The Psychic Scandal

The world of parapsychology has more than its share of frauds, charlatans and opportunists. But even those critics who were openly skeptical about the phenomena reported by the Institute for Parapsychology in Durham, N.C., seldom questioned the sincerity or integrity of Dr. Joseph B. Rhine, the institute's founder, or his staff. Last week a shaken Rhine was preparing to acknowledge publicly a scandal that has already rocked the entire psychic establishment.

In the parapsychological equivalent of the famous case of the painted mice at Manhattan's Sloan-Kettering Institute (TIME, April 29 et seq.), Walter J. Levy Jr., 26, the bright, recently appointed director of Rhine's institute, resigned after admitting that he had falsified experimental data.

Rhine, who pioneered E.S.P. (extrasensory perception) research in the 1930s, has long recognized the need for sophisticated techniques, including the use of computers, to collect reliable data on psychic phenomena. Levy, a medical student who began working at the institute during his summer vacation in 1969, showed an unusual talent for automating experiments and recording data. After Levy graduated from the Medical College of Georgia last year, Rhine hired him as a full-time researcher; soon he was promoted to director.

Levy's research, elegantly computerized, was aimed at testing the ability of rodents to anticipate events (E.S.P.) or to effect physical changes by sheer will power (psychokinesis). He had electrodes implanted in the brains of rats in a zone where stimulation gave the animals intense pleasure. The stimuli were delivered at random intervals by a computer that in turn was keyed to the decay of atoms in a sample of radioactive strontium 90. Without any outside influence, the system would stimulate the rats' pleasure zones 50% of the time. If the rats could anticipate the computer by E.S.P. or influence the decay of the radioactive source by psychokinesis, their pleasure score would exceed 50%.

By early May, Levy was reporting 54% pleasure stimulus scores, indicating that the rats had psychic powers. Then one of Levy's assistants became suspicious when he noticed that the director seemed to be loitering needlessly around the equipment. With two colleagues, the assistant decided to check. From a hiding place one watched while the others helped Levy run a test. They saw him tamper with the recorder, causing his tape to score high. Another set of instruments--installed without Levy's knowledge--confirmed their suspicions by recording the expected 50% score.

Issue of Fraud. The three reported to Rhine, who confronted Levy. He confessed and resigned, later telling friends that he had been under great pressure to produce positive results and had been overburdened by administrative duties. He insisted that this was the only time he had falsified data; after failing to reproduce earlier positive tests, he had felt a need to force the data to reflect the results he expected. Following the disclosure, Rhine set other staff members to work, checking the more important of Levy's earlier findings, and cautioned other psychic researchers not to rely on these data until they can be verified.

Levy's deception was a severe blow not only to his mentor but, as Rhine sees it, to all of parapsychology. Even before he had heard of the Sloan-Kettering painted mice, Rhine published a soul-searching article on "Security versus Deception" in the March Journal of Parapsychology. In it, he conceded that the long delay in acceptance of parapsychology as a reputable science can be traced in part to suspicions about the honesty of investigators. Rhine suggested that this "subtle, slightly distasteful, and sometimes embarrassing issue of fraud might need more frank and forthright recognition and response." He even noted that "apparatus can sometimes be used as a screen to conceal the trickery it was intended to prevent." Rhine maintained his confidence in Levy for months after those words were written--evidence that Rhine lacks one of his own favorite phenomena: precognition.

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