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Psi Phenomena is the claims of psychical research, recorded with the research itself: telepathy, precognition, remote viewing and the rest, a field with an unusually well documented history running from the founding of the Society for Psychical Research in London in 1882 through J. B. Rhine's laboratory at Duke University from the 1930s. Counted by type, 35.3 percent of its recorded facts are debated or debunked, against a baseline of well under one percent, the atlas's third most argued with type behind Frequencies and Prophecies.

Physical Claims, Exposed by Physical Means

Ectoplasm, the viscous substance said to be exuded from a physical medium during trance, was named by physiologist Charles Richet in 1894; every sample subjected to laboratory analysis has been identified as mundane material, investigator Harry Price finding a sample from the medium Helen Duncan to be cheesecloth mixed with egg white, and researcher Eric Dingwall finding paper, cotton and human hair in samples from the medium known as Eva C. Table Tipping swept through 1850s parlours until Michael Faraday settled the question experimentally in 1853, building an apparatus that proved sitters were unconsciously pushing the table themselves, the ideomotor effect. Spirit Photography, sold commercially from 1861, has had every documented case traced to conventional technique, chiefly double exposure on a pre-prepared plate, and the French photographer Edouard Buguet was convicted of fraud in 1875 after police found the dummies and cutout heads used to produce his images. Spoon Bending became a cultural phenomenon through Uri Geller's 1970s television appearances until the magician James Randi reproduced every effect through ordinary sleight of hand, a controlled 1973 Tonight Show appearance with Geller's props withheld until air producing no results at all.

Where the Argument Is Still Live

Not every entry in the type is closed by exposed trickery. The Ganzfeld Protocol, a method for testing telepathy under sensory deprivation championed by parapsychologist Charles Honorton from the 1970s, produced a widely cited 1986 joint statement with skeptic Ray Hyman on the methodological standards future studies would need to meet; later large scale independent replications have still not settled whether the effect is real. Remote Viewing's Stanford Research Institute programme, eventually known by its codename Star Gate, ran 22 years and roughly 20 million dollars before an outside evaluation in 1995 produced a rare, well documented case of two experts, statistician Jessica Utts and psychologist Raymond Hyman, examining the same data and reaching opposite conclusions, though both agreed the programme had no practical intelligence value. Near-Death Experience is different again: the subjective experiences themselves, named and popularised by psychiatrist Raymond Moody in 1975, are not in dispute as real events reported in good faith, but the largest test of their most extraordinary claimed feature, veridical perception during a period of flat brain activity, the multi-hospital AWARE study led by Sam Parnia and published in 2014, did not establish that feature as a general finding. A century of testing has closed some of its own founding cases and left others genuinely open, and the 35.3 percent is what both look like counted together.

Where To Read More

• Psi PhenomenaThe type itself, 35.3 percent debated or debunked, third behind Frequencies and Prophecies
• EctoplasmPhysical MediumshipEvery analyzed sample identified as mundane material, cheesecloth and egg white among them
• Table TippingPhysical MediumshipSettled by Faraday in 1853 as the ideomotor effect, sitters unconsciously pushing the table
• Spirit PhotographyPhysical MediumshipEvery documented case traced to double exposure; one practitioner convicted of fraud in 1875
• Spoon BendingPsychokinesisReproduced through sleight of hand by James Randi, including a controlled 1973 television test
• The Ganzfeld ProtocolExtrasensory PerceptionStill not settled after decades of large scale independent replication attempts
• Remote ViewingExtrasensory PerceptionThe Star Gate programme, ended in 1995 with its own evaluators reaching opposite conclusions on the same data
• Near-Death ExperienceSurvival ClaimsIts most extraordinary claimed feature not established as a general finding by the 2014 AWARE study