My first professional position was at the Institute for Parapsychology. After working there a few months, it became apparent that the laboratory Director who had hired me, Walter J. Levy, was fraudulenty manipulating the data. Two colleagues and I exposed him as a fraud on an experiment in which I was his coexperimenter. The end result of these events was described in J.B. Rhine's article "A Second Report on a Case of Experimenter Fraud" in the Journal of Parapsychology, 1975, pp. 306-325. A surprisingly accurate article on these events appeared in Time magazine, August 26, 1974.
Some summary documents that were written at the time as records of the events are given below. These were the basis, in part, of Rhine's article. These documents were intended to be made available to anyone who was interested in more details.
Chronology of Events in Exposing W.J. Levy (1974), J.E. Kennedy, J.W. Davis, J. Levin.
pdf
doc
Memo Summarizing Maze Research (1975), J.E. Kennedy.
pdf
doc
Summary of the Rat Implantation Work (1975), J.E. Kennedy.
pdf
doc
Summary of Egg Work (1975), J.E. Kennedy.
pdf
doc
The topic of researcher fraud appears to inspire some writers to confuse imagination with fact, and to feel that checking their imaginagive facts is unnecessary. One example is D. Scott Rogo's chapter in the book A Skeptic's Handbook of Parapsychology (1985, Edited by Paul Kurtz). Among the myriad of incorrect information, large and small, Rogo claims that Jim Davis and Jim Kennedy first became suspicious of Levy but did not obtain any evidence until Jerry Levin became involved later. However, as described in the "Chronology of Events in Exposing W.J. Levy" above that was written at the time as an offical record, Rogo had it backwards. Levin was the first to become suspicious, but it was when Kennedy later observed Levy apparently committing fraud that the exposé began. Rogo also claims that Rhine and others at the laboratory tried to suppress the reporting of the replication efforts for the fraudulent research. That is simply not true. Those of us involved formally agreed early in the process that we would wait until we had a full overview of the entire situation before publishing about it. There was never any question that the full story was going to be made known.
As another example, Chris Roe published an article in 2016 in Mindfield, 8/1, 8-17, that attempted to minimize the problem of researcher fraud in parapsychology. Roe gave a misleading description of the Levy exposé and gave the impression that fraud may have occurred only in one experiment without acknowledging the strong evidence for fraud in Levy's other studies. He also said that the line of research had not been published without noting that the research was presented at a convention and published in a book of the proceedings. Roe also discussed other writings about researcher fraud without noting the main conclusions in the writings that undetected researcher fraud is a significant problem.
As a third example, John Palmer also wrote an article that downplayed the problem of researcher fraud in parapsychology (Journal of Parapsychology, 2016, 80, 5-16) that stated multiple times that Doug Stokes was involved in the Levy exposé. However, if Palmer would have read any of the writings about the case, he would have known that Stokes was not involved. Palmer made various other comments that showed a lack of familiarity with the topic of researcher fraud.
The above articles by Roe and Palmer in 2016 also failed to recognize that detecting researcher fraud is much more difficult in parapsychology than in other areas of science because patterns in the data that are side-effects of fraud can be interpreted as psi effects rather than as evidence of fraud. However, psi is not considered a possible explanation for such patterns in other areas of science. This made me realize that many or most parapspychologists had missed the major lesson of the Levy case and motivated me to publish a paper in 2017 about fraud in parapsychology.
Additional information about researcher fraud in parapsychology and science in general
can be found in the following articles:
Experimenter Fraud: What are Appropriate Methodological
Standards? (2017), J.E. Kennedy, Journal of Parapsychology, Volume 81,
Pages 63-72.
pdf
Researcher Fraud in Experimental Parapsychology (2026),
J.E. Kennedy.
pdf
Addressing Researcher Fraud: Retrospective, Real-Time, and Preventive
Strategies—Including Legal Points and Data Management that Prevents Fraud (2024), J.E. Kennedy,
Frontiers in Research Metrics and Analytics, Volume 9, Article 1397649, Pages 1-16.
https://doi.org/10.3389/frma.2024.1397649
pdf
Is the Methodological Revolution in Psychology Over
or Just Beginning? (2016), J.E. Kennedy, Journal of Parapsychology, Volume 80,
Pages 56-68.
pdf
J.E. Kennedy (version of September 8, 2026)