The Unbearable Fear of Psi: On Scientific Suppression in the 21st Century

This paper describes various examples of blatant attempts to suppress and censor parapsychology research and those who are doing it. The examples include raising false accusations, barring access to journals, suppressing papers and data, and ostracizing and persecuting scientists interested in the topic. The intensity of fear and vituperation caused by parapsychology research is disproportionate even to the possibility that the psi hypothesis could be completely wrong, so I speculate on the psychological reasons that may give rise to it. There are very few circumstances in which censorship might be appropriate, and the actions by parapsychology censors put them at odds not only with the history of science but with the history of modern liberal societies. Appendix 1 is an Editorial censored by the then-editors of the Journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. . . . the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection . . . to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise, or even right. —John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1869/2010:10) One can only pray, even if in a secular prayer, that as the great scientist and philosopher Giordano Bruno had his tongue and palate pierced by an iron gag before being burned alive in 1600 by the inquisitors for daring to speak his mind, he could sense the “every human love” in the midst of the “pedantic boring cry” of his executioners, as W. H. Auden would wish us all in his 1937 poem Lullaby. In some countries (and the extraordinary rendition program instigated by the USA and in which 54 other countries colluded to extrajudicially abduct and sometimes torture detainees suggest how few, cf. Fisher 2013), blissfully, the instruments of torture have rusted and are now only curiosities in morbid museum collections. But the itch Journal of Scientifi c Exploration, Vol. 29, No. 4, pp. 601–620, 2015 0892-3310/15