The July-August 2018 issue of American Psychologist contained an article titled “The Experimental Evidence for Parapsychological Phenomena: A Review” by Etzel Cardeña. Cardeña is known for research on hypnosis and consciousness, parapsychology, and, interestingly, for his work in theater as an actor and director. The paper prompted us to examine and critique the science behind parapsychology (Reber and Alcock, forthcoming). This article is a summary of our arguments.
The American Psychologist is the flagship publication of the American Psychological Association (APA), the largest and most influential professional organization in our field, and it is sent to its nearly 120,000 members. An article being published within it is equivalent to granting the imprimatur of the APA. Interestingly, this wasn’t the first time the APA had entered this controversial domain of psychology; in 2011, another of its respected journals, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, published a paper by Daryl Bem of Cornell University that purported to show evidence of precognition. Bem’s paper lit a small firestorm largely because Bem was well-known for research in fields outside of parapsychology. It was applauded enthusiastically by psi researchers and, of course, was immediately subjected to efforts at replication by other labs (which almost uniformly failed) and well-honed criticisms, including one by one of us (Alcock 2011).
Cardeña’s paper was, to the eye untutored in the world of the paranormal, an impressive effort. It reviewed the data for psi, focusing mainly on meta-analyses of published papers that showed small or marginal effects and, importantly, acknowledged the fact that there is no coherent theory for psi. Cardeña, in an effort to find a causal mechanism through which to understand the paranormal, brought in quantum mechanics (QM) and, to a lesser extent, relativity theory and the recently proposed notion of a “block universe” model in which past, present, and future all enjoy a simultaneous coexistence. The effort failed—mainly from some unfortunate misunderstandings of QM, relativity theory, and the fact that the block universe notion is little more than creative speculation.1