Paranormal

[1][2][3][4] Notable paranormal beliefs include those that pertain to extrasensory perception (for example, telepathy), spiritualism and the pseudosciences of ghost hunting, cryptozoology, and ufology.

Thus, paranormal phenomena include extrasensory perception (ESP), telekinesis, ghosts, poltergeists, life after death, reincarnation, faith healing, human auras, and so forth.

Many scientists are actively engaged in the search for unicellular life within the Solar System, carrying out studies on the surface of Mars and examining meteors that have fallen to Earth.

[16] Projects such as SETI are conducting an astronomical search for radio activity that would show evidence of intelligent life outside the Solar System.

The paranormal aspect of extraterrestrial life centers largely around the belief in unidentified flying objects (UFOs) and the phenomena said to be associated with them.

Reported events that he collected include teleportation (a term Fort is generally credited with coining); poltergeist events; falls of frogs, fishes, and inorganic materials of an amazing range; crop circles; unaccountable noises and explosions; spontaneous fires; levitation; ball lightning (a term explicitly used by Fort); unidentified flying objects; mysterious appearances and disappearances; giant wheels of light in the oceans; and animals found outside their normal ranges (see phantom cat).

B. Rhine popularized the now famous methodology of using card-guessing and dice-rolling experiments in a laboratory in the hopes of finding evidence of extrasensory perception.

[27][28] Parapsychology has been criticized for continuing investigation despite being unable to provide convincing evidence for the existence of any psychic phenomena after more than a century of research.

[31] Publication remained limited to a small number of niche journals,[31] and to date there have been no experimental results that have gained wide acceptance in the scientific community as valid evidence of the paranormal.

Participant-observer methodologies have overlaps with other essentially qualitative approaches, including phenomenological research that seeks largely to describe subjects as they are experienced, rather than to explain them.

[33][page needed] Specific data-gathering methods, such as recording EMF (electromagnetic field) readings at haunted locations, have their own criticisms beyond those attributed to the participant-observer approach itself.

CSI's Richard Wiseman draws attention to possible alternative explanations for perceived paranormal activity in his article, The Haunted Brain.

[36][37] He was also the founder of the James Randi Educational Foundation and its million dollar challenge that offered a prize of US$1,000,000 to anyone who could demonstrate evidence of any paranormal, supernatural or occult power or event, under test conditions agreed to by both parties.

[39] The psychologist David Marks wrote that paranormal phenomena can be explained by magical thinking, mental imagery, subjective validation, coincidence, hidden causes, and fraud.

[47] Bainbridge (1978) and Wuthnow (1976) found that the most susceptible people to paranormal belief are those who are poorly educated, unemployed or have roles that rank low among social values.

[55][56] In a case study (Gow, 2004) involving 167 participants the findings revealed that psychological absorption and dissociation were higher for believers in the paranormal.

[63] De Boer and Bierman wrote: In his article 'Creative or Defective' Radin (2005) asserts that many academics explain the belief in the paranormal by using one of the three following hypotheses: Ignorance, deprivation or deficiency.

The deficiency hypothesis asserts that such beliefs arise because people are mentally defective in some way, ranging from low intelligence or poor critical thinking ability to a full-blown psychosis' (Radin).

[64]A psychological study involving 174 members of the Society for Psychical Research completed a delusional ideation questionnaire and a deductive reasoning task.

[65] Research has shown that people reporting contact with aliens have higher levels of absorption, dissociativity, fantasy proneness and tendency to hallucinate.

[67] Survivors from childhood sexual abuse, violent and unsettled home environments have reported to have higher levels of paranormal belief.

[68][69] A study of a random sample of 502 adults revealed paranormal experiences were common in the population which were linked to a history of childhood trauma and dissociative symptoms.

[80] In a study (Pizzagalli et al. 2000) data demonstrated that "subjects differing in their declared belief in and experience with paranormal phenomena as well as in their schizotypal ideation, as determined by a standardized instrument, displayed differential brain electric activity during resting periods.

"[81] Another study (Schulter and Papousek, 2008) wrote that paranormal belief can be explained by patterns of functional hemispheric asymmetry that may be related to perturbations during fetal development.

[84] According to Paul Kurtz "In regard to the many talk shows that constantly deal with paranormal topics, the skeptical viewpoint is rarely heard; and when it is permitted to be expressed, it is usually sandbagged by the host or other guests."

[87] A survey conducted in 2006 by researchers from Australia's Monash University[88] sought to determine the types of phenomena that people claim to have experienced and the effects these experiences have had on their lives.

[89] A survey by Jeffrey S. Levin, associate professor at Eastern Virginia Medical School, found that more than two thirds of the United States population reported having at least one mystical experience.

A 2002 Roper poll conducted for the Sci Fi channel reported that 56% thought UFOs were real craft and 48% that aliens had visited the Earth.

About 60% of all people polled believed in some form of Extra-sensory perception and 30% thought that "some of the unidentified flying objects that have been reported are really space vehicles from other civilizations.

[95] The James Randi Educational Foundation offered a prize of a million dollars to a person who could prove that they had supernatural or paranormal abilities under appropriate test conditions.