J.B. Rhine and his earliest vDuke Research

Joseph Banks Rhine earned his PhD in botany and grew enamored with psychic phenomenon after hearing a lecture from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle regarding scientific evidence of communicating with the dead. Rhine's studies were intended to develop parapsychology into a discipline of science. Initially, he considered it a form of abnormal psychology, so he coined the term 'parapsychology' to distinguish the it from conventional psychology.

Dr. Rhine and his wife, Louisa Rhine worked with Professor William McDougall, Duke’s Chairman of the Psychology Department, for the purpose of studying ESP experimentally. The study involved using Zener cards, which are a deck intended for testing ESP, telepathy and precognition. They are the same size as a regular deck, with twenty-five cards, five cards each, with symbols of a plus sign, wavy lines, five pointed star, circle and five circles. Five correct guesses from a Zener deck are expected by to happen by chance.

They used precise binomial probability calculations for determining how improbable it would be to correctly guess number of cards... above the odds of chance. Later, Rhine conducted tests using dice throws, for detecting psychokinesis, PK, which is the ability of the mind to affect matter. Rhine’s experiments led to him founding the Duke Parapsychology Laboratory, where under his guidance experimental parapsychology science was born. Rhine founded the Journal of Parapsychology as a peer-reviewed professional publication to report findings from Duke and other parapsychology laboratories.