Word: phenomena
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...Science and Mathematics Analyst Martin Gardner (Relativity for the Million, Ambidextrous Universe), announcements of psychic phenomena belong not to the march of science but to the pageant of publicity. "Uri Geller, The Secret Life of Plants, telepathy, ESP, the incomplete conclusions of Koestler ?all seem part of a new uncritical enthusiasm for pseudo science," says Gardner. "The claims are immense, the proof nonexistent. The researchers, almost without exception, are emotionally committed to finding phenomena. And few are aware of the controls necessary in a field in which deception, conscious or unconscious, is all too familiar...
...Cohen, former managing editor of Science Digest and author of the debunking volume Myths of the Space Age, remains unpersuaded by what he sees through the Koestlerian keyhole. "After decades of research and experiments," Cohen observes, "the parapsychologists are not one step closer to acceptable scientific proof of psychic phenomena. Examining the slipshod work of the modern researchers, one begins to wonder if any proof exists...
Many psychics and their followers believe that paranormal powers may be dependent on mysterious auras or "energy flows," phenomena that they say can be recorded by Kirlian photography. The technique, developed in the late 1930s by Russian Electronics Expert Semyon Kirlian and his wife Valentina, involves introducing a small amount of high-voltage, high-frequency current into the subject and recording the subsequent discharge on photographic film. The result is a photograph showing an "energy body"?a weird aura?around the plant, animal or human part being photographed...
Moss, a former Broadway actress, found her interest in parapsychological phenomena kindled after LSD therapy. "From the first," she recalls, "I intended to specialize in parapsychology because of the glimpses of psychic phenomena I experienced during the LSD treatments. But I certainly don't feel the need to use drugs any more ... When you've gotten the message, you hang up the phone." For Moss, the message is that Kirlian photography clearly demonstrates a human aura. "We have done work with acupuncturists and [psychic] healers," she says, "and we find that the corona of the healer becomes intense before healing...
...psychic adherent's reply is simple: anything is possible. But simply saying that it is so and then supporting the contention with shoddy or downright fraudulent evidence, is not enough. Psychic phenomena cannot be accepted on faith; they must be convincingly demonstrated to objective people by objective researchers. To date, those demonstrations have not been made...