Noetic Now

Goldilocks and the PK Experiment – a Q & A from IONS’ Parapsychology Lab

A conversation with IONS' Senior Scientist Dean Radin about some of the challenges he's encountered when trying to find a device that is "just right" to measure psycho-kinetic (PK) abilities in the research lab.

When Skeptics Face the Evidence

This last weekend found me in Washington, DC, at the Society for Experimental and Social Psychology Annual Conference (SESP). I was invited to discuss the controversy that was kicked up in the field of social psychology about the study of precognition.

Social psychologists (and other scientists) as a whole are extremely skeptical not only of the research on psi but of the very idea that psi can or should be studied by scientists. But this may be changing. The session I presented in was very well-attended, and I found that most people, while not exactly open-minded, were open-hearted, thoughtful, and willing to engage in respectful discussion about the topic.

Rustum Roy: Ode to a Contrarian

Very few have heard of Dr. Roy, as his books and lectures focused on geochemistry, glass ceramics, and nanocomposites rather than low-fat diets and the number of steps to optimal health. But he was the consummate unsung hero of healthcare, and he passed away on August 26, 2010, at the age of 86, a true visionary in a realm where the word is applied a bit too freely and often with a taste of self promotion.

"Facts" and Their Interpretations

As a scientist and neuropsychiatrist, I agree with the late physicist Sir William Lawrence Bragg’s statement that, “The important thing in science is not so much to obtain new facts as to discover new ways of thinking about them.” One problem with research on anomalous phenomena such as out-of-body ...

Make Ignorance your Friend

Non-scientists may not realize that most of the time in scientific research – especially research at the edge of the known, where all the excitement is – we really don’t know what we’re doing. Those few things we think we do understand are taught in elementary college textbooks.