Robert H. Thouless

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British academic Robert H. Thouless (?-1984[1]) is best known as the author of Straight and Crooked Thinking (1953), which describes flaws in reasoning and argument.

Career

He was a lecturer in psychology at Manchester, Glasgow, and the University of Cambridge.

He wrote on psychic phenomena, not as an advocate but describing a scientific approach to studying something which is not known with certainty to exist. His own experiments did not confirm the results of J.B. Rhine and he criticised the experimental protocols of previous experimenters. He is credited with introducing the word "psi" as a neutral term for parapsychological phenomena in a 1942 article in the British Journal of Psychology.

Positions

• He served as President of the Society for Psychical Research from 1942 to 1944
• In 1947 he was elected President of the British Psychological Society

External links

• Thirty-eight dishonest tricks - extract from Straight and Crooked Thinking.
• An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural - describes Thouless' test for survival after death.
• Survival After Death website - articles by Thouless on a scientific approach to psychic phenomena.