Parapsychology

The "Enemies" of Parapsychology

The author regards as "enemies" of parapsychological research (1) those critics who confuse parapsychology with popular superstition, (2) those parapsychologists who know all the pieces of evidence for the reality of psi effects but who lack the capacity to integrate and to evaluate that evidence as a whole, and (3) those professional psychics whose faltering attempts to apply psi for profit gi...

Parapsychology: Science or Pseudo-Science?

Do paranormal or parapsychologicalinvestigationsmeet the criteria often said to characterize pseudo-science? Mainstream and non-mainstream research is compared through content analysis of selected samples of mainstream journals from several fields and of non-mainstream (‘‘fringe’’) journals. Oral communication processes were studied at an annual meeting of the ParapsychologicalAssociation. Thou...

How Parapsychology Could Become a Science

An important methodological argument is outlined in support of general theoretical challenges to the dominant materialist paradigm. The idea is that the empirical inadequacies of a dominant theory can be hidden from view by various and will emerge from the shadows only when viewed from the perspective of a systematic conceptual alternative. The question then posed is whether parapsychology prov...

Replication and Meta-Analysis in Parapsychology

Parapsychology, the laboratory study of psychic phenomena, has had its history interwoven with that of statistics. Many of the controversies in parapsychology have focused on statistical issues, and statistical models have played an integral role in the experimental work. Recently, parapsychologists have been using meta-analysis as a tool for synthesizing large bodies of work. This paper presen...

Parapsychology and Spirituality: Implications and Intimations