Parapsychology

Parapsychology is the study of alleged psychic phenomena

(extrasensory perception, as in telepathy, precognition, clairvoyance,
psychokinesis, a.k.a. telekinesis, and psychometry) and other
paranormal claims, for example related to near-death experiences,
synchronicity, apparitional experiences, etc. It is considered to be
pseudoscience by a vast majority of mainstream scientists, in part
because, in addition to a lack of replicable empirical evidence,
parapsychological claims simply cannot be true "unless the rest of
science isn't."[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]

Parapsychology research almost never appears in mainstream science

journals.[9] Parapsychology has been criticised for continuing
investigation despite being unable to provide convincing evidence for
the existence of any psychic phenomena after more than a century of
research.[10][11]

Contents
Photographs which purportedly
Terminology
depicted ghosts or spirits were
History popular during the 19th century.
Early physical research
Rhine era
Establishment of the Parapsychological Association
Stargate Project
1970s and 1980s
Modern era
Research
Scope
Experimental research
Ganzfeld
Remote viewing
Psychokinesis on random number generators
Direct mental interactions with living systems
Dream telepathy
Near-death experiences
Reincarnation research
Scientific reception
Evaluation
Physics
Pseudoscience
Fraud
Criticism of experimental results
 Selection bias and meta-analysis
Anomalistic psychology
Skeptics organizations
See also
References
Further reading
External links

Terminology
The term parapsychology was coined in 1889 by philosopher Max Dessoir as the German
"parapsychologie."[12][13] It was adopted by J. B. Rhine in the 1930s as a replacement for the term psychical
research in order to indicate a significant shift toward experimental methodology and academic discipline.[14]
The term originates from the Greek: παρά para meaning "alongside", and psychology.

In parapsychology, psi is the unknown factor in extrasensory perception and psychokinesis experiences that is
not explained by known physical or biological mechanisms.[15][16] The term is derived from the Greek ψ psi,
23rd letter of the Greek alphabet and the initial letter of the Greek ψυχή psyche, "mind, soul".[17][18] The term
was coined by biologist Bertold Wiesner, and first used by psychologist Robert Thouless in a 1942 article
published in the British Journal of Psychology.[19]

The Parapsychological Association divides psi into two main categories: psi-gamma for extrasensory
perception and psi-kappa for psychokinesis.[18] In popular culture, "psi" has become more and more
synonymous with special psychic, mental, and "psionic" abilities and powers.

History

Early physical research

In 1853, the chemist Robert Hare conducted experiments with mediums and
reported positive results.[20] Other researchers such as Frank Podmore
highlighted flaws in his experiments, such as lack of controls to prevent
trickery.[21][22] Agenor de Gasparin conducted early experiments into table-
tipping. Over a period of five months in 1853 he declared the experiments a
success being the result of an "ectenic force". Critics noted that the conditions
were insufficient to prevent trickery. For example, the knees of the sitters may
have been employed to move the table and no experimenter was watching
above and below the table simultaneously.[23]

The German astrophysicist Johann Karl Friedrich Zöllner tested the medium
Henry Slade in 1877. According to Zöllner some of the experiments were a
success.[24] However, flaws in the experiments were discovered and critics
have suggested that Slade was a fraud who performed trickery in the Henry Slade with Zöllner
experiments.[25][26]
The Society for Psychical Research (SPR) was founded in London in 1882. Its formation was the first
systematic effort to organize scientists and scholars to investigate paranormal phenomena. Early membership
included philosophers, scholars, scientists, educators and politicians, such as Henry Sidgwick, Arthur Balfour,
William Crookes, Rufus Osgood Mason and Nobel Laureate Charles Richet.[27] Presidents of the Society
included, in addition to Richet, Eleanor Sidgwick and William James, and subsequently Nobel Laureates
Henri Bergson and Lord Rayleigh, and philosopher C. D. Broad.[28]

Areas of study included telepathy, hypnotism, Reichenbach's phenomena, apparitions, hauntings, and the
physical aspects of Spiritualism such as table-tilting, materialization and apportation.[29][30] In the 1880s, the
Society investigated apparitional experiences and hallucinations in the sane. Among the first important works
was the two-volume publication in 1886, Phantasms of the Living which was largely criticized by scholars.[31]
In 1894, the Census of Hallucinations was published which sampled 17,000 people. Out of these, 1,684
persons admitted to having experienced a hallucination of an apparition.[32] The SPR became the model for
similar societies in other European countries and the United States during the late 19th century.

Early clairvoyance experiments were reported in 1884 by Charles Richet. Playing cards were enclosed in
envelopes and a subject put under hypnosis attempted to identify them. The subject was reported to have been
successful in a series of 133 trials but the results dropped to chance level when performed before a group of
scientists in Cambridge. J. M. Peirce and E. C. Pickering reported a similar experiment in which they tested 36
subjects over 23,384 trials which did not obtain above chance scores.[33]

In 1881, Eleanor Sidgwick revealed the fraudulent methods that spirit photographers such as Édouard Isidore
Buguet, Frederic Hudson and William H. Mumler had utilized.[34] During the late nineteenth century many
fraudulent mediums were exposed by SPR investigators.[35]

Largely due to the support of psychologist William James, the American Society for Psychical Research
(ASPR) opened its doors in Boston in 1885, moving to New York City in 1905 under the leadership of James
H. Hyslop.[36] Notable cases investigated by Walter Franklin Prince of the ASPR in the early 20th century
included Pierre L. O. A. Keeler, the Great Amherst Mystery and Patience Worth.[37][38]

Rhine era

In 1911, Stanford University became the first academic institution in the United States to study extrasensory
perception (ESP) and psychokinesis (PK) in a laboratory setting. The effort was headed by psychologist John
Edgar Coover, and was supported by funds donated by Thomas Welton Stanford, brother of the university's
founder. After conducting approximately 10,000 experiments, Coover concluded "statistical treatments of the
data fail to reveal any cause beyond chance."[39]

In 1930, Duke University became the second major U.S. academic institution to engage in the critical study of
ESP and psychokinesis in the laboratory. Under the guidance of psychologist William McDougall, and with
the help of others in the department—including psychologists Karl Zener, Joseph B. Rhine, and Louisa E.
Rhine—laboratory ESP experiments using volunteer subjects from the undergraduate student body began. As
opposed to the approaches of psychical research, which generally sought qualitative evidence for paranormal
phenomena, the experiments at Duke University proffered a quantitative, statistical approach using cards and
dice. As a consequence of the ESP experiments at Duke, standard laboratory procedures for the testing of ESP
developed and came to be adopted by interested researchers throughout the world.[36]

George Estabrooks conducted an ESP experiment using cards in 1927. Harvard students were used as the
subjects. Estabrooks acted as the sender with the guesser in an adjoining room. In total 2,300 trials were
conducted. When the subjects were sent to a distant room with insulation the scores dropped to chance level.
Attempts to repeat the experiment also failed.[33]
The publication of J. B. Rhine's book, New Frontiers of the Mind (1937) brought the laboratory's findings to
the general public. In his book, Rhine popularized the word "parapsychology", which psychologist Max
Dessoir had coined over 40 years earlier, to describe the research conducted at Duke. Rhine also founded an
autonomous Parapsychology Laboratory within Duke and started the Journal of Parapsychology, which he
co-edited with McDougall.[36]

Rhine, along with associate Karl Zener, had developed a

statistical system of testing for ESP that involved subjects
guessing what symbol, out of five possible symbols, would
appear when going through a special deck of cards designed
for this purpose. A percentage of correct guesses (or hits)
significantly above 20% was perceived as higher than
chance and indicative of psychic ability. Rhine stated in his Early parapsychological research employed the
first book, Extrasensory Perception (1934), that after 90,000 use of Zener cards in experiments designed to
trials, he felt ESP is "an actual and demonstrable test for the existence of telepathic
communication, or clairvoyant or precognitive
occurrence".[40]
perception.
Irish medium and parapsychologist, Eileen J. Garrett, was
tested by Rhine at Duke University in 1933 with Zener
cards. Certain symbols that were placed on the cards and sealed in an envelope, and she was asked to guess
their contents. She performed poorly and later criticized the tests by claiming the cards lacked a psychic energy
called "energy stimulus" and that she could not perform clairvoyance to order.[41] The parapsychologist
Samuel Soal and his colleagues tested Garrett in May 1937. Most of the experiments were carried out in the
Psychological Laboratory at University College London. A total of over 12,000 guesses were recorded but
Garrett failed to produce above chance level.[42] In his report Soal wrote "In the case of Mrs. Eileen Garrett
we fail to find the slightest confirmation of J. B. Rhine's remarkable claims relating to her alleged powers of
extra-sensory perception. Not only did she fail when I took charge of the experiments, but she failed equally
when four other carefully trained experimenters took my place."[43]

The parapsychology experiments at Duke evoked much criticism from academics and others who challenged
the concepts and evidence of ESP. A number of psychological departments attempted to repeat Rhine's
experiments with failure. W. S. Cox (1936) from Princeton University with 132 subjects produced 25,064
trials in a playing card ESP experiment. Cox concluded "There is no evidence of extrasensory perception
either in the 'average man' or of the group investigated or in any particular individual of that group. The
discrepancy between these results and those obtained by Rhine is due either to uncontrollable factors in
experimental procedure or to the difference in the subjects."[44] Four other psychological departments failed to
replicate Rhine's results.[45] After thousands of card runs, James Charles Crumbaugh failed to duplicate the
results of Rhine.[46]

In 1938, the psychologist Joseph Jastrow wrote that much of the

evidence for extrasensory perception collected by Rhine and other
parapsychologists was anecdotal, biased, dubious and the result of
"faulty observation and familiar human frailties".[47] Rhine's
experiments were discredited due to the discovery that sensory
leakage or cheating could account for all his results such as the subject
being able to read the symbols from the back of the cards and being
able to see and hear the experimenter to note subtle
clues.[48][49][50][51] Hubert Pearce with J. B. Rhine

Illusionist Milbourne Christopher wrote years later that he felt "there

are at least a dozen ways a subject who wished to cheat under the
conditions Rhine described could deceive the investigator". When Rhine took precautions in response to
criticisms of his methods, he was unable to find any high-scoring subjects.[52] Another criticism, made by
chemist Irving Langmuir, among others, was one of selective reporting. Langmuir stated that Rhine did not
report scores of subjects that he suspected were intentionally guessing wrong, and that this, he felt, biased the
statistical results higher than they should have been.[53]

Rhine and his colleagues attempted to address these criticisms through new experiments described in the book
Extrasensory Perception After Sixty Years (1940).[54] Rhine described three experiments the Pearce-Pratt
experiment, the Pratt-Woodruff experiment and the Ownbey-Zirkle series which he believed demonstrated
ESP. However, C. E. M. Hansel wrote "it is now known that each experiment contained serious flaws that
escaped notice in the examination made by the authors of Extra-Sensory Perception After Sixty Years".[33]
Joseph Gaither Pratt was the co-experimenter in the Pearce-Pratt and Pratt-Woodruff experiments at the Duke
campus. Hansel visited the campus where the experiments took place and discovered the results could have
originated through the use of a trick so could not regarded as supplying evidence for ESP.[55]

In 1957, Rhine and Joseph Gaither Pratt wrote Parapsychology: Frontier Science of the Mind. Because of the
methodological problems, parapsychologists no longer utilize card-guessing studies.[56] Rhine's experiments
into psychokinesis (PK) were also criticized. John Sladek wrote:

His research used dice, with subjects 'willing' them to fall a certain way. Not only can dice be
drilled, shaved, falsely numbered and manipulated, but even straight dice often show bias in the
long run. Casinos for this reason retire dice often, but at Duke, subjects continued to try for the
same effect on the same dice over long experimental runs. Not surprisingly, PK appeared at Duke
and nowhere else.[57]

The Ownbey-Zirkle ESP experiment at Duke was criticized

by parapsychologists and skeptics.[58] Ownbey would
attempt to send ESP symbols to Zirkle who would guess
what they were. The pair were placed in adjacent rooms
unable to see each other and an electric fan was used to
prevent the pair communicating by sensory cues. Ownbey
tapped a telegraph key to Zirkle to inform him when she
was trying to send him a symbol. The door separating the
Mr. Zirkle and Miss Ownbey
two rooms was open during the experiment, and after each
guess Zirkle would call out his guess to Ownbey who
recorded his choice. Critics pointed out the experiment was
flawed as Ownbey acted as both the sender and the experimenter, nobody was controlling the experiment so
Ownbey could have cheated by communicating with Zirkle or made recording mistakes.[58][59]

The Turner-Ownbey long distance telepathy experiment was discovered to contain flaws. May Frances Turner
positioned herself in the Duke Parapsychology Laboratory whilst Sara Ownbey claimed to receive
transmissions 250 miles away. For the experiment Turner would think of a symbol and write it down whilst
Ownbey would write her guesses.[57] The scores were highly successful and both records were supposed to
be sent to J. B. Rhine, however, Ownbey sent them to Turner. Critics pointed out this invalidated the results as
she could have simply written her own record to agree with the other. When the experiment was repeated and
the records were sent to Rhine the scores dropped to average.[57][60][61]

A famous ESP experiment at the Duke University was performed by Lucien Warner and Mildred Raible. The
subject was locked in a room with a switch controlling a signal light elsewhere, which she could signal to
guess the card. Ten runs with ESP packs of cards were used and she achieved 93 hits (43 more than chance).
Weaknesses with the experiment were later discovered. The duration of the light signal could be varied so that
the subject could call for specific symbols and certain symbols in the experiment came up far more often than
others which indicated either poor shuffling or card manipulation. The experiment was not repeated.[57][62]

The administration of Duke grew less sympathetic to parapsychology, and after Rhine's retirement in 1965
parapsychological links with the university were broken. Rhine later established the Foundation for Research
on the Nature of Man (FRNM) and the Institute for Parapsychology as a successor to the Duke laboratory.[36]
In 1995, the centenary of Rhine's birth, the FRNM was renamed the Rhine Research Center. Today, the Rhine
Research Center is a parapsychology research unit, stating that it "aims to improve the human condition by
creating a scientific understanding of those abilities and sensitivities that appear to transcend the ordinary limits
of space and time".[63]

Establishment of the Parapsychological Association

The Parapsychological Association (PA) was created in Durham, North Carolina, on June 19, 1957. Its
formation was proposed by J. B. Rhine at a workshop on parapsychology which was held at the
Parapsychology Laboratory of Duke University. Rhine proposed that the group form itself into the nucleus of
an international professional society in parapsychology. The aim of the organization, as stated in its
Constitution, became "to advance parapsychology as a science, to disseminate knowledge of the field, and to
integrate the findings with those of other branches of science".[64]

In 1969, under the direction of anthropologist Margaret Mead, the Parapsychological Association became
affiliated with the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the largest general
scientific society in the world.[65] In 1979, physicist John A. Wheeler said that parapsychology is
pseudoscientific, and that the affiliation of the PA to the AAAS needed to be reconsidered.[66][67]

His challenge to parapsychology's AAAS affiliation was unsuccessful.[67] Today, the PA consists of about
three hundred full, associate, and affiliated members worldwide.[68]

Stargate Project

Beginning in the early 1950s, the CIA started extensive research into behavioral engineering. The findings
from these experiments led to the formation of the Stargate Project, which handled ESP research for the U.S.
federal government.

The Stargate Project was terminated in 1995 with the conclusion that it was never useful in any intelligence
operation. The information was vague and included a lot of irrelevant and erroneous data. There was also
reason to suspect that the research managers had adjusted their project reports to fit the known background
cues.[69]

1970s and 1980s

The affiliation of the Parapsychological Association (PA) with the American Association for the Advancement
of Science, along with a general openness to psychic and occult phenomena in the 1970s, led to a decade of
increased parapsychological research. During this period, other related organizations were also formed,
including the Academy of Parapsychology and Medicine (1970), the Institute of Parascience (1971), the
Academy of Religion and Psychical Research, the Institute of Noetic Sciences (1973), the International Kirlian
Research Association (1975), and the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Laboratory (1979).
Parapsychological work was also conducted at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) during this time.[14]
The scope of parapsychology expanded during these years. Psychiatrist Ian Stevenson conducted much of his
research into reincarnation during the 1970s, and the second edition of his Twenty Cases Suggestive of
Reincarnation was published in 1974. Psychologist Thelma Moss devoted time to the study of Kirlian
photography at UCLA's parapsychology laboratory. The influx of spiritual teachers from Asia, and their
claims of abilities produced by meditation, led to research on altered states of consciousness. American Society
for Psychical Research Director of Research, Karlis Osis, conducted experiments in out of body experiences.
Physicist Russell Targ coined the term remote viewing for use in some of his work at SRI in 1974.[14]

The surge in paranormal research continued into the 1980s: the Parapsychological Association reported
members working in more than 30 countries. For example, research was carried out and regular conferences
held in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union[14] although the word parapsychology was discarded in
favour of the term psychotronics.[70] The main promoter of psychotronics was Czech scientist Zdeněk Rejdák,
who described it as a physical science, organizing conferences and presiding over the International Association
for Psychotronic Research.[71]

In 1985 a Chair of Parapsychology was established within the Department of Psychology at the University of
Edinburgh and was given to Robert Morris, an experimental parapsychologist from the United States. Morris
and his research associates and PhD students pursued research on topics related to parapsychology.[72]

Modern era

Since the 1980s, contemporary parapsychological research has waned

considerably in the United States.[73] Early research was considered
inconclusive, and parapsychologists were faced with strong opposition from
their academic colleagues.[14] Some effects thought to be paranormal, for
example the effects of Kirlian photography (thought by some to represent a
human aura), disappeared under more stringent controls, leaving those
avenues of research at dead-ends.[14] The bulk of parapsychology research in
the US is now confined to private institutions funded by private sources.[14]
After 28 years of research, Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research
Laboratory (PEAR), which studied psychokinesis, closed in 2007.[73]
Bernard Carr (astronomer),
Two universities in the United States currently have academic parapsychology
one-time president of the
Society for Psychical
laboratories. The Division of Perceptual Studies, a unit at the University of
Research Virginia's Department of Psychiatric Medicine, studies the possibility of
survival of consciousness after bodily death, near-death experiences, and out-
of-body experiences.[74] Gary Schwartz at the University of Arizona's Veritas
Laboratory conducted laboratory investigations of mediums, criticized by scientific skeptics. Several private
institutions, including the Institute of Noetic Sciences, conduct and promote parapsychological research.[73]

Over the last two decades some new sources of funding for parapsychology in Europe have seen a "substantial
increase in European parapsychological research so that the center of gravity for the field has swung from the
United States to Europe".[75] Of all nations the United Kingdom has the largest number of active
parapsychologists.[75] In the UK, researchers work in conventional psychology departments, and also do
studies in mainstream psychology to "boost their credibility and show that their methods are sound". It is
thought that this approach could account for the relative strength of parapsychology in Britain.[73]

As of 2007, parapsychology research is represented in some 30 different countries[75] and a number of

universities worldwide continue academic parapsychology programs. Among these are the Koestler
Parapsychology Unit at the University of Edinburgh;[76] the Parapsychology Research Group at Liverpool
Hope University (this closed in April 2011);[77][78] the SOPHIA Project at the University of Arizona;[79] the
Consciousness and Transpersonal Psychology Research Unit of Liverpool John Moores University;[80] the
Center for the Study of Anomalous Psychological Processes at the University of Northampton;[81] and the
Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit at Goldsmiths, University of London.[82]

Research and professional organizations include the Parapsychological Association;[83] the Society for
Psychical Research, publisher of the Journal of Society for Psychical Research;[84] the American Society for
Psychical Research, publisher of the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research (last published in
2004);[85] the Rhine Research Center and Institute for Parapsychology, publisher of the Journal of
Parapsychology;[86] the Parapsychology Foundation, which published the International Journal of
Parapsychology (between 1959 and 1968 and 2000–2001)[87] and the Australian Institute of
Parapsychological Research, publisher of the Australian Journal of Parapsychology.[88] The European
Journal of Parapsychology ceased publishing in 2010.[89]

Parapsychological research has also included other sub-disciplines of psychology. These related fields include
transpersonal psychology, which studies transcendent or spiritual aspects of the human mind, and anomalistic
psychology, which examines paranormal beliefs and subjective anomalous experiences in traditional
psychological terms.[73][90]

Research

Scope

Parapsychologists study a number of ostensible paranormal phenomena, including but not limited to:

Telepathy: Transfer of information of thoughts or feelings between individuals by means other

than the five classical senses.
Precognition: Perception of information about future places or events before they occur.
Clairvoyance: Obtaining information about places or events at remote locations, by means
unknown to current science.
Psychokinesis: The ability of the mind to influence matter, time, space, or energy by means
unknown to current science.
Near-death experiences: An experience reported by a person who nearly died, or who
experienced clinical death and then revived.
Reincarnation: The rebirth of a soul or other non-physical aspect of human consciousness in a
new physical body after death.
Apparitional experiences: Phenomena often attributed to ghosts and encountered in places a
deceased individual is thought to have frequented, or in association with the person's former
belongings.

The definitions for the terms above may not reflect their mainstream usage, nor the opinions of all
parapsychologists and their critics.

According to the Parapsychological Association, parapsychologists do not study all paranormal phenomena,
nor are they concerned with astrology, UFOs, cryptozoology, paganism, vampires, alchemy, or witchcraft.[91]

Journals dealing with parapsychology include the Journal of Parapsychology, Journal of Near-Death Studies,
Journal of Consciousness Studies, Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, and Journal of Scientific
Exploration.
Experimental research

Ganzfeld

The Ganzfeld (German for "whole field") is a technique used to test individuals for telepathy. The technique—
a form of moderate sensory deprivation—was developed to quickly quiet mental "noise" by providing mild,
unpatterned stimuli to the visual and auditory senses. The visual sense is usually isolated by creating a soft red
glow which is diffused through half ping-pong balls placed over the recipient's eyes. The auditory sense is
usually blocked by playing white noise, static, or similar sounds to the recipient. The subject is also seated in a
reclined, comfortable position to minimize the sense of touch.[92]

In the typical Ganzfeld experiment, a "sender" and a "receiver" are isolated.[93] The receiver is put into the
Ganzfeld state,[92] or Ganzfeld effect and the sender is shown a video clip or still picture and asked to mentally
send that image to the receiver. The receiver, while in the Ganzfeld, is asked to continuously speak aloud all
mental processes, including images, thoughts, and feelings. At the end of the sending period, typically about
20 to 40 minutes in length, the receiver is taken out of the Ganzfeld state and shown four images or videos,
one of which is the true target and three of which are non-target decoys. The receiver attempts to select the true
target, using perceptions experienced during the Ganzfeld state as clues to what the mentally "sent" image
might have been.

The Ganzfeld experiment studies that were examined by Ray Hyman

and Charles Honorton had methodological problems that were well
documented. Honorton reported only 36% of the studies used
duplicate target sets of pictures to avoid handling cues.[96] Hyman
discovered flaws in all of the 42 Ganzfeld experiments and to assess
each experiment, he devised a set of 12 categories of flaws. Six of
these concerned statistical defects, the other six covered procedural
flaws such as inadequate documentation, randomization and security
as well as possibilities of sensory leakage.[97] Over half of the studies
Participant of a Ganzfeld
experiment. Proponents say such
failed to safeguard against sensory leakage and all of the studies
experiments have shown evidence contained at least one of the 12 flaws. Because of the flaws, Honorton
of telepathy,[94] while critics like Ray agreed with Hyman the 42 Ganzfeld studies could not support the
Hyman have pointed out that they claim for the existence of psi.[97]
have not been independently
replicated.[95] Possibilities of sensory leakage in the Ganzfeld experiments included
the receivers hearing what was going on in the sender's room next
door as the rooms were not soundproof and the sender's fingerprints to
be visible on the target object for the receiver to see.[98][99] Hyman reviewed the autoganzfeld experiments
and discovered a pattern in the data that implied a visual cue may have taken place. Hyman wrote the
autoganzfeld experiments were flawed because they did not preclude the possibility of sensory leakage.[97]

In 2010, Lance Storm, Patrizio Tressoldi, and Lorenzo Di Risio analyzed 29 Ganzfeld studies from 1997 to
2008. Of the 1,498 trials, 483 produced hits, corresponding to a hit rate of 32.2%. This hit rate is statistically
significant with p < .001. Participants selected for personality traits and personal characteristics thought to be
psi-conducive were found to perform significantly better than unselected participants in the Ganzfeld
condition.[100] Hyman (2010) published a rebuttal to Storm et al. According to Hyman, "Reliance on meta-
analysis as the sole basis for justifying the claim that an anomaly exists and that the evidence for it is consistent
and replicable is fallacious. It distorts what scientists mean by confirmatory evidence." Hyman wrote that the
Ganzfeld studies were not independently replicated and failed to produce evidence for psi.[95] Storm et al.
published a response to Hyman stating that the Ganzfeld experimental design has proved to be consistent and
reliable, that parapsychology is a struggling discipline that has not received much attention, and that therefore
further research on the subject is necessary.[94] Rouder et al. 2013 wrote that critical evaluation of Storm et
al.'s meta-analysis reveals no evidence for psi, no plausible mechanism and omitted replication failures.[101]

Remote viewing

Remote viewing is the practice of seeking impressions about a distant or

unseen target using subjective means, in particular, extrasensory perception.
Typically a remote viewer is expected to give information about an object,
event, person or location that is hidden from physical view and separated at
some distance.[102] Several hundred such trials have been conducted by
investigators over the past 25 years, including those by the Princeton
Engineering Anomalies Research Laboratory (PEAR) and by scientists at SRI
International and Science Applications International Corporation.[103][104]
Many of these were under contract by the U.S. government as part of the
espionage program Stargate Project, which terminated in 1995 having failed
to document any practical intelligence value.[105]

The psychologists David Marks and Richard Kammann attempted to replicate Russell Targ, co-founder of
Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff’s remote viewing experiments that were the Stargate Project
carried out in the 1970s at the Stanford Research Institute. In a series of 35
studies, they were unable to replicate the results, motivating them to
investigate the procedure of the original experiments. Marks and Kammann discovered that the notes given to
the judges in Targ and Puthoff's experiments contained clues as to the order in which they were carried out,
such as referring to yesterday's two targets, or they had the date of the session written at the top of the page.
They concluded that these clues were the reason for the experiment's high hit rates.[106][107] Marks was able
to achieve 100 per cent accuracy without visiting any of the sites himself but by using cues.[108] James Randi
wrote controlled tests in collaboration with several other researchers, eliminating several sources of cuing and
extraneous evidence present in the original tests; Randi's controlled tests produced negative results. Students
were also able to solve Puthoff and Targ's locations from the cues that had inadvertently been included in the
transcripts.[109]

In 1980, Charles Tart claimed that a rejudging of the transcripts from one of Targ and Puthoff’s experiments
revealed an above-chance result.[110] Targ and Puthoff again refused to provide copies of the transcripts and it
was not until July 1985 that they were made available for study, when it was discovered they still contained
sensory cues.[111] Marks and Christopher Scott (1986) wrote "considering the importance for the remote
viewing hypothesis of adequate cue removal, Tart’s failure to perform this basic task seems beyond
comprehension. As previously concluded, remote viewing has not been demonstrated in the experiments
conducted by Puthoff and Targ, only the repeated failure of the investigators to remove sensory cues."[112]

PEAR closed its doors at the end of February 2007. Its founder, Robert G. Jahn, said of it that, "For 28 years,
we’ve done what we wanted to do, and there’s no reason to stay and generate more of the same data."[113]
Statistical flaws in his work have been proposed by others in the parapsychological community and within the
general scientific community.[114][115] The physicist Robert L. Park said of PEAR, "It’s been an
embarrassment to science, and I think an embarrassment for Princeton".[113]

Psychokinesis on random number generators

The advent of powerful and inexpensive electronic and computer technologies has allowed the development of
fully automated experiments studying possible interactions between mind and matter. In the most common
experiment of this type, a random number generator (RNG), based on electronic or radioactive noise, produces
a data stream that is recorded and analyzed by computer software. A subject attempts to mentally alter the
distribution of the random numbers, usually in an experimental design that is functionally equivalent to getting
more "heads" than "tails" while flipping a coin. In the RNG experiment, design flexibility can be combined
with rigorous controls, while collecting a large amount of data in a very short period of time. This technique
has been used both to test individuals for psychokinesis and to test the possible influence on RNGs of large
groups of people.[116]

Major meta-analyses of the RNG database have been published every few years since appearing in the journal
Foundations of Physics in 1986.[116] PEAR founder Robert G. Jahn and his colleague Brenda Dunne say that
the experiments produced "a very small effect" not large enough to be observed over a brief experiment but
over a large number of trials resulted in a tiny statistical deviation from chance.[117] According to Massimo
Pigliucci the results from PEAR can be explained without invoking the paranormal because of two problems
with the experiment "the difficulty of designing machines capable of generating truly random events and the
fact that statistical "significance" is not at all a good measure of the importance or genuineness of a
phenomenon."[118] Pigluicci has written the statistical analysis used by the Jahn and the PEAR group relied on
a quantity called a "p-value" but a problem with p-values is that if the sample size (number of trials) is very
large like PEAR then one is guaranteed to find artificially low p-values indicating a statistical "significant"
result even though nothing was occurring other than small biases in the experimental apparatus.[118]

Two German independent scientific groups have failed to replicate the PEAR results.[118] Pigliucci has written
this was "yet another indication that the simplest hypothesis is likely to be true: there was nothing to
replicate."[118] The most recent meta-analysis on psychokinesis was published in Psychological Bulletin,
along with several critical commentaries. It analyzed the results of 380 studies; the authors reported an overall
positive effect size that was statistically significant but very small relative to the sample size and could, in
principle, be explained by publication bias.[119][120][121]

Direct mental interactions with living systems

Formerly called bio-PK, "direct mental interactions with living systems" (DMILS) studies the effects of one
person's intentions on a distant person's psychophysiological state.[122] One type of DMILS experiment looks
at the commonly reported "feeling of being stared at." The "starer" and the "staree" are isolated in different
locations, and the starer is periodically asked to simply gaze at the staree via closed circuit video links.
Meanwhile, the staree's nervous system activity is automatically and continuously monitored.

Parapsychologists have interpreted the cumulative data on this and similar DMILS experiments to suggest that
one person's attention directed towards a remote, isolated person can significantly activate or calm that person's
nervous system. In a meta-analysis of these experiments published in the British Journal of Psychology in
2004, researchers found that there was a small but significant overall DMILS effect. However, the study also
found that when a small number of the highest-quality studies from one laboratory were analyzed, the effect
size was not significant. The authors concluded that although the existence of some anomaly related to distant
intentions cannot be ruled out, there was also a shortage of independent replications and theoretical
concepts.[122]

Dream telepathy

Parapsychological studies into dream telepathy were carried out at the Maimonides Medical Center in
Brooklyn, New York led by Stanley Krippner and Montague Ullman. They concluded the results from some
of their experiments supported dream telepathy.[123] However, the results have not been independently
replicated.[124][125][126][127]
The picture target experiments that were conducted by Krippner and Ullman were criticized by C. E. M.
Hansel. According to Hansel there were weaknesses in the design of the experiments in the way in which the
agent became aware of their target picture. Only the agent should have known the target and no other person
until the judging of targets had been completed; however, an experimenter was with the agent when the target
envelope was opened. Hansel also wrote there had been poor controls in the experiment as the main
experimenter could communicate with the subject.[128] In 2002, Krippner denied Hansel's accusations,
claiming the agent did not communicate with the experimenter.[129]

An attempt to replicate the experiments that used picture targets was carried out by Edward Belvedere and
David Foulkes. The finding was that neither the subject nor the judges matched the targets with dreams above
chance level.[130] Results from other experiments by Belvedere and Foulkes were also negative.[131]

In 2003, Simon Sherwood and Chris Roe wrote a review that claimed support for dream telepathy at
Maimonides.[132] However, James Alcock noted that their review was based on "extreme messiness" of data.
Alcock concluded the dream telepathy experiments at Maimonides have failed to provide evidence for
telepathy and "lack of replication is rampant."[133]

Near-death experiences

A near-death experience (NDE) is an experience reported by a person who

nearly died, or who experienced clinical death and then revived. NDEs
include one or more of the following experiences: a sense of being dead; an
out-of-body experience; a sensation of floating above one's body and seeing
the surrounding area; a sense of overwhelming love and peace; a sensation of
moving upwards through a tunnel or narrow passageway; meeting deceased
relatives or spiritual figures; encountering a being of light, or a light;
experiencing a life review; reaching a border or boundary; and a feeling of
being returned to the body, often accompanied by reluctance.[136]

Interest in the NDE was originally spurred by the research of psychiatrists

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, George G. Ritchie, and Raymond Moody. In 1975,
Moody wrote the best-selling book Life After Life and in 1977 he wrote a
second book, Reflections on Life After Life.[137] In 1998 Moody was
appointed chair in "consciousness studies" at the University of Nevada, Las
Vegas. The International Association for Near-death Studies (IANDS) was
founded in 1978 to meet the needs of early researchers and experiencers
within this field of research. Later researchers, such as psychiatrist Bruce
Greyson, psychologist Kenneth Ring, and cardiologist Michael Sabom,
introduced the study of near-death experiences to the academic setting.[136]
Ascent of the Blessed by
Hieronymus Bosch (after
Reincarnation research 1490) depicts a tunnel of
light and spiritual figures
Psychiatrist Ian Stevenson, from the University of Virginia, conducted more similar to those reported by
than 2,500 case studies over a period of 40 years and published twelve books. near-death
He wrote that childhood memories ostensibly related to reincarnation experiencers.[134][135]
normally occurred between the ages of three and seven years then fade shortly
afterwards. He compared the memories with reports of people known to the
deceased, attempting to do so before any contact between the child and the deceased's family had
occurred,[138] and searched for disconfirming evidence that could provide alternative explanations for the
reports aside from reincarnation.[139]
Some 35 per cent of the subjects examined by Stevenson had birthmarks or birth defects. Stevenson believed
that the existence of birth marks and deformities on children, when they occurred at the location of fatal
wounds in the deceased, provided the best evidence for reincarnation.[140] However, Stevenson has never
claimed that he had proved the existence of reincarnation, and cautiously referred to his cases as being "of the
reincarnation type" or "suggestive of reincarnation".[141] Researchers who believe in the evidence for
reincarnation have been unsuccessful in getting the scientific community to consider it a serious
possibility.[142]

Ian Wilson argued that a large number of Stevenson’s cases consisted of poor children remembering wealthy
lives or belonging to a higher caste. He speculated that such cases may represent a scheme to obtain money
from the family of the alleged former incarnation.[143] Philosopher Keith Augustine has written "the vast
majority of Stevenson's cases come from countries where a religious belief in reincarnation is strong, and
rarely elsewhere, seems to indicate that cultural conditioning (rather than reincarnation) generates claims of
spontaneous past-life memories."[144] According to the research of Robert Baker many of the alleged past-life
experiences investigated by Stevenson and other parapsychologists can be explained in terms of known
psychological factors. Baker has written the recalling of past lives is a mixture of cryptomnesia and
confabulation.[145] Philosopher Paul Edwards noted that reincarnation invokes logicially dubious assumptions
and is inconsistent with modern science.[146]

Scientific reception

Evaluation

The scientific consensus is that there is insufficient evidence to support the

existence of psi phenomena.[147][148][149][150][151][152][153][154]

Scientists critical of parapsychology state that its extraordinary claims demand

extraordinary evidence if they are to be taken seriously.[155] Scientists who
have evaluated parapsychology have written the entire body of evidence is of
poor quality and not adequately controlled.[156] In support of this view, critics
cite instances of fraud, flawed studies, and cognitive biases (such as clustering
illusion, availability error, confirmation bias, illusion of control, magical
thinking, and the bias blind spot) as ways to explain parapsychological
results.[157][158] Research has also shown that people's desire to believe in
James Alcock is a notable
paranormal phenomena causes them to discount strong evidence that it does
critic of parapsychology.
not exist.[159]

The psychologists Donovan Rawcliffe (1952), C. E. M. Hansel (1980), Ray

Hyman (1989) and Andrew Neher (2011) have studied the history of psi experiments from the late 19th
century up until the 1980s. In every experiment investigated, flaws and weaknesses were discovered so the
possibility of sensory leakage and trickery were not ruled out. The data from the Creery sister and the Soal-
Goldney experiments were proven to be fraudulent, one of the subjects from the Smith-Blackburn experiments
confessed to fraud, the Brugmans experiment, the experiments by John Edgar Coover and those conducted by
Joseph Gaither Pratt and Helmut Schmidt had flaws in the design of the experiments, did not rule out the
possibility of sensory cues or trickery and have not been replicated.[160][161][162][163]

According to critics, psi is negatively defined as any effect that cannot be currently explained in terms of
chance or normal causes and this is a fallacy as it encourages parapsychologists into using any peculiarity in
the data as a characteristic of psi.[97][164] Parapsychologists have admitted it is impossible to eliminate the
possibility of non-paranormal causes in their experiments. There is no independent method to indicate the
presence or absence of psi.[97] Persi Diaconis has written that the controls in parapsychological experiments
are often loose with possibilities of subject cheating and unconscious sensory cues.[165]

The existence of parapsychological phenomena and the scientific validity of parapsychological research is
disputed by independent evaluators and researchers. In 1988, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences
published a report on the subject that concluded that "no scientific justification from research conducted over a
period of 130 years for the existence of parapsychological phenomena."[166] No accepted theory of
parapsychology currently exists, and many competing and often conflicting models have been advocated by
different parapsychologists in an attempt to explain reported paranormal phenomena.[167] Terence Hines in his
book Pseudoscience and the Paranormal (2003) wrote "Many theories have been proposed by
parapsychologists to explain how psi takes place. To skeptics, such theory building seems premature, as the
phenomena to be explained by the theories have yet to be demonstrated convincingly."[168] Skeptics such as
Antony Flew have cited the lack of such a theory as their reason for rejecting parapsychology.[169]

In 1998, physics professor Michael W. Friedlander noted that parapsychology has "failed to produce any clear
evidence for the existence of anomalous effects that require us to go beyond the known region of
science."[170] Philosopher and skeptic Robert Todd Carroll has written research in parapsychology has been
characterized by "deception, fraud, and incompetence in setting up properly controlled experiments and
evaluating statistical data."[171] The psychologist Ray Hyman has pointed out that some parapsychologists
such as Dick Bierman, Walter Lucadou, J. E. Kennedy, and Robert Jahn have admitted the evidence for psi is
"inconsistent, irreproducible, and fails to meet acceptable scientific standards."[172] Richard Wiseman has
criticized the parapsychological community for widespread errors in research methods including cherry-
picking new procedures which may produce preferred results, explaining away unsuccessful attempted
replications with claims of an "experimenter effect", data mining, and retrospective data selection.[173]

In a review of parapsychological reports Hyman wrote "randomization is often inadequate, multiple statistical
testing without adjustment for significance levels is prevalent, possibilities for sensory leakage are not
uniformly prevented, errors in use of statistical tests are much too common, and documentation is typically
inadequate".[174] Parapsychology has been criticized for making no precise predictions.[175]

In 2003, James Alcock Professor of Psychology at York University published

Give the Null Hypothesis a Chance: Reasons to Remain Doubtful about the
Existence of Psi, where he claimed that parapsychologists never seem to take
seriously the possibility that psi does not exist. Because of that, they interpret
null results as indicating only that they were unable to observe psi in a
particular experiment, rather than taking it as support for the possibility that
there is no psi. The failure to take the null hypothesis as a serious alternative
to their psi hypotheses leads them to rely upon a number of arbitrary "effects"
to excuse failures to find predicted effects, excuse the lack of consistency in
outcomes, and to excuse failures to replicate.[164]

Basic endemic problems in parapsychological research include amongst

others: insufficient definition of the subject matter, total reliance on negative
definitions of their phenomena (E.g.- psi is said to occur only when all known
Ray Hyman (standing), Lee
normal influences are ruled out); failure to produce a single phenomenon that
Ross, Daryl Bem and Victor
can be independently replicated by neutral researchers; the invention of
Benassi at the 1983
"effects" such as the psi-experimenter effect to explain away inconsistencies
CSICOP Conference in
Buffalo, New York
in the data and failures to achieve predicted outcomes; unfalsifiability of
claims; unpredictability of effects; lack of progress in over a century of formal
research; methodological weaknesses; reliance on statistical procedures to
determine when psi has supposedly occurred, even though statistical analysis does not in itself justify a claim
that psi has occurred; and failure to jibe with other areas of science. Overall, he argues that there is nothing in
parapsychological research that would ever lead parapsychologists to conclude that psi does not exist, and so,
even if it does not, the search is likely to continue for a long time to come. "I continue to believe that
parapsychology is, at bottom, motivated by belief in search of data, rather than data in search of
explanation."[164]

Richard Land has written that from what is known about human biology it is highly unlikely that evolution has
provided humans with ESP as research has shown the recognized five senses are adequate for the evolution
and survival of the species.[176] Michael Shermer in an article Psychic Drift: Why most scientists do not
believe in ESP and psi phenomena for Scientific American wrote "the reason for skepticism is that we need
replicable data and a viable theory, both of which are missing in psi research."[177]

In January 2008 the results of a study using neuroimaging were published. To provide what are purported to
be the most favorable experimental conditions, the study included appropriate emotional stimuli and had
participants who are biologically or emotionally related, such as twins. The experiment was designed to
produce positive results if telepathy, clairvoyance or precognition occurred, but despite this no distinguishable
neuronal responses were found between psychic stimuli and non-psychic stimuli, while variations in the same
stimuli showed anticipated effects on patterns of brain activation. The researchers concluded that "These
findings are the strongest evidence yet obtained against the existence of paranormal mental phenomena."[178]
Other studies have attempted to test the psi hypothesis by using functional neuroimaging. A neuroscience
review of the studies (Acunzo et al. 2013) discovered methodological weaknesses that could account for the
reported psi effects.[179]

A 2014 study discovered that schizophrenic patients have more belief in psi than healthy adults.[180]

Some researchers have become skeptical of parapsychology such as Susan Blackmore and John Taylor after
years of study and no progress in demonstrating the existence of psi by the scientific method.[181][182]

Physics

The ideas of psi (precognition, psychokinesis and telepathy) violate well-established laws of physics.[183]
Psychokinesis violates the inverse-square law, the second law of thermodynamics, and the conservation of
momentum.[184][185] There is no known mechanism for psi.[186]

On the subject of psychokinesis, the physicist Sean M. Carroll has written that both human brains and the
spoons they try to bend are made, like all matter, of quarks and leptons; everything else they do emerges as
properties of the behavior of quarks and leptons. And the quarks and leptons interact through the four forces:
strong, weak, electromagnetic and gravitational. Thus either it's one of the four known forces or it's a new
force, and any new force with range over 1 millimetre must be at most a billionth the strength of gravity or it
will have been captured in experiments already done. This leaves no physical force that could possibly account
for psychokinesis.[187]

Physicist John G. Taylor who investigated parapsychological claims has written an unknown fifth force
causing psychokinesis would have to transmit a great deal of energy. The energy would have to overcome the
electromagnetic forces binding the atoms together. The atoms would need to respond more strongly to the fifth
force while it is operative than to electric forces. Such an additional force between atoms should therefore exist
all the time and not during only alleged paranormal occurrences. Taylor wrote there is no scientific trace of
such a force in physics, down to many orders of magnitude; thus if a scientific viewpoint is to be preserved the
idea of any fifth force must be discarded. Taylor concluded there is no possible physical mechanism for
psychokinesis and it is in complete contradiction to established science.[188]
Felix Planer, a professor of electrical engineering, has written that if psychokinesis was real then it would be
easy to demonstrate by getting subjects to depress a scale on a sensitive balance, raise the temperature of a
water bath which could be measured with an accuracy of a hundredth of a degree Celsius or affect an element
in an electrical circuit such as a resistor which could be monitored to better than a millionth of an ampere.[189]
Planer writes that such experiments are extremely sensitive and easy to monitor but are not utilized by
parapsychologists as they "do not hold out the remotest hope of demonstrating even a minute trace of PK"
because the alleged phenomenon is non-existent. Planer has written parapsychologists have to fall back on
studies that involve only statistics that are unrepeatable, owing their results to poor experimental methods,
recording mistakes and faulty statistical mathematics.[189]

According to Planer, "all research in medicine and other sciences would become illusionary, if the existence of
PK had to be taken seriously; for no experiment could be relied upon to furnish objective results, since all
measurements would become falsified to a greater or lesser degree, according to his PK ability, by the
experimenter's wishes." Planer concluded the concept of psychokinesis is absurd and has no scientific
basis.[190]

Philosopher and physicist Mario Bunge has written that "psychokinesis, or PK, violates the principle that mind
cannot act directly on matter. (If it did, no experimenter could trust his readings of measuring instruments.) It
also violates the principles of conservation of energy and momentum. The claim that quantum mechanics
allows for the possibility of mental power influencing randomizers—an alleged case of micro-PK—is
ludicrous since that theory respects the said conservation principles, and it deals exclusively with physical
things."[191]

The physicist Robert L. Park questioned if mind really could influence matter then it would be easy for
parapsychologists to measure such a phenomenon by using the alleged psychokinetic power to deflect a
microbalance which would not require any dubious statistics but "the reason, of course, is that the
microbalance stubbornly refuses to budge."[117] Park has suggested the reason statistical studies are so popular
in parapsychology is because they introduce opportunities for uncertainty and error which are used to support
the biases of the experimenter. Park wrote "No proof of psychic phenomena is ever found. In spite of all the
tests devised by parapsychologists like Jahn and Radin, and huge amounts of data collected over a period of
many years, the results are no more convincing today than when they began their experiments."[117]

Pseudoscience

Parapsychological theories are viewed as pseudoscientific by the scientific community as they are incompatible
with well established laws of science. As there is no repeatable evidence for psi, the field is often regarded as a
pseudoscience.[193][194][195][196]

The philosopher Raimo Tuomela summarized why the majority of scientists consider parapsychology to be a
pseudoscience in his essay "Science, Protoscience, and Pseudoscience".[197]

Parapsychology relies on an ill-defined ontology and typically shuns exact thinking.

The hypotheses and theories of parapsychology have not been proven and are in bad shape.
Extremely little progress has taken place in parapsychology on the whole and parapsychology
conflicts with established science.
Parapsychology has poor research problems, being concerned with establishing the existence
of its subject matter and having practically no theories to create proper research problems.
While in parts of parapsychology there are attempts to use the methods of science there are
also unscientific areas; and in any case parapsychological research can at best qualify as
prescientific because of its poor theoretical foundation.
Parapsychology is a largely isolated research area.
The methods of parapsychologists are regarded by critics, including those
who wrote the science standards for the California State Board of
Education,[198] to be pseudoscientific.[199] Some of the more specific
criticisms state that parapsychology does not have a clearly defined subject
matter, an easily repeatable experiment that can demonstrate a psi effect on
demand, nor an underlying theory to explain the paranormal transfer of
information.[200] James Alcock has stated that few of parapsychology's
experimental results have prompted interdisciplinary research with more
mainstream sciences such as physics or biology, and that parapsychology
remains an isolated science to such an extent that its very legitimacy is
questionable,[201] and as a whole is not justified in being labeled
"scientific".[202] Alcock has written "Parapsychology is indistinguishable
from pseudo-science, and its ideas are essentially those of magic... There is no
evidence that would lead the cautious observer to believe that
parapsychologists and paraphysicists are on the track of a real phenomenon, a Mario Bunge has described
real energy or power that has so far escaped the attention of those people parapsychology as a
engaged in "normal" science."[203] "pseudoscience
paragon".[192]
The scientific community considers parapsychology a pseudoscience because
it continues to explore the hypothesis that psychic abilities exist despite a
century of experimental results that fail to conclusively demonstrate that hypothesis.[10] A panel commissioned
by the United States National Research Council to study paranormal claims concluded that "despite a 130-year
record of scientific research on such matters, our committee could find no scientific justification for the
existence of phenomena such as extrasensory perception, mental telepathy or ‘mind over matter’ exercises...
Evaluation of a large body of the best available evidence simply does not support the contention that these
phenomena exist."[204]

There is also an issue of non-falsifiability associated with psi. On this subject Terence Hines has written:

The most common rationale offered by parapsychologists to explain the lack of a repeatable
demonstration of ESP or other psi phenomena is to say that ESP in particular and psi phenomena
in general are elusive or jealous phenomena. This means the phenomena go away when a skeptic
is present or when skeptical “vibrations” are present. This argument seems nicely to explain away
some of the major problems facing parapsychology until it is realized that it is nothing more than a
classic nonfalsifiable hypothesis... The use of the nonfalsifiable hypothesis is permitted in
parapsychology to a degree unheard of in any scientific discipline. To the extent that investigators
accept this type of hypothesis, they will be immune to having their belief in psi disproved. No
matter how many experiments fail to provide evidence for psi and no matter how good those
experiments are, the nonfalsifiable hypothesis will always protect the belief.[205]

Mario Bunge has written that research in parapsychology for over a hundred years has produced no single firm
finding and no testable predictions. All parapsychologists can do is claim alleged data is anomalous and lying
beyond the reach of ordinary science. The aim of parapsychologists "is not that of finding laws and
systematizing them into theories in order to understand and forecast" but to "buttress ancient spiritualist myths
or to serve as a surrogate for lost religions."[192]

The psychologist David Marks has written that parapsychologists have failed to produce a single repeatable
demonstration of the paranormal and described psychical research as a pseudoscience, an "incoherent
collection of belief systems steeped in fantasy, illusion and error."[206] However, Chris French who is not
convinced that parapsychology has demonstrated evidence for psi, has argued that parapsychological
experiments still adhere to the scientific method, and should not be completely dismissed as pseudoscience.
“Sceptics like myself will often point out that there’s been systematic research in parapsychology for well over
a century, and so far the wider scientific community is not convinced."[207] French has noted his position is
"the minority view among critics of parapsychology".[208]

Philosopher Bradley Dowden characterized parapsychology as a pseudoscience as parapsychologists have no

valid theories to test and no reproducible data from their experiments.[209]

Fraud

There have been instances of fraud in the history of parapsychology

research.[210] In the late 19th century the Creery Sisters (Mary, Alice,
Maud, Kathleen, and Emily) were tested by the Society for Psychical
Research and believed them to have genuine psychic ability; however,
during a later experiment they were caught utilizing signal codes and
they confessed to fraud.[211][212] George Albert Smith and Douglas
Blackburn were claimed to be genuine psychics by the Society for
Psychical Research but Blackburn confessed to fraud:
Stage magician and skeptic James
Randi has demonstrated that magic
For nearly thirty years the telepathic experiments tricks can simulate or duplicate
conducted by Mr. G. A. Smith and myself have been some supposedly psychic
accepted and cited as the basic evidence of the truth of phenomena.
thought transference... ...the whole of those alleged
experiments were bogus, and originated in the honest
desire of two youths to show how easily men of scientific
mind and training could be deceived when seeking for
evidence in support of a theory they were wishful to
establish.[213]

The experiments of Samuel Soal and K. M. Goldney of 1941–1943 (suggesting precognitive ability of a single
participant) were long regarded as some of the best in the field because they relied upon independent checking
and witnesses to prevent fraud. However, many years later, statistical evidence, uncovered and published by
other parapsychologists in the field, suggested that Soal had cheated by altering some of the raw
data.[201]:140–141[214][215]

In 1974, a number of experiments by Walter J. Levy, J. B. Rhine's successor as director of the Institute for
Parapsychology, were exposed as fraudulent.[216] Levy had reported on a series of successful ESP
experiments involving computer-controlled manipulation of non-human subjects, including rats. His
experiments showed very high positive results. However, Levy's fellow researchers became suspicious about
his methods. They found that Levy interfered with data-recording equipment, manually creating fraudulent
strings of positive results. Levy confessed to the fraud and resigned.[216][217]

In 1974 Rhine published the paper Security versus Deception in Parapsychology in the Journal of
Parapsychology which documented 12 cases of fraud that he had detected from 1940 to 1950 but refused to
give the names of the participants in the studies.[218] Massimo Pigliucci has written:

Most damning of all, Rhine admitted publicly that he had uncovered at least twelve instances of
dishonesty among his researchers in a single decade, from 1940 to 1950. However, he flaunted
standard academic protocol by refusing to divulge the names of the fraudsters, which means that
 there is unknown number of published papers in the literature that claim paranormal effects while
in fact they were the result of conscious deception.[219]

Martin Gardner claimed to have inside information that files in Rhine's laboratory contain material suggesting
fraud on the part of Hubert Pearce.[220] Pearce was never able to obtain above-chance results when persons
other than the experimenter were present during an experiment, making it more likely that he was cheating in
some way. Rhine's other subjects were only able to obtain non-chance levels when they were able to shuffle
the cards, which has suggested they used tricks to arrange the order of the Zener cards before the experiments
started.[221]

A researcher from Tarkio College in Missouri, James D. MacFarland, was suspected of falsifying data to
achieve positive psi results.[220] Before the fraud was discovered, MacFarland published 2 articles in the
Journal of Parapsychology (1937 & 1938) supporting the existence of ESP.[222][223] Presumably speaking
about MacFarland, Louisa Rhine wrote that in reviewing the data submitted to the lab in 1938, the researchers
at the Duke Parapsychology Lab recognized the fraud. "...before long they were all certain that Jim had
consistently falsified his records... To produce extra hits, Jim had to resort to erasures and transpositions in the
records of his call series."[224] MacFarland never published another article in the Journal of Parapsychology
after the fraud was discovered.

Some instances of fraud amongst spiritualist mediums were exposed by early psychical researchers such as
Richard Hodgson[225] and Harry Price.[226] In the 1920s, magician and escapologist Harry Houdini said that
researchers and observers had not created experimental procedures which absolutely preclude fraud.[227]

Criticism of experimental results

Critical analysts, including some parapsychologists, are not satisfied with experimental parapsychology
studies.[200][228] Some reviewers, such as psychologist Ray Hyman, contend that apparently successful
experimental results in psi research are more likely due to sloppy procedures, poorly trained researchers, or
methodological flaws rather than to genuine psi effects.[229][230][231][232] Fellow psychologist Stuart Vyse
hearkens back to a time of data manipulation, now recognized as "p-hacking," as part of the issue.[233] Within
parapsychology there are disagreements over the results and methodology as well. For example, the
experiments at the PEAR laboratory were criticized in a paper published by the Journal of Parapsychology in
which parapsychologists independent from the PEAR laboratory concluded that these experiments "depart[ed]
from criteria usually expected in formal scientific experimentation" due to "[p]roblems with regard to
randomization, statistical baselines, application of statistical models, agent coding of descriptor lists, feedback
to percipients, sensory cues, and precautions against cheating." They felt that the originally stated significance
values were "meaningless".[114]

A typical measure of psi phenomena is statistical deviation from chance expectation. However, critics point out
that statistical deviation is, strictly speaking, only evidence of a statistical anomaly, and the cause of the
deviation is not known. Hyman contends that even if psi experiments could be designed that would regularly
reproduce similar deviations from chance, they would not necessarily prove psychic functioning.[234] Critics
have coined the term The Psi Assumption to describe "the assumption that any significant departure from the
laws of chance in a test of psychic ability is evidence that something anomalous or paranormal has occurred...
[in other words] assuming what they should be proving." These critics hold that concluding the existence of
psychic phenomena based on chance deviation in inadequately designed experiments is affirming the
consequent or begging the question.[235]

In 1979, magician and debunker James Randi engineered a hoax, now referred to as Project Alpha to
encourage a tightening of standards within the parapsychology community. Randi recruited two young
magicians and sent them undercover to Washington University's McDonnell Laboratory where they " fooled
researchers ... into believing they had paranormal powers." The aim was to expose poor experimental methods
and the credulity thought to be common in parapsychology.[236] Randi has stated that both of his recruits
deceived experimenters over a period of three years with demonstrations of supposedly psychic abilities:
blowing electric fuses sealed in a box, causing a lightweight paper rotor perched atop a needle to turn inside a
bell jar, bending metal spoons sealed in a glass bottle, etc.[237] The hoax by Randi raised ethical concerns in
the scientific and parapsychology communities, eliciting criticism even among skeptical communities such as
the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), which he helped found,
but also positive responses from the President of the Parapsychological Association Stanley Krippner.
Psychologist Ray Hyman, a CSICOP member, called the results "counterproductive".[236]

Selection bias and meta-analysis

Selective reporting has been offered by critics as an explanation for the positive results reported by
parapsychologists. Selective reporting is sometimes referred to as a "file drawer" problem, which arises when
only positive study results are made public, while studies with negative or null results are not made public.[120]
Selective reporting has a compounded effect on meta-analysis, which is a statistical technique that aggregates
the results of many studies in order to generate sufficient statistical power to demonstrate a result that the
individual studies themselves could not demonstrate at a statistically significant level. For example, a recent
meta-analysis combined 380 studies on psychokinesis,[119] including data from the PEAR lab. It concluded
that, although there is a statistically significant overall effect, it is not consistent and relatively few negative
studies would cancel it out. Consequently, biased publication of positive results could be the cause.[73]

The popularity of meta-analysis in parapsychology has been criticized by numerous researchers,[238] and is
often seen as troublesome even within parapsychology itself.[238] Critics have said that parapsychologists
misuse meta-analysis to create the incorrect impression that statistically significant results have been obtained
that indicate the existence of psi phenomena.[239] Physicist Robert Park states that parapsychology's reported
positive results are problematic because most such findings are invariably at the margin of statistical
significance and that might be explained by a number of confounding effects; Park states that such marginal
results are a typical symptom of pathological science as described by Irving Langmuir.[117]

Researcher J. E. Kennedy has said that concerns over the use of meta-analysis in science and medicine apply
as well to problems present in parapsychological meta-analysis. As a post-hoc analysis, critics emphasize the
opportunity the method presents to produce biased outcomes via the selection of cases chosen for study,
methods employed, and other key criteria. Critics say that analogous problems with meta-analysis have been
documented in medicine, where it has been shown different investigators performing meta-analyses of the
same set of studies have reached contradictory conclusions.[240]

Anomalistic psychology

In anomalistic psychology, paranormal phenomena have naturalistic explanations resulting from psychological
and physical factors which have sometimes given the impression of paranormal activity to some people when,
in fact, there have been none.[90][241] According to the psychologist Chris French:

The difference between anomalistic psychology and parapsychology is in terms of the aims of
what each discipline is about. Parapsychologists typically are actually searching for evidence to
prove the reality of paranormal forces, to prove they really do exist. So the starting assumption is
that paranormal things do happen, whereas anomalistic psychologists tend to start from the
position that paranormal forces probably don't exist and that therefore we should be looking for
other kinds of explanations, in particular the psychological explanations for those experiences that
people typically label as paranormal.[242]
Whilst parapsychology has been said to be in decline, anomalistic psychology has been reported to be on the
rise. It is now offered as an option on many psychology degree programmes and is also an option on the A2
psychology syllabus in the UK.[243]

Skeptics organizations

Organizations that encourage a critical examination of parapsychology and parapsychological research include
the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, publisher of the Skeptical Inquirer;[244] the James Randi Educational
Foundation, founded by illusionist and skeptic James Randi,[245] and the Occult Investigative Committee of
the Society of American Magicians[246] a society for professional magicians/illusionists that seeks "the
promotion of harmony among magicians, and the opposition of the unnecessary public exposure of magical
effects."[247]

See also
Outline of parapsychology
List of topics characterized as pseudoscience

References
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2. Gross, Paul R.; Levitt, Norman; Lewis, Martin W. (1996). The Flight from Science and Reason
(https://archive.org/details/flightfromscienc0000unse_w3d8/page/565). New York City: New
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particularly suitable for this study, because the parapsychological phenomenon it investigates
is widely believed to be nonexistent ... results are still significant (p = 0.003) with QRPs."
8. Carroll, Sean (May 11, 2016). "Thinking About Psychic Powers Helps Us Think About
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9. (Pigliucci, Boudry 2013) "Parapsychological research almost never appears in mainstream
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10. Cordón, Luis A. (2005). Popular Psychology: An Encyclopedia (https://archive.org/details/popul
arpsycholog0000cord/page/182). Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press. p. 182 (https://archive.or
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elusive goal."
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and under standard experimental conditions. Until they can do that, their claims will
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20-M).
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ISBN 978-1-57392-021-6, "Mainstream science is on the whole very dubious about ESP,
and the only way that most scientists will be persuaded is by a demonstration that can be
generally reproduced by neutral or even skeptical scientists. This is something that
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23. Podmore, Frank. (1897). Studies in Psychical Research. New York: Putnam. p. 47
24. Stein, Gordon. (1996). The Encyclopedia of the Paranormal. Prometheus Books. p. 703.
ISBN 1-57392-021-5 "Slade succeeded only on tests that allowed easy trickery, such of
producing knots in cords that had their ends tied together and the knot sealed, putting wooden
rings on a table leg, and removing coins from sealed boxes. He failed utterly on tests that did
not permit deception. He was unable to reverse the spirals of snail shells. He could not link two
wooden rings, one of oak, the other of alder. He could not knot an endless ring cut from a
bladder, or put a piece of candle inside a closed glass bulb. He failed to change the optical
handedness of tartaric dex-tro to levo. These tests would have been easy to pass if Slade 's
spirit controls had been able to take an object into the fourth dimension, then return it after
making the required manipulations. Such successes would have created marvelous PPOs
(permanent paranormal objects), difficult for skeptics to explain. Zöllner wrote an entire book in
praise of Slade. Titled Transcendental Physics (1878), it was partly translated into English in
1880 by spiritualist Charles Carleton Massey. The book is a classic of childlike gullibility by a
scientist incapable of devising adequate controls for testing paranormal powers."
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1111354879
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Prometheus Books. p. 209. ISBN 0-87975-504-0 "In the case of Zöllner's investigations of
Slade, not only do we know that Slade was exposed before and after his sessions with Zöllner,
but also there is ample reason to raise questions about the adequacy of the investigation.
Carrington (1907), Podmore (1963), and Mrs. Sidgwick (1886-87) are among a number of
critics who have uncovered flaws and loopholes in Zöllner's sittings with Slade."
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29576-9.
28. "Past Presidents" (https://web.archive.org/web/20150223112644/http://www.spr.ac.uk/page/pas
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England, 1750-1920. Cambridge University Press. p. 114. ISBN 978-0-521-76798-9
31. Douglas, Alfred. (1982). Extra-Sensory Powers: A Century of Psychical Research. Overlook
Press. p. 76. ISBN 978-0879511609 "Phantasms of the Living was criticized by a number of
scholars when it appeared, one ground for the attack being the lack of written testimony
regarding the apparitions composed shortly after they had been seen. In many instances
several years had elapsed between the occurrence and a report of it being made to the
investigators from the SPR."
32. Williams, William F. (2000). Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience: From Alien Abductions to Zone
Therapy. Routledge. p. 49. ISBN 1-57958-207-9
33. C. E. M. Hansel. The Search for a Demonstration of ESP. In Paul Kurtz. (1985). A Skeptic's
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34. Edmunds, Simeon. (1966). Spiritualism: A Critical Survey. Aquarian Press. p. 115. ISBN 978-
0850300130 "The early history of spirit photography was reviewed by Mrs Henry Sidgwick in
the Proceedings of the SPR in 1891. She showed clearly not only that Mumler, Hudson, Buguet
and their ilk were fraudulent, but the way in which those who believed in them were deceived."
35. Moreman, Christopher M. (2010). Beyond the Threshold: Afterlife Beliefs and Experiences in
World Religions. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. p. 163. ISBN 978-0-7425-6228-8 "SPR
investigators quickly found that many mediums were indeed, as skeptics had alleged,
operating under cover of darkness in order to perpetrate scams. They used a number of tricks
facilitated by darkness: sleight of hand was used to manipulate objects and touch people eager
to make contact with deceased loved ones; flour or white lines would give the illusion of
spectral white hands or faces; accomplices were even stashed under tables or in secret rooms
to lent support in the plot... As the investigations of the SPR, and other skeptics, were made
public, many fraudulent mediums saw their careers ruined and many unsuspecting clients were
enraged at the deception perpetrated."
36. Berger, Arthur S.; Berger, Joyce (1991). The Encyclopedia of Parapsychology and Psychical
Research (https://archive.org/details/encyclopediaofpa00berg). Paragon House Publishers.
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38. Berger, Arthur S. (1988). Lives and Letters in American Parapsychology: A Biographical
History, 1850-1987. McFarland. pp. 75-107. ISBN 978-0899503455
39. Asprem, Egil (2014). The Problem of Disenchantment: Scientific Naturalism and Esoteric
Discourse, 1900-1939. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill Academic Publishers. pp. 355–360.
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40. J. B. Rhine (1934). Extra-Sensory Perception. (4th ed.) Branden Publishing Company 1997.
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g/details/spiritualismbrit00haze/page/204). Manchester, England: Manchester University Press.
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Sociology. Vol. 43, No. 4. pp. 623-634. "Investigating Rhine's methods, we find that his
mathematical methods are wrong and that the effect of this error would in some cases be
negligible and in others very marked. We find that many of his experiments were set up in a
manner which would tend to increase, instead of to diminish, the possibility of systematic
clerical errors; and lastly, that the ESP cards can be read from the back."
49. Charles M. Wynn, Arthur W. Wiggins. (2001). Quantum Leaps in the Wrong Direction: Where
Real Science Ends...and Pseudoscience Begins. Joseph Henry Press. p. 156. ISBN 978-0-
309-07309-7 "In 1940, Rhine coauthored a book, Extrasensory Perception After Sixty Years in
which he suggested that something more than mere guess work was involved in his
experiments. He was right! It is now known that the experiments conducted in his laboratory
contained serious methodological flaws. Tests often took place with minimal or no screening
between the subject and the person administering the test. Subjects could see the backs of
cards that were later discovered to be so cheaply printed that a faint outline of the symbol could
be seen. Furthermore, in face-to-face tests, subjects could see card faces reflected in the
tester’s eyeglasses or cornea. They were even able to (consciously or unconsciously) pick up
clues from the tester’s facial expression and voice inflection. In addition, an observant subject
could identify the cards by certain irregularities like warped edges, spots on the backs, or
design imperfections."
50. Terence Hines. (2003). Pseudoscience and the Paranormal. Prometheus Books. p. 122.
ISBN 1-57392-979-4 "The procedural errors in the Rhine experiments have been extremely
damaging to his claims to have demonstrated the existence of ESP. Equally damaging has
been the fact that the results have not replicated when the experiments have been conducted in
other laboratories."
51. Jonathan C. Smith. (2009). Pseudoscience and Extraordinary Claims of the Paranormal: A
Critical Thinker's Toolkit (https://books.google.com/books?id=sJgONrua8IkC&pg=PT226&dq=r
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nepage&q=rhine%20pseudoscience&f=false). Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 978-1405181228.
"Today, researchers discount the first decade of Rhine's work with Zener cards. Stimulus
leakage or cheating could account for all his findings. Slight indentations on the backs of cards
revealed the symbols embossed on card faces. Subjects could see and hear the experimenter,
and note subtle but revealing facial expressions or changes in breathing."
52. Milbourne Christopher. (1970). ESP, Seers & Psychics. Thomas Y. Crowell Co. pp. 24-28
53. Robert L. Park. (2000). Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud. Oxford
University Press. pp. 40-43. ISBN 0-19-860443-2
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Humphries.
55. C. E. M. Hansel. (1980). ESP and Parapsychology: A Critical Re-Evaluation. Prometheus
Books. pp. 125-140
56. Back from the Future: Parapsychology and the Bem Affair (http://www.csicop.org/specialarticle
s/show/back_from_the_future) Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20111231102646/http://w
ww.csicop.org/specialarticles/show/back_from_the_future) 2011-12-31 at the Wayback
Machine. Skeptical Inquirer. "Despite Rhine’s confidence that he had established the reality of
extrasensory perception, he had not done so. Methodological problems with his experiments
eventually came to light, and as a result parapsychologists no longer run card-guessing studies
and rarely even refer to Rhine’s work."
57. John Sladek. (1974). The New Apocrypha: A Guide to Strange Sciences and Occult Beliefs.
Panther. pp. 172-174
58. Peter Lamont. (2013). Extraordinary Beliefs: A Historical Approach to a Psychological Problem.
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59. C. E. M. Hansel. (1989). The Search for Psychic Power: ESP and Parapsychology Revisited.
Prometheus Books. p. 46. ISBN 0-87975-516-4
60. Bergen Evans. (1954). The Spoor of Spooks: And Other Nonsense. Knopf. p. 24
61. C. E. M. Hansel. (1989). The Search for Psychic Power: ESP and Parapsychology Revisited.
Prometheus Books. pp. 56-58. ISBN 0-87975-516-4
62. C. E. M. Hansel. (1989). The Search for Psychic Power: ESP and Parapsychology Revisited.
Prometheus Books. p. 53. ISBN 0-87975-516-4 "First, the recording was not completely
independent, since the flash of light in the experimenters' room could be varied in duration by
the subject and thus provide a possible cue. Second, there were five different symbols in the
target series, but the experimental record showed that two of these arose more frequently than
the other three."
63. "The History of the Rhine Research Center" (https://web.archive.org/web/20070529210149/htt
p://www.rhine.org/f_hist.htm). Rhine Research Center. Archived from the original (http://www.rhi
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38. Tucker, Jim (2005). Life before life: a scientific investigation of children's memories of previous
lives. New York: St. Martin's Press. ISBN 978-0-312-32137-6.
39. Shroder, T (2007-02-11). "Ian Stevenson; Sought To Document Memories Of Past Lives in
Children" (https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/10/AR2007021001
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40. Cadoret, R (2005). "Book Forum: Ethics, Values, and Religion - European Cases of the
Reincarnation Type" (http://arquivo.pt/wayback/20090717023649/http://ajp.psychiatryonline.or
g/cgi/content/full/162/4/823). The American Journal of Psychiatry. 162 (4): 823–4.
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the original (http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/162/4/823) on 2009-07-17.
41. Harvey J. Irwin (2004). An Introduction to Parapsychology. McFarland, p. 218.
42. Shroder, Tom (2007-02-11). "Ian Stevenson; Sought To Document Memories Of Past Lives in
Children" (https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/10/AR2007021001
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45. Robert Baker. (1996). Hidden Memories: Voices and Visions from Within. Prometheus Books.
ISBN 0-87975-576-8
46. Robert Cogan. (1998). Critical Thinking: Step by Step. University Press of America. pp. 202-
203. ISBN 0-7618-1067-6 "Edwards catalogs common sense objections which have been
made against reincarnation. 1) How does a soul exist between bodies? 2) Tertullian's
objection: If there is reincarnation, why are not babies born with the mental abilities of adults?
3) Reincarnation claims an infinite series of prior incarnations. Evolution teaches that there was
a time when humans did not yet exist. So reincarnation is inconsistent with modern science. 4)
If there is reincarnation, then what is happening when the population increases? 5) If there is
reincarnation, then why do so few, if any people, remember past lives?... To answer these
objections believers in reincarnation must accept additional assumptions... Acceptance of
these silly assumptions, Edwards says, amounts to a crucifixion of one's intellect."
Paul Edwards. (1996, reprinted in 2001). Reincarnation: A Critical Examination.
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47. Simon Hoggart, Mike Hutchinson. (1995). Bizarre Beliefs. Richard Cohen Books. p. 145.
ISBN 978-1573921565 "The trouble is that the history of research into psi is littered with failed
experiments, ambiguous experiments, and experiments which are claimed as great successes
but are quickly rejected by conventional scientists. There has also been some spectacular
cheating."
48. Robert Cogan. (1998). Critical Thinking: Step by Step. University Press of America. p. 227.
ISBN 978-0761810674 "When an experiment can't be repeated and get the same result, this
tends to show that the result was due to some error in experimental procedure, rather than
some real causal process. ESP experiments simply have not turned up any repeatable
paranormal phenomena."
49. Charles M. Wynn, Arthur W. Wiggins. (2001). Quantum Leaps in the Wrong Direction: Where
Real Science Ends...and Pseudoscience Begins. Joseph Henry Press. p. 165. ISBN 978-
0309073097 "Extrasensory perception and psychokinesis fail to fulfill the requirements of the
scientific method. They therefore must remain pseudoscientific concepts until methodological
flaws in their study are eliminated, and repeatable data supporting their existence are
obtained."
50. Terence Hines. (2003). Pseudoscience and the Paranormal. Prometheus Books. p. 144.
ISBN 1-57392-979-4 "It is important to realize that, in one hundred years of parapsychological
investigations, there has never been a single adequate demonstration of the reality of any psi
phenomenon."
51. Jan Dalkvist (1994). Telepathic Group Communication of Emotions as a Function of Belief in
Telepathy. Dept. of Psychology, Stockholm University. "Within the scientific community
however, the claim that psi anomalies exist or may exist is in general regarded with skepticism.
One reason for this difference between the scientist and the non scientist is that the former [sic]
relies on his own experiences and anecdotal reports of psi phenomena, whereas the scientist
at least officially requires replicable results from well controlled experiments to believe in such
phenomena - results which according to the prevailing view among scientists, do not exist."
52. Willem B. Drees (28 November 1998). Religion, Science and Naturalism (https://books.google.
com/books?id=BxmcHWCv2c4C&pg=PA242). Cambridge University Press. pp. 242–.
ISBN 978-0-521-64562-1. Retrieved 5 October 2011. "Let me take the example of claims in
parapsychology regarding telepathy across spatial or temporal distances, apparently without a
mediating physical process. Such claims are at odds with the scientific consensus."
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Prometheus Books. p. 166. ISBN 0-87975-575-X "The bottom line is simple: science is based
on consensus, and at present a scientific consensus that psychic phenomena exist is still not
established."
54. Eugene B. Zechmeister, James E. Johnson. (1992). Critical Thinking: A Functional Approach.
Brooks/Cole Pub. Co. p. 115. ISBN 0534165966 "There exists no good scientific evidence for
the existence of paranormal phenomena such as ESP. To be acceptable to the scientific
community, evidence must be both valid and reliable."
55. Gracely, Ph.D., Ed J. (1998). "Why Extraordinary Claims Demand Extraordinary Proof" (http://w
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63. Andrew Neher. (2011). Paranormal and Transcendental Experience: A Psychological
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about the Existence of Psi" (https://web.archive.org/web/20070810173433/http://www.imprint.c
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"Parapsychology is the only realm of objective inquiry in which the phenomena are all
negatively defined, defined in terms of ruling out normal explanations. Of course, ruling out all
normal explanations is not an easy task. We may not be aware of all possible normal
explanations, or we may be deceived by our subjects, or we may deceive ourselves. If all
normal explanations actually could be ruled out, just what is it that is at play? What is psi?
Unfortunately, it is just a label. It has no substantive definition that goes beyond saying that all
normal explanations have apparently been eliminated. Of course, parapsychologists generally
presume that it has something to do with some ability of the mind to transcend the laws of
nature as we know them, but all that is so vague as to be unhelpful in any scientific
exploration."
65. Diaconis, Persi (1978). "Statistical Problems in ESP Research". Science. 201 (4351): 131–
136. Bibcode:1978Sci...201..131D (https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1978Sci...201..131D).
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66. Druckman, D.; Swets, J. A., eds. (1988). Enhancing Human Performance: Issues, Theories and
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67. James Alcock, Jean Burns, Anthony Freeman. (2003). Psi Wars: Getting to Grips with the
Paranormal. Imprint Academic. p. 25. ISBN 978-0907845485
68. Terence Hines. (2003). Pseudoscience and the Paranormal. Prometheus Books. p. 146.
ISBN 1-57392-979-4
69. Antony Flew. (1989). The problem of evidencing the improbable and the impossible. In G. K.
Zollschan, J. F. Schumaker & G. F. Walsh (eds.). Exploring the paranormal. pp. 313–327.
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70. Michael W. Friedlander. (1998). At the Fringes of Science. Westview Press. p. 122. ISBN 0-
8133-2200-6
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72. Ray Hyman. (2008). "Anomalous Cognition? A Second Perspective" (http://www.csicop.org/si/s
how/anomalous_cognition_a_second_perspective/). Skeptical Inquirer. Volume 32. Retrieved
May 22, 2014.
73. Wiseman, Richard (2009). "Heads I Win, Tails You Lose". Skeptical Inquirer. 34 (1): 36–40.
74. Hyman, R (1988). "Psi experiments: Do the best parapsychological experiments justify the
claims for psi?". Experientia. 44 (4): 315–322. doi:10.1007/bf01961269 (https://doi.org/10.100
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75. Mario Bunge. (1983). Treatise on Basic Philosophy: Volume 6: Epistemology & Methodology II:
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76. Land, Richard I. (1976). "Comments on Hypothetical Extrasensory Perception (ESP)".
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77. Shermer, Michael (2003). "Psychic drift. Why most scientists do not believe in ESP and psi
phenomena". Scientific American. 288: 2.
78. Moulton, S. T.; Kosslyn, S. M. (2008). "Using Neuroimaging to Resolve the Psi Debate" (https://
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i.pdf) (PDF). Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. 20 (1): 182–192.
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79. Acunzo, D.J.; Evrard, R.; Rabeyron, T. (2013). "Anomalous Experiences, Psi, and Functional
Neuroimaging" (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3870293). Frontiers in Human
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00893). PMC 3870293 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3870293).
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80. Shiah, YJ; Wu, YZ; Chen, YH; Chiang, SK (2014). "Schizophrenia and the paranormal: More
psi belief and superstition, and less déjà vu in medicated schizophrenic patients".
Comprehensive Psychiatry. 55 (3): 688–92. doi:10.1016/j.comppsych.2013.11.003 (https://doi.o
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4355706).
81. John Taylor. (1980). Science and the Supernatural: An Investigation of Paranormal
Phenomena Including Psychic Healing, Clairvoyance, Telepathy, and Precognition by a
Distinguished Physicist and Mathematician. Temple Smith. ISBN 0-85117-191-5
82. Susan Blackmore. (2001). Why I Have Given Up in Paul Kurtz. Skeptical Odysseys: Personal
Accounts by the World’s Leading Paranormal Inquirers. Prometheus Books. pp. 85-94. ISBN 1-
57392-884-4
83. Mario Bunge. (1983). Treatise on Basic Philosophy: Volume 6: Epistemology & Methodology II:
Understanding the World. Springer. pp. 225-226. ISBN 978-9027716347
"Precognition violates the principle of antecedence ("causality"), according to which the
effect does not happen before the cause. Psychokinesis violates the principle of
conservation of energy as well as the postulate that mind cannot act directly on matter. (If it
did no experimenter could trust his own readings of his instruments.) Telepathy and
precognition are incompatible with the epistemological principle according to which the
gaining of factual knowledge requires sense perception at some point."
"Parapsychology makes no use of any knowledge gained in other fields, such as physics
and physiological psychology. Moreover, its hypotheses are inconsistent with some basic
assumptions of factual science. In particular, the very idea of a disembodied mental entity is
incompatible with physiological psychology; and the claim that signals can be transmitted
across space without fading with distance is inconsistent with physics."
84. Gardner, Martin (September 1981). "Einstein and ESP" (https://books.google.com/books?id=Xj
ENAQAAMAAJ). In Kendrick Frazier (ed.). Paranormal Borderlands of Science. Prometheus.
pp. 60–65. ISBN 978-0-87975-148-7. Gilovich, Thomas (1993). How We Know What Isn't So:
The Fallibility of Human Reason in Everyday Life. Simon & Schuster. pp. 160, 169, 174, 175.
ISBN 978-0-02-911706-4.
85. Milton A. Rothman. (1988). A Physicist's Guide to Skepticism. Prometheus Books. p. 193.
ISBN 978-0-87975-440-2 "Transmission of information through space requires transfer of
energy from one place to another. Telepathy requires transmission of an energy-carrying signal
directly from one mind to another. All descriptions of ESP imply violations of conservation of
energy in one way or another, as well as violations of all the principles of information theory
and even of the principle of causality. Strict application of physical principles requires us to say
that ESP is impossible."
86. Charles M. Wynn, Arthur W. Wiggins. (2001). Quantum Leaps in the Wrong Direction: Where
Real Science Ends...and Pseudoscience Begins. Joseph Henry Press. p. 165. ISBN 978-
0309073097 "One of the reasons scientists have difficulty believing that psi effects are real is
that there is no known mechanism by which they could occur. PK action-at-a-distance would
presumably employ an action-at-a-distance force that is as yet unknown to science... Similarly,
there is no known sense (stimulation and receptor) by which thoughts could travel from one
person to another by which the mind could project itself elsewhere in the present, future, or
past."
87. "Telekinesis and Quantum Field Theory : Cosmic Variance" (http://blogs.discovermagazine.co
m/cosmicvariance/2008/02/18/telekinesis-and-quantum-field-theory/).
Blogs.discovermagazine.com. 2008-02-18. Retrieved 2014-04-11.
88. John Taylor. (1980). Science and the Supernatural: An Investigation of Paranormal
Phenomena Including Psychic Healing, Clairvoyance, Telepathy, and Precognition by a
Distinguished Physicist and Mathematician. Temple Smith. pp. 27-30. ISBN 0-85117-191-5
89. Felix Planer. (1980). Superstition. Cassell. p. 242. ISBN 0-304-30691-6
90. Felix Planer. (1980). Superstition. Cassell. p. 254. ISBN 0-304-30691-6
91. Bunge, Mario (2001). Philosophy in Crisis :The Need for Reconstruction (https://archive.org/det
ails/philosophycrisis00mari). Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books. p. 176 (https://archive.org/detai
ls/philosophycrisis00mari/page/n164). ISBN 978-1-57392-843-4.
92. Mario Bunge. (1983). Treatise on Basic Philosophy: Volume 6: Epistemology & Methodology II:
Understanding the World. Springer. pp. 225-227. ISBN 978-9027716347
93. Mario Bunge. (1984). What is Pseudoscience?. The Skeptical Inquirer. Volume 9: 36-46.
94. Bunge, Mario (1987). "Why Parapsychology Cannot Become a Science". Behavioral and Brain
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95. Arthur Newell Strahler. (1992). Understanding Science: An Introduction to Concepts and
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ISBN 1-57392-979-4
97. Raimo Tuomela Science, Protoscience, and Pseudoscience in Joseph C. Pitt, Marcello Pera
(1987). Rational Changes in Science: Essays on Scientific Reasoning. Springer. pp. 83-102.
ISBN 9401081816
98. Science Framework for California Public Schools. California State Board of Education. 1990.
99. Beyerstein, Barry L. (1995). "Distinguishing Science from Pseudoscience" (https://web.archive.
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cience.pdf) (PDF). Simon Fraser University. Archived from the original (https://www.sfu.ca/~bey
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00. Hyman, Ray (1995). "Evaluation of the program on anomalous mental phenomena" (https://we
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8445600). The Journal of Parapsychology. 59 (1). Archived from the original (http://findarticles.c
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01. Alcock, J. E. (1981). Parapsychology, Science or Magic?. Pergamon Press. ISBN 978-0-08-
025772-3.
02. Alcock, J. E. (1998). "Science, pseudoscience, and anomaly". Behavioral and Brain Sciences.
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89).
03. James Alcock. (1981). Parapsychology-Science Or Magic?: A Psychological Perspective.
Pergamon Press. p. 196. ISBN 978-0080257730
04. Thomas Gilovich. (1993). How We Know What Isn't So: The Fallibility of Human Reason in
Everyday Life. Free Press. p. 160
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ISBN 1-57392-979-4
06. David Marks. (1986). Investigating the Paranormal. Nature. Volume 320: 119-124.
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alphr.com/science/1001390/parapsychology-when-did-science-give-up-on-paranormal-study).
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08. French, Chris; Stone, Anna. (2014). Anomalistic Psychology: Exploring Paranormal Belief and
Experience. Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 252-255. ISBN 978-1-4039-9571-1
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10. Henry Gordon. (1988). Extrasensory Deception: ESP, Psychics, Shirley MacLaine, Ghosts,
UFOs. Macmillan of Canada. p. 13. ISBN 0-7715-9539-5 "The history of parapsychology, of
psychic phenomena, has been studded with fraud and experimental error."
11. Hyman, Ray. (1989). The Elusive Quarry: A Scientific Appraisal of Psychical Research.
Prometheus Books. pp. 99-106. ISBN 0-87975-504-0
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Further reading
Allison, Paul D. (1979). "Experimental Parapsychology as a Rejected Science". The
Sociological Review. 27 (suppl): 271–291. doi:10.1111/j.1467-954X.1979.tb00065.x (https://do
i.org/10.1111%2Fj.1467-954X.1979.tb00065.x). S2CID 146472367 (https://api.semanticschola
r.org/CorpusID:146472367).
Alcock, James (1981). Parapsychology-Science Or Magic?: A Psychological Perspective.
Pergamon Press.
Bunge, Mario (1987). "Why Parapsychology Cannot Become a Science". Behavioral and Brain
Sciences. 10 (4): 576–577. doi:10.1017/s0140525x00054595 (https://doi.org/10.1017%2Fs014
0525x00054595).
Hines, Terence (2003). Pseudoscience and the Paranormal. Prometheus Books. ISBN 1-
57392-979-4
Irwin, Harvey J.; Watt, Caroline. (2007). An Introduction to Parapsychology. McFarland &
Company. p. 320. ISBN 978-0-7864-3059-8.
Marks, David (2000). The Psychology of the Psychic (2nd ed.). New York: Prometheus Books.
p. 336. ISBN 978-1-57392-798-7.
Moore, E. Garth (1977). Believe It or Not: Christianity and Psychical Research. London:
Mowbray. ISBN 0-264-66010-2
Neher, Andrew (2011). Paranormal and Transcendental Experience: A Psychological
Examination. Dover Publications.
Randi, James (June 1982). Flim-Flam! Psychics, ESP, Unicorns, and Other Delusions.
Prometheus Books. p. 342. ISBN 978-0-345-40946-1.
Randi, James; Arthur C. Clarke (1997). An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the
Occult and Supernatural. St. Martin's Griffin. p. 336. ISBN 978-0-312-15119-5.
Sagan, Carl; Ann Druyan (1997). The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the
Dark. Ballantine Books. p. 349. ISBN 978-0-345-40946-1.
Shepard, Leslie (2000). Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology. Thomson Gale.
p. 1939. ISBN 978-0-8103-8570-2.
Shermer, Michael (2003). "Psychic drift. Why most scientists do not believe in ESP and psi
phenomena". Scientific American. 288: 2.
Wiseman, Richard; Watt, Caroline (2005). Parapsychology (International Library of
Psychology). Ashgate Publishing. pp. 501 pages. ISBN 978-0-7546-2450-9.

External links
 The Division of Perceptual Studies (http://www.medicine.virginia.edu/clinical/departments/psyc
hiatry/sections/cspp/dops) Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20140508224826/http://www.
medicine.virginia.edu/clinical/departments/psychiatry/sections/cspp/dops) 2014-05-08 at the
Wayback Machine at the University of Virginia School of Medicine.
Institute of Noetic Sciences (http://www.noetic.org/) A nonprofit organization that sponsors
research in parapsychology.
Parapsychological Association (https://web.archive.org/web/20100310213612/http://www.para
psych.org/index.html) An organization of scientists and scholars engaged in the study of
psychic phenomena, affiliated with the American Association for the Advancement of Science
in 1969.
Rhine Research Center (http://www.rhine.org/) A historical parapsychological research center
featuring the first building ever made for experimental work in parapsychology. The Rhine
Research Center is a hub for research and education in Parapsychology.
Society for Psychical Research (http://www.spr.ac.uk/) Founded in 1882, the SPR was the first
society to conduct organised scholarly research into parapsychology and other human
experiences that challenge contemporary scientific models. It continues its work today.
Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (http://csicop.org/) Organization formed in 1976 to promote
scientific skepticism and encourage the critical investigation of paranormal claims and
parapsychology.
James Randi Educational Foundation (http://www.randi.org/site/) The James Randi Education
Foundation(JREF) was founded to promote critical thinking in the areas of the supernatural and
paranormal. The JREF has provided skeptical views in the area of parapsychology.
FindArticles.com Index (https://web.archive.org/web/20080112045008/http://findarticles.com/p/
search?qt=parapsychology) Large number of articles about parapsychology, from publications
such as the Journal of Parapsychology and the Skeptical Inquirer.
Parapsychology (https://curlie.org/Science/Social_Sciences/Psychology/Alternative/Parapsych
ology/) at Curlie
Classification MeSH: D010268 D
(https://www.nlm.ni
h.gov/cgi/mesh/201
5/MB_cgi?field=uid
&term=D010268)

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