science

Mental Radio

Mental Radio is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Mental Radio rather than just read about it. In short: Mental Radio: Does it work, and how? (1930) is a book by American author Upton Sinclair, self-published initially.

Key takeaways

Mental Radio belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Mental Radio to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Mental Radio from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Mental Radio: Does it work, and how? (1930) is a book by American author Upton Sinclair, self-published initially. The book documents Sinclair's tests of his second wife, Mary Craig Sinclair's psychic abilities during a period of depression and interest in the occult. Mary attempted to replicate 290 drawings made by her brother, with Sinclair claiming she successfully duplicated 65, had 155 "partial successes", and 70 failures. The experiments lacked a controlled scientific environment. The German edition of the book included a preface by Albert Einstein, who praised Sinclair's writing. In 1932, psychical researcher Walter Franklin Prince conducted an analysis of the results and believed that telepathy had been demonstrated in Sinclair's data. Prince's analysis was published as "The Sinclair Experiments for Telepathy" in Part I of Bulletin XVI of the Boston Society for Psychical Research in April 1932 and included in the book's addendum.

Critical reception Sinclair has been criticized for his "credulous" belief in occult and pseudoscience topics. Martin Gardner wrote "As Mental Radio stands, it is a highly unsatisfactory account of conditions surrounding the clairvoyancy tests. Throughout his entire life, Sinclair has been a gullible victim of mediums and psychics." Gardner also pointed out that the possibility of sensory leakage during experiments had not been ruled out:

In the first place, an intuitive wife, who knows her husband intimately, may be able to guess with a fair degree of accuracy what he is likely to draw—particularly if the picture is related to some freshly recalled event the two experienced in common. At first, simple pictures like chairs and tables would likely predominate, but as these are exhausted, the field of choice narrows and pictures are more likely to be suggested by recent experiences. It is also possible that Sinclair may have given conversational hints during some of the tests—hints which in his strong will to believe, he would promptly forget about. Also, one must not rule out the possibility that in many tests, made across the width of a room, Mrs. Sinclair may have seen the wiggling of the top of a pencil, or arm movements, which would convey to her unconscious a rough notion of the drawing. When Mrs. Sinclair was tested by William McDougall under different conditions, the results were unsatisfactory.

References

Further reading Leon Harris (1975). Upton Sinclair, American Rebel. Crowell.

External links Full text of Mental Radio at HathiTrust Digital Library

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Mental Radio

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Mental Radio claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Mental Radio before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Mental Radio ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Mental Radio

In research: Mental Radio appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Mental Radio in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Mental Radio is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1930 non-fiction books, Books by Upton Sinclair, Parapsychology, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Mental Radio outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Mental Radio in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Mental Radio means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Mental Radio out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Mental Radio in simple terms?

Mental Radio: Does it work, and how? (1930) is a book by American author Upton Sinclair, self-published initially.

Why does Mental Radio matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Mental Radio?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Mental Radio.