Note 18 — THE SINCLAIR EXPERIMENTS FOR TELEPATHY

Mr. Sinclair says, “Now why should an obelisk go on a jag, and have little circles at its base? The answer appears to be: it inherited the curves from the previous fish-hook, and the little circles from the next drawing.”

It is psychologically likely that a drawing just before made or even looked at sometimes unfortunately influences a succeeding drawing. The most interesting apparent example of this is Figure 8a made just after Mrs. Sinclair had been looking at the several concentric circles of her last reproduction in the Sinclair-Irwin Group. First she got a whirl of circles, then the whirl assumed the shape of a triangle, then came two angles differently characterized, and finally the angles multiplied and constituted a star duplicating the original. And a careful study makes it impossible to doubt that there were anticipations. Some are too striking to be likely as accidents in the same series, and in some cases Mrs. Sinclair announced ahead that such-and-such an object would be found among the originals, and was right. Indeed, in cases where a set of originals was not viewed by the agent one by one, as the tests were proceeding, but were submitted in a heap together, it is a wonder that as a general rule the correspondences were found in due order, and we are hardly able to explain it. I do not, however, count any feature theoretically left over from the previous drawing as evidential, but only as an interesting glimpse into the mental processes. Neither does Mr. Sinclair, as I understand him. Nor do I reckon any “anticipation” as evidential, unless it was announced in advance, and then only in a reduced degree. And Mr. Sinclair’s principles of estimation were nearly the same. For he says (the italics mine):

“Manifestly, if I grant the right to more than one guess, I am increasing the chances of guesswork, and correspondingly reducing the significance of the totals. What I have done is this: where such cases have occurred, I have called them total failures, except in a few cases, where the description was so detailed and exact as to be overwhelming—as in the case of this ‘Happy Hooligan.’ Even so, I have not called it a complete success, only a partial success. In order to be classified as a complete success, my wife’s drawing must have been made for the particular drawing of mine which she had in her hand at that time; and throughout this account, the reader is to understand that every drawing presented was made in connection with the particular drawing printed alongside it—except in cases where I expressly state otherwise.”