ABSTRACT
In modern times, the most significant bid for the academic normalization of parapsychology occurred in the decade of the 1930’s and was associated with the first work of J. B. Rhine at Duke University. Rhine’s work engendered considerable controversy in the 1930’s, but by the end of the decade parapsychology had achieved the peripheral acceptance which at best characterizes the field. In general approach and format, Rhine’s experiments conformed closely to the earlier tradition of experimentation. Rhine’s experimental results were unprecedented among psychical researchers by virtue of the extraordinary success he claimed in discovering gifted psychics among the Duke Student body. The controversy over statistical methods suggests some perhaps unexpected ways in which Rhine’s work was being perceived as unconventional in the 1930’s. Hidden behind their objections, of course, lay an even more general skepticism of Rhine’s claims to unprecedented success in demonstrating the existence of psychic abilities such as telepathy and clairvoyance.
