Our stance
Two claims are easy to find online and both are wrong: “science has proven the paranormal” and “it’s all obvious nonsense.” The truthful position is more uncomfortable: a small community of credentialed scientists has studied these questions for ~140 years with increasing rigor, has produced some small and genuinely contested effects, and has not produced a single universally accepted demonstration of any paranormal phenomenon.
We hold both halves of that sentence at once. Where proponents overstate, we cite the skeptics. Where skeptics dismiss a priori, we cite the data. We treat the unresolved tension as the finding.
Who writes this
An independent editorial team – not practitioners, not affiliated with any lab, organization, or researcher named on the site. Pages are compiled from primary literature (peer-reviewed journals, meta-analyses, and the researchers’ own publications) and carry a “last reviewed” date. Found an error or an out-of-date fact? Write to editor@paranormalscientists.com.
How we read the evidence
- Effect sizes travel with their critiques. Ganzfeld ≈ 0.13 and presentiment ≈ 0.21 are always paired with the skeptical reanalysis.
- Preregistered > retrospective. We weight preregistered and registered-report studies above the older literature.
- Mainstream venues matter. Work that survives review in Resuscitation or Psychological Bulletin carries more weight than self-published reports.
- No prize-essay “proof.” We treat BICS-style contests with caution and say so.
No paranormal effect has been definitively demonstrated. Everything here is offered for understanding a real scientific subfield and the boundary around it – not as proof of anything.