74
PHYSICS OF THE IMPOSSIBLE
Lady Wonder. This horse could perform dazzling feats of telepathy,
such as knocking over toy alphabet blocks and thereby spelling out
words that members of an audience were thinking. Rhine apparently
did not know about the Clever Hans effect. In 1927 Rhine analyzed
Lady Wonder in some detail and concluded, "There is left then, only
the telepathic explanation, the transference of mental influence by an
unknown process. Nothing was discovered that failed to accord with it,
and no other hypothesis proposed seems tenable in view of the results." Later, Milbourne Christopher revealed the true source of Lady
Wonder's telepathic power: subtle motions of the whip carried by the
horse's owner. The subtle movements of the whip were cues for Lady
Wonder to stop beating her hoof. (But even after the true source of
Lady Wonder's power was exposed, Rhine continued to believe that the
horse was truly telepathic, but somehow had lost its telepathic power,
forcing the owner to resort to trickery.)
Rhine's reputation suffered a final crushing blow, however, when
he was on the verge of retiring. He was seeking a successor with an
untarnished reputation to carry on the work of his institute. One promising candidate was Dr. Walter Levy, whom he hired in 1973. Dr. Levy
was a rising star in the field, reporting sensational study results seeming to demonstrate that mice could telepathically alter a computer's
random number generator. However, suspicious lab workers discovered that Dr. Levy was surreptitiously sneaking into the lab at night to
alter the results of the tests. He was caught red-handed doctoring the
data. Further tests showed that the mice possessed no telepathic power
whatsoever, and Dr. Levy was forced to resign from the institute in disgrace.
TELEPATHY AND STAR GATE
Interest in the paranormal took a deadly turn at the height of the cold
war, during which a number of clandestine experiments on telepathy,
mind control, and remote viewing were spawned. (Remote viewing is
"seeing" a distant location by the mind alone, by reading the minds of
PHYSICS OF THE IMPOSSIBLE
Lady Wonder. This horse could perform dazzling feats of telepathy,
such as knocking over toy alphabet blocks and thereby spelling out
words that members of an audience were thinking. Rhine apparently
did not know about the Clever Hans effect. In 1927 Rhine analyzed
Lady Wonder in some detail and concluded, "There is left then, only
the telepathic explanation, the transference of mental influence by an
unknown process. Nothing was discovered that failed to accord with it,
and no other hypothesis proposed seems tenable in view of the results." Later, Milbourne Christopher revealed the true source of Lady
Wonder's telepathic power: subtle motions of the whip carried by the
horse's owner. The subtle movements of the whip were cues for Lady
Wonder to stop beating her hoof. (But even after the true source of
Lady Wonder's power was exposed, Rhine continued to believe that the
horse was truly telepathic, but somehow had lost its telepathic power,
forcing the owner to resort to trickery.)
Rhine's reputation suffered a final crushing blow, however, when
he was on the verge of retiring. He was seeking a successor with an
untarnished reputation to carry on the work of his institute. One promising candidate was Dr. Walter Levy, whom he hired in 1973. Dr. Levy
was a rising star in the field, reporting sensational study results seeming to demonstrate that mice could telepathically alter a computer's
random number generator. However, suspicious lab workers discovered that Dr. Levy was surreptitiously sneaking into the lab at night to
alter the results of the tests. He was caught red-handed doctoring the
data. Further tests showed that the mice possessed no telepathic power
whatsoever, and Dr. Levy was forced to resign from the institute in disgrace.
TELEPATHY AND STAR GATE
Interest in the paranormal took a deadly turn at the height of the cold
war, during which a number of clandestine experiments on telepathy,
mind control, and remote viewing were spawned. (Remote viewing is
"seeing" a distant location by the mind alone, by reading the minds of