What paranormal or psychic phenomena are scientifically proven, and what do you think will be proved in the future?
None.I invite you to look at the evidence in Craig Weiler’s response. Even a cursory reading of the first article will strike an unbiased observer with the degree of wishful thinking present in the analysis. Meta analysis is useful when one has a demonstrated effect. Here it is used to fish for results. The use of the analysis cannot be adequately assessed without understanding the precise nature of the experiments that have been included. Like so much in this area, obfuscation abounds. The appeal to Quantum Mechanics to explain effects that are questionable in the first place is dishonest. Quantum effects occur at quantum levels, until someone explains how they can occur at macro levels it is just so much arm waving using highly abstruse science as a fig leaf.The entire Princeton fiasco has been dissected time and again.PEAR Lab Closes, Ending Decades of Psychic Research - CSITo read any of the papers that they published is to be struck by the almost child like sense of belief in what they were doing. Thats not science and nothing has been replicated. You will also find examples of hypotheses being developed post hoc and a host of other odd behaviors masquerading as science. I recall doing a line by line analysis of one of their papers and being struck by the absurdity not just of the claims but what was presented as evidence. I thought “given that these effects exist within a negligible distance from random, how is it that anyone would have noticed them in the first place?”As I have mentioned, if these things actually existed our lives would be different. There would be ruling classes whose understanding of events and ability to control the physical world would be notable. They are not there. Games of chance would not exist, even if the effect were tiny. They do. Evolution would have selected capabilities that enhanced survival and we would be a species of adepts. We are not. What we have instead are vague things that only exist on the fringes of chance occurrence, a myriad of excuses and reasons why clear, repeatable effects are elusive.If this stuff existed Nobel Prizes would have been won and University Chairs would have been endowed. No and no.
Why has no one won the James Randi Million Dollar Challenge?
The James Randi Educational Foundation offers one million dollars to anyone who can demonstrate any paranormal or supernatural ability. Many people have applied. The money is in a savings account and the test to prove your abilities is only done after you yourself agree that you can do it. With so many people claiming to have supernatural abilities, like psychics, dowsers, aura viewers, supernatural healers, and so on, why has no one claimed the million yet?
What is it about the JREF and other paranormal challenges that makes them dishonest?
It's because they rig the tests. They design the tests so that they are incredibly hard for the average guy to do. I mean, it's almost like you have to be a psychic to win one of those challenges! How is that even fair?