Joseph Gaither Pratt

Joseph Gaither Pratt (August 31, 1910 – November 3, 1979) was an American psychologist who specialized in the field of parapsychology.

Among his research interests were extrasensory perception, psychokinesis, mediumship and poltergeists.

J. G. Pratt was born on August 31, 1910, at Winston-Salem in the Piedmont section of North Carolina, the fourth among 10 children of a large farming family.

From an early age, he planned to become a Methodist minister.

He commenced his university studies in 1928 at Trinity College, Durham, in what was to become Duke University's School of Religion, and from which he obtained his B.A. in 1931.

Pratt came to realize that "my mind was not suited to a profession in which the answers to the great questions regarding man and his relation to the universe are largely taken on faith".

Much of Pratt's research was conducted while he was associated with J. B. Rhine's Parapsychology Laboratory at Duke University (1932–1964), and he also conducted research while associated with Columbia University (1935–1937), under Gardner Murphy, and the University of Virginia (1964–1975).

Pratt was co-experimenter in the Pearce–Pratt and Pratt–Woodruff tests that are considered by some parapsychologists to have provided evidence for psi, though critics discovered flaws in the experiments.

Accordingly, in 1932, he entered Duke's Department of Psychology, from which he graduated with a M.A. in 1933, and a Ph.D. in 1936.

His doctoral thesis was concerned with the psychology of learning, as informed by his experiments on white rats.

Pratt and the divinity student Hubert Pearce performed a long distance ESP experiment at the Duke University in 37 sittings between August 1933 and March 1934.

For the experiment Pratt positioned himself in a room in the physics building whilst Pearce went to the library.

Pratt took a pack of ESP cards and after shuffling them placed it facedown on the table.

When the experiment started he took the top card and placed it face down on a book.

After a minute the card would be transferred to the table and a second card from the pack would be placed on the book.

After a run of twenty-five cards and a short break the same procedure was followed by a second pack.

In the library Pearce would guess to identify each card on the book.

Both Pearce and Pratt made a copy of their records which were sent to Joseph Rhine's office.

In 37 sittings they both produced 558 hits out of 1,850 trials.

Rhine was present at only three of the sittings in Pratt's room as an observer.

Pratt spent two of his early academic years (1935–1937) at Columbia University, upon the invitation of Gardner Murphy to there seek to replicate the results of forced-choice ESP experiments, as offered by J. B. Rhine at Duke University.

From 1937, Pratt worked as Research Associate, and then as Assistant Director, of the Parapsychology Laboratory at Duke University, under Rhine.

He was the principal author of the publication Extrasensory Perception After Sixty Years (1940).

He was the principal author of an article in the journal Nature that offered a statistical summary of almost a decade of experiments with the selected participant, Pavel Štěpánek.

A brief hiatus to his research occurred from 1942 to 1946, while he served in the U.S. Navy.

Pratt was President of the Parapsychological Association in 1960.

In 1960, C. E. M. Hansel investigated the Duke Campus and found that it would have been easy for Pearce to have left the library during the experiment to approach Pratt's room and watch him turn over the cards.

According to John Sladek "The room had a clear window giving on to the corridor, a trap door with a hole in it situated right above Pratt's table and Hansel found that he could stand up on the chair in the corridor and peer through a crack at the top of the door to see the cards."

Rhine and Pratt responded to the criticisms claiming that during three of the sittings Rhine was present in the room and could see the subject from the window enter the library.

Hansel responded by questioning how Rhine could have been watching everything at once.

If he had been looking out the window for Pearce then Pratt could have faked his records and if he was watching Pratt then Pearce may have sneaked out of the library and into Pratt's room.

Paul Kurtz wrote that "Pratt could easily have peeked at the Zener cards by sneaking out of the library to the sender's office, or by using an accomplice."

Hansel came to the conclusion that the possibility of trickery had not been ruled out in the experiment, the subject was left unobserved in the library, the room used by Pratt was not screened to make it impossible for outsiders to see inside and the reports themselves contained conflicting statements so because of these factors the experiment could not be regarded as supplying evidence of ESP.

Pratt continued as Assistant Director of the Parapsychology Laboratory until, in 1964, Rhine reorganized the Laboratory outside of Duke University, and within his own Foundation for Research on the Nature of Man.

From this point onwards, Pratt maintained a professional relationship with the University of Virginia.

In 1970, together with Jürgen Keil, of the University of Tasmania, he was awarded the Parapsychology Laboratory's McDougall award for their research with the selected participant Pavel Štěpánek.

His later years were somewhat concerned by attentions to the claims of fraud against his one-time research associate, S. G. Soal.

Pratt died on November 3, 1979.

His archives are stored at Duke University, and within the historical collections section of the medical library at the University of Virginia.

Pratt's granddaughter is American magazine editor, Jane Pratt.