Parapsychology.....I have a general idea on what it is, but, What is the formal defination? Why is it so discredited? Anyone know any good books on the study of it? Peace, -Guyute
1)The study of the evidence for psychological phenomena, such as telepathy, clairvoyance, and psychokinesis, that are inexplicable by science 2)Too many nuts claiming to have supernatural powers yet they provide no proof except claims that non believers are narrowminded. 3) Don't read so, no.
This is only part of the story. Other reasons for its bad reputation: horribly flawed research, complete lack of successful evidence, some (not all) untrustworthy parapsychologists (Targ, Puthoff, Rhine, etc).
On the contrary. During the cold war the US government spent millions upon miliions of dollares on ESP and every method that could be thought up was thought up to detect ESP in certain individuals to help out in the cold war. Yes there were eager researchers who sacrificed scientific dignity and got too excited and over exaggerated results but even with such flamboyant helpout empirical results could not be had, infact anything even tangible and coherent wasn't even found. ESP was simply science fiction back then and still is today in the labratory......but not on TV.
ESP is real on TV? I thought it was fiction there too. I don't know many good books that are directly about parapsychology, but there are a few that help to describe some of the (pseudoscientific type) mistakes that have been made in the field. One good one is Pseudoscience and the Paranormal by Terence Hines. This is not necessarily canonical and would definitely offend a career psychic, but it helps to explain some of the problems with the parapsychology/paranormal investigations field. It also describes some of the tricks that are used by the dishonest types to make them look psychic when in fact they are not. There's also a book called How to Think About Weird Things: Critical Thinking for a New Age by Theodore Schick and Lewis Vaughn. This book is a little less of a tome than Hines' book, and should be a quick read if you just want some background. Both of these books are relatively anti-paranormal and generally state that normal physical phenomena and cognitive illusions are sufficient to explain most apparently paranormal happenings.
So what? The government-related testing isn't the majority of parapsychology research. Surely, some of it wasn't flawed research--specifically, the stuff that didn't get results. However, there were lots of experiments that DID get results, and for each of these that are examined (for example, Rhine's, Targ's, Puthoff's, older Ganzfield experiments, etc), a fatal flaw is found.
