Page 78 - The Art and Science of Analog Circuit Design

Richard P. Feynman

not referred to, because he didn't discover anything about the rats. In
fact, he discovered all the things you have to do to discover something
about rats. But not paying attention to experiments like that is a charac-
teristic of cargo cult science.
Another example is the ESP experiments of Mr. Rhine, and other peo-
ple. As various people have made criticisms—and they themselves have
made criticisms of their own experiments—they improve the techniques
so that the effects are smaller, and smaller, and smaller until they gradu-
ally disappear. All the parapsychoiogists are looking for some experiment
that can be repeated—that you can do again and get the same effect—
statistically, even. They ran a million rats—no, it's people this time—
they do a lot of things and get a certain statistical effect. Next time they
try it they don't get it any more. And now you find a man saying that it is
an irrelevant demand to expect a repeatable experiment. This is science?
This man also speaks about a new institution, in a talk in which he was
resigning as Director of the Institute of Parapsychology. And, in telling
people what to do next, he says that one of the things they have to do is
be sure they only train students who have shown their ability to get PSI
results to an acceptable extent—not to waste their time on those ambi-
tious and interested students who get only chance results. It is very dan-
gerous to have such a policy in teaching—to teach students only how to
get certain results, rather than how to do an experiment with scientific
integrity.
So I have just one wish for you—the good luck to be somewhere
where you are free to maintain the kind of integrity I have described, and
where you do not feel forced by a need to maintain your position in the
organization, or financial support, or so on, to lose your integrity. May
you have that freedom.

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