One of the most famous early parapsychologists was Joseph Banks Rhine.  He didn’t initially set out to study psychic powers. He was trained as a botanist at the University of Chicago. His life would change after he had a fateful encounter with none other than Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Doyle, who was born May 22, 1859, is best known as the author who created the character of Sherlock Holmes.  Later in his life, Doyle became a major advocate of Spiritualism.  In 1922 he embarked on a multi-city tour of the United States in an effort to popularize it.

Doyle gave two talks in Chicago that year.  On May 23, 1922 his talk was entitled “Proofs of Immortality” and on May 26 his second talk was titled “Recent Psychic Evidence”. It was at this talk that Doyle exhibited newly obtained spirit photographs and talked about other alleged spriit evidence such as ectoplasm.

In later interviews, Rhine recounted having seen Doyle speak in Chicago.  He was very impressed that someone as accomplished as Doyle was a believer.  This inspired Rhine to enter the field of parapsychology.  Rhine established a major laboratory to research it at Duke University.

In July 1926, Rhine attended a single seance given by the famous Boston medium known as “Margery”, whose real name was Mina Crandon.  He was not impressed.  He wrote a paper published in the “Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology” in 1927 that debunked her as a fraud.

Some controversy ensued.  Margery herself denounced the criticism as “a feeble effort, through publicity, to get ‘on the map’”.  Supporters of Margery came to her defense in the Boston newspapers and elsewhere.  

One Margery supporter accused Rhine of “colossal impertinence”, especially since he had only attended a single seance.  This supporter went on at length about Margery’s merits in a letter to the Boston Herald on March 4, 1927.

The letter's author was none other than Arthur Conan Doyle.  Rhine’s inspiration had (just five years later) become his most vocal critic.

Legend has it that Doyle did not just write a letter.  Several histories of parapsychology claim that he was so incensed by Rhine’s paper that he took out a display ad in the Boston newspapers, with a thick black border and simple block letters that said:

J.B. RHINE IS A MONUMENTAL ASS

In my research for Skeptic History, I’ve been trying to discover exactly when this ad actually ran in the Boston Herald or other newspapers.  I’ve had no luck so far.  Perhaps it is just a legend?

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(This is adapted from a segment that originally appeared on the Skepticality podcast episode #156)

 

Tim Farley is a Research Fellow for JREF.