Joseph Banks Rhine

Joseph Banks Rhine (September 29, 1895 – February 20, 1980) (usually known as J. B. Rhine) was a pioneer of parapsychology.

Biography
He was educated at Ohio Northern University, the College of Wooster, and at the University of Chicago, where he received his master's degree in 1923 and Ph.D. in 1925, both in botany. In 1927 he moved to Duke University to work under Professor William McDougall. There he began the studies that helped develop parapsychology into a branch of science; the field is today recognized by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

He almost single-handedly developed methodology and concepts for parapsychology as a form of experimental psychology and founded the institutions necessary for its continuing professionalization &mdash; including the establishment of the Journal of Parapsychology and the formation of the Parapsychological Association, and the Foundation for Research on the Nature of Man (FRNM), a precursor to what is today known as the Rhine Research Center. His parapsychology research organization was originally affiliated with Duke University, but is now separate.

The most famous series of experiments from Rhine's laboratory is arguably the ESP test involving Hubert Pearce and J. G. Pratt.

Rhine has been criticized for not disclosing the names of assistants he caught cheating. Skeptic Martin Gardner wrote: "His paper 'Security Versus Deception in Parapsychology' published in his journal (vol. 38, 1974), runs to 23 pages. [..] Rhine selects twelve sample cases of dishonest experimenters that came to his attention from 1940 to 1950, four of whom were caught 'red-handed'. Not a single name is mentioned. What papers did they publish, one wonders.''" Assistants whose cheating has been made public in spite of Rhine's secrecy policy are James D. MacFarland and Walter Levy. Gardner claims to have inside information that Rhine's files contain "material suggesting fraud on the part of Hubert Pearce".

In 1983 his wife Louisa Rhine wrote a book Something Hidden. She wrote (Gardner 1988:240-43) "Jim [her psudonymn for James D. MacFarland] had actually consistently falsified his records. ... To produce extra hits Jim had to resort to erasures and transpositions in his records of his call series."

Literature

 * Gardner, Martin. (1988). "The Obligation to Disclose Fraud", Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII No. 3.

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