. To find in this declining "pure clairvoyant" subject a "pure telepathic" perception approximately equal to the already weakened P.C. was a very stimulating discovery, since the possible relationships between P.T. and P.C. were becoming more and more fascinating.

The keenest interest then lay in getting at possible tests differentiating between P.C. and P.T., with distance. For instance, pure telepathy might possibly work at a greater distance than P.C. or vice versa. A long

But the climax to our story, so far, consists of long distance E.S.P. conducted by Miss Turner as percipient, at Lake Junaluska, N.C., and Miss Ownbey as agent, here at Durham, a distance well over 250 miles. They arranged to run series of 25 trials at certain hours, the trials five minutes apart. The first eight series run as follows, per 25: 19, 16, 16, 7, 7, 8, 6, 2. This is an average of 10.1 per 25, with a positive deviation of 41, which is 10.8 times the probable error. The first three series are enormously significant, as is obvious, reaching a value of well over twenty times the probable error for chance expectation based on 75 trials.

What now about distance and P.C.? This has become a most crucial sort of question, indeed. Later on in the summer, Miss Turner and Miss Ownbey arranged for a long distance P.C. experiment (300 miles), Miss Ownbey simply selecting the card, isolating it on a table, but not looking at it. The cards are changed at regular known time intervals as were the images in the P.T. tests. These were to alternate daily with distance P.T. runs, conducted as those described above. The distance P.T. fell to chance average and stayed there for the 4 runs attempted. All we can say in explanation is that Miss Ownbey did not feel well for part of the period and was expecting to be married within a few weeks. What disturbance this might give to the necessary act of "concentration" we can only conjecture. At the same time, Miss Ownbey was acting as agent in distance-P.T. tests with Zirkle 165 miles away and these, too, yielded only 5.5 per 25 for 10 runs, which is not significant scoring. But in the