Robert Lyle Morris (July 9, 1942, in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania – August 12, 2004, in Edinburgh, Scotland) was an American

psychologist A psychologist is a professional who practices psychology and studies mental states, perceptual, cognitive, emotional, and social processes and behavior. Their work often involves the experimentation, observation, and interpretation of how indi ...

, parapsychologist and professor at the University of Edinburgh, where he was the first holder of the Koestler Chair of Parapsychology at the

Koestler Parapsychology Unit The Koestler Parapsychology Unit is a research group established in 1985 at the University of Edinburgh, in Scotland, to teach and conduct research concerning various aspects of parapsychology. It hosts the only endowed chair of parapsychology in ...

Education

Morris received his doctorate from

Duke University Duke University is a private research university in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist James ...

Career and research

Morris was Koestler Professor of Parapsychology from December 1985 until his death in August 2004. Morris was also known to have cooperated with the skeptic group

Committee for Skeptical Inquiry The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI), formerly known as the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), is a program within the US non-profit organization Center for Inquiry (CFI), which seeks to "prom ...

. Morris co-wrote the book ''Guidelines for Testing Psychic Claimants'' (1995) with Wiseman, published by Prometheus Books. Morris once commented in the '' New Scientist'' that "parapsychology is still a collection of half-baked explanations in search of phenomena to explain."Michael W. Friedlander. (1998). ''At the Fringes of Science''. Westview Press. p. 118. Richard Wiseman completed his PhD in psychology under the supervision of Morris in 1992.

Publications

*''Some New Techniques in Animal Psi Research''. Journal of Parapsychology 31 (December 1967). *''Obtaining Non-Random Entry Points: A Complex Psi Process''. In ''Parapsychology Today''. Edited by

J. B. Rhine Joseph Banks Rhine (September 29, 1895 – February 20, 1980), usually known as J. B. Rhine, was an American botanist who founded parapsychology as a branch of psychology, founding the parapsychology lab at Duke University, the ''Journ ...

and R. Brier. New York: Citadel Press, 1968. *''The Psychobiology of Psi''. In ''Psychic Exploration''. Edited by E. D. Mitchell. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1974. *''Biology and Psychical Research''. Edited by Gertrude R. Schmeidler. In ''Parapsychology: Its Relation to Physics, Biology Psychology, and Psychiatry''. N.P. 1976. *''Parapsychology: A Biological Perspective''. Edited by Benjamin Wolman. In ''Handbook of Parapsychology''. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1977. *''Guidelines for Testing Psychic Claimants'' Richard Wiseman">ith Richard Wiseman Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1995.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Morris, Robert L. 1942 births 2004 deaths Academics of the University of Edinburgh 20th-century American psychologists Duke University alumni Parapsychologists