Super-Sensory Superstition

THE high jinks of the telepathy advocates have reached a new high, and promise to go higher, through the discovery, in London, of a man whose feats in "thought transference" have baffled observers.

The new wonder-worker is known as B.S., and what he cannot do in reading five little cards at a distance wouldn't interest a professional card sharp. So at least we gather from the Extra-sensory-perceptionists.

Waldemar Kaempffert, who writes for the New York Times and swallows this stuff, describes the experiments in an item entitled, "A London Subject Shows Ability to Penetrate the Future."

"The tests", says he, "consisted in asking B.S. to identify which of five cards, each with a different animal picture on it, was being looked at by a sender in an adjoining room. With certain senders B.S. achieved significantly high scores, well above chance, and did so quite consistently from session to session. With other senders he could get nothing. The most curious thing about B.S. was that with certain senders he would get ahead of the actual card selected and call the one which was to be selected next."

You are supposed to believe all this, of course, as accomplished by "telepathy", and to dismiss at once, as vulgar and crude, any thoughts you may entertain about conniving and confederates. Cheating, as you know, has never happened, or cannot happen in "psychical research". The record is as lily-white as a black sheep.

Be it remembered that B.S., the arch-telepathist, can do his stunts only with "certain senders" -- with other senders "he could get nothing". Do not ask why. The "certain senders" may know more about the matter than they care to reveal. There is always a chance to follow a pre-arranged order of cards.

And why should only five measley "animal" cards be used? Why not a 52 deck? If "certain senders" can transmit a thought image to B.S., why not a heart or a spade? Yet this stuff is called "precognition or prophecy". The list of fancy names the ESP publicity experts use has not run out.

It would be amusing, as our friend Joseph Rinn suggested on a similar occasion, to substitute, without the telepathists knowing it, the original pack of picture cards with a deck of blank-faced cards, and watch him call off "symbols" that weren't there!

This, by the way, would be a super type of supersensitivity in extra sensory perception - - seeing "symbols" that aren't on the cards.

We suggest for this the name of Super-super-Clairvoyance.

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