THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 56, Issue 4047, 13 May 1938, Page 7

THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE

DO BRAINS BROADCAST? Recently Jock Lauder, brother of the famous comedian, died at Newcastle, N.S.W. Sir Harry Lauder told a London interviewer that he had been in touch with his brother for 30 years by telepathy, that is, thought transference over a distance. Telepathy is still being scientifically investigated. So far, no radio wave has been detected as issuing from a brain in action; “thought waves,” if thqy exist, must be a unique form of vibration. The so-called “brain waves,” which were recently found by delicate electrical instruments to surge through human brains, especially in sheep, are not thought waves but merely the accompaniment of chemical activity. They even occur in lower animals, such as guinea pigs, when the eyes are closed. So research on telepathy is restricted to attempting to project the thought of some object from one person to another over distances. Results are discordant. Professor Rhine (U.S.A.), a week ago, was cabled as getting 14 correct results in 950 (using cards). Dr Coo ver, U.S.A., got 153 on 5135. Warcollier (across the Atlantic) got seven out of 22, Brugmans (Germany) 60 in 187, and so on—all above guess level. Melbourne had a mass experiment with radio listeners at 3LO a few years ago, but of 15,221 “thinkers-in,” not one received by thought wave correctly the five objects the thinkers concentrated upon. Naturally such negative experiments merely prove that in ordinary circumstances the average person is not “in thought touch” with strangers. As deaths are frequently reported to be “thought broadcast” between close friends or relations, it would be interesting to learn if Sir Harry Lauder “received” his brother’s death, and the local time of the message. Thousands of so-called telepathic messages of deaths prove mere afterthoughts (or fabrications) when tested by the difference of local time according to longitude.