supernormal (10. 199)

Our gratitude to Boing Boing contributor Mitch Horowitz not just for the introduction to botanist and founder of the field of parapsychology Joseph Banks Rhine but more over for upholding his rigour and the scientific approach that he and his wife and intellectual partner Louisa, also holding a doctorate in plant studies and statistics, applied to phenomena of mediumship, telepathy, precognition and telekinesis, taking interest in the paranormal after attending a lecture in May of 1922 delivered by Arthur Conan Doyle extolling reputed proof for communicating with the dead. Championing the scientific method for a branch that Rhine considered an off-shoot of abnormal psychology, he later earned the ire and denunciation of the Sherlock Holmes author for exposing his favourite séance host as a fraud. While the Rhines’ exhaustive research in extrasensory perception (helped by colleague Karl Zener) have resisted reduplication, by dint of their transparency and volume should not be dismissed as pseudoscience and certainly have endured in popular and practical culture.