Talk:Leonora Piper

Leonora Piper's fees

George E. Dorr, Piper's manager, set up six sittings with Dr. G. Stanley Hall from Clark University. A sitting with Mrs. Piper about 1910 cost $20.00. This would be equivalent to $487.80 in 2013. Mrs. Piper made about $1000.00 per year from her sittings. This would be equivalent to $24390.00 in 2013. Kazuba (talk) 11:16, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Eleanor Mildred Sidgwick

The final word on Mrs. Leonora Piper by the Society for Psychical Research in 1915 was A Contribution to the Study of the Psychology of Mrs. Piper's Trance Phenomena by Eleanor Mildred Sidgwick, Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, Volume 28, Pages 1-645, Robert Maclehose & Co., Glasgow, 1915. I think it is important to reveal the Society for Psychical Research's purpose is to understand "events and abilities commonly described as psychic or paranormal by promoting and supporting important research in this area" and to "examine allegedly paranormal phenomena in a scientific and unbiased way." It does not however, since its inception in 1882, hold any corporate opinions: SPR members have a variety of beliefs or lack thereof about the reality and nature of the phenomena studied, and some sceptics have been active members of the Society. Kazuba (talk) 20:58, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Richard Hodgson

Richard Hodgson by A.T. Baird was published by Psychic Press Limited, London. 1949. is the only biography of Hodgson. The much expanded 2nd edition, extremely scarce in any form, Spiritualism and Oliver Lodge by Dr. Charles Arthur Mercier, Mental Culture Enterprise, 1917, first edition 1897, contains a letter by Hodgson which portrays him as over-zealous and a unreliable witness in the preface according to Is Spiritualism Based on Fraud? [1] by Joseph McCabe Watts & Co., London, 1920, page 101. Mrs. Leonora Piper is also discussed by McCabe in pages 101-103 Kazuba (talk) 02:22, 22 April 2013 (UTC) Dr. Richard Hodgson, during the latter days of his life, would allow no one to enter the privacy of his room in 15 Charles Street. During these years Hodgson believed that he constantly received direct communication with the regular band of spirits in charge of Mrs. Piper. He received these messages when alone in the evening. He allowed no one to enter his room. Hodgson was afraid they would disturb the "magnetic atmosphere". (I suspect Hodgson believed he was in with contact with Jessie D. his lover who died in 1879. He was most certainly under the spell of Mrs. Leonora Piper). He told very few people about this. Kazuba (talk) 12:01, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Rebuttals

I would like to protest the removal by Lucky Louie of part of my edit yesterday, with the comment "Prescott's blog is not a WP:RS. Wikipedia isn't "neutral" regarding WP:FRINGE claims. Discuss relevance of huge blockquote on Talk, thanks."

Two sections were deleted. The first was:

Science writer and mathematician Martin Gardner dismissed Piper as a "clever charlatan" and wrote two essays detailing mundane techniques she may have used to misrepresent her abilities. However, others have been very critical of Gardner's explanations.

I referenced Prescott's blog to prove that "others have been very critical of Gardner's explanations". It is certainly a "reliable source" for that fact.

The second section was this:

===Rebuttals=== The claim that Piper used tricks is hotly contested by others. Many of her sittings were done with proxies – people who did not know the facts of the case they were inquiring about. This would make "fishing" or "cold reading" useless. Even though Gardner says she feigned unconsciousness, he himself relates that, "During one trance she ignored a small cut James made on her wrist. She was undisturbed when a needle was forced into her hand and when a French investigator stuck a feather up her nose." He also states, "While in trance her right hand rapidly scribbled messages. Frequently she pressed so hard the pencil broke. For a while she spoke and wrote simultaneously. On several occasions three discarnates came through, one speaking, one writing with one hand, one writing with the other." The initially skeptical researcher Richard Hodgson took great pains to prevent any clues reaching Mrs Piper.

More information in favor of Mrs Piper is given in a report that William James wrote around 1890, of which here is an excerpt:

I made Mrs. Piper's acquaintance in the autumn of 1885. My wife's mother, Mrs. Gibbens, had been told of her by a friend, during the previous summer, and never having seen a medium before, had paid her a visit out of curiosity. She returned with the statement that Mrs. P. had given her a long string of names of members of the family, mostly Christian names, together with facts about the persons mentioned and their relations to each other, the knowledge of which on her part was incomprehensible without supernormal powers. My sister-in-law went the next day, with still better results, as she related them. Amongst other things, the medium had accurately described the circumstances of the writer of a letter which she held against her forehead, after Miss G. had given it to her. The letter was in Italian, and its writer was known to but two persons in this country. [I may add that on a later occasion my wife and I took another letter from this same person to Mrs. P., who went on to speak of him in a way which identified him unmistakably again. On a third occasion, two years later, my sister-in-law and I being again with Mrs. P., she reverted in her trance to these letters, and then gave us the writer's name, which she said she had not been able to get on the former occasion.] But to revert to the beginning. I remember playing the esprit fort on that occasion before my feminine relatives, and seeking to explain, by simple considerations the marvellous character of the facts which they brought back. This did not, however, prevent me from going myself a few days later, in company with my wife, to get a direct personal impression. The names of none of us up to this meeting had been announced to Mrs. P., and Mrs. J. and I were, of course, careful to make no reference to our relatives who had preceded. The medium, however, when entranced, repeated most of the names of "spirits" whom she had announced on the two former occasions and added others. The names came with difficulty, and were only gradually made perfect. My wife's father's name of Gibbens was announced first as Niblin, then as Giblin. A child Herman (whom we had lost the previous year) had his name spelt out as Herrin. I think that in no case were both Christian and surnames given on this visit. But the facts predicated of the persons named made it in many instances impossible not to recognise the particular individuals who were talked about. We took particular pains on this occasion to give the Phinuit control no help over his difficulties and to ask no leading questions. In the light of subsequent experience I believe this not to be the best policy. For it often happens, if you give this trance-personage a name or some small fact for the lack of which he is brought to a standstill, that he will then start off with a copious flow of additional talk, containing in itself an abundance of "tests." My impression after this first visit was, that Mrs. P. was either possessed of supernormal powers, or knew the members of my wife's family by sight and had by some lucky coincidence become acquainted with such a multitude of their domestic circumstances as to produce the startling impression which she did. My later knowledge of her sittings and personal acquaintance with her has led me absolutely to reject the latter explanation, and to believe that she has supernormal powers.

Again, I refer to Prescott's blog as support for the fact that "The claim that Piper used tricks is hotly contested by others". I also used Prescott's blog as an aid in writing the short summary of criticisms of Gardner. It is a fact that these criticisms have been made, not just by Prescott but by others (see the comments in his blog). What I have written in my summary is not a question of "fringe science". It is simply criticisms of Gardner's chapter. I gave two quotes of Gardner himself. What exactly in what I wrote does LuckyLouie consider "fringe science"?

I then gave a rather long quote from William James explaining why he believed that Mrs Piper had supernormal powers. This is entirely relevant to an article on Leonora Piper! The article as it was gave an entirely negative view (NOT at neutral point of view at all) of Mrs Piper. For instance it called her statement in 1901 a "confession", which it wasn't. (If anything, it shows how honest she was.) It gave absolutely no explanation of why great scientific minds like that of William James were so impressed by her. It proclaimed her as a clever charlatan, using nothing but tricks.

The case of Mrs Piper is very interesting. No one claims that her "controls" were real people. And yet her abilities astounded very intelligent people (who were actually there, unlike Gardner). I get the impression (I hope I'm wrong) that LuckyLouie is more interested in "protecting" the reader from getting the full picture than in protecting the reader from reading uninteresting or untrue things. I am therefore reverting his deletion.

Eric Kvaalen (talk) 07:49, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Please read WP:RS. Dbrodbeck (talk) 10:47, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Please read WP:FRINGE, WP:UNDUE, WP:RS, WP:GEVAL etc. Prescott is apparently a fiction writer whose hobby is parapsychology. His blog just isn't a reliable source. And the "Career" section of the article already summarizes William James's beliefs in Piper's powers so there is no need for an inflated section of text from a primary source to "rebut" anything. - LuckyLouie (talk) 12:36, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

I have already addressed the concerns you raise. You haven't given a convincing rebuttal to my point that the article was not neutral. So I'm reverting your reversion. Eric Kvaalen (talk) 10:01, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

There is no consensus that you have 'addressed the concerns'. I will be reverting your edit. Dbrodbeck (talk) 11:07, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

This is facetious, he clearly addressed the concerns by rewriting the entire paragraph. Shii (tock) 15:16, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

No I was not being facetious, there is no consensus for the addition. Dbrodbeck (talk) 13:15, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

What I see from [2] is the removal of sourced content and the addition of an excessively large quote from a fringe source, IRWolfie- (talk) 18:41, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

I see a rewriting of the lede that makes almost exactly the same statements (the sources can be restored) and the addition of a properly sized quote from William James. Shii (tock) 02:54, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

You changed the meaning of the sentences quite drastically, so you did not rewrite "the lede that makes almost exactly the same statements", IRWolfie- (talk) 10:47, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

[3] the edit summary "removed offending word" is an edit summary which is at least an understatement and, in my opinion, is actually in violation of WP:REVTALK. I recommend looking into disciplinary action for User:Shii.jps (talk) 18:53, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

I did remove the offending word. I don't see why my edit is being reverted. The James quote is not POV pushinrg. You can see from the quote what kind of behavior he engaged in and make your own conclusion about whether it was scientifically rigorous. James is one of the most important intellectuals of the turn of the 20th century and reverting the quote demands an explanation. Shii (tock) 02:17, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

Your revert was misleading because you did a lot more than removing a word. You have chosen a primary source and wish to quote it because you wish to create the impression of scientific rigour, that violates WP:NPOV/WP:FRINGE. IRWolfie- (talk) 10:50, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

"you wish to create the impression of scientific rigour" Nice violation of WP:AGF. I had an unpleasant intuition that WP:FTN is a way to summon people to an article who will make assumptions about the belief systems of editors and revert the article accordingly, with total disregard to whether the article has been improved, and I have seen nothing to disprove that hunch. Am I trying to "create impressions"? No, and you have no right to assume that. I'm trying to present important information. Not all important information is written by amateur critics trying to posthumously make a case for trickery. How about you broaden your perspective just a little bit. You see the subject of this article as some minor fraud who was unveiled by Martin Gardner. I see the subject of the article as a notable late Victorian woman who attracted the interest of prominent men of her time, who willingly underwent many tests, and who did not have a reputation for trickery during her lifetime, regardless of the metaphysical question of whether psychic powers exist, which Wikipedia should not be supporting. How about you actually read the James quote I inserted. Does it sound to you like "the impression of scientific rigor"? Seriously? The quote helps us understand exactly what kind of communication was encouraged in the Spiritualist movement, and that James was familiar with this and went along with it. So what's your problem? Shii (tock) 12:57, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

" Nice violation of WP:AGF. I had an unpleasant intuition that ..." " So what's your problem?" etc, do you not see an element of hypocrisy there? The information which is important will be in secondary sources. We do not select the "important information" from primary sources ourselves, IRWolfie- (talk) 13:35, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

I agree that secondary sources must be used to express the degree of James' beliefs, which the article presently does. I have read the SPR-primary-sourced quote Shii wished to include, and even though cut down from Kvallen's version, it appears to me a rather wordy ramble about Piper's use of family names and interactions with spirit guides, and does not add anything significant that secondary sources haven't already been used to express. Is there some other important information about James and Piper you feel is missing from the article, Shii? - LuckyLouie (talk) 22:07, 25 August 2013 (UTC) 14:14, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

It should go into more detail about her life in some way; right now it has too much posthumous speculation and not enough biographical detail. The means to accomplish this is not very important to me. I did not write the content myself, I just took stuff from the talk page that seemed relevant and would grow the article. If you want to write your own alternative go ahead. Shii (tock) 19:01, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

These are not "rebuttals", they are dodgy quote-mines that have been taken out of context. William James was no friend of the spiritualists, he rejected that view. As the article reads "James did not believe that Piper was in contact with spirits. After evaluating sixty-nine reports of Piper's mediumship he considered the hypothesis of telepathy as well as Piper obtaining information about her sitters by natural means such as her memory recalling information. According to James the "spirit-contol" hypothesis of her mediumship was incoherent, irrelevant and in cases demonstrably false." Else where James had written Piper's controls were "dream creations" and in other cases even admitted she would fish for information. I highly recommend checking out the books by Edward Clodd, Joseph McCabe, Walter Mann and Ivor Lloyd Tuckett as they have well and truly debunked the mediumship of Piper. She was not in contact with spirits or utilizing telepathy. She was a clever fraud. Unfortunately the spiritualists never choose to read the skeptical literature which is rather ignorant in this era, as most of these books are online free. Fodor Fan (talk) 16:48, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

Piper's maid

My friend David from Germany recently sent me this article (this is not all of it):

Herman H. Spitz, “Contemporary Challenges to William James's White Crow,” Skeptical Inquirer 28, no. 1 (2004): 53. 84.

"The White Crow

Any discussion of James's spiritualistic bent must begin with Mrs. Piper. James (1890) wrote that he first met her in the Autumn of 1885, and Mrs. Piper's description of how they met is particularly illuminating. "My maid of all work told a friend who was a servant in the household of Professor William James, of Harvard, that I went into 'queer sleeps,' in which I said many 'strange things.' Professor James recognized that I was what is called a psychic, and took steps to make my acquaintance" (Piper 1902, 143). If this was true there would have been an obvious conduit from the James household to Mrs. Piper, and her trance state revelations about the James family, which so impressed James, would have had a more mundane source than the spirit world. Mrs. Piper's daughter, Alta Piper, told a somewhat different story. Her grandparents had a maid whose sister worked in a Boston home frequently visited by James's mother-in-law, Mrs. Gibbens (Alta Piper spelled it Gibbins). Hearing, through this channel, marvelous tales about Mrs. Piper, Mrs. Gibbens requested and received a sitting that so impressed her that she arranged a sitting for her daughter, James's wife, "the results of which appeared equally, if not more, surprising than her own" (A. Piper 1929, 22).

James's (1890) version of how he met Mrs. Piper generally supports her daughter's description, although he made no mention of the role played by the housekeepers. When he was told of Mrs. Piper's powers he went with his wife, "to get a direct personal impression" (652). Whatever the specific connection between the servants, "It is thus possible that Mrs. Piper's knowledge of the James family was acquired from the gossip of servants and that the whole mystery rests on the failure of the people upstairs to realize that servants [downstairs] also have ears" (Burkhardt and Bowers 1986, 397)."

I have added a small section to the article about this, Massimo Polidoro also makes reference to it. Fodor Fan (talk) 16:42, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

Dean Connor

My friend sent me this source, it mentions the case of Dean Connor:

"Leonore Piper lived in the United States around the turn of the century. Through her, a number of "spirits" related stories of persons and events concerning which Leonora Piper denied any knowledge. However, a number of incidents cast doubt on her ability to contact the dead. For example, she gained some degree of fame with a "spirit" revelation about the circumstances of the death of a man called Dean Connor. However, when the revelation was finally checked out, it turned out to be grossly unreliable. In another incident, the family of George Pellew-whose departed spirit supposedly conveyed much of the news of the "other world" to Leonore- was shown the information furnished by "Pellew" about himself; they judged it to be highly inaccurate. On another occasion, Leonore claimed to have contacted the spirit of Bessie Beals, who was a fictitious person invented on the spur of the moment by the psychologist G. Stanley Hall. Later in her life, Leonore Piper made the following statement: I cannot see but that it must have been an unconscious expression of my subliminal self... it seems to me that there is no evidence of sufficient scientific value to warrant acceptance of the spiritualist hypothesis." Andrew Neher. (2011). Paranormal and Transcendental Experience: A Psychological Examination. Dover Publications. pp. 217-218

As you can see the Dean Connor case was a large embarrassment to Piper's mediumship and the spiritualists, all the details she gave were wrong. I have had a look for information on this, no spiritualist books mentions it, they like to ignore it. Only a handful of skeptical mention it. Milbourne Christopher in his book Search for the Soul mentions the case, but the most detailed is Joseph Rinn Sixty Years of Psychical Research. As far as I know the user Kazuba (talk · contribs) has the Rinn book, perhaps he can help. Fodor Fan (talk) 17:50, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

Edward Clodd in his book The Question: A Brief History and Examination of Modern Spiritualism. pp. 208-209 mentions the Dean Connor case, I have added a section on it. Fodor Fan (talk) 22:26, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

Edit was removed

My edit, which presented a simple fact regarding Martin Gardner was removed by pseudoskeptic Barney. This is not science, it is fundamentalism. 159.118.158.122 (talk) 17:25, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

Yes it was. I am not being pseudosceptical - it simply wasn't a good edit. Barney the barney barney (talk) 17:28, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

Incorrect. I provided references and links. Your removal is prejudicial and the only reason you can get away with it is because editorial control of this subject by Wikipedia has been handed over to the Skeptic's Society and pseudoskeptics like yourself Barney. You believe your practicing an objective viewpoint but nothing could be further from the truth. Regards. 159.118.158.122 (talk) 17:36, 5 March 2014 (UTC)