Парапсихологија је псеудонаука која претендује да проучава неистражене делове људског ума. У парапсихологију се убрајају још недовољно изтражени феномени: телекинеза, телепатија, емпатија и манипулација енергије. Парапсихологија није призната област у психологији. Велика већина научника сматра да је парапсихологија псеудонаука делом због недостатка поновљивих емпиријских доказа, а делом и зато што низ парапсихолошких тврдњи једноставно не може бити истинит, „осим ако остатак науке није тачан”.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]
Истраживање парапсихологије углавном спроводе приватне институције у неколико земаља, а финансирају се путем приватних донација,[9][10] и тема се готово никада не појављује у главним научним часописима. Већина радова о парапсихологији објављена је у малом броју споредних часописа.[11][12] Парапсихологија је била критикована због настављања истраге упркос томе што није могла да пружи убедљиве доказе за постојање било каквих психичких појава након више од једног века истраживања.[13][14]
Терминологија
Израз парапсихологија сковао је 1889. године филозоф Макс Десуар, као немачка „парапсихологија”.[15][16] Касније га је Џ. Б. Рајн усвојио током 1930-их као замену за термин психичка истраживања како би указао на значајан помак ка експерименталној методологији и академској дисциплини..[17] Израз потиче од грч.παράpara са значењем „поред”, и психологија.
^Gross, Paul R.; Levitt, Norman; Lewis, Martin W. (1996). The Flight from Science and Reason. New York City: New York Academy of Sciences. стр. 565. ISBN978-0801856761. „The overwhelming majority of scientists consider parapsychology, by whatever name, to be pseudoscience.”
^Friedlander, Michael W. (1998). At the Fringes of Science. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press. стр. 119. ISBN978-0-8133-2200-1. „Parapsychology has failed to gain general scientific acceptance even for its improved methods and claimed successes, and it is still treated with a lopsided ambivalence among the scientific community. Most scientists write it off as pseudoscience unworthy of their time.”
^Pigliucci, Massimo; Boudry, Maarten (2013). Philosophy of Pseudoscience: Reconsidering the Demarcation Problem. Chicago, Illinois: University Of Chicago Press. стр. 158. ISBN978-0-226-05196-3. hdl:1854/LU-3161824. „Many observers refer to the field as a 'pseudoscience'. When mainstream scientists say that the field of parapsychology is not scientific, they mean that no satisfying naturalistic cause-and-effect explanation for these supposed effects has yet been proposed and that the field's experiments cannot be consistently replicated.”
^Odling-Smee, Lucy (1. 3. 2007). „The lab that asked the wrong questions”. Nature. 446 (7131): 10—11. Bibcode:2007Natur.446...10O. PMID17330012. doi:10.1038/446010a. Приступљено 29. 6. 2007. „[Outside the US] the field is livelier. Britain is a lead player, with privately funded labs at the universities of Edinburgh, Northampton and Liverpool Hope, among others."..."The status of paranormal research in the United States is now at an all-time low, after a relative surge of interest in the 1970s. Money continues to pour from philanthropic sources to private institutions, but any chance of credibility depends on ties with universities, and only a trickle of research now persists in university labs.”
^(Pigliucci, Boudry 2013) "Parapsychological research almost never appears in mainstream science journals."
^(Odling-Smee 2007) "But parapsychologists are still limited to publishing in a small number of niche journals."
^Cordón, Luis A. (2005). Popular Psychology: An Encyclopedia. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press. стр. 182. ISBN978-0-313-32457-4. „The essential problem is that a large portion of the scientific community, including most research psychologists, regards parapsychology as a pseudoscience, due largely to its failure to move beyond null results in the way science usually does. Ordinarily, when experimental evidence fails repeatedly to support a hypothesis, that hypothesis is abandoned. Within parapsychology, however, more than a century of experimentation has failed even to conclusively demonstrate the mere existence of paranormal phenomenon, yet parapsychologists continue to pursue that elusive goal.”
Kurtz, Paul (1981), „Is Parapsychology a Science?”, Ур.: Kendrick Frazier, Paranormal Borderlands of Science, Prometheus Books, стр. 5—23, ISBN978-0-87975-148-7, „If parapsychologists can convince the skeptics, then they will have satisfied an essential criterion of a genuine science: the ability to replicate hypotheses in any and all laboratories and under standard experimental conditions. Until they can do that, their claims will continue to be held suspect by a large body of scientists.”
Flew, Antony (1982). Grim, Patrick, ур. Parapsychology: Science or Pseudoscience? in Philosophy of Science and the Occult. State University of New York Press. ISBN978-0873955720.
Stein, Gordon (1996), The Encyclopedia of the Paranormal, Prometheus Books, стр. 249, ISBN978-1-57392-021-6, „Mainstream science is on the whole very dubious about ESP, and the only way that most scientists will be persuaded is by a demonstration that can be generally reproduced by neutral or even skeptical scientists. This is something that parapsychology has never succeeded in producing.”
Allison, Paul D. (1979). „Experimental Parapsychology as a Rejected Science”. The Sociological Review. 27 (suppl): 271—291. doi:10.1111/j.1467-954X.1979.tb00065.x.
Alcock, James (1981). Parapsychology-Science Or Magic?: A Psychological Perspective. Pergamon Press.
Rhine Research Center A historical parapsychological research center featuring the first building ever made for experimental work in parapsychology. The Rhine Research Center is a hub for research and education in Parapsychology.
Society for Psychical Research Founded in 1882, the SPR was the first society to conduct organised scholarly research into parapsychology and other human experiences that challenge contemporary scientific models. It continues its work today.
James Randi Educational Foundation The James Randi Education Foundation(JREF) was founded to promote critical thinking in the areas of the supernatural and paranormal. The JREF has provided skeptical views in the area of parapsychology.