[6][7] Discussion to form a committee that would regularly perform experiments with scientific controls to assess extraordinary claims originated in January 1947, after a group of academics was challenged to prove the validity of radiesthesia (the results were negative).

The organisation was eventually founded by seventeen members including astronomer Sylvain Arend on 15 January 1949, and officially registered as an association without lucrative purpose on 4 June 1949.

American philosopher Paul Kurtz was inspired by the Comité Para[4] to found the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal in the United States in 1976 after the debate around the Mars effect (that allegedly proved astrological influences).

The Comité was formally bilingual, but after a sleeping existence it was revived by almost exclusively French-speaking members, most of them astronomers.

[4] Represented by Arlette Fougnies, the Comité Para became a founding member of the European Council of Skeptical Organisations (ECSO) in 1994.