Death of a parapsychologist

Guardian Unlimited | Obituaries | John Beloff

Anyone with more than a passing knowledge of parapsychology would have heard of the name of John Beloff. He's now off finding out first hand if there is life after death.

From his obituary above comes this piece of irony:

By the time Beloff visited Rhine, he was already acquiring a reputation as a psi-inhibitory experimenter - that is, an experimenter whose presence seemed to discourage the appearance of evidence for psychic functioning. None of his experiments yielded positive results.

He sounds just the right sort of person for this line of inquiry, though:

In an area where passions run high and opinions too often are guided by prejudice, Beloff relied on data and reason. He had no theistic inclinations; and always demonstrated an even-handed approach to the material and to opposing points of view. So although he never overtly encountered the paranormal first-hand, and although he never succeeded in obtaining evidence for psychic functioning in his own experiments, he saw no choice but to accept at least some of the evidence for ESP, PK, and survival of death.