Parapsychological Research: A Tutorial Review and Critical Appraisal
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Psychologist Ray Hyman wrote this landmark skeptical overview for engineers at IEEE, and it became a cornerstone of the case against psi (psychic phenomena). He surveys 130 years of evidence — from Victorian seances through Rhine's card-guessing labs to modern ganzfeld (sensory-deprivation telepathy tests) and remote viewing. His key idea is the "False Dichotomy": critics feel trapped between accepting psychic powers or crying fraud, when really subtle methodological mistakes often explain things. His most damaging argument? Parapsychology's evidence never builds on itself — each generation's best proof gets debunked, then a shiny new method appears and the cycle restarts. He notes that 85% of top ESP studies had serious flaws. A copy even turned up in declassified CIA Stargate files.
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📋 Cite this paper
Hyman, Ray (1986). Parapsychological Research: A Tutorial Review and Critical Appraisal. Proceedings of the IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/PROC.1986.13528
@article{hyman_1986_parapsychological_tutorial,
title = {Parapsychological Research: A Tutorial Review and Critical Appraisal},
author = {Hyman, Ray},
year = {1986},
journal = {Proceedings of the IEEE},
doi = {10.1109/PROC.1986.13528},
}