Extra-Sensory Perception: Part II. The Experimental Results: Chapter 6. Charles E. Stuart

CHAPTER 6

Charles E. Stuart

Mr. Stuart rose to prominence as a subject after Linzmayer but as an investigator he antedated Linzmayer's best work. The experiments made by Stuart with other subjects have been reported in detail already in Chapter IV and need not be repeated. In these tests he included some

Stuart was a subject for Dr. Lundholm and myself in the trance-telepathy series. He scored, at that time, just a little above chance average, about 20% above. And that is the rate also in his first 100 trials witnessed by myself, exactly 20% above, which means an average of 6 hits per 25 calls. The other 40 trials I have witnessed raised the average for the whole 140 trials to 6.15 hits per 25. All the rest of his work is unwitnessed but, since he does not on the whole rise beyond the level of these witnessed results and since he is the responsible man he is, I feel that we may unhesitatingly offer his work to the public as fully endorsed.

Beginning in the autumn of 1931 and continuing through the school year, Stuart ran the huge sum of 7,500 trials. Marvelous patience indeed! These were not very high but, on account of the large number of trials, they take on great mathematical significance. The ratio of the positive deviation to the p.e. rises to 13.5 (and, if computed by sections, as is fully legitimate in so long an experiment under necessarily changing conditions, we get a still higher value, since the first 500 trials alone give a value of X 13.3). The average per 25 for the 7,500 was 6.05. Table XV will show these results in details of 500's. In his procedure Stuart

TABLE XV

First Series, Pure Clairvoyant Perception, by Stuart, 1931-32

Serial No.	Trials	Hits	Dev. and p.e.	X	Dev. per 1500	Value of X	Avge. per 25	Dev. per 2500	p.e.	X	Avge. per 25
1	500	180	+80±6	13.3	} +128±10.4	12.3	7.1	} +180	±13.5	13.3	6.80
2	500	132	+32	5.3
3	500	116	+16	2.7
4	500	139	+39	6.5	} +67	6.4	6.1
5	500	113	+13	2.2
6	500	115	+15	2.5
7	500	119	+19	3.2	} +42	4.0	5.7	} +70	±13.5	5.2	5.70
8	500	124	+24	4.0
9	500	99	-1	-.2
10	500	113	+13	2.2	} +54	5.2	5.9
11	500	119	+19	3.1
12	500	123	+23	3.8
13	500	105	+5	0.8	} +23	2.2	5.4	} +65	±13.5	4.8	5.65
14	500	102	+2	0.3
15	500	114	+16	2.7
Total	7,500	1,815	+315±23.4					X value	13.5

The most remarkable feature of this table (XV), aside from its high significance in terms of X ("anti-chance value") is the relatively gradual decline of the rate of scoring. Taken, however, by 500's there is a peculiarly low drop in the 9th with a "comeback" for the 10th to the 12th, followed by a drop again. Taken in larger groups of 1500's the decline is steadier, the average per 25 being respectively, 7.1, 6.1, 5.7, 5.9, 5.4. In 2500's the decline is a bit more telescoped, but is clearly shown. The last 150 trials were slightly below chance and, after discussing it with me, Stuart discontinued for a time. We were interested in preserving his full capacity. He agreed with me that his interest had declined somewhat.

During the summer of ’32 I wrote Stuart, asking him to try some more E.S.P. work with the cards. His rate of scoring was found to be quite good again, averaging 6.8 in 25 for 250 trials. He continued for the summer, until 2,100 trials were made. These were about on the same scoring level, averaging 6.9 per 25 trials. They alone have a value of 12.5 for the ratio of deviation to p.e.

XVI, in which the data are grouped in 400's in order to spread the decline effect out over more points.

TABLE XVI

Second Series, Clairvoyant Perception, Stuart, Summer, 1932

Serial No.	Trials by 400's	Hits	Deviation and p.e.	Value of X	Average per 25	Dates, 1932
1	400	117	+37 ±5.4	6.9	7.3	6-2 to 7-14
2	400	117	37	6.9	7.3	6-2 to 7-14
3	400	116	36	6.7	7.2	7-15 to 7-21
4	400	110	30	5.6	6.9	7-15 to 7-21
5	400	96	16	3.0	6.0	7-21 to 7-28
7	(100)	19	-1 ±2.7	.4	4.8	7-21 to 7-28
Total	2,100	575	+155±12.4	12.5	6.8

Table XVI. He began on July 21 to make 2 calls for each card, one for "correct" and another that he thought was "incorrect". The two records were appropriately labelled and kept distinct. Pearce had been calling whole series with the deliberate purpose of getting all incorrect. But he was afraid to complicate the procedure by making both "correct" and "incorrect" calls on one card. Stuart found no difficulty, and, as one would expect, in general, his positive deviation on the High-Scoring and negative deviation on the voluntary Low-Scoring are about equal. They likewise decline together at about the same rate, as would naturally follow. Comparison of the two is made in Table XVII-A with the data grouped in 400's for the purpose of comparing the decline.

TABLE XVII-A

Comparison of Low-Score and High-Score Calls on Same Cards
Stuart, Summer, 1932

Low-Score Calls by 400's					High-Score Calls by 400's
Trials	Hits	Deviation and p.e.	Dev. per 25	Per cent of Dev. from np.	Ser. No.	Per cent of Dev. from np.	Dev. per 25	Deviation and p.e.	Hits	Trials
400	52	-28±5.4	-1.8	-35%	1	+45%	+2.3	+36±5.4	116	400
400	52	-28±5.4	-1.8	-35	2	+38	+1.9	+30±5.4	110	400
400	61	-19±5.4	-1.2	-24	3	+20	+1.0	+16±5.4	96	400
(100)	17	-3±2.7	-.8	-15	4	-5	-0.3	-1±2.7	19	100
1,300	182	-78±9.7	-1.50	-30%	Totals	31%	+1.56	+81±9.7	341	1,300
(X = 8.0)					(X = 8.4)

At present the most interesting phase of Stuart's work is his development of P.T. scoring; i.e., pure telepathy. He has only relatively lately got started at it and he does it with just about the same level of ability as he now shows on the P.C. work. (His late work on the clairvoyance has, however, been low.) On the 500 trials of P.T. he averaged 5.8 hits per 25. His regular B.T. trials, the 950 made since the work of Table XVII, gave only 5.7 hits per 25. This is quite naturally a most interesting comparison to follow up.

Stuart has tried D.T. clairvoyance but has not done it very successfully as yet in all his 2100 trials; but, as just stated, in all of his work he has been scoring low for nearly a year. In the 2100 trials the average is only 5.3 per 25; and is not "significant" as yet—i.e., is not 4 times the p.e.—it is only about 2 times the p.e. But it shows the same type of curve which we found in Linzmayer's D.T. data, and have also found in the distribution of D.T. scoring by others; i.e., a curve showing greater frequency of successes as we approach either the top or the bottom of the pack by 5's. His data are as follows, totalled in number of hits in the order of 5's down through the D.T. pack: 40, 39, 36, 38, 49. He gets fewest near the center of the pack, as do several of the others.

Stuart, too, shows a distinct operating curve, in waves of 5's. That is, he tends to succeed better on the first and last of each 5 in his D.T. work, a matter perhaps of habitual rhythm of attention, since he has called over 10,000, 5 calls at a run. His totals of all the hits made in 1000 trials of D.T. work, obtained by superimposing the results by 5's and totalling, then, for each ordinal in the 5, yield the following: 46, 37, 37, 31, 51. These 1000 trials are not selected; they happened to be at hand and convenient. They show in total yield very little deviation from chance, only 2 above, but are interesting for this internal peculiarity, the distribution that produces the difference of 20 points between the 4th and 5th calls. This

Table XVII-B.

TABLE XVII-B

Summary of E.S.P. Results by Stuart, Himself as Subject, 1931-32

Date	Condition	No. of Trials	No. of Hits	Deviation and p.e.		Dev./p.e. or X	Avge. per 25	Remarks
Spring, ’31	B.T.	250	76	+26	±4.3	6.2	7.6
1931-32	B.T.	7,500	1,815	+315	23.4	13.5	6.1
Summer, ’32	B.T.	2,100	575	+155	12.4	12.5	6.8
Summer, ’32	"Wrong"	1,300	182	-78	9.7	8.0	3.5	Purposely "wrong".
1932-33	D.T.	2,100	440	+20	12.4	1.6	5.3
1932-33	P.T.	500	115	+15	6.0	2.5	5.8
1932-33	B.T.	950	216	+26	8.2	3.2	5.7
Totals		14,700	21.16

Total value of X or D/p.e. =√(6.2)²+(13.5)²+(12.5)²+(8.0)²+(1.6)²+(2.5)²+(3.2)²= 21.16

The cumulative value of the "anti-chance" index (X) for the 46,974 trials reported thus far is now equal to √(31.5)² +(21.2)² = 38.1, with the heaviest scorers and half the scores still to come.

Footnotes

71:1 Jephson, Miss Ina, Evidence for Clairvoyance in Card-guessing. Proc. S.P.R., 38: pp. 223-271, 1928.

Extra-Sensory Perception: Part II. The Experimental Results: Chapter 6. Charles E. Stuart

CHAPTER 6

Charles E. Stuart

Footnotes

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