Parapsychology

Parapsychology

TYPEAcademic discipline

ALSO KNOWN ASPsychical research

NOTABLE CASESociety for Psychical Research; Rhine Research Center

STATUSFringe science — not recognised by mainstream academia

Parapsychology is the study of purported psychic phenomena — including telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, psychokinesis, and mediumship — using the methods of experimental science. It sits outside mainstream academic psychology, but has maintained a continuous tradition of formal, peer-reviewed research since the late 19th century.

History

Early psychical research

Formal, organised study of these claims began in 1882 with the founding of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) in London, the first learned society of its kind. Its founders included classicist Frederic Myers, physicist Oliver Lodge, philosopher and economist Henry Sidgwick, and psychologist and philosopher William James, and its stated purpose was to investigate mesmeric, psychical, and spiritualist phenomena "in a purely scientific spirit" — including rigorous efforts to expose fraudulent mediums.

The Rhine era

The centre of activity shifted to the United States in the 1930s with botanist J. B. Rhine's work at Duke University. Rhine founded a dedicated Parapsychology Laboratory there in the early 1930s, and in 1934 published Extra-Sensory Perception, a monograph summarising six years of card-guessing experiments using Zener cards that became a landmark, and highly controversial, moment in the field's history. Rhine went on to found the Journal of Parapsychology in 1937 and the Parapsychological Association — still the field's main professional body — in 1957. His laboratory later became the independent Foundation for Research on the Nature of Man, a precursor to today's Rhine Research Center.

Methods

Parapsychological research has generally followed mainstream experimental psychology's own methods and standards, rather than developing entirely separate ones — Rhine's card-guessing protocols and later presentiment studies measuring physiological arousal before a random stimulus are both close adaptations of standard laboratory technique. Precognition gives a fuller account of specific experimental traditions, including Zener card testing and Daryl Bem's contested 2011 "Feeling the Future" studies.

Reception and criticism

Despite adopting mainstream scientific methods, parapsychology has not achieved broad acceptance within academic psychology. Recurring criticisms include the field's history of failed independent replication, the file-drawer effect (unsuccessful studies being less likely to be published or noticed than successful ones), and statistical or procedural flaws identified in specific high-profile studies. Rhine's own laboratory acknowledged several cases of researcher unreliability in its published record, and more recent controversies — such as the reception of Daryl Bem's 2011 work — have made parapsychology a recurring case study in broader discussions about research standards and the replication crisis across psychology as a whole.

Notable organisations

• Society for Psychical Research (founded 1882, London)
• Parapsychological Association (founded 1957)
• Rhine Research Center (successor to Rhine's original Duke laboratory)

See also

• Psychic Ability
• Precognition
• Ciarán O'Keeffe, a contemporary researcher who has worked in the field