TELEPATHY TEST.

Waipawa Mail, Volume LXVI, Issue 10, 6 October 1937, Page 1

TELEPATHY TEST.

EXTRA-SENSORY PERCEPTION. Group tests for extra-sensory perception carried on at New York University’s School of Commerce, Accounts and Finance at AYashington Square East since March, 1936, revealed that volunteer girl students taking part in the experiment achieved a 50 per cent, higher score than the men students, says the “New York Times.” The experimental data compiled and analysed in the study conducted by Dr. Clarence C. Clark, of the school’s General Science Department, and Vernon Sharp, his assistant, covered a total of 126,075 trials by sixtynine students. The experiment on the whole showed that 66 per cent, of the subjects tested over mapy periods were able to maintain a scoring rate far above chance.’ Of the! total there were forty-six who had positive deviations from chance and twenty-three who had negative deviations. Five packs of extra-sensory perception cards were used at a single time in the tests. The packs of twentyfive cards, devised by Dr. J. B. Rhine, of Duke University, include five different symbols. The five packs were shuffled by the observer, and laid out in a row on a desk where everyone could see them. The students got record sheets which had columns for the calls made, and for the correct calls. The students recorded their guesses as to the symbols on each of these record sheets. As soon as all had finished one pack, the correct order of the cards was called by the observer. These calls were written in the “correct” column and then checked against the guesses made. The pack was then shuffled by the observer while the students recorded their calls on the next pack. The shuffled pack was then placed at the back of the table. At the end of five packs, these previously shuffled cards were moved forward without lifting and placed at the front again. They were rearranged so that the first in the old order might be the third or fourth, etc., in the new order.

The experiments were divided in tuU series. The first series began in March, 1936, and continued for eight weeks. The second series, likewise continuing for eight weeks, began in November, 1936, and,was concluded in January, 1937. In the first series seventeen girls scored 152 calls above chance, using 1310 packs of cards of twenty-five each. The men students scored but forty-eight calls above chance, using 2117 packs of cards. In the November series sixteen girls achieved 249 calls above chance, using 567 packs of cards, while twenty-one men tallied 193 calls above chance, using 642 packs of cards. In the first series, composed largely of group tests, the size of the groups ranged from two to twenty-four. In the second series both group and individual tests were made.

It was said that experience in taking the tests appeared to increase the subject’s ability to call the cards correctly. How long additional experience would cause an increase in scoring ability was not determined by the tests.

The tests also showed that the attitude and personality of the observer when present seemed to have some effect upon extra-sensory perception ability. This is suggested by the fact, Dr. Clark and Mr Sharp said, that the observer who gave most of the tests experienced a period when he was mentally disturbed and distracted while carrying out the study. In the normal period, he obtained results with a significant positive deviation, while during the distracted period the results show a small negative deviation.

The experimenters said that some observers were definitely distracting to the subjects, and thus were unable to secure positive results, while other observers were better able to secure good results.

Subjects working individually with the instructor, the results show, are able to get higher totals than they do when working in groups.

than good manners; and with a sudden change of regime in France he abandoned the career in which already he had shown skill and aptitude and turned towards the accomplishment of his great idea. He had seen enough of Woodshed in the earlier part of his life, both as Consul at Barcelona and French Minister at Madrid, to last him to the end of his days; revolutions and a civil war in Spain hardly less bloody than that which now' rages had been his portion; for the future he was to devote his genius to constructive efforts for the greater happiness of his fellows.

In November, 1854, De Lesseps signed his concession to cut the isthmus; five years later he had, by persistent demand and a sense of persuasion which marked his extraordinary character, raised enough money to begin the work. He swung the first pick-axe himself in 1859; ten years later the radiant Eugenie, Empress of the French, stood in the bow's of the Khedival yacht and was the first person in history to move across the waters of the canal, which, in after years, was to become the hub around which the imperial policy of Great Britain revolved.

Indeed, the opening of the canal changed history. It put India on the doorstep of Europe and the remoter countries of the world came proportionately nearer to the heart of things. In the early stages of construction, Britain had objected to France obtaining paramount power in Egypt; hut with the purchase of a commanding block of canal shares by the British Government all differences were sunk; the canal became an international company with head offices in the rue d’Astorg in Paris and an annual tribute from the world which made it one of the richest and most prosperous enterprises ever operated.

AA 7 ith success the ideas of De Lesseps grew; and with success he also developed an overweening autocracy that brooked no opposition.

No smaller task was now worthy of his attention; the taste of immense conception was alone able to satisfy his palate.

He became interested in the idea of a vast railway from Paris to Bombay, which, at some forgotten point, was to have a branch line to Pekin; he considered an idea for turning the Sahara into an inland sea, so that the climate of all Europe might be changed, and the desert bear flowers. He laid the foundation of the French Congo. And ultimately, at the age of 74, he began an operation beside which the cutting of the Suez was little more than a piece of amateur ditch-digging. He set out to construct a. canal across the isthmus of Panama, so that ships might pass from the Atlantic to the Pacific without the danger and expensive tedium of passing beneath Cape Horn. It was here that the autocracy of De Lesseps led to ruin. Nothing was too formidable for the brain that had achieved the Suez miracle. His faith in the correctness of his own views was now, literally, to be employed in the moving of mountains; for beneath the two oceans lay a range through which he proposed to cut a deep passage so that ships might pass without having to lie carried uphill by locks. AH the best advice was against the construction of a sea-level canal; hut the only advice that mattered to De Lesseps was his own. The dire failure of his enterprise is now a chapter in the history of major scandals.