J. B. Rhine

Joseph Banks Rhine, known as J. B. Rhine (1895–1980), was an American botanist who founded the parapsychology lab at Duke University. He is considered one of the fathers of modern parapsychology¹.

Rhine sought to bring scientific rigor to the study of psychic phenomena, moving away from the theatricality of séance mediums and focusing on controlled experiments with quantifiable results. His work at the Duke University Parapsychology Laboratory in the 1930s and 1940s, which involved card-guessing and dice-throwing tests, helped to establish parapsychology as an academic discipline¹. He first popularized ESP in the 1920s, and his work became so fashionable that by the 1940s, it was included in the Psychology 101 course at Harvard University¹.

However, Rhine's research faced significant criticism from skeptics like Martin Gardner, who, in his 1952 book Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science, dedicated a chapter to debunking Rhine's work, concluding it was the product of "an enormous self-deception"¹. Gardner criticized Rhine's research for loose laboratory controls, skewing of data, and the premise that the attitude of the scientist could negatively influence the subject or psychic. Rhine himself stated that "The subtlest influences seem to disturb the operation of these [psychic] abilities... If the scientist is a disbeliever it will upset the delicate operation of the subject’s [psychic] abilities"¹.

Despite public skepticism, Rhine was involved in numerous classified ESP research programs with the Department of Defense. In 1952, the U.S. Army initiated a secret program with Rhine's laboratory involving ESP and animals, exploring whether dogs could locate land mines underwater and studying the homing phenomenon in pigeons. He also conducted experiments to determine if humans could communicate telepathically with cats¹.

In 1974, one of Rhine's assistants, Walter Levy, was caught cheating in an experiment involving rats, which became a scandal and fodder for skeptics¹.