![Paraghost](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fb/Paraghost.gif)
Parapsychology is the study of alleged
psychic
A psychic is a person who claims to use extrasensory perception (ESP) to identify information hidden from the normal senses, particularly involving telepathy or clairvoyance, or who performs acts that are apparently inexplicable by natural laws, ...
phenomena (
extrasensory perception
Extrasensory perception or ESP, also called sixth sense, is a claimed paranormal ability pertaining to reception of information not gained through the recognized physical senses, but sensed with the mind. The term was adopted by Duke Universi ...
,
telepathy
Telepathy () is the purported vicarious transmission of information from one person's mind to another's without using any known human sensory channels or physical interaction. The term was first coined in 1882 by the classical scholar Frederic W ...
,
precognition
Precognition (from the Latin 'before', and 'acquiring knowledge') is the purported psychic phenomenon of seeing, or otherwise becoming directly aware of, events in the future.
There is no accepted scientific evidence that precognition is a ...
,
clairvoyance
Clairvoyance (; ) is the magical ability to gain information about an object, person, location, or physical event through extrasensory perception. Any person who is claimed to have such ability is said to be a clairvoyant () ("one who sees cl ...
,
psychokinesis
Psychokinesis (from grc, ψυχή, , soul and grc, κίνησις, , movement, label=ㅤ), or telekinesis (from grc, τηλε, , far off and grc, κίνησις, , movement, label=ㅤ), is a hypothetical psychic ability allowing a person ...
(also called telekinesis), and
psychometry) and other
paranormal
Paranormal events are purported phenomena described in popular culture, folk, and other non-scientific bodies of knowledge, whose existence within these contexts is described as being beyond the scope of normal scientific understanding. Nota ...
claims, for example, those related to
near-death experience
A near-death experience (NDE) is a profound personal experience associated with death or impending death which researchers claim share similar characteristics. When positive, such experiences may encompass a variety of sensations including detac ...
s,
synchronicity
Synchronicity (german: Synchronizität) is a concept first introduced by analytical psychologist Carl G. Jung "to describe circumstances that appear meaningfully related yet lack a causal connection." In contemporary research, synchronicity ...
,
apparitional experience
In parapsychology, an apparitional experience is an anomalous experience characterized by the apparent perception of either a living being or an inanimate object without there being any material stimulus for such a perception.
In academic discu ...
s, etc.
Criticized as being a
pseudoscience
Pseudoscience consists of statements, beliefs, or practices that claim to be both scientific and factual but are incompatible with the scientific method. Pseudoscience is often characterized by contradictory, exaggerated or falsifiability, unfa ...
, the majority of mainstream scientists reject it.
Parapsychology has also been criticised by mainstream critics for many of its practitioners claiming that their studies are plausible in spite of there being no convincing evidence for the existence of any psychic phenomena after more than a century of research.
Parapsychology research rarely appears in mainstream
scientific journal
In academic publishing, a scientific journal is a periodical publication intended to further the progress of science, usually by reporting new research.
Content
Articles in scientific journals are mostly written by active scientists such as s ...
s; instead, most papers about parapsychology are published in a small number of niche journals.
Terminology
The term ''parapsychology'' was coined in 1889 by philosopher
Max Dessoir
Maximilian Dessoir (8 February 1867 – 19 July 1947) was a German philosopher, psychologist and theorist of aesthetics.
Career
Dessoir was born in Berlin, into a German Jewish family, his parents being Ludwig Dessoir (1810-1874), "Germany's mo ...
as the German .
It was adopted by
J. B. Rhine
Joseph Banks Rhine (September 29, 1895 – February 20, 1980), usually known as J. B. Rhine, was an American botanist who founded parapsychology as a branch of psychology, founding the parapsychology lab at Duke University, the ''Journ ...
in the 1930s as a replacement for the term ''psychical research'' in order to indicate a significant shift toward experimental methodology and academic discipline.
The term originates from the el, παρά meaning "alongside", and
psychology
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...
.
In parapsychology, psi is the unknown factor in
extrasensory perception
Extrasensory perception or ESP, also called sixth sense, is a claimed paranormal ability pertaining to reception of information not gained through the recognized physical senses, but sensed with the mind. The term was adopted by Duke Universi ...
and
psychokinesis
Psychokinesis (from grc, ψυχή, , soul and grc, κίνησις, , movement, label=ㅤ), or telekinesis (from grc, τηλε, , far off and grc, κίνησις, , movement, label=ㅤ), is a hypothetical psychic ability allowing a person ...
experiences that is not explained by known physical or biological mechanisms. The term is derived from the
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
ψ ''psi,'' 23rd letter of the
Greek alphabet
The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BCE. It is derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and was the earliest known alphabetic script to have distinct letters for vowels as we ...
and the initial letter of the el, ψυχή, translit= , "mind, soul".
The term was coined by
biologist
A biologist is a scientist who conducts research in biology. Biologists are interested in studying life on Earth, whether it is an individual Cell (biology), cell, a multicellular organism, or a Community (ecology), community of Biological inter ...
Bertold Wiesner
Bertold Paul Wiesner (1901–1972) was an Austrian Jewish physiologist noted firstly for coining the term 'Psi' to denote parapsychological phenomena;Rhine, J. B., 'Psi Phenomena and Psychiatry'. Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine 43 ( ...
, and first used by psychologist
Robert Thouless
Robert Henry Thouless (15 July 1894 – 25 September 1984) was an English psychologist and parapsychologist. He is best known as the author of '' Straight and Crooked Thinking'' (1930, 1953), which describes flaws in reasoning and argument.
Ca ...
in a 1942 article published in the ''
British Journal of Psychology
The ''British Journal of Psychology'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed psychology journal. It was established in 1904 and is published by Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of the British Psychological Society. The editor-in-chief is Stefan R. Schweinberger ( ...
''.
The
Parapsychological Association
The Parapsychological Association (PA) was formed in 1957 as a professional society for parapsychologists following an initiative by Joseph B. Rhine. Its purpose has been "to advance parapsychology as a science, to disseminate knowledge of the fie ...
divides psi into two main categories: psi-gamma for
extrasensory perception
Extrasensory perception or ESP, also called sixth sense, is a claimed paranormal ability pertaining to reception of information not gained through the recognized physical senses, but sensed with the mind. The term was adopted by Duke Universi ...
and psi-kappa for
psychokinesis
Psychokinesis (from grc, ψυχή, , soul and grc, κίνησις, , movement, label=ㅤ), or telekinesis (from grc, τηλε, , far off and grc, κίνησις, , movement, label=ㅤ), is a hypothetical psychic ability allowing a person ...
.
[ In popular culture, "psi" has become more and more synonymous with special ]psychic
A psychic is a person who claims to use extrasensory perception (ESP) to identify information hidden from the normal senses, particularly involving telepathy or clairvoyance, or who performs acts that are apparently inexplicable by natural laws, ...
, mental
Mental may refer to:
* of or relating to the mind
Films
* ''Mental'' (2012 film), an Australian comedy-drama
* ''Mental'' (2016 film), a Bangladeshi romantic-action movie
* ''Mental'', a 2008 documentary by Kazuhiro Soda
* ''Mental'', a 2014 O ...
, and "psionic
In American science fiction of the 1950s and 1960s, psionics was a proposed discipline that applied principles of engineering (especially electronics) to the study (and employment) of paranormal or psychic phenomena, such as telepathy and psychok ...
" abilities and powers.
History
Early psychical research
In 1853, chemist Robert Hare conducted experiments with mediums
Mediumship is the practice of purportedly mediating communication between familiar spirits or spirits of the dead and living human beings. Practitioners are known as "mediums" or "spirit mediums". There are different types of mediumship or spir ...
and reported positive results. Other researchers such as Frank Podmore
Frank Podmore (5 February 1856 – 14 August 1910) was an English author, and founding member of the Fabian Society. He is best known as an influential member of the Society for Psychical Research and for his sceptical writings on spiritualism.
...
highlighted flaws in his experiments, such as lack of controls to prevent trickery. Agenor de Gasparin
Agenor (; Ancient Greek: Ἀγήνωρ or Αγήνορας ''Agēnor''; English translation: "heroic, manly") was in Greek mythology and history a Phoenician king of Tyre or Sidon. The Doric Greek historian Herodotus (c. 484–425 BC), born in ...
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
Ectoplasm (from Greek ''ektos'' 'outside' and ''plasma'' 'something formed or molded') is a term used in spiritualism to denote a substance or spiritual energy "exteriorized" by physical mediums. It was coined in 1894 by psychical researcher Cha ...
". 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.
The German astrophysicist Johann Karl Friedrich Zöllner
Johann Karl Friedrich Zöllner (8 November 1834, Berlin25 April 1882, Leipzig) was a German astrophysicist who studied optical illusions. He was also an early psychical investigator.
Biography
From 1872 he held the chair of astrophysics at Lei ...
tested the medium Henry Slade
Henry Slade (1835–1905) was a famous fraudulent medium who lived and practiced in both Europe and North America.
Biography
Slade was most well known as a slate-writing medium. During his séances he would place a small slate with a piece ...
in 1877. According to Zöllner some of the experiments were a success. However, flaws in the experiments were discovered and critics have suggested that Slade was a fraud who performed trickery in the experiments.
The Society for Psychical Research
The Society for Psychical Research (SPR) is a nonprofit organisation in the United Kingdom. Its stated purpose is to understand events and abilities commonly described as psychic or paranormal. It describes itself as the "first society to condu ...
(SPR) was founded in London
London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
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
Henry Sidgwick (; 31 May 1838 – 28 August 1900) was an English utilitarian philosopher and economist. He was the Knightbridge Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Cambridge from 1883 until his death, and is best known in philos ...
, Arthur Balfour
Arthur James Balfour, 1st Earl of Balfour, (, ; 25 July 184819 March 1930), also known as Lord Balfour, was a British Conservative Party (UK), Conservative statesman who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1902 to 1905. As F ...
, William Crookes
Sir William Crookes (; 17 June 1832 – 4 April 1919) was a British chemist and physicist who attended the Royal College of Chemistry, now part of Imperial College London, and worked on spectroscopy. He was a pioneer of vacuum tubes, inventing t ...
, Rufus Osgood Mason
Rufus Osgood Mason (January 22, 1830, in Sullivan, New Hampshire – May 11, 1903, in New York City) was a physician, surgeon, and teacher and an early researcher in parapsychology and hypnotherapy.Carlos S. Alvarado, "Rufus Osgood Mason (1830– ...
and Nobel Laureate Charles Richet
Charles Robert Richet (25 August 1850 – 4 December 1935) was a French physiologist at the Collège de France known for his pioneering work in immunology. In 1913, he won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "in recognition of his work on ...
. Presidents of the Society included, in addition to Richet, Eleanor Sidgwick
Eleanor Mildred Sidgwick (née Balfour; 11 March 1845 – 10 February 1936), known as Nora to her family and friends, was a physics researcher assisting Lord Rayleigh, an activist for the higher education of women, Principal of Newnham College o ...
and William James
William James (January 11, 1842 – August 26, 1910) was an American philosopher, historian, and psychologist, and the first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States.
James is considered to be a leading thinker of the lat ...
, and subsequently Nobel Laureates Henri Bergson
Henri-Louis Bergson (; 18 October 1859 – 4 January 1941) was a French philosopherHenri Bergson. 2014. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Retrieved 13 August 2014, from https://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/61856/Henri-Bergson and Lord Rayleigh
John William Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh, (; 12 November 1842 – 30 June 1919) was an English mathematician and physicist who made extensive contributions to science. He spent all of his academic career at the University of Cambridge. Amo ...
, and philosopher C. D. Broad
Charlie Dunbar Broad (30 December 1887 – 11 March 1971), usually cited as C. D. Broad, was an English people, English epistemology, epistemologist, history of philosophy, historian of philosophy, philosophy of science, philosopher of sc ...
.
Areas of study included telepathy
Telepathy () is the purported vicarious transmission of information from one person's mind to another's without using any known human sensory channels or physical interaction. The term was first coined in 1882 by the classical scholar Frederic W ...
, hypnotism
Hypnosis is a human condition involving focused attention (the selective attention/selective inattention hypothesis, SASI), reduced peripheral awareness, and an enhanced capacity to respond to suggestion.In 2015, the American Psychologica ...
, Reichenbach's phenomena, apparitions
Apparition may refer to:
Supernatural
*Apparitional experience, an anomalous, quasi-perceptual experience
* A vision, something seen in a dream, trance, or religious ecstasy
*Ghost, the soul or spirit of a dead person or animal that can appear ...
, hauntings
The list of reportedly haunted locations throughout the world, that are locations said to be haunted by ghosts or other supernatural beings, including demons. Reports of haunted locations are part of ghostlore, which is a form of folklore.
Ar ...
, and the physical aspects of Spiritualism
Spiritualism is the metaphysical school of thought opposing physicalism and also is the category of all spiritual beliefs/views (in monism and dualism) from ancient to modern. In the long nineteenth century, Spiritualism (when not lowercase) ...
such as table-tilting, materialization and apportation. In the 1880s, the Society investigated apparitional experiences and hallucinations in the sane
Anomalous experiences, such as so-called benign hallucinations, may occur in a person in a state of good mental and physical health, even in the apparent absence of a transient trigger factor such as fatigue, intoxication or sensory deprivation.
T ...
. Among the first important works was the two-volume publication in 1886, ''Phantasms of the Living
Frederic William Henry Myers (6 February 1843 – 17 January 1901) was a British poet, classicist, philologist, and a founder of the Society for Psychical Research. Myers' work on psychical research and his ideas about a "subliminal self" w ...
'' which was largely criticized by scholars. 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. The SPR became the model for similar societies in other European countries and the United States during the late 19th century.
Early clairvoyance
Clairvoyance (; ) is the magical ability to gain information about an object, person, location, or physical event through extrasensory perception. Any person who is claimed to have such ability is said to be a clairvoyant () ("one who sees cl ...
experiments were reported in 1884 by Charles Richet
Charles Robert Richet (25 August 1850 – 4 December 1935) was a French physiologist at the Collège de France known for his pioneering work in immunology. In 1913, he won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "in recognition of his work on ...
. 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.[ C. E. M. Hansel. ''The Search for a Demonstration of ESP''. In ]Paul Kurtz
Paul Kurtz (December 21, 1925 – October 20, 2012) was an American scientific skeptic and Secular humanism, secular humanist. He has been called "the father of secular humanism". He was Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University at Buff ...
. (1985). ''A Skeptic's Handbook of Parapsychology''. Prometheus Books. pp. 97–127.
In 1881, Eleanor Sidgwick
Eleanor Mildred Sidgwick (née Balfour; 11 March 1845 – 10 February 1936), known as Nora to her family and friends, was a physics researcher assisting Lord Rayleigh, an activist for the higher education of women, Principal of Newnham College o ...
revealed the fraudulent methods that spirit photographers such as Édouard Isidore Buguet
Édouard Isidore Buguet (1840–1901) was a French medium and spirit photographer. Harry Houdini. (2011 edition). Originally published in 1924. ''A Magician Among the Spirits''. Cambridge University Press. pp. 120-124.
Buguet became a "sensatio ...
, Frederic Hudson
Frederic Hudson (April 25, 1819 – October 21, 1875) was a leading 19th century American newspaper editor, working from 1838 to 1866 for ''New York Herald'', where he served as managing editor, and was influential in the development of Am ...
and William H. Mumler
William H. Mumler (1832–1884) was an American spirit photographer who worked in New York and Boston. His first spirit photograph was apparently an accident—a self-portrait which, when developed, also revealed the "spirit" of his deceas ...
had utilized. During the late nineteenth century many fraudulent mediums were exposed by SPR investigators.
Largely due to the support of psychologist William James
William James (January 11, 1842 – August 26, 1910) was an American philosopher, historian, and psychologist, and the first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States.
James is considered to be a leading thinker of the lat ...
, the American Society for Psychical Research
The American Society for Psychical Research (ASPR) is the oldest psychical research organization in the United States dedicated to parapsychology. It maintains offices and a library, in New York City, which are open to both members and the gener ...
(ASPR) opened its doors in Boston
Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...
in 1885, moving to New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
in 1905 under the leadership of James H. Hyslop. Notable cases investigated by Walter Franklin Prince
Walter Franklin Prince (22 April 1863 – 7 August 1934) was an American parapsychologist and founder of the Boston Society for Psychical Research in Boston.Berger, Arthur S. (1988). ''Walter Franklin Prince: A Portrait''. In ''Lives and Letters ...
of the ASPR in the early 20th century included Pierre L. O. A. Keeler, the Great Amherst Mystery
The Great Amherst Mystery was a notorious case of reported poltergeist activity in Amherst, Nova Scotia, Canada between 1878 and 1879. It was the subject of an investigation by Walter Hubbell, an actor with an interest in psychic phenomena, who ...
and Patience Worth
Patience Worth was allegedly a spirit contacted by Pearl Lenore Curran (February 15, 1883 – December 2, 1937). This symbiotic relationship produced several novels, poetry and prose which Pearl Curran claimed were delivered to her through chan ...
.
Rhine era
In 1911, Stanford University
Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...
became the first academic institution in the United States to study extrasensory perception
Extrasensory perception or ESP, also called sixth sense, is a claimed paranormal ability pertaining to reception of information not gained through the recognized physical senses, but sensed with the mind. The term was adopted by Duke Universi ...
(ESP) and psychokinesis
Psychokinesis (from grc, ψυχή, , soul and grc, κίνησις, , movement, label=ㅤ), or telekinesis (from grc, τηλε, , far off and grc, κίνησις, , movement, label=ㅤ), is a hypothetical psychic ability allowing a person ...
(PK) in a laboratory setting. The effort was headed by psychologist John Edgar Coover, and was supported by funds donated by Thomas Welton Stanford
Thomas Welton Stanford (1832–1918), also known as Welton Stanford, was an American-born Australian businessman, spiritualist and philanthropist, most notably toward Stanford University, which was founded by his older brother Leland Stanford. A ...
, 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."
In 1930, Duke University
Duke University is a private research university in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist James ...
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
Louisa Ella Rhine (née Weckesser November 9, 1891 – March 17, 1983) was an American doctor of botany and is known for her work in parapsychology. At the time of her death, she was recognized as the foremost researcher of spontaneous ...
—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
Quantitative may refer to:
* Quantitative research, scientific investigation of quantitative properties
* Quantitative analysis (disambiguation)
* Quantitative verse, a metrical system in poetry
* Statistics, also known as quantitative analysis ...
, statistical
Statistics (from German: ''Statistik'', "description of a state, a country") is the discipline that concerns the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of data. In applying statistics to a scientific, industria ...
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.
George Estabrooks
George Hoben Estabrooks (December 16, 1895 – December 30, 1973) was a Canadian-American psychologist and an authority on hypnosis
Hypnosis is a human condition involving focused attention (the selective attention/selective inattentio ...
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.
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
Maximilian Dessoir (8 February 1867 – 19 July 1947) was a German philosopher, psychologist and theorist of aesthetics.
Career
Dessoir was born in Berlin, into a German Jewish family, his parents being Ludwig Dessoir (1810-1874), "Germany's mo ...
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
The ''Journal of Parapsychology'' is a biannual peer-reviewed academic journal covering research on psi phenomena, including telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, and psychokinesis, as well as human consciousness in general and anomalous experie ...
'', which he co-edited with McDougall.[
]
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 first book, ''Extrasensory Perception
Extrasensory perception or ESP, also called sixth sense, is a claimed paranormal ability pertaining to reception of information not gained through the recognized physical senses, but sensed with the mind. The term was adopted by Duke Universi ...
'' (1934), that after 90,000 trials, he felt ESP is "an actual and demonstrable occurrence".[J. B. Rhine (1934). Extra-Sensory Perception. (4th ed.) Branden Publishing Company 1997. ]
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. The parapsychologist Samuel Soal
Samuel George Soal (1889–1975) was a British mathematician and parapsychologist. He was charged with fraudulent production of data in his work in parapsychology.
Biography
Soal graduated with first class honours in mathematics from Queen Ma ...
and his colleagues tested Garrett in May 1937. Most of the experiments were carried out in the Psychological Laboratory at University College London
, mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward
, established =
, type = Public research university
, endowment = £143 million (2020)
, budget = ...
. A total of over 12,000 guesses were recorded but Garrett failed to produce above chance level. 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."
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
Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...
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." Four other psychological departments failed to replicate Rhine's results. After thousands of card runs, James Charles Crumbaugh
James Charles Crumbaugh (1912-2001) was an American psychologist and parapsychologist.
Crumbaugh was born in Terrell, Texas. He became interested in parapsychology starting in 1938 which led to a Master's thesis. He received his Ph.D. from the ...
failed to duplicate the results of Rhine.
In 1938, the psychologist Joseph Jastrow
Joseph Jastrow (January 30, 1863 – January 8, 1944) was a Polish-born American psychologist, noted for inventions in experimental psychology, design of experiments, and psychophysics. He also worked on the phenomena of optical illusions, ...
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". Rhine's experiments were discredited due to the discovery that sensory leakage Sensory leakage is a term used to refer to information that transferred to a person by conventional means (other than psi) during an experiment into ESP.Robert Todd Carroll. (2014)"Sensory Leakage in The Skeptic's Dictionary.
For example, where the ...
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.
Illusionist
Magic, which encompasses the subgenres of illusion, stage magic, and close up magic, among others, is a performing art in which audiences are entertained by tricks, effects, or illusions of seemingly impossible feats, using natural means. It ...
Milbourne Christopher
Milbourne Christopher (23 March 1914 – 17 June 1984) was a prominent American illusionist, magic historian, and author.
President of the Society of American Magicians, an honorary vice-president to The Magic Circle, and one of the founding me ...
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.Milbourne Christopher
Milbourne Christopher (23 March 1914 – 17 June 1984) was a prominent American illusionist, magic historian, and author.
President of the Society of American Magicians, an honorary vice-president to The Magic Circle, and one of the founding me ...
. (1970). ''ESP, Seers & Psychics''. Thomas Y. Crowell Co. pp. 24–28 Another criticism, made by chemist Irving Langmuir
Irving Langmuir (; January 31, 1881 – August 16, 1957) was an American chemist, physicist, and engineer. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1932 for his work in surface chemistry.
Langmuir's most famous publication is the 1919 art ...
, among others, was one of selective reporting
In epidemiology, reporting bias is defined as "selective revealing or suppression of information" by subjects (for example about past medical history, smoking, sexual experiences). In artificial intelligence research, the term reporting bias is u ...
. 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.
Rhine and his colleagues attempted to address these criticisms through new experiments described in the book ''Extrasensory Perception After Sixty Years
''Extrasensory Perception'' is a 1934 book written by parapsychologist Joseph Banks Rhine, which discusses his research work at Duke University. Extrasensory perception is the ability to acquire information shielded from the senses, and the bo ...
'' (1940).[Rhine, J.B. (1966). Foreword. In Pratt, J.G., Rhine, J.B., Smith, B.M., Stuart, C.E., & Greenwood, J.A. (eds.). '']Extrasensory Perception After Sixty Years
''Extrasensory Perception'' is a 1934 book written by parapsychologist Joseph Banks Rhine, which discusses his research work at Duke University. Extrasensory perception is the ability to acquire information shielded from the senses, and the bo ...
''. 2nd ed. Boston, US: Humphries. Rhine described three experiments the Pearce-Pratt experiment
Joseph Gaither Pratt (August 31, 1910 – November 3, 1979) was an American psychologist who specialized in the field of parapsychology. Among his research interests were extrasensory perception, psychokinesis, mediumship and poltergeists.
Muc ...
, the Pratt-Woodruff experiment
Joseph Gaither Pratt (August 31, 1910 – November 3, 1979) was an American psychologist who specialized in the field of parapsychology. Among his research interests were extrasensory perception, psychokinesis, mediumship and poltergeists.
Muc ...
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''". Joseph Gaither Pratt
Joseph Gaither Pratt (August 31, 1910 – November 3, 1979) was an American psychologist who specialized in the field of parapsychology. Among his research interests were extrasensory perception, psychokinesis, mediumship and poltergeists.
Muc ...
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 be regarded as supplying evidence for ESP.
In 1957, Rhine and Joseph Gaither Pratt
Joseph Gaither Pratt (August 31, 1910 – November 3, 1979) was an American psychologist who specialized in the field of parapsychology. Among his research interests were extrasensory perception, psychokinesis, mediumship and poltergeists.
Muc ...
wrote '' Parapsychology: Frontier Science of the Mind''. Because of the methodological problems, parapsychologists no longer utilize card-guessing studies. Rhine's experiments into psychokinesis
Psychokinesis (from grc, ψυχή, , soul and grc, κίνησις, , movement, label=ㅤ), or telekinesis (from grc, τηλε, , far off and grc, κίνησις, , movement, label=ㅤ), is a hypothetical psychic ability allowing a person ...
(PK) were also criticized. John Sladek
John Thomas Sladek (December 15, 1937 – March 10, 2000) was an American science fiction author, known for his satirical and surreal novels.
Life and work
Born in Waverly, Iowa, in 1937, Sladek was in England in the 1960s for the New Wave ...
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.John Sladek
John Thomas Sladek (December 15, 1937 – March 10, 2000) was an American science fiction author, known for his satirical and surreal novels.
Life and work
Born in Waverly, Iowa, in 1937, Sladek was in England in the 1960s for the New Wave ...
. (1974). ''The New Apocrypha: A Guide to Strange Sciences and Occult Beliefs''. Panther. pp. 172–174
The Ownbey-Zirkle ESP experiment at Duke was criticized by parapsychologists and skeptics.Peter Lamont
Peter Curtis Lamont (12 November 1929 – 18 December 2020) was a British set decorator, art director, and production designer most noted for his collaborations with filmmaker James Cameron, and for working on eighteen ''James Bond'' films, fr ...
. (2013). ''Extraordinary Beliefs: A Historical Approach to a Psychological Problem''. Cambridge University Press. pp. 206–208. 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 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.
The Turner-Ownbey long distance telepathy
Telepathy () is the purported vicarious transmission of information from one person's mind to another's without using any known human sensory channels or physical interaction. The term was first coined in 1882 by the classical scholar Frederic W ...
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. 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.
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.
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. In 1995, the centenary of Rhine's birth, the FRNM was renamed the Rhine Research Center
The Rhine Research Center is an independent, non-profit parapsychology research center that takes a scientific approach to anomalous phenomena and exceptional human experience. According to the mission statement, the "Rhine's mission is to advance ...
. 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".
Establishment of the Parapsychological Association
The Parapsychological Association
The Parapsychological Association (PA) was formed in 1957 as a professional society for parapsychologists following an initiative by Joseph B. Rhine. Its purpose has been "to advance parapsychology as a science, to disseminate knowledge of the fie ...
(PA) was created in Durham, North Carolina
Durham ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of North Carolina and the county seat of Durham County, North Carolina, Durham County. Small portions of the city limits extend into Orange County, North Carolina, Orange County and Wake County, North Carol ...
, 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".
In 1969, under the direction of anthropologist
An anthropologist is a person engaged in the practice of anthropology. Anthropology is the study of aspects of humans within past and present societies. Social anthropology, cultural anthropology and philosophical anthropology study the norms and ...
Margaret Mead
Margaret Mead (December 16, 1901 – November 15, 1978) was an American cultural anthropologist who featured frequently as an author and speaker in the mass media during the 1960s and the 1970s.
She earned her bachelor's degree at Barnard Co ...
, the Parapsychological Association became affiliated with the American Association for the Advancement of Science
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is an American international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific respons ...
(AAAS), the largest general scientific society in the world. In 1979, physicist John A. Wheeler
John Archibald Wheeler (July 9, 1911April 13, 2008) was an American theoretical physicist. He was largely responsible for reviving interest in general relativity in the United States after World War II. Wheeler also worked with Niels Bohr in e ...
said that parapsychology is pseudoscientific, and that the affiliation of the PA to the AAAS needed to be reconsidered.
His challenge to parapsychology's AAAS affiliation was unsuccessful. Today, the PA consists of about three hundred full, associate, and affiliated members worldwide.
Stargate Project
Beginning in the early 1950s, the CIA
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian intelligence agency, foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gat ...
started extensive research into behavioral engineering
Behavioral engineering, also called applied behavior analysis, is intended to identify issues associated with the interface of technology and the human operators in a system and to generate recommended design practices that consider the strengths ...
. The findings from these experiments led to the formation of the Stargate Project
Stargate Project was a secret U.S. Army unit established in 1978 at Fort Meade, Maryland, by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and SRI International (a California contractor) to investigate the potential for psychic phenomena in military and ...
, 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.
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
The occult, in the broadest sense, is a category of esoteric supernatural beliefs and practices which generally fall outside the scope of religion and science, encompassing phenomena involving otherworldly agency, such as magic and mysticism a ...
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
The Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) is an American non-profit parapsychological research institute. It was co-founded in 1973 by former astronaut Edgar Mitchell,Pfeffer, Elizabeth''Stars aligned: Astronaut's mission seeks to answer life's b ...
(1973), the International Kirlian Research Association (1975), and the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Laboratory
The Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) was a research program at Princeton University that studied parapsychology. Established in 1979 by then Dean of Engineering Robert G. Jahn, PEAR conducted formal studies on two primary subject ...
(1979). Parapsychological work was also conducted at the Stanford Research Institute
SRI International (SRI) is an American nonprofit scientific research institute and organization headquartered in Menlo Park, California. The trustees of Stanford University established SRI in 1946 as a center of innovation to support economic d ...
(SRI) during this time.
The scope of parapsychology expanded during these years. Psychiatrist Ian Stevenson
Ian Pretyman Stevenson (October 31, 1918 – February 8, 2007) was a Canadian-born American psychiatrist, the founder and director of the Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia School of Medicine.
He was a professor at th ...
conducted much of his research into reincarnation during the 1970s, and the second edition of his ''Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation
''Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation'' is a 1966 book written by psychiatrist Ian Stevenson on claims of spontaneous recall of information about previous lives by young children. The book focuses on twenty cases investigated by the author. I ...
'' was published in 1974. Psychologist Thelma Moss
Thelma Moss (born Thelma Schnee, January 6, 1918 – February 1, 1997) was an American actress, and later a psychologist and parapsychologist, best known for her work on Kirlian photography and the human aura.
Biography
Born Thelma Schnee, ...
devoted time to the study of Kirlian photography
Kirlian photography is a collection of photographic techniques used to capture the phenomenon of electrical coronal discharges. It is named after Semyon Kirlian, who, in 1939, accidentally discovered that if an object on a photographic plate i ...
at UCLA
The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California St ...
's parapsychology laboratory. The influx of spiritual teachers from Asia, and their claims of abilities produced by meditation
Meditation is a practice in which an individual uses a technique – such as mindfulness, or focusing the mind on a particular object, thought, or activity – to train attention and awareness, and achieve a mentally clear and emotionally cal ...
, led to research on altered states of consciousness
An altered state of consciousness (ASC), also called altered state of mind or mind alteration, is any condition which is significantly different from a normal waking state. By 1892, the expression was in use in relation to hypnosis, though there ...
. American Society for Psychical Research Director of Research, Karlis Osis
Karlis Osis (26 December 1917 – 26 December 1997) was a Latvian-born parapsychologist who specialised in exploring deathbed phenomena and life after death.
Biography
Karlis' first research, conducted in the 1940s, was inspired by the wo ...
, conducted experiments in out of body
An out-of-body experience (OBE or sometimes OOBE) is a phenomenon in which a person perceives the world from a location outside their physical body. An OBE is a form of autoscopy (literally "seeing self"), although this term is more commonly us ...
experiences. Physicist Russell Targ
Russell Targ (born April 11, 1934) is an American physicist, parapsychologist and author who is best known for his work on remote viewing.
Targ joined Stanford Research Institute (SRI) in 1972 where he and Harold E. Puthoff coined the term "rem ...
coined the term remote viewing
Remote viewing (RV) is the practice of seeking impressions about a distant or unseen subject, purportedly sensing with the mind. Typically a remote viewer is expected to give information about an object, event, person or location that is hidden ...
for use in some of his work at SRI in 1974.
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
Eastern Europe is a subregion of the Europe, European continent. As a largely ambiguous term, it has a wide range of geopolitical, geographical, ethnic, cultural, and socio-economic connotations. The vast majority of the region is covered by Russ ...
and the former Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
although the word parapsychology was discarded in favour of the term psychotronics. The main promoter of psychotronics was Czech
Czech may refer to:
* Anything from or related to the Czech Republic, a country in Europe
** Czech language
** Czechs, the people of the area
** Czech culture
** Czech cuisine
* One of three mythical brothers, Lech, Czech, and Rus'
Places
*Czech, ...
scientist Zdeněk Rejdák, who described it as a physical science
Physical science is a branch of natural science that studies non-living systems, in contrast to life science. It in turn has many branches, each referred to as a "physical science", together called the "physical sciences".
Definition
Physi ...
, organizing conferences and presiding over the International Association for Psychotronic Research.
In 1985 a Chair of Parapsychology was established within the Department of Psychology at the University of Edinburgh
The University of Edinburgh ( sco, University o Edinburgh, gd, Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in post-nominals) is a public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Granted a royal charter by King James VI in 15 ...
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.
Modern era
Since the 1980s, contemporary parapsychological research has waned considerably in the United States. Early research was considered inconclusive, and parapsychologists were faced with strong opposition from their academic colleagues. Some effects thought to be paranormal, for example the effects of Kirlian photography
Kirlian photography is a collection of photographic techniques used to capture the phenomenon of electrical coronal discharges. It is named after Semyon Kirlian, who, in 1939, accidentally discovered that if an object on a photographic plate i ...
(thought by some to represent a human aura), disappeared under more stringent controls, leaving those avenues of research at dead-ends. The bulk of parapsychology research in the US is now confined to private institutions funded by private sources. After 28 years of research, Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Laboratory
The Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) was a research program at Princeton University that studied parapsychology. Established in 1979 by then Dean of Engineering Robert G. Jahn, PEAR conducted formal studies on two primary subject ...
(PEAR), which studied psychokinesis
Psychokinesis (from grc, ψυχή, , soul and grc, κίνησις, , movement, label=ㅤ), or telekinesis (from grc, τηλε, , far off and grc, κίνησις, , movement, label=ㅤ), is a hypothetical psychic ability allowing a person ...
, closed in 2007.
Two universities in the United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
currently have academic parapsychology laboratories. The Division of Perceptual Studies, a unit at the University of Virginia
The University of Virginia (UVA) is a Public university#United States, public research university in Charlottesville, Virginia. Founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson, the university is ranked among the top academic institutions in the United S ...
's Department of Psychiatric Medicine, studies the possibility of survival of consciousness after bodily death, near-death experiences
A near-death experience (NDE) is a profound personal experience associated with death or impending death which researchers claim share similar characteristics. When positive, such experiences may encompass a variety of sensations including detac ...
, and out-of-body experiences
An out-of-body experience (OBE or sometimes OOBE) is a phenomenon in which a person perceives the world from a location outside their physical body. An OBE is a form of autoscopy (literally "seeing self"), although this term is more commonly use ...
. Gary Schwartz
Gary E. Schwartz is an American psychologist, author, parapsychologist and professor at the University of Arizona and the director of its Laboratory for Advances in Consciousness and Health. Schwartz researches the veracity of mediums and energy ...
at the University of Arizona
The University of Arizona (Arizona, U of A, UArizona, or UA) is a public land-grant research university in Tucson, Arizona. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, it was the first university in the Arizona Territory.
T ...
's ''Veritas Laboratory'' conducted laboratory investigations of mediums
Mediumship is the practice of purportedly mediating communication between familiar spirits or spirits of the dead and living human beings. Practitioners are known as "mediums" or "spirit mediums". There are different types of mediumship or spir ...
, criticized by scientific skeptics
Scientific skepticism or rational skepticism (also spelled scepticism), sometimes referred to as skeptical inquiry, is a position in which one questions the veracity of claims lacking empirical evidence. In practice, the term most commonly refe ...
. Several private institutions, including the Institute of Noetic Sciences
The Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) is an American non-profit parapsychological research institute. It was co-founded in 1973 by former astronaut Edgar Mitchell,Pfeffer, Elizabeth''Stars aligned: Astronaut's mission seeks to answer life's b ...
, conduct and promote parapsychological research.
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".[ Of all nations the United Kingdom has the largest number of active parapsychologists.][Harvey J. Irwin and Caroline Watt]
An introduction to parapsychology
McFarland, 2007, pp. 248–249. 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.
As of 2007, parapsychology research is represented in some 30 countries[ and a number of universities worldwide continue academic parapsychology programs. Among these are the ]Koestler Parapsychology Unit
The Koestler Parapsychology Unit is a research group established in 1985 at the University of Edinburgh, in Scotland, to teach and conduct research concerning various aspects of parapsychology.
It hosts the only endowed chair of parapsychology in ...
at the University of Edinburgh
The University of Edinburgh ( sco, University o Edinburgh, gd, Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in post-nominals) is a public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Granted a royal charter by King James VI in 15 ...
; the Parapsychology Research Group at Liverpool Hope University
, mottoeng=Hope to all who need it
, established=1844 – Saint Katharine's College (as Warrington Training College)1856 – Notre Dame College (as Our Lady's Training College)1964 – Christ's College1979 – Liverpool Institute of Higher Edu ...
(this closed in April 2011); the SOPHIA Project at the University of Arizona
The University of Arizona (Arizona, U of A, UArizona, or UA) is a public land-grant research university in Tucson, Arizona. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, it was the first university in the Arizona Territory.
T ...
; the Consciousness and Transpersonal Psychology Research Unit of Liverpool John Moores University
, mottoeng = Fortune favours the bold
, established = 1823 – Liverpool Mechanics' School of Arts1992 – Liverpool John Moores University
, type = Public
, endowment =
, coor ...
; the Center for the Study of Anomalous Psychological Processes at the University of Northampton
, mottoeng = Let us not be ignorant
, established = 2005 (gained University status) 1975 (Nene College established)
, type = Public
, endowment = £0.95 m (2015)
, chancellor = Richard Coles
, vice_chancellor = ...
; and the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit at Goldsmiths, University of London
Goldsmiths, University of London, officially the Goldsmiths' College, is a constituent research university of the University of London in England. It was originally founded in 1891 as The Goldsmiths' Technical and Recreative Institute by the Wor ...
.
Research and professional organizations include the Parapsychological Association
The Parapsychological Association (PA) was formed in 1957 as a professional society for parapsychologists following an initiative by Joseph B. Rhine. Its purpose has been "to advance parapsychology as a science, to disseminate knowledge of the fie ...
; the Society for Psychical Research
The Society for Psychical Research (SPR) is a nonprofit organisation in the United Kingdom. Its stated purpose is to understand events and abilities commonly described as psychic or paranormal. It describes itself as the "first society to condu ...
, publisher of the ''Journal of the Society for Psychical Research'' and ''Psi Encyclopedia''; the American Society for Psychical Research
The American Society for Psychical Research (ASPR) is the oldest psychical research organization in the United States dedicated to parapsychology. It maintains offices and a library, in New York City, which are open to both members and the gener ...
, publisher of the ''Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research'' (last published in 2004); the Rhine Research Center and Institute for Parapsychology, publisher of the ''Journal of Parapsychology
The ''Journal of Parapsychology'' is a biannual peer-reviewed academic journal covering research on psi phenomena, including telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, and psychokinesis, as well as human consciousness in general and anomalous experie ...
''; the Parapsychology Foundation, which published the ''International Journal of Parapsychology'' (between 1959 and 1968 and 2000–2001) and the Australian Institute of Parapsychological Research, publisher of the ''Australian Journal of Parapsychology''. The ''European Journal of Parapsychology'' ceased publishing in 2010.
Parapsychological research has also included other sub-disciplines of psychology. These related fields include transpersonal psychology
Transpersonal psychology, or spiritual psychology, is a sub-field or school of psychology that integrates the spiritual and transcendent aspects of the human experience with the framework of modern psychology. The ''transpersonal'' is defined a ...
, which studies transcendent or spiritual aspects of the human mind, and anomalistic psychology
In psychology, anomalistic psychology is the study of human behaviour and experience connected with what is often called the paranormal, with few assumptions made about the validity (or otherwise) of the reported phenomena.
Early history
Accordin ...
, which examines paranormal beliefs and subjective anomalous experiences in traditional psychological terms.
Research
Scope
Parapsychologists study a number of ostensible paranormal phenomena, including but not limited to:
* Telepathy
Telepathy () is the purported vicarious transmission of information from one person's mind to another's without using any known human sensory channels or physical interaction. The term was first coined in 1882 by the classical scholar Frederic W ...
: Transfer of information of thoughts or feelings between individuals by means other than the five classical senses.
* Precognition
Precognition (from the Latin 'before', and 'acquiring knowledge') is the purported psychic phenomenon of seeing, or otherwise becoming directly aware of, events in the future.
There is no accepted scientific evidence that precognition is a ...
: Perception of information about future places or events before they occur.
* Clairvoyance
Clairvoyance (; ) is the magical ability to gain information about an object, person, location, or physical event through extrasensory perception. Any person who is claimed to have such ability is said to be a clairvoyant () ("one who sees cl ...
: Obtaining information about places or events at remote locations, by means unknown to current science.
* Psychokinesis
Psychokinesis (from grc, ψυχή, , soul and grc, κίνησις, , movement, label=ㅤ), or telekinesis (from grc, τηλε, , far off and grc, κίνησις, , movement, label=ㅤ), is a hypothetical psychic ability allowing a person ...
: The ability of the mind to influence matter, time, space, or energy by means unknown to current science.
* Near-death experience
A near-death experience (NDE) is a profound personal experience associated with death or impending death which researchers claim share similar characteristics. When positive, such experiences may encompass a variety of sensations including detac ...
s: An experience reported by a person who nearly died, or who experienced clinical death
Clinical death is the medical term for cessation of blood circulation and breathing, the two criteria necessary to sustain the lives of human beings and of many other organisms. It occurs when the heart stops beating in a regular rhythm, a conditio ...
and then revived.
* Reincarnation
Reincarnation, also known as rebirth or transmigration, is the philosophical or religious concept that the non-physical essence of a living being begins a new life in a different physical form or body after biological death. Resurrection is a ...
: The rebirth of a soul or other non-physical aspect of human consciousness
Consciousness, at its simplest, is sentience and awareness of internal and external existence. However, the lack of definitions has led to millennia of analyses, explanations and debates by philosophers, theologians, linguisticians, and scien ...
in a new physical body after death.
* Apparitional experience
In parapsychology, an apparitional experience is an anomalous experience characterized by the apparent perception of either a living being or an inanimate object without there being any material stimulus for such a perception.
In academic discu ...
s: 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
Astrology is a range of Divination, divinatory practices, recognized as pseudoscientific since the 18th century, that claim to discern information about human affairs and terrestrial events by studying the apparent positions of Celestial o ...
, UFOs
An unidentified flying object (UFO), more recently renamed by US officials as a UAP (unidentified aerial phenomenon), is any perceived aerial phenomenon that cannot be immediately identified or explained. On investigation, most UFOs are id ...
, cryptozoology
Cryptozoology is a pseudoscience and subculture that searches for and studies unknown, legendary, or extinct animals whose present existence is disputed or unsubstantiated, particularly those popular in folklore, such as Bigfoot, the Loch Ness ...
, paganism
Paganism (from classical Latin ''pāgānus'' "rural", "rustic", later "civilian") is a term first used in the fourth century by early Christianity, early Christians for people in the Roman Empire who practiced polytheism, or ethnic religions ot ...
, vampires
A vampire is a mythical creature that subsists by feeding on the vital essence (generally in the form of blood) of the living. In European folklore, vampires are undead creatures that often visited loved ones and caused mischief or deaths ...
, alchemy
Alchemy (from Arabic: ''al-kīmiyā''; from Ancient Greek: χυμεία, ''khumeía'') is an ancient branch of natural philosophy, a philosophical and protoscientific tradition that was historically practiced in China, India, the Muslim world, ...
, or witchcraft
Witchcraft traditionally means the use of magic or supernatural powers to harm others. A practitioner is a witch. In medieval and early modern Europe, where the term originated, accused witches were usually women who were believed to have us ...
.
Journals dealing with parapsychology include the ''Journal of Parapsychology
The ''Journal of Parapsychology'' is a biannual peer-reviewed academic journal covering research on psi phenomena, including telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, and psychokinesis, as well as human consciousness in general and anomalous experie ...
'', ''Journal of Near-Death Studies
The ''Journal of Near-Death Studies'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal devoted to the field of near-death studies. It is published by the International Association for Near-Death Studies.
The journal's founding editor-in-chief was Ken ...
'', ''Journal of Consciousness Studies
A journal, from the Old French ''journal'' (meaning "daily"), may refer to:
*Bullet journal, a method of personal organization
*Diary, a record of what happened over the course of a day or other period
*Daybook, also known as a general journal, a ...
'', ''Journal of the Society for Psychical Research
The Society for Psychical Research (SPR) is a nonprofit organisation in the United Kingdom. Its stated purpose is to understand events and abilities commonly described as psychic or paranormal. It describes itself as the "first society to condu ...
'', and ''Journal of Scientific Exploration
The Society for Scientific Exploration, or SSE, is a group committed to studying fringe science. The opinions of the organization in regard to what are the proper limits of scientific exploration are often at odds with those of mainstream science. ...
''.
Experimental research
Ganzfeld
The Ganzfeld Ganzfeld (German for "complete field") is a particular phenomenon of visual perception. The term is used most commonly in relationship to:
* Ganzfeld effect, the psychological result of staring at an actual Ganzfeld
* Ganzfeld experiment
A gan ...
(German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
**Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ger ...
for "whole field") is a technique used to test individuals for telepathy. The technique—a form of moderate sensory deprivation
Sensory deprivation or perceptual isolation is the deliberate reduction or removal of stimuli from one or more of the senses. Simple devices such as blindfolds or hoods and earmuffs can cut off sight and hearing, while more complex devices can al ...
—was developed to quickly quiet mental "noise" by providing mild, unpatterned stimuli to the visual
The visual system comprises the sensory organ (the eye) and parts of the central nervous system (the retina containing photoreceptor cells, the optic nerve, the optic tract and the visual cortex) which gives organisms the sense of sight (the ...
and auditory senses. The visual sense is usually isolated by creating a soft red glow which is diffused through half ping-pong ball
Table tennis, also known as ping-pong and whiff-whaff, is a sport in which two or four players hit a lightweight ball, also known as the ping-pong ball, back and forth across a table using small solid rackets. It takes place on a hard table div ...
s placed over the recipient's eyes. The auditory sense is usually blocked by playing white noise
In signal processing, white noise is a random signal having equal intensity at different frequencies, giving it a constant power spectral density. The term is used, with this or similar meanings, in many scientific and technical disciplines, ...
, static, or similar sounds to the recipient. The subject is also seated in a reclined, comfortable position to minimize the sense of touch.
In the typical Ganzfeld experiment, a "sender" and a "receiver" are isolated. The receiver is put into the Ganzfeld state, or Ganzfeld effect
The Ganzfeld effect (from German for "complete field"), or perceptual deprivation, is a phenomenon of perception caused by exposure to an unstructured, uniform stimulation field. The effect is the result of the brain amplifying neural noise in or ...
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
Ray Hyman (born June 23, 1928) is a Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Oregon in Eugene, Oregon, and a noted critic of parapsychology. Hyman, along with James Randi, Martin Gardner and Paul Kurtz, is one of the founders of the ...
and Charles Honorton
Charles Henry Honorton (February 5, 1946 – November 4, 1992) was an American parapsychologist and was one of the leaders of a collegial group of researchers who were determined to apply established scientific research methods to the examination ...
had methodological problems that were well documented. Honorton reported only 36% of the studies used duplicate target sets of pictures to avoid handling cues. 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
Documentation is any communicable material that is used to describe, explain or instruct regarding some attributes of an object, system or procedure, such as its parts, assembly, installation, maintenance and use. As a form of knowledge manageme ...
, randomization and security as well as possibilities of sensory leakage. Over half of the studies failed to safeguard against sensory leakage Sensory leakage is a term used to refer to information that transferred to a person by conventional means (other than psi) during an experiment into ESP.Robert Todd Carroll. (2014)"Sensory Leakage in The Skeptic's Dictionary.
For example, where the ...
and all of the studies contained at least one of the 12 flaws. Because of the flaws, Honorton agreed with Hyman the 42 Ganzfeld studies could not support the claim for the existence of psi.
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. 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.
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
In statistical hypothesis testing, a result has statistical significance when it is very unlikely to have occurred given the null hypothesis (simply by chance alone). More precisely, a study's defined significance level, denoted by \alpha, is the p ...
with 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. 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. 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. 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.
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. Several hundred such trials have been conducted by investigators over the past 25 years, including those by the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Laboratory
The Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) was a research program at Princeton University that studied parapsychology. Established in 1979 by then Dean of Engineering Robert G. Jahn, PEAR conducted formal studies on two primary subject ...
(PEAR) and by scientists at SRI International
SRI International (SRI) is an American nonprofit scientific research institute and organization headquartered in Menlo Park, California. The trustees of Stanford University established SRI in 1946 as a center of innovation to support economic d ...
and Science Applications International Corporation
Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), Inc. is an American technology company headquartered in Reston, Virginia that provides government services and information technology support.
History
The original SAIC was created in 196 ...
. Many of these were under contract by the U.S. government as part of the espionage program Stargate Project
Stargate Project was a secret U.S. Army unit established in 1978 at Fort Meade, Maryland, by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and SRI International (a California contractor) to investigate the potential for psychic phenomena in military and ...
, which terminated in 1995 having failed to document any practical intelligence value.
The psychologists David Marks
David Lee Marks (born August 22, 1948) is an American guitarist who is best known for being an early member of the Beach Boys. While growing up in Hawthorne, California, Marks was a neighborhood friend of the original band members and was a freq ...
and Richard Kammann attempted to replicate Russell Targ
Russell Targ (born April 11, 1934) is an American physicist, parapsychologist and author who is best known for his work on remote viewing.
Targ joined Stanford Research Institute (SRI) in 1972 where he and Harold E. Puthoff coined the term "rem ...
and Harold Puthoff
Harold E. Puthoff (born June 20, 1936) is an American parapsychologist and electrical engineer. In the 2010s, he co-founded the company To the Stars with Tom DeLonge.
Biography
Puthoff was born in Chicago, Illinois. He receive his BA and MSc i ...
's remote viewing experiments that were carried out in the 1970s at the Stanford Research Institute
SRI International (SRI) is an American nonprofit scientific research institute and organization headquartered in Menlo Park, California. The trustees of Stanford University established SRI in 1946 as a center of innovation to support economic d ...
. 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. Marks was able to achieve 100 per cent accuracy without visiting any of the sites himself but by using cues. James Randi
James Randi (born Randall James Hamilton Zwinge; August 7, 1928 – October 20, 2020) was a Canadian-American stage magician, author and scientific skeptic who extensively challenged paranormal and pseudoscientific claims. Rodrigues 2010p. ...
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.
In 1980, Charles Tart
Charles T. Tart (born 1937) is an American psychologist and parapsychologist known for his psychological work on the nature of consciousness (particularly altered states of consciousness), as one of the founders of the field of transpersonal psych ...
claimed that a rejudging of the transcripts from one of Targ and Puthoff's experiments revealed an above-chance result. 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 cue
Sensory may refer to:
Biology
* Sensory ecology, how organisms obtain information about their environment
* Sensory neuron, nerve cell responsible for transmitting information about external stimuli
* Sensory perception, the process of acquiri ...
s. 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."
PEAR closed its doors at the end of February 2007. Its founder, Robert G. Jahn
Robert George Jahn (April 1, 1930 – November 15, 2017) was an American plasma physicist, Professor of Aerospace Science, and Dean of Engineering at Princeton University. Jahn was also a founder of the Princeton Engineering Anomalies R ...
, 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." Statistical flaws in his work have been proposed by others in the parapsychological community and within the general scientific community. The physicist Robert L. Park
Robert Lee Park (January 16, 1931 – April 29, 2020) was an American emeritus professor of physics at the University of Maryland, College Park, and a former director of public information at the Washington office of the American Physical Society. ...
said of PEAR, "It's been an embarrassment to science, and I think an embarrassment for Princeton".[
]
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
Random number generation is a process by which, often by means of a random number generator (RNG), a sequence of numbers or symbols that cannot be reasonably predicted better than by random chance is generated. This means that the particular out ...
(RNG), based on electronic or radioactive
Radioactive decay (also known as nuclear decay, radioactivity, radioactive disintegration, or nuclear disintegration) is the process by which an unstable atomic nucleus loses energy by radiation. A material containing unstable nuclei is consid ...
noise, produces a data stream that is recorded and analyzed by computer software
Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work.
At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...
. 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.
Major meta-analyses of the RNG database have been published every few years since appearing in the journal ''Foundations of Physics
''Foundations of Physics'' is a monthly journal "devoted to the conceptual bases and fundamental theories of modern physics and cosmology, emphasizing the logical, methodological, and philosophical premises of modern physical theories and procedur ...
'' in 1986. PEAR founder Robert G. Jahn
Robert George Jahn (April 1, 1930 – November 15, 2017) was an American plasma physicist, Professor of Aerospace Science, and Dean of Engineering at Princeton University. Jahn was also a founder of the Princeton Engineering Anomalies R ...
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. According to Massimo Pigliucci
Massimo Pigliucci (; born January 16, 1964) is Professor of Philosophy at the City College of New York, former co-host of the '' Rationally Speaking Podcast'', and former editor in chief for the online magazine ''Scientia Salon''. He is a critic o ...
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."Massimo Pigliucci
Massimo Pigliucci (; born January 16, 1964) is Professor of Philosophy at the City College of New York, former co-host of the '' Rationally Speaking Podcast'', and former editor in chief for the online magazine ''Scientia Salon''. He is a critic o ...
. (2010). ''Nonsense on Stilts: How to Tell Science from Bunk''. University of Chicago Press. pp. 77–80. Pigluicci has written the statistical analysis used by the Jahn and the PEAR group relied on a quantity called a "p-value
In null-hypothesis significance testing, the ''p''-value is the probability of obtaining test results at least as extreme as the result actually observed, under the assumption that the null hypothesis is correct. A very small ''p''-value means ...
" 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.
Two German independent scientific groups have failed to replicate the PEAR results. Pigliucci has written this was "yet another indication that the simplest hypothesis is likely to be true: there was nothing to replicate." The most recent meta-analysis on psychokinesis
Psychokinesis (from grc, ψυχή, , soul and grc, κίνησις, , movement, label=ㅤ), or telekinesis (from grc, τηλε, , far off and grc, κίνησις, , movement, label=ㅤ), is a hypothetical psychic ability allowing a person ...
was published in ''Psychological Bulletin
The ''Psychological Bulletin'' is a monthly peer-reviewed academic journal that publishes evaluative and integrative research reviews and interpretations of issues in psychology, including both qualitative (narrative) and/or quantitative (meta-anal ...
'', 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
In published academic research, publication bias occurs when the outcome of an experiment or research study biases the decision to publish or otherwise distribute it. Publishing only results that show a significant finding disturbs the balance o ...
.
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
Psychophysiology (from Greek , ''psȳkhē'', "breath, life, soul"; , ''physis'', "nature, origin"; and , '' -logia'') is the branch of psychology that is concerned with the physiological bases of psychological processes. While psychophysiology w ...
state. 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 biology, the nervous system is the highly complex part of an animal that coordinates its actions and sensory information by transmitting signals to and from different parts of its body. The nervous system detects environmental changes th ...
. 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.
Dream telepathy
Parapsychological studies into dream telepathy were carried out at the Maimonides Medical Center
Maimonides Medical Center is a non-profit, non-sectarian hospital located in Borough Park, Brooklyn, Borough Park, in the New York City Borough (New York City), borough of Brooklyn, in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York. Maimonides is b ...
in Brooklyn, New York
Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...
led by Stanley Krippner
Stanley Krippner (born October 4, 1932) is an American psychologist and parapsychologist. He received a B.S. degree from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1954 and M.A. (1957) and Ph.D. (1961) degrees from Northwestern University.
From 1 ...
and Montague Ullman
Montague Ullman (September 9, 1916 – June 7, 2008) was a psychiatrist, Psychoanalysis, psychoanalyst and Parapsychology, parapsychologist who founded the Dream Laboratory at the Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, Brooklyn, New York and for o ...
. They concluded the results from some of their experiments supported dream telepathy. However, the results have not been independently replicated.
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. In 2002, Krippner denied Hansel's accusations, claiming the agent did not communicate with the experimenter.
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. Results from other experiments by Belvedere and Foulkes were also negative.
In 2003, Simon Sherwood and Chris Roe wrote a review that claimed support for dream telepathy at Maimonides. However, James Alcock
James E. Alcock (born 24 December 1942) is a Canadian educator. He has been a Professor of Psychology at York University (Canada) since 1973. Alcock is a noted critic of parapsychology and is a Fellow and Member of the Executive Council for the ...
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".
Near-death experiences
A near-death experience
A near-death experience (NDE) is a profound personal experience associated with death or impending death which researchers claim share similar characteristics. When positive, such experiences may encompass a variety of sensations including detac ...
(NDE) is an experience reported by a person who nearly died, or who experienced clinical death
Clinical death is the medical term for cessation of blood circulation and breathing, the two criteria necessary to sustain the lives of human beings and of many other organisms. It occurs when the heart stops beating in a regular rhythm, a conditio ...
and then revived. NDEs include one or more of the following experiences: a sense of being dead; an out-of-body experience
An out-of-body experience (OBE or sometimes OOBE) is a phenomenon in which a person perceives the world from a location outside their physical body. An OBE is a form of autoscopy (literally "seeing self"), although this term is more commonly use ...
; 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
The term life review, or flashback before death, refers to a phenomenon widely reported as occurring during near-death experiences, in which a person rapidly sees much or the totality of their life history. Life review is often described by people ...
; reaching a border or boundary; and a feeling of being returned to the body, often accompanied by reluctance.
Interest in the NDE was originally spurred by the research of psychiatrists Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (July 8, 1926 – August 24, 2004) was a Swiss-American psychiatrist, a pioneer in near-death studies, and author of the internationally best-selling book, '' On Death and Dying'' (1969), where she first discussed her the ...
, George G. Ritchie, and Raymond Moody
Raymond A. Moody Jr. (born June 30, 1944) is an American philosopher, psychiatrist, physician and author, most widely known for his books about afterlife and near-death experiences (NDE), a term that he coined in 1975 in his best-selling book '' ...
. In 1975, Moody wrote the best-selling book '' Life After Life'' and in 1977 he wrote a second book, ''Reflections on Life After Life''. In 1998 Moody was appointed chair in "consciousness studies" at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas
The University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) is a public land-grant research university in Paradise, Nevada. The campus is about east of the Las Vegas Strip. It was formerly part of the University of Nevada from 1957 to 1969. It includes the S ...
. The International Association for Near-death Studies
The International Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS) is a nonprofit organization based in Durham, North Carolina in the United States, associated with the academic field of near-death studies.IANDS. "Near-Death Experiences: Is this what ha ...
(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
Charles Bruce Greyson (born October 1946) is Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences at the University of Virginia. He is author of '' After: A Doctor Explores What Near-Death Experiences Reveal about Life and Beyond'' (2021), ...
, psychologist Kenneth Ring Kenneth Ring is an American psychologist, born in San Francisco, California. He is the co-founder and past president of the International Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS) and is the founding editor of the '' Journal of Near-Death Studies' ...
, and cardiologist Michael Sabom, introduced the study of near-death experiences to the academic setting.
Reincarnation research
Psychiatrist Ian Stevenson
Ian Pretyman Stevenson (October 31, 1918 – February 8, 2007) was a Canadian-born American psychiatrist, the founder and director of the Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia School of Medicine.
He was a professor at th ...
, from the University of Virginia
The University of Virginia (UVA) is a Public university#United States, public research university in Charlottesville, Virginia. Founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson, the university is ranked among the top academic institutions in the United S ...
, conducted more than 2,500 case studies over a period of 40 years and published twelve books. He wrote that childhood memories ostensibly related to reincarnation
Reincarnation, also known as rebirth or transmigration, is the philosophical or religious concept that the non-physical essence of a living being begins a new life in a different physical form or body after biological death. Resurrection is a ...
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, and searched for disconfirming evidence that could provide alternative explanations for the reports aside from reincarnation.
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. 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". Researchers who believe in the evidence for reincarnation have been unsuccessful in getting the scientific community
The scientific community is a diverse network of interacting scientists. It includes many " sub-communities" working on particular scientific fields, and within particular institutions; interdisciplinary and cross-institutional activities are als ...
to consider it a serious possibility.
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. 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." 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
Cryptomnesia occurs when a forgotten memory returns without its being recognized as such by the subject, who believes it is something new and original. It is a memory bias whereby a person may falsely recall generating a thought, an idea, a tune, ...
and confabulation
In psychology, confabulation is a memory error defined as the production of fabricated, distorted, or misinterpreted memories about oneself or the world. It is generally associated with certain types of brain damage (especially aneurysm in the a ...
. Philosopher Paul Edwards noted that reincarnation invokes logically dubious assumptions and is inconsistent with modern science.
Scientific reception
Evaluation
The scientific consensus is that there is insufficient evidence to support the existence of psi phenomena.
Scientists critical of parapsychology state that its extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence if they are to be taken seriously. Scientists who have evaluated parapsychology have written the entire body of evidence is of poor quality and not adequately controlled. In support of this view, critics cite instances of fraud, flawed studies, and cognitive bias
A cognitive bias is a systematic pattern of deviation from norm or rationality in judgment. Individuals create their own "subjective reality" from their perception of the input. An individual's construction of reality, not the objective input, m ...
es (such as clustering illusion
The clustering illusion is the tendency to erroneously consider the inevitable "streaks" or "clusters" arising in small samples from random distributions to be non-random. The illusion is caused by a human tendency to underpredict the amount of v ...
, availability error
The availability heuristic, also known as availability bias, is a mental shortcut that relies on immediate examples that come to a given person's mind when evaluating a specific topic, concept, method, or decision. This heuristics in judgment and d ...
, confirmation bias
Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one's prior beliefs or values. People display this bias when they select information that supports their views, ignoring ...
, illusion of control
The illusion of control is the tendency for people to overestimate their ability to control events. It was named by U.S. psychologist Ellen Langer and is thought to influence gambling behavior and belief in the paranormal. Along with illusory supe ...
, magical thinking
Magical thinking, or superstitious thinking, is the belief that unrelated events are causally connected despite the absence of any plausible causal link between them, particularly as a result of supernatural effects. Examples include the idea that ...
, and the bias blind spot
The bias blind spot is the cognitive bias of recognizing the impact of biases on the judgment of others, while failing to see the impact of biases on one's own judgment. The term was created by Emily Pronin, a social psychologist from Princeton Uni ...
) as ways to explain parapsychological results. Research has also shown that people's desire to believe in paranormal phenomena causes them to discount strong evidence that it does not exist.
The psychologists Donovan Rawcliffe
''The Psychology of the Occult'' is a 1952 skeptical book on the paranormal by psychologist D. H. Rawcliffe. It was later published as ''Illusions and Delusions of the Supernatural and the Occult'' (1959) and ''Occult and Supernatural Phenomena' ...
(1952), C. E. M. Hansel (1980), Ray Hyman
Ray Hyman (born June 23, 1928) is a Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Oregon in Eugene, Oregon, and a noted critic of parapsychology. Hyman, along with James Randi, Martin Gardner and Paul Kurtz, is one of the founders of the ...
(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 Sensory leakage is a term used to refer to information that transferred to a person by conventional means (other than psi) during an experiment into ESP.Robert Todd Carroll. (2014)"Sensory Leakage in The Skeptic's Dictionary.
For example, where the ...
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
Joseph Gaither Pratt (August 31, 1910 – November 3, 1979) was an American psychologist who specialized in the field of parapsychology. Among his research interests were extrasensory perception, psychokinesis, mediumship and poltergeists.
Muc ...
and Helmut Schmidt
Helmut Heinrich Waldemar Schmidt (; 23 December 1918 – 10 November 2015) was a German politician and member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), who served as the chancellor of West Germany from 1974 to 1982.
Before becoming Cha ...
had flaws in the design of the experiments, did not rule out the possibility of sensory cues or trickery and have not been replicated.
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.Ray Hyman
Ray Hyman (born June 23, 1928) is a Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Oregon in Eugene, Oregon, and a noted critic of parapsychology. Hyman, along with James Randi, Martin Gardner and Paul Kurtz, is one of the founders of the ...
. ''Evaluating Parapsychological Claims'' in Robert J. Sternberg, Henry L. Roediger, Diane F. Halpern. (2007). ''Critical Thinking in Psychology''. Cambridge University Press. pp. 216–231. [ "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."] 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. Persi Diaconis
Persi Warren Diaconis (; born January 31, 1945) is an American mathematician of Greek descent and former professional magician. He is the Mary V. Sunseri Professor of Statistics and Mathematics at Stanford University.
He is particularly known f ...
has written that the controls in parapsychological experiments are often loose with possibilities of subject cheating and unconscious sensory cues.
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." No accepted theory
A theory is a rational type of abstract thinking about a phenomenon, or the results of such thinking. The process of contemplative and rational thinking is often associated with such processes as observational study or research. Theories may be s ...
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
Paranormal events are purported phenomena described in popular culture, Folk culture, folk, and other non-scientific bodies of knowledge, whose existence within these contexts is described as being beyond the scope of normal scientific under ...
. Terence Hines
Terence Hines (born 22 March 1951) is a professor of psychology at Pace University, New York, and adjunct professor of neurology at the New York Medical College; he is also a science writer. Hines has a BA from Duke University, and an MA and P ...
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." Skeptics such as Antony Flew
Antony Garrard Newton Flew (; 11 February 1923 – 8 April 2010) was a British philosopher. Belonging to the analytic and evidentialist schools of thought, Flew worked on the philosophy of religion. During the course of his career he taught at ...
have cited the lack of such a theory as their reason for rejecting parapsychology.
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." Philosopher and skeptic Robert Todd Carroll
Robert Todd Carroll (May 18, 1945 – August 25, 2016) was an American author, philosopher and academic, best known for The Skeptic's Dictionary. He described himself as a naturalist, an atheist, a materialist, a metaphysical libertarian, and ...
has written research in parapsychology has been characterized by "deception, fraud, and incompetence in setting up properly controlled experiments and evaluating statistical data." The psychologist Ray Hyman
Ray Hyman (born June 23, 1928) is a Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Oregon in Eugene, Oregon, and a noted critic of parapsychology. Hyman, along with James Randi, Martin Gardner and Paul Kurtz, is one of the founders of the ...
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." Richard Wiseman
Richard J. Wiseman (born 17 September 1966) is a Professor of the Public Understanding of Psychology at the University of Hertfordshire in the United Kingdom. He has written several psychology books. He has given keynote addresses to The Royal ...
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.
In a review of parapsychological reports Hyman wrote "randomization Randomization is the process of making something random. Randomization is not haphazard; instead, a random process is a sequence of random variables describing a process whose outcomes do not follow a deterministic pattern, but follow an evolution d ...
is often inadequate, multiple statistical testing without adjustment for significance levels is prevalent, possibilities for sensory leakage Sensory leakage is a term used to refer to information that transferred to a person by conventional means (other than psi) during an experiment into ESP.Robert Todd Carroll. (2014)"Sensory Leakage in The Skeptic's Dictionary.
For example, where the ...
are not uniformly prevented, errors in use of statistical tests
A statistical hypothesis test is a method of statistical inference used to decide whether the data at hand sufficiently support a particular hypothesis.
Hypothesis testing allows us to make probabilistic statements about population parameters.
...
are much too common, and documentation
Documentation is any communicable material that is used to describe, explain or instruct regarding some attributes of an object, system or procedure, such as its parts, assembly, installation, maintenance and use. As a form of knowledge manageme ...
is typically inadequate". Parapsychology has been criticized for making no precise predictions.
In 2003, James Alcock
James E. Alcock (born 24 December 1942) is a Canadian educator. He has been a Professor of Psychology at York University (Canada) since 1973. Alcock is a noted critic of parapsychology and is a Fellow and Member of the Executive Council for the ...
Professor of Psychology
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...
at York University
York University (french: Université York), also known as YorkU or simply YU, is a public university, public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is Canada's fourth-largest university, and it has approximately 55,700 students, 7,0 ...
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
In scientific research, the null hypothesis (often denoted ''H''0) is the claim that no difference or relationship exists between two sets of data or variables being analyzed. The null hypothesis is that any experimentally observed difference is d ...
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.
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 normal influences are ruled out); failure to produce a single phenomenon that can be independently replicated by neutral researchers; the invention of "effects" such as the psi-experimenter effect to explain away inconsistencies in the data and failures to achieve predicted outcomes; unfalsifiability
Falsifiability is a standard of evaluation of scientific theories and hypotheses that was introduced by the Philosophy of science, philosopher of science Karl Popper in his book ''The Logic of Scientific Discovery'' (1934). He proposed it as t ...
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."
Alcock and cognitive psychologist Arthur S. Reber
Arthur S. Reber (born 1940) is an American cognitive psychologist. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the Association for Psychological Science (APS) and a Fulbright Fellow. He is known for introduc ...
have criticized parapsychology broadly, writing that if psi effects were true, they would negate fundamental principles of science such as causality
Causality (also referred to as causation, or cause and effect) is influence by which one event, process, state, or object (''a'' ''cause'') contributes to the production of another event, process, state, or object (an ''effect'') where the cau ...
, time's arrow
Time's Arrow may refer to:
* "Time's Arrow" (short story), a 1950 short story by Arthur C. Clarke
* ''Time's Arrow'' (novel), a 1991 novel by Martin Amis
* "Time's Arrow" (''Star Trek: The Next Generation''), a 1992 two-part episode of ''Star Trek: ...
, thermodynamics
Thermodynamics is a branch of physics that deals with heat, work, and temperature, and their relation to energy, entropy, and the physical properties of matter and radiation. The behavior of these quantities is governed by the four laws of the ...
, and the inverse square law
In science, an inverse-square law is any scientific law stating that a specified physical quantity is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the source of that physical quantity. The fundamental cause for this can be understoo ...
. According to Alcock and Reber, "parapsychology cannot be true unless the rest of science isn't. Moreover, if psi effects were real, they would have already fatally disrupted the rest of the body of science".
Richard Land has written that from what is known about human biology
Human biology is an interdisciplinary area of academic study that examines humans through the influences and interplay of many diverse fields such as genetics, evolution, physiology, anatomy, epidemiology, anthropology, human ecology, ecology, hum ...
it is highly unlikely that evolution has provided humans with ESP
ESP most commonly refers to:
* Extrasensory perception, a paranormal ability
ESP may also refer to:
Arts, entertainment Music
* ESP Guitars, a manufacturer of electric guitars
* E.S. Posthumus, an independent music group formed in 2000, ...
as research has shown the recognized five senses are adequate for the evolution and survival of the species. Michael Shermer
Michael Brant Shermer (born September 8, 1954) is an American science writer, historian of science, executive director of The Skeptics Society, and founding publisher of ''Skeptic'' magazine, a publication focused on investigating pseudoscientific ...
, in the article "Psychic Drift: Why most scientists do not believe in ESP and psi phenomena" for ''Scientific American
''Scientific American'', informally abbreviated ''SciAm'' or sometimes ''SA'', is an American popular science magazine. Many famous scientists, including Albert Einstein and Nikola Tesla, have contributed articles to it. In print since 1845, it i ...
'', wrote "the reason for skepticism is that we need replicable data and a viable theory, both of which are missing in psi research."
In January 2008 the results of a study using neuroimaging
Neuroimaging is the use of quantitative (computational) techniques to study the structure and function of the central nervous system, developed as an objective way of scientifically studying the healthy human brain in a non-invasive manner. Incre ...
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
Telepathy () is the purported vicarious transmission of information from one person's mind to another's without using any known human sensory channels or physical interaction. The term was first coined in 1882 by the classical scholar Frederic W ...
, clairvoyance
Clairvoyance (; ) is the magical ability to gain information about an object, person, location, or physical event through extrasensory perception. Any person who is claimed to have such ability is said to be a clairvoyant () ("one who sees cl ...
or precognition
Precognition (from the Latin 'before', and 'acquiring knowledge') is the purported psychic phenomenon of seeing, or otherwise becoming directly aware of, events in the future.
There is no accepted scientific evidence that precognition is a ...
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." 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.
A 2014 study discovered that schizophrenic
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by continuous or relapsing episodes of psychosis. Major symptoms include hallucinations (typically hearing voices), delusions, and disorganized thinking. Other symptoms include social withdra ...
patients have more belief in psi than healthy adults.
Some researchers have become skeptical
Skepticism, also spelled scepticism, is a questioning attitude or doubt toward knowledge claims that are seen as mere belief or dogma. For example, if a person is skeptical about claims made by their government about an ongoing war then the p ...
of parapsychology such as Susan Blackmore
Susan Jane Blackmore (born 29 July 1951) is a British writer, lecturer, sceptic, broadcaster, and a Visiting Professor at the University of Plymouth. Her fields of research include memetics, parapsychology, consciousness, and she is best known fo ...
and John Taylor after years of study and no progress in demonstrating the existence of psi by the scientific method.
Physics
The ideas of psi (precognition
Precognition (from the Latin 'before', and 'acquiring knowledge') is the purported psychic phenomenon of seeing, or otherwise becoming directly aware of, events in the future.
There is no accepted scientific evidence that precognition is a ...
, psychokinesis and telepathy
Telepathy () is the purported vicarious transmission of information from one person's mind to another's without using any known human sensory channels or physical interaction. The term was first coined in 1882 by the classical scholar Frederic W ...
) violate well-established laws of physics
Scientific laws or laws of science are statements, based on repeated experiments or observations, that describe or predict a range of natural phenomena. The term ''law'' has diverse usage in many cases (approximate, accurate, broad, or narrow) a ...
. Psychokinesis violates the inverse-square law
In science, an inverse-square law is any scientific law stating that a specified physical quantity is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the source of that physical quantity. The fundamental cause for this can be understo ...
, the second law of thermodynamics
The second law of thermodynamics is a physical law based on universal experience concerning heat and Energy transformation, energy interconversions. One simple statement of the law is that heat always moves from hotter objects to colder objects ( ...
, and the conservation of momentum
In Newtonian mechanics, momentum (more specifically linear momentum or translational momentum) is the product of the mass and velocity of an object. It is a vector quantity, possessing a magnitude and a direction. If is an object's mass an ...
. There is no known mechanism for psi.
On the subject of psychokinesis
Psychokinesis (from grc, ψυχή, , soul and grc, κίνησις, , movement, label=ㅤ), or telekinesis (from grc, τηλε, , far off and grc, κίνησις, , movement, label=ㅤ), is a hypothetical psychic ability allowing a person ...
, the physicist Sean M. Carroll
Sean Michael Carroll (born October 5, 1966) is an American theoretical physicist and philosopher who specializes in quantum mechanics, gravity, and cosmology. He is (formerly) a research professor in the Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical ...
has written that both human brains and the spoons they try to bend are made, like all matter, of quark
A quark () is a type of elementary particle and a fundamental constituent of matter. Quarks combine to form composite particles called hadrons, the most stable of which are protons and neutrons, the components of atomic nuclei. All commonly o ...
s and lepton
In particle physics, a lepton is an elementary particle of half-integer spin ( spin ) that does not undergo strong interactions. Two main classes of leptons exist: charged leptons (also known as the electron-like leptons or muons), and neutr ...
s; 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 is one of the four known forces or it is 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.
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.
Felix Planer, a professor of electrical engineering
Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems which use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...
, 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
The degree Celsius is the unit of temperature on the Celsius scale (originally known as the centigrade scale outside Sweden), one of two temperature scales used in the International System of Units (SI), the other being the Kelvin scale. The ...
or affect an element in an electrical circuit such as a resistor which could be monitored to better than a millionth of an ampere.[Felix Planer. (1980). ''Superstition''. Cassell. p. 242. ] 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.
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.
Philosopher and physicist Mario Bunge
Mario Augusto Bunge (; ; September 21, 1919 – February 24, 2020) was an Argentine-Canadian philosopher and physicist. His philosophical writings combined scientific realism, systemism, materialism, emergentism, and other principles.
He was ...
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."
The physicist Robert L. Park
Robert Lee Park (January 16, 1931 – April 29, 2020) was an American emeritus professor of physics at the University of Maryland, College Park, and a former director of public information at the Washington office of the American Physical Society. ...
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
A microbalance is an instrument capable of making precise measurements of weight of objects of relatively small mass: of the order of a million parts of a gram. In comparison, a standard analytical balance is 100 times less sensitive; i.e. it is ...
which would not require any dubious statistics but "the reason, of course, is that the microbalance stubbornly refuses to budge."Robert L. Park
Robert Lee Park (January 16, 1931 – April 29, 2020) was an American emeritus professor of physics at the University of Maryland, College Park, and a former director of public information at the Washington office of the American Physical Society. ...
. (2000). '' Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud''. Oxford University Press. pp. 198–200. 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
Radin is a surname and given name.
Given name
Radin (Persian: رادین) is also an Ancient Persian given name meaning "gentleman".
Surname
Notable people with the surname include:
* Adolph Moses Radin (1848–1909), Polish-American rabbi
* ...
, 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."
Pseudoscience
Parapsychological theories are viewed as pseudoscientific by the scientific community as they are incompatible with well-established laws of science
Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.
Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for ...
. As there is no repeatable evidence for psi, the field is often regarded as a pseudoscience
Pseudoscience consists of statements, beliefs, or practices that claim to be both scientific and factual but are incompatible with the scientific method. Pseudoscience is often characterized by contradictory, exaggerated or falsifiability, unfa ...
.
The philosopher Raimo Tuomela
Raimo Heikki Tuomela (9 October 1940 in Helsinki, Finland – 22 November 2020 in Helsinki) was a Finnish philosopher.
Career
Tuomela received his first degree of doctor of philosophy in 1968 from the University of Helsinki and the second one in ...
summarized why the majority of scientists consider parapsychology to be a pseudoscience in his essay "Science, Protoscience, and Pseudoscience".
* 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
The California State Board of Education is the governing and policy-making body of the California Department of Education. The State Board of Education sets K-12 education policy in the areas of standards, instructional materials, assessment, and ...
, to be pseudoscientific
Pseudoscience consists of statements, beliefs, or practices that claim to be both scientific and factual but are incompatible with the scientific method. Pseudoscience is often characterized by contradictory, exaggerated or unfalsifiable claim ...
. 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. James Alcock
James E. Alcock (born 24 December 1942) is a Canadian educator. He has been a Professor of Psychology at York University (Canada) since 1973. Alcock is a noted critic of parapsychology and is a Fellow and Member of the Executive Council for the ...
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, and as a whole is not justified in being labeled "scientific".
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 real energy or power that has so far escaped the attention of those people engaged in "normal" science."
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. A panel commissioned by the United States National Research Council
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (also known as NASEM or the National Academies) are the collective scientific national academy of the United States. The name is used interchangeably in two senses: (1) as an umbrell ...
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."
There is also an issue of non-falsifiability associated with psi. On this subject Terence Hines
Terence Hines (born 22 March 1951) is a professor of psychology at Pace University, New York, and adjunct professor of neurology at the New York Medical College; he is also a science writer. Hines has a BA from Duke University, and an MA and P ...
has written:
Mario Bunge
Mario Augusto Bunge (; ; September 21, 1919 – February 24, 2020) was an Argentine-Canadian philosopher and physicist. His philosophical writings combined scientific realism, systemism, materialism, emergentism, and other principles.
He was ...
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."
The psychologist David Marks
David Lee Marks (born August 22, 1948) is an American guitarist who is best known for being an early member of the Beach Boys. While growing up in Hawthorne, California, Marks was a neighborhood friend of the original band members and was a freq ...
has written that parapsychologists have failed to produce a single repeatable demonstration of the paranormal
Paranormal events are purported phenomena described in popular culture, folk, and other non-scientific bodies of knowledge, whose existence within these contexts is described as being beyond the scope of normal scientific understanding. Nota ...
and described psychical research as a pseudoscience, an "incoherent collection of belief systems steeped in fantasy, illusion and error." However, Chris French
Christopher Charles French (born 1956) is a British psychologist specialising in the psychology of paranormal beliefs and experiences, cognition and emotion. He is the head of the University of London's anomalistic Psychology Research Unit and ...
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." French has noted his position is "the minority view among critics of parapsychology".
Philosopher Bradley Dowden
Bradley Harris Dowden (born 1942) is an American philosopher and professor of philosophy at the California State University, Sacramento.
Work
He is a general editor of the '' Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy''. Dowden received his MS in ph ...
characterized parapsychology as a pseudoscience as parapsychologists have no valid theories to test and no reproducible data from their experiments.
Fraud
There have been instances of fraud
In law, fraud is intentional deception to secure unfair or unlawful gain, or to deprive a victim of a legal right. Fraud can violate civil law (e.g., a fraud victim may sue the fraud perpetrator to avoid the fraud or recover monetary compens ...
in the history of parapsychology research. In the late 19th century the Creery Sisters
Telepathy () is the purported vicariousness, vicarious transmission of information from one person's mind to another's without using any known human sensory channels or physical interaction. The term was first coined in 1882 by the classical sch ...
(Mary, Alice, Maud, Kathleen, and Emily) were tested by the Society for Psychical Research
The Society for Psychical Research (SPR) is a nonprofit organisation in the United Kingdom. Its stated purpose is to understand events and abilities commonly described as psychic or paranormal. It describes itself as the "first society to condu ...
and believed them to have genuine psychic ability; however, during a later experiment they were caught utilizing signal codes and they confessed to fraud. George Albert Smith
George Albert Smith Sr. (April 4, 1870 – April 4, 1951) was an American religious leader who served as the eighth president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church).
Early life
Born in Salt Lake City, Utah Territor ...
and Douglas Blackburn
Douglas Blackburn (6 August 1857, Southwark – 28 March 1929, Tonbridge) was an English journalist and novelist, who worked in the Transvaal and Natal between 1892 and 1908. He has been called "the great chronicler of the last days of the Bo ...
were claimed to be genuine psychics by the Society for Psychical Research but Blackburn confessed to fraud:
The experiments of Samuel Soal
Samuel George Soal (1889–1975) was a British mathematician and parapsychologist. He was charged with fraudulent production of data in his work in parapsychology.
Biography
Soal graduated with first class honours in mathematics from Queen Ma ...
and K. M. Goldney
Kathleen Mary Hervey Goldney (1894–1992) best known as K. M. Goldney was a British parapsychologist and writer.
Career
In the 1940s, Goldney worked with the mathematician Samuel Soal on ESP experiments with Basil Shackleton. It later was disco ...
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.
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.[McBurney, Donald H; White, Theresa L. (2009). ''Research Methods''. Wadsworth Publishing. p. 60. ] 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.
In 1974 Rhine published the paper ''Security versus Deception in Parapsychology'' in the Journal of Parapsychology
The ''Journal of Parapsychology'' is a biannual peer-reviewed academic journal covering research on psi phenomena, including telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, and psychokinesis, as well as human consciousness in general and anomalous experie ...
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. Massimo Pigliucci
Massimo Pigliucci (; born January 16, 1964) is Professor of Philosophy at the City College of New York, former co-host of the '' Rationally Speaking Podcast'', and former editor in chief for the online magazine ''Scientia Salon''. He is a critic o ...
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.
Martin Gardner
Martin Gardner (October 21, 1914May 22, 2010) was an American popular mathematics and popular science writer with interests also encompassing scientific skepticism, micromagic, philosophy, religion, and literatureespecially the writings of Lewis ...
claimed to have inside information that files in Rhine's laboratory contain material suggesting fraud on the part of Hubert Pearce
Joseph Gaither Pratt (August 31, 1910 – November 3, 1979) was an American psychologist who specialized in the field of parapsychology. Among his research interests were extrasensory perception, psychokinesis, mediumship and poltergeists.
Muc ...
.Kendrick Frazier
Kendrick Crosby Frazier (March 19, 1942 – November 7, 2022) was an American science writer and longtime editor of ''Skeptical Inquirer'' magazine. He was also a former editor of '' Science News'', author or editor of ten books, and a Fellow of ...
. (1991). ''The Hundredth Monkey: And Other Paradigms of the Paranormal''. Prometheus Books. pp. 168–170. 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
Zener cards are cards used to conduct experiments for extrasensory perception (ESP). Perceptual psychologist Karl Zener (1903–1964) designed the cards in the early 1930s for experiments conducted with his colleague, parapsychologist J. B. Rhi ...
before the experiments started.
A researcher from Tarkio College
Tarkio College was a college that operated in Tarkio, Missouri, from 1883 to 1992. The institution was supported by the United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, followed by the Presbyterian Church (USA).
It was closed after fi ...
in Missouri, James D. MacFarland, was suspected of falsifying data to achieve positive psi results. Before the fraud was discovered, MacFarland published two articles in the ''Journal of Parapsychology'' (1937 & 1938) supporting the existence of ESP. 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." MacFarland never published another article in the Journal of Parapsychology after the fraud was discovered.
Some instances of fraud amongst spiritualist
Spiritualism is the metaphysical school of thought opposing physicalism and also is the category of all spiritual beliefs/views (in monism and dualism) from ancient to modern. In the long nineteenth century
The ''long nineteenth century'' i ...
mediums
Mediumship is the practice of purportedly mediating communication between familiar spirits or spirits of the dead and living human beings. Practitioners are known as "mediums" or "spirit mediums". There are different types of mediumship or spir ...
were exposed by early psychical researchers such as Richard Hodgson and Harry Price
Harry Price (17 January 1881 – 29 March 1948) was a British psychic researcher and author, who gained public prominence for his investigations into psychical phenomena and exposing fraudulent spiritualist mediums. He is best known for ...
. In the 1920s, magician
Magician or The Magician may refer to:
Performers
* A practitioner of magic (supernatural)
* A practitioner of magic (illusion)
* Magician (fantasy), a character in a fictional fantasy context
Entertainment
Books
* ''The Magician'', an 18th-ce ...
and escapologist Harry Houdini
Harry Houdini (, born Erik Weisz; March 24, 1874 – October 31, 1926) was a Hungarian-American escape artist, magic man, and stunt performer, noted for his escape acts. His pseudonym is a reference to his spiritual master, French magician ...
said that researchers and observers had not created experimental procedures which absolutely preclude fraud.
Criticism of experimental results
Critical analysts, including some parapsychologists, are not satisfied with experimental parapsychology studies. Some reviewers, such as psychologist Ray Hyman
Ray Hyman (born June 23, 1928) is a Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Oregon in Eugene, Oregon, and a noted critic of parapsychology. Hyman, along with James Randi, Martin Gardner and Paul Kurtz, is one of the founders of the ...
, 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. Fellow psychologist Stuart Vyse
Stuart Vyse is an American psychologist, teacher, speaker and author who specializes in belief in superstitions and critical thinking. He is frequently invited as a speaker and interviewed by the media as an expert on superstitious behavior. His ...
hearkens back to a time of data manipulation, now recognized as "p-hacking", as part of the issue. 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
The ''Journal of Parapsychology'' is a biannual peer-reviewed academic journal covering research on psi phenomena, including telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, and psychokinesis, as well as human consciousness in general and anomalous experie ...
'' in which parapsychologists independent from the PEAR laboratory concluded that these experiments "depart dfrom criteria usually expected in formal scientific experimentation" due to " oblems 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".
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. 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...n other words
N, or n, is the fourteenth letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''en'' (pronounced ), plural ''ens''.
History
...
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
Affirming the consequent, sometimes called converse error, fallacy of the converse, or confusion of necessity and sufficiency, is a formal fallacy of taking a true conditional statement (e.g., "If the lamp were broken, then the room would be dar ...
'' or ''begging the question
In classical rhetoric and logic, begging the question or assuming the conclusion (Latin: ') is an informal fallacy that occurs when an argument's premises assume the truth of the conclusion, instead of supporting it.
For example:
* "Green is t ...
.''
In 1979, magician and debunker
A debunker is a person or organization that exposes or discredits claims believed to be false, exaggerated, or pretentious. "to expose or excoriate (a claim, assertion, sentiment, etc.) as being pretentious, false, or exaggerated: to debunk adv ...
James Randi
James Randi (born Randall James Hamilton Zwinge; August 7, 1928 – October 20, 2020) was a Canadian-American stage magician, author and scientific skeptic who extensively challenged paranormal and pseudoscientific claims. Rodrigues 2010p. ...
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
Washington University in St. Louis (WashU or WUSTL) is a private research university with its main campus in St. Louis County, and Clayton, Missouri. Founded in 1853, the university is named after George Washington. Washington University is r ...
'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. 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. 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".
Selection bias and meta-analysis
Selective reporting
In epidemiology, reporting bias is defined as "selective revealing or suppression of information" by subjects (for example about past medical history, smoking, sexual experiences). In artificial intelligence research, the term reporting bias is u ...
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. Selective reporting has a compounded effect on meta-analysis
A meta-analysis is a statistical analysis that combines the results of multiple scientific studies. Meta-analyses can be performed when there are multiple scientific studies addressing the same question, with each individual study reporting me ...
, which is a statistical technique that aggregates the results of many studies in order to generate sufficient statistical power
Power most often refers to:
* Power (physics), meaning "rate of doing work"
** Engine power, the power put out by an engine
** Electric power
* Power (social and political), the ability to influence people or events
** Abusive power
Power may a ...
to demonstrate a result that the individual studies themselves could not demonstrate at a statistically significant
In statistical hypothesis testing, a result has statistical significance when it is very unlikely to have occurred given the null hypothesis (simply by chance alone). More precisely, a study's defined significance level, denoted by \alpha, is the p ...
level. For example, a recent meta-analysis combined 380 studies on psychokinesis, 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.
The popularity of meta-analysis in parapsychology has been criticized by numerous researchers, and is often seen as troublesome even within parapsychology itself. 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. 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
Pathological science is an area of research where "people are tricked into false results ... by subjective effects, wishful thinking or threshold interactions."Irving Langmuir, "Colloquium on Pathological Science," held at the Knolls Research Lab ...
as described by Irving Langmuir
Irving Langmuir (; January 31, 1881 – August 16, 1957) was an American chemist, physicist, and engineer. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1932 for his work in surface chemistry.
Langmuir's most famous publication is the 1919 art ...
.
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
In a scientific study, post hoc analysis (from Latin '' post hoc'', "after this") consists of statistical analyses that were specified after the data were seen. They are usually used to uncover specific differences between three or more group mea ...
, 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.
Anomalistic psychology
In anomalistic psychology, paranormal phenomena have naturalistic explanations resulting from psychological
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries between t ...
and physical
Physical may refer to:
*Physical examination
In a physical examination, medical examination, or clinical examination, a medical practitioner examines a patient for any possible medical signs or symptoms of a medical condition. It generally co ...
factors which have sometimes given the impression of paranormal activity to some people when, in fact, there have been none. According to the psychologist Chris French
Christopher Charles French (born 1956) is a British psychologist specialising in the psychology of paranormal beliefs and experiences, cognition and emotion. He is the head of the University of London's anomalistic Psychology Research Unit and ...
:
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.
Skeptics organizations
Organizations that encourage a critical examination of parapsychology and parapsychological research include the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry
The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI), formerly known as the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), is a program within the US non-profit organization Center for Inquiry (CFI), which seeks to "prom ...
, publisher of the ''Skeptical Inquirer
''Skeptical Inquirer'' is a bimonthly American general-audience magazine published by the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI) with the subtitle: ''The Magazine for Science and Reason''.
Mission statement and goals
Daniel Loxton, writing in ...
''; the James Randi Educational Foundation
James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) is an American grant-making institution founded in 1996 by magician and skeptic James Randi. As a nonprofit organization, the mission of JREF includes educating the public and the media on the dangers of ...
, founded by illusionist and skeptic James Randi, and the Occult Investigative Committee of the Society of American Magicians
The Society of American Magicians (S.A.M.) is the oldest fraternal magic organization in the world. Its purpose is "to advance, elevate, and preserve magic as a performing art, to promote harmonious fellowship throughout the world of magic, and t ...
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."
See also
* Outline of parapsychology
Parapsychology is a field of research that studies a number of ostensible paranormal phenomena, including telepathy, precognition, clairvoyance, psychokinesis, near-death experiences, reincarnation, and apparitional experiences.
Essence of parap ...
* List of topics characterized as pseudoscience
This is a list of topics that have, either currently or in the past, been characterized as pseudoscience by academics or researchers. Detailed discussion of these topics may be found on their main pages. These characterizations were made in the ...
References
Further reading
*
* Alcock, James (1981). ''Parapsychology-Science Or Magic?: A Psychological Perspective''. Pergamon Press.
*
* Hines, Terence (2003). ''Pseudoscience and the Paranormal''. Prometheus Books.
*
*
* Moore, E. Garth (1977). ''Believe It or Not: Christianity and Psychical Research''. London: Mowbray.
* Neher, Andrew (2011). ''Paranormal and Transcendental Experience: A Psychological Examination''. Dover Publications.
*
*
*
*
*
*
External links
The Division of Perceptual Studies
at the University of Virginia
The University of Virginia (UVA) is a Public university#United States, public research university in Charlottesville, Virginia. Founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson, the university is ranked among the top academic institutions in the United S ...
School of Medicine.
Institute of Noetic Sciences
A nonprofit organization that sponsors research in parapsychology.
An organization of scientists and scholars engaged in the study of psychic phenomena, affiliated with the American Association for the Advancement of Science
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is an American international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific respons ...
in 1969.
Rhine Research Center
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
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
Organization formed in 1976 to promote scientific skepticism
Scientific skepticism or rational skepticism (also spelled scepticism), sometimes referred to as skeptical inquiry, is a position in which one questions the veracity of claims lacking empirical evidence. In practice, the term most commonly refe ...
and encourage the critical investigation of paranormal claims and parapsychology.
James Randi Educational Foundation
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
Large number of articles about parapsychology, from publications such as the ''Journal of Parapsychology
The ''Journal of Parapsychology'' is a biannual peer-reviewed academic journal covering research on psi phenomena, including telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, and psychokinesis, as well as human consciousness in general and anomalous experie ...
'' and the ''Skeptical Inquirer
''Skeptical Inquirer'' is a bimonthly American general-audience magazine published by the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI) with the subtitle: ''The Magazine for Science and Reason''.
Mission statement and goals
Daniel Loxton, writing in ...
''.
*
{{Authority control
Pseudoscience
Psychics
Paranormal