The Active Debates
Where does the evidence point? Explore both sides of 14 contested questions in psi research.
⚠️ Note: Each controversy map shows research supporting AND challenging the claim. We present both sides so you can evaluate the evidence yourself. The "Heat" indicator reflects the volume of active discourse.
Does the ganzfeld produce replicable evidence for telepathy?
"Can telepathy be demonstrated under controlled conditions?"
The ganzfeld remains one of parapsychology's most-replicated paradigms, but the debate turns on study inclusion criteria and quality thresholds. Pro-psi meta-analyses (Storm 2010, 2020) find a robust ...
Does the telephone/email telepathy paradigm demonstrate anomalous information transfer?
"Can people sense who's calling before answering?"
The telephone telepathy evidence base now includes a full 2025 quantitative synthesis: across 23 telepathy-condition experiments, performance was 8.7% above chance (standardized ES = 0.17), with moder...
Does the sense of being stared at demonstrate anomalous perception?
"Can people detect when they're being stared at?"
SOBA has a large evidence base by parapsychological standards: tens of thousands of behavioral trials and a separately confirmed physiological signal (CCTV/GSR). The most serious methodological challe...
Does Sheldrake's animal telepathy research demonstrate interspecies psi?
"Do pets genuinely anticipate their owner's return?"
The Jaytee controversy is unique in parapsychology: two research teams filmed the same dog during overlapping periods and reached opposite conclusions. Sheldrake's program began with a 9-month observa...
Do identical twins show anomalous physiological connectedness?
"Do twins share a psychic connection?"
This is the smallest evidence base in the library for any controversy: two pilot studies (Copenhagen and London) totaling 8 twin pairs and 14 sessions. Both studies found that approximately 1 in 4 scr...
Are Bem's "Feeling the Future" results real or statistical artifacts?
"Did Bem really prove precognition?"
This is the defining controversy of modern psi research and a landmark case in the broader replication crisis. The pro-psi position rests on the 2015 meta-analysis, which aggregates 90 experiments and...
Is presentiment a real physiological effect?
"Does the body anticipate unpredictable future events?"
Presentiment has a stronger meta-analytic base than many other psi claims (d = 0.21 across 26 studies), and the effect has been reported across multiple physiological measures (EDA, EEG, heart rate, f...
Does consciousness influence quantum systems (double-slit PK)?
"Can consciousness affect quantum-level physical systems?"
The double-slit PK paradigm is one of the most provocative claims in psi research because it directly implicates consciousness in quantum mechanics. Radin's lab has published a steady series of result...
Is the Global Consciousness Project detecting real effects?
"Does collective human attention influence random systems worldwide?"
The GCP has accumulated over two decades of data, and its proponents report a cumulative z-score that is astronomically unlikely by chance. However, the project's methodology has been criticized for i...
Are NDEs evidence for consciousness survival?
"Do NDEs provide evidence for consciousness beyond the brain?"
NDEs remain one of the most challenging phenomena for both sides of the debate. The field began with retrospective qualitative studies (Moody 1977) that established the core phenomenology and demonstr...
Does distant healing/prayer work?
"Can prayer or distant intention promote healing?"
The evidence picture is more nuanced than a simple pro/con split. The two largest individual clinical RCTs — the STEP prayer trial (Benson 2006, N=1,802) and MANTRA II (Krucoff 2005) — found no benefi...
Is mediumship evidence genuine or explainable by cold reading?
"Can mediums genuinely access information from deceased persons?"
The Windbridge Research Center (Beischel) has produced the most sustained program of blinded mediumship research, with multiple studies reporting above-chance accuracy under triple-blind conditions. C...
Is psi research fundamentally flawed? (The meta-debate)
"Do meta-analyses actually support the existence of psi?"
This meta-debate is the most consequential in the field because it determines whether psi research is capable of producing reliable knowledge....
Non-Speaker Telepathy
"Can nonspeaking individuals communicate information received telepathically?"
This controversy was reignited by The Telepathy Tapes podcast (2024), which features nonspeaking autistic individuals apparently communicating detailed information they should not have access to — cla...