Parapsychology: Evidence & Resources for the ‘Elusive Science’
Is there replicable lab evidence for ESP and related phenomena? The answer may surprise you
Few areas of modern science are as controversial — and misrepresented — as parapsychology.
On Wikipedia and in much of mainstream letters, the rap on parapsychology — scholarly study of extra-physical phenomena such as ESP and precognition — is as recitative as an airline safety video: ESP has never been proven in a lab setting; the data is non-replicable; there’s “not a shred of evidence;” we know you have a choice when you fly…
In his sumptuously illustrated 2019 book The Spectacle of Illusion, stage magician and psychologist Matthew Tompkins offers the typically opaque — and standard — skeptic’s dismissal of pioneering parapsychologist J.B. Rhine (1895–1980), whose card-test experiments at Duke University documented the occurrence of ESP:
Rhine’s research methods and lack of scientific rigour were called into question while attempts by other scientists to replicate his studies failed to produce similar results…the more controls he introduced, the less impressive his results became, and attempts to replicate his results in other laboratories consistently met with failure.
