NEW INSTITUTE

Taranaki Daily News, 3 April 1934, Page 7

NEW INSTITUTE

PSYCHICAL RESEARCH BIOLOGISTS IN THE FIELD SCIENTIFIC METHODS-

When, fifty years ago, the. Society for Psychical Research was founded with a group of '■pflnfoltectual distinction as its nucleus, there seemed to be a reasonably hope that; in the course of a few years thy problems of the reality, and nature of 'sifoh apparently supernormal occurrences as telepathic communication, clairvoyance, spirit-rappings,’table-turning, etc., would be definitely settled, writes Robert H. Thorless in the ManChester 'Guardian. That 'hope has been disappointed. Certain successes have been obtained. Hypnotism ta no. Idngyr regarded as supernormal and takes its place in orthodox science; some of the alleged phenomena have been definitely shown to be results of mistaken observation or of fraud. The existence of telepathy. has probably been proved, although we are as far as ever from understanding its nature. Nevertheless the vast' majority of the problems about which there was dp.ubt at that time are still doubtful. The' possibility of communication from foy spirits of people who have died, of moving 'objects at distances, of materialisatien, of reporting correctly the contents of sealed packages are still questions on which'there ta fierce controversy. Certainly is now' plenty of evidence, "of various degrees of reliability, but thpsy 3 why best krio.w the evidence come io different ' conclusions about it. Some find it convincing, while others ary riot'‘convmcyd. This”ta unsatisfactory to those'who'hope that every problem will be'solve'd by the application of scientific method' and foat ‘ the? solution will fall into ' an 'oreforyd' system whole body of scientific

ALL BIOLOGISTS. Now, the presidency of Rrofessyr G. Elliot' Smith? and'"with Professors Julian Huxley and E. W. Macßride as vice-presidents, a nety International Institute for TsycKical Research has been formed fo' investigate psychic phenomena on strictly, scientific? lines. ’ It :ta perhaps significypf of a nyrv attitudy foal foefo thrye a,re all workers m, the biological The chemist who finds that a substance bunta in air knows that any other specimen of the same substance will’ also do §o under the same conditions. But the biological scientist is used to dealing with effects which occur only sometimes and not always, and with the difficulties’ which result from one individual behaving differently from another individual. So for him the unravelling of the skein of cause arid effect ta a task requiring more complicated methods of thought then the simple logic of the physical scientist These complications occur plainly in psychical research, and it ta not surprising that those at the head of the. ngw institute are drawn frpm. the biological sciences.

In 'some, ways the task is harder now than it was in 1882. There is an immense literature in many languages,. and the investigator' Who undertook to’ read everything that had been done by others before he started experimenting for himself w°uld die miserably before-his first experiment. Also there is no doubt thqt the problems which'remain untolved are those’ most difficult of solution. Telepathy could, at any rate, be under adequately controlled conditions. The medium, however, who moves things aboui wWbut 'contact may- object’ to every method of control that the' scientist wishes'to impose.

SUSPICION OF .. / It is difficult to satisfy oneself as to the nature of an ectoplasm which is said to be exuded by the medium, but which cannot be touched or ( examined under strong light. ’ Conscious ’ and deliberate fraud must also be guarded against, _as well as ipe risks of inoqrrqct observation and the too" hasty reaching of conclusions. ■

Perhaps it is the suspicion of fraud that has most discredited these phenomena in the eyes of the- general public. The ectoplasmic arm of a .well-known medium looked in-a photograph suspiciously like a piece cut from the lung of a sheep, pnd the faces pf another medium resembled in detail portraits which'had previously been published in an illustrated paper. But the difficulty of separating gop.d. from bad evidence need not be an insuperable one, and I think that it fe for another reason that there has been a general distrust of ’the investigation’ of supernormal amongst ’scientis.ts., Even the strangest of physical facts—apparent exceptions to natural law, such as the breaking-up of radium—when investigated and understood have taken their placp in the whole coherent "body pf scientific knowledge, eyen explaining other fqcts in that bpdy not formerly understood. So scientific knowledge tends "to oe a compact’and’ coherent whole. But the facts of the so-called supernormal do not seem to fit either with’ih’e existing body of knowledge or with any extension of it that we can imagine.'”

REASON FOR DISTRUST. Telepathy, if it be a fact, fits in with nothing that we know of mind or of brain, and casts no new light ,on what we already know:'of human psychology. Nor can we see any way in which the ectoplasm secreted by the medium in trance and moulded into shapes perhaps by the medium’s thoughts can fit into what is known of physiology.. This resistance to assimilation by existing knowledge is different frpm everything that has previously been fdpnd in the history of science."’’The facts may be genuine, and there may be a reason for this difficulty, b.ut it is’.cprtainly a’considerable reason fd.r the fiistrusl scientific in? vestigators and their' tendency to abandon this field qf investigation to the amateur. ‘ . Tlte pseudo-scientist, who is a serious hindrance tp the scientific ‘ development of psychical investigation, is not simply a would-be investigator who lacks academic qualifications or standing (he may, in fact, have both). He is One who* undertakes scientific investigation without submitting himself to the severe discipline which is necessary in order to make scientific conclusions valid. He makes numerical investigations without bothering himself to master the science of statistical- methofisj by .tfie. use of which alone can the yalue pf fiis conclusions' be " judged; and, generally, he snatches at results' without having learned or developed any technique of selfcriticism. Now, as in 1882, a body of Scientists wfiq have W9P their -spurs in other fields of investigation are turning to this most difficult field of research. All those interested in scientific research will wish them success. '