Who Was Joseph Banks, "J.B." Rhine PhD?

Psychical Researcher Considered Father of Modern Parapsychology

Sep 28, 2009

Psychical research was, primarily, searching for evidence of an afterlife. Rhine expanded this to include extrasensory perception and developed methods for testing this.

Joseph Banks, better known as J.B. Rhine, earned a PhD in botany and became interested in psychic phenomena after hearing a lecture given by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle about scientific proof of communicating with the dead.

Rhine began the studies that was intended to develop parapsychology into a branch of science, although, initially he considered it one of abnormal psychology. He coined the term "parapsychology" to distinguish the field from mainstream psychology and ESP, extrasensory perception, to describe how people gather information without using the five senses.

Rhine’s ESP Experiments at Duke University

The parapsychologist and his wife, Louisa E. Rhine PhD Botany, collaborated with Professor William McDougall, Duke’s Chairman of the Psychology Department, to study ESP.

This study involved using the Zener cards, a deck designed for testing ESP, precognition and telepathy. They’re the size of a regular card deck, consisting of twenty-five cards, five cards each with symbols of a plus sign, wavy lines, five pointed star, circle and five circles. Five correct guesses from the Zener deck were expected by chance. He used exact binomial probability calculations to determine how implausible it would be to correctly guess number of cards above the odds of chance. Later, Rhine would conduct testing people for psychokinesis, PK, the ability of the mind to affect matter, using dice throws.

Rhine’s experiments led to the creation of the Duke Parapsychology Laboratory,where, under his guidance, the experimental science of parapsychology was born. Rhine founded the Journal of Parapsychology as a peer-reviewed professional publication to report findings from Duke and other parapsychological laboratories.

Rhine and the Walter J. Levy Jr. Scandal

Levy showed extraordinary skill for automating experiments and recording data. Rhine hired him as a researcher, then promoted him to director. Levy tested rodents’ ability to anticipate events by ESP or to make physical changes by PK. His experiments resulted in significantly high scores.

Other experimenters noticed Levy tampering with equipment and reported it to Rhine who confronted him. Levy resigned. This led to Rhine’s writing, “A Second Report on a Case of Experimenter Fraud” in the December 1975 issue of The Journal of Parapsychology, which stated that all of Levy’s work had to be validated and provided a list of the experiments involved.

Rhine and Animal Psychic Phenomena

The parapsychologist coined the term, anpsi, to refer to psychic ability in animals.

In 1952, the US Army asked Rhine if dogs could be trained to locate underground mines by dowsing. The experiments was a classified secret. The dogs were trained to sit when they detected a box. The handlers weren’t told where Rhine’s colleagues buried the boxes to eliminate the possibility of telepathy.

Two hundred and three tests were run. The dogs were successful over fifty percent of the time, above the odds of chance.

Rhine’s Legacy

In addition to establishing the Journal of Parapsychology, Rhine founded the Foundation for the Research on the Nature of Man, FRNM, renamed the Rhine Research Center, an organization separate from Duke in the early 1960s. The FRNM’s original purpose was to study the experimental science of parapsychology. The center continues Rhine’s mission and has expanded into the study of consciousness.

Rhine proposed forming the Parapsychological Association during a parapsychology workshop at Duke. It was created in Durham North Carolina in 1957 as an international professional organization of scientists and students studying extraordinary human experiences.

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