The Ghost Hunters - Deborah Blum [48]
Not that the experiments yet came near any such exalted conclusions. But they did consistently suggest that person-to-person communication occurred outside the obvious channels. Myers and Gurney themselves had conducted a neat little series of tests, exploring the ability to transmit a sensation such as taste. The tests were modeled after William Barrett’s suggestion that hypnosis might make a person a better “receiver,” more able to concentrate on reception.
As Gurney described them, some of his more tantalizing results came from studies with two young men, identified only as A, who was put in a hypnotic trance, and B. Both subjects were concealed from each other by a screen. Gurney made no effort to prepare either man for the experiments. He simply brought a package into the test room. The box contained some small vials, each packed with a strong-tasting material. He administered the substances, one at a time, to his two subjects. The result was a sometimes-comical series of exchanges.
“I suddenly and silently gave [B] some salt, motioned to him to put it in his mouth. He did so; and [A] instantly and loudly exclaimed ‘What’s this salt stuff?’ ” Gurney then provided sugar. His hypnotized subject sighed with relief, “Sweeter, not so bad as before.” When Gurney once again gave B a spoonful of salt, A was exasperated: “I told you I liked sweet things, not salt—such a mixture.”
It was the preciseness of these experiments that bothered Newcomb. They seemed to him too good to be true. That went not just for Gurney’s taste tests, but other SPR experiments as well. He especially disliked a series of tests in which one participant was asked to draw a picture and then mentally transmit it. A second participant, sitting blindfolded, was asked to draw the image “received.”
The original drawings were kept simple: the outline of a goblet, the wooden frame of a chair, a fatheaded fish. So were the companion drawings, those sketched out by the receivers. But they were still recognizably fish or furniture, only a little more crooked than the original work. That was what Newcomb found so unlikely, that a person blindfolded could draw so relatively accurately. Therefore he suspected cheating.
By this time, William James had grown as exasperated with Newcomb as Gurney was. James also wrote to Science, attacking Newcomb’s comments on the SPR: “To brand as dupes and enthusiasts a set of gentlemen as careful as these English investigators have proved to be, seems to me singularly unjust.”
And then he dismantled Newcomb’s criticisms, almost point by point. Despite Newcomb’s new ASPR title, James stressed, the gentleman had no experience in these matters. He had not done any observation himself, but merely complained about the work of others. Further, if Newcomb had bothered to test his misgiving about the drawings, he would have seen how feeble it was. James had made a point of checking his own ability to draw blindfolded. With a cloth over his eyes, he found that he could sketch outlines of fish and fruit as well, if not better, than the ones Newcomb criticized. To prove it,