Parapsychology: Fact or Fiction?

If you are referring to the television series "Sea of ​​Souls" researchers of parapsychology unit at Edinburgh University, they may throw you a black look. That inspired some of this fantastic series of the BBC, they resent being represented as well as "ghost-buster."


Parapsychologists at the University of Edinburgh, however, are not illuminated. At the head of this unit, Caroline Watt, a psychologist whose research focuses on children of people reporting paranormal experiences. It also examines the "ghost stories" of Edinburgh. Among his colleagues, a former professional magician whose research focuses on the history of fraud, and a philosopher who is interested in the possibility of human beings to predict the future. These researchers use scientific methods and statistics. However, number of subjects they are studying - telepathy, precognition and psychokinesis - are frowned upon by academic science.

This situation parapsychologists working in academia in a difficult position. If they can explain how and why phenomena seemingly "paranormal" occur, they will be recognized alongside pioneering scientists like Newton and Einstein, to be able to understand what seems unthinkable today and is often object of derision. If they fail, they will be the heirs of the alchemists of the Middle Ages: the years of effort in search of lost dreams.

The history of parapsychology in Great Britain could be very different if the writer Arthur Koestler had not existed. Born in Hungary a century ago, Arthur Koestler was a former communist imprisoned and sentenced to death under Franco during the Spanish Civil War. He later escaped from Nazi Germany to settle in Britain, where he spent most of his life to fight Soviet totalitarianism.


His suicide in 1983 was the controversial ending to an eventful life. The overdose of barbiturates which died Koestler was not unexpected, he suffered from Parkinson's disease and leukemia. But it was a shock as his third wife, Cynthia, will be also committed suicide, although only 55 years of Agee and being healthy.

Koestler had always been a taciturn and authoritarian and suspicion that he has persuaded to kill Cynthia could also darken the appreciation of what he did in his life.

Years later, his personality was again questioned when the wife of Michael Foot, Jill Craigie, claimed that Koestler had removed. In the scandal that followed, his bust was removed from the hall of the psychology department of the University of Edinburgh.

Another clap of thunder occurred during the publication of the last wishes of Koestler: almost all of his property was bequeathed to create a chair of parapsychology at a university in Britain. Cynthia's last wishes also included a bequest of £ 100,000 for this project. The total leg was nearly one million lire!

Who knows where does the fascination of Koestler for psi phenomena? Young, he was influenced by Jung's writings on synchronicity. But it was after having receded currents far left he became more interested in the paranormal. Was he trying to replace the loss of certain beliefs by others?

Shortly after the death of Koestler, novelist and critic Stephen Vizinczey said that bequeathing money to research in parapsychology, Koestler "committed suicide again." His interest in the paranormal "made it virtually impossible to suspect that that crazy Köstler had written several books the most relevant and rational of our time. "

The benefits of his generosity does not remain less welcome. However, the universities of Oxford and Cambridge took no risk by accepting this legacy, mainly for fear of ridicule.

It is finally in Edinburgh as the chair of parapsychology was established, in particular through the philosopher John Beloff, a friend who dispensed Koestler parapsychology courses for several years in the psychology programs at the University of Edinburgh.

With the establishment of the first unitié of parapsychology in Britain, this field of investigation was a step towards recognition, but there are many who doubted the relevance and return to a "pseudo-science" in University.

The first professor of the chair of Koestler, the psychologist Robert Morris, arrived in the United States in 1985, after working with renowned parapsychologist JB Rhine, and made such experiments to test the ability psi rats.


Robert Morris



Previous studies by Robert Morris were not necessarily a guarantee of reliability for the other university of Edinburgh. According to some, studying rats that could predict the future hardly seemed credible ... Choose Morris as a teacher, however, proved a wise choice.

"Bob had a clear plan for the long term," said Caroline Watts, who joined the unit in 1986. "He knew that if parapsychology should be taken seriously, you had to tread carefully."

Morris, who considered the skeptics as researchers in their own right, the chair of parapsychology directed away from the more controversial aspects of the paranormal and never deviated from this rule.

In 2002, he explained in the magazine 'New Scientist' that when he came to Edinburgh University he "estimated that 85% chance the possibility that it is studying something that would beyond what science could account current. During recent years, I probably spent 90 to 95% ".

However, Morris then explained that "researchers should move away from notions of belief and disbelief. People do not speak of belief in other areas. It seems to me that there is something new, but I would not fall over backwards if he thought it was not the case. "

Morris's patience paid off. When he died in August 2004, no fewer than five units of parapsychology had been created in other British universities by students who have a doctorate in parapsychology. Research groups in parapsychology have been created at the universities of Coventry and Hertfordshire.

This is in contrast to that can be observed in the United States where researchers were more likely to express their belief in the reality of psi phenomena. Parapsychology has virtually disappeared from American universities.

If Koestler was still alive, he would certainly be delighted to see the fruits of his leg. But it would be as eager to have answers. What are the results of parapsychology labs?

The implementation of the protocol is the Ganzfeld first indication that something not usually take place at the Koestler unit. The play takes place in which the Ganzfeld is small, isolated and empty, with just a comfortable leather seat and a computer screen. It's more like, at first glance, a torture chamber or a dentist's operating room!

The Ganzfeld experiment is most used in an attempt to highlight the extra sensory perception (ESP); It means covering the eyes of subjects with halves of ping-pong and implement a red light, while a white noise is played through the headphones. Meanwhile, in another room of the building, another subject, the "sender" focuses on a target, usually a video clip, trying to pass on sitting comfortably in the room ganzfeld. Asked about it to find the target of several other targets that are decoys.

installed in about a ganzfeld



According to the simple random topics ganzfeld participants should just drop that 25% of the time. In fact, the success of all experience is slightly above 33%. This is a statistically highly significant: such results can they alone prove the existence of psi?

However, when you discussed with parapsychology, nothing can be taken as evidence. Experiments using the ganzfeld have indeed caused more fights than a convention of poltergeist!

In 1985, the parapsychologist Charles Honorton claimed that the ganzfeld had proved the existence of psi. In response, the American skeptic Ray Hyman rose more than 99 potential biases in the first ganzfeld experiments, including on how targets were selected


Charles Honorton



After more than a year of academic debate, Hyman and Honorton published the "Joint Communique". They explained in this press release that they agreed on the fact that the ganzfeld experiments had shown that something happened that was not in the range of statistical error. But they disagreed on the fact that this was evidence of psi: "We agree that the final verdict will come from the future results of experiments with a larger number of experimenters and using standards more stringent standards. "

Scientifically, it was good news because the experimenters were encouraged to improve their protocols. Honorton began developing the autoganzfeld. This computerized version of the Ganzfeld, used today, was conducted to eliminate the biases identified by Hyman.

Slowly, the positive re-emerged. On a study using the autoganzfeld for six years, Honorton's laboratory has obtained a passing score of 34%. Other laboratories, including lab Koestler, obtained the same result in 1990. These results seemed to confirm the hypothesis that psi exists.

But a new controversy erupted then. In 1999, the British parapsychologists Julie Milton, a researcher at the Koestler unit, and Richard Wiseman, a former doctoral student at the Koestler unit, published a statistical review of 30 new experiences autoganzfeld made after those of Honorton. This statistical analysis showed that the results were in line with the simple chance.

The ensuing debate was fierce. Pro-psi skeptics and failing to agree on the origin and interpretation of such results. Caroline Watt, head of the Koestler unit, explains that "it seems there is something, but we do not know what it is, ie the existence of psi or bias in the methodology. Bob was often a joke for the skeptic consists in that the acronym ESP corresponded to the expression "Error Some Place".

For an outsider to this field, this may seem incredible that research for over 30 years have only helped to achieve this. Moreover, even if it were possible to prove that psi exists, there is, at present, no theoretical model to explain as it works. Many parapsychologists argue that psi operates independently of time (thus allowing effects such as precognition) and beyond the distance that the waves can cover conventional. If true, the physical laws that govern our universe may need to be reviewed, at least in part.

"The field of parapsychology is very limited, and research on psi are only a small party," says Watt. "All funds vested in psi research since its inception is the equivalent of only two months of subsidies in psychology in the United States." Resources are variable and it seems to be the same psi. The inability to reproduce the experiments leading to conclusive results according to the will of the researchers is the main objective of psi research in its struggle to be taken seriously. Reproducibility allows science to advance. Skeptics vigorously criticize the difficulty of reproducibility of the protocols of parapsychology.

Richard Wiseman, who participated in the statistical analysis of critical 1999 became professor of psychology at the University of Hertfordshire. Former member of a group of magic, he worked with a magician Derren Brown. But he almost broke the ranks of "believers" in parapsychological research.



Richard Wiseman



"If you believe in psi, your problem is whether what you are studying there or not. If this is the case, congratulations, you're on track to become the next Nobel Prize. If it is not, what are you doing? It is very difficult to justify its position as a researcher in parapsychology if you are not yourself a medium. "

"If I could say tomorrow that all these amazing results can be explained by a wave that comes from our brain and then go in someone else, many parapsychologists who leave this field of research soon. For a number of them is a kind of paradox, a search of mystery, not a search for a solution. "

Wiseman, however, does not rule out the possibility that psi exists, but he thinks that parapsychologists have been too inconsistent from one experiment to another without the depth. "If everybody tries to do his own experiences, we do not learn much," says Wiseman. "Let us carry our hopes for systematic research and we'll see what we get."

And then? What happens if such studies do not lead anywhere? "The question I would ask then the defenders of psi would be:" Some twenty experiments were made to find unicorns and every time someone thought to have seen some, but we have never been able to 'bring back one. When will you stop looking for something? "

Dean Radin, director of the Consciousness Research Laboratory (CRL) in California, believes that the unicorn has been caught, and only the blind belief of skeptics can make them say the opposite.


Dean Radin



Radin has conducted research on the paranormal, especially for AT & T Laboratories and the U.S. government. His book, The Invisible conscience, what he calls this compelling evidence of the reality of paranormal phenomena.

"Richard Wiseman is one of those people who want to see a UFO landing on the White House before accepting that it is a proof," says Radin. It think it just look at the discoveries made by the official scientific bodies. Five committees of the Government of the United States evaluated the results of parapsychological research in the 1980s and 1990s. "All five concluded that something was happening."

Radin think the skeptics are not aware of current scientific findings. He affirms that the developments in quantum physics, the science that explains the astonishing behavior of subatomic particles, mean that "our understanding of the physical world is becoming more compatible with psi."

For example, one of the biggest obstacles to accept the existence of psi has always been that it was apparently impossible to transfer information instantaneously, whatever the distance. However, in the late 1990s, a research team managed to get information this way between two atomic particles. This process is referred to as "quantum teleportation" and even those who discovered it are amazed at its strangeness. Charles Bennett of IBM's research laboratories, comparing this to "a curse that would pass a lock of hair to its owner."

Add to that the recent theories of consciousness, which suggest that quantum processes in the brain are responsible for mysterious effects as free will or the feeling of being oneself, and the implications of psi research are enormous. If psi is a quantum phenomenon and consciousness a "quantum computer", what would there be more natural it is manifested in the latter? Yet many biologists and physicists do not agree with such theories. Parapsychology leads again a neutral observer to many questions!

In 1963, historian Thomas Kuhn observed that history was divided into long periods of science "normal" followed by short periods of "scientific revolutions". Normal science "does not seek the facts and new theories." During scientific revolutions, however, the most fundamental scientific ideas are challenged. This was for instance the case when Copernicus said for the first time that the earth revolved around the sun.

Kuhn called such a change from one world to another scientist a "paradigm shift". Reason alone, he said, can never determine how a scientific paradigm allegiance: it is always an act of faith.

For pro-psi researchers, Kuhn's ideas may be of some help. For many of them, science is moving towards a paradigm that takes into account the psychic phenomena which may become the norm among scientists. Opposition institutions is normal.

If psi effects were identified and used, psychic healing might be present in health services. The psychic abilities could be used to search for oil and missing persons. But some researchers are more interested in the social implications, as the idea that consciousness may be related to a common goal. According to Radin, the existence of psi opens the possibility of "whether brief moments where individual thoughts or intense groupal could literally be spread to others."

For now, researchers at the Koestler unit are anxious waiting to see if Robert Morris will be replaced or if the unit will lose his teaching position. Nevertheless, the research group will continue to exist in one way or another. Maybe in 20 years, these researchers will know if their discipline is based on wishful thinking. Meanwhile, work continues. The team is currently completing a study on precognition ...