Why is parapsychology considered as pseudoscientific discipline?
Answers
Answer:
Parapsychology is the study of alleged psychic phenomena (extrasensory perception, as in telepathy, precognition, clairvoyance, psychokinesis, a.k.a. telekinesis, and psychometry) and other paranormal claims, for example related to near-death experiences, synchronicity, apparitional experiences, etc. It is considered to be pseudoscience and is rejected by a vast majority of mainstream scientists.
Explanation:
Parapsychology research almost never appears in mainstream science journals. Most papers about parapsychology are published in a small number of niche journals.[9] Parapsychology has been criticised for continuing investigation despite being unable to provide convincing evidence for the existence of any psychic phenomena after more than a century of research
It is immediately apparent that, although there are some common themes running through these representative sets of criteria, there is also a great deal of variation. The same could be said if other proposed sets of criteria had also been included in our sample (e.g., Gray, 1991;Mousseau, 2003). Clearly, this reflects the fact that science itself has proven to be impossible to define in terms of universally accepted criteria. ...
... The point at issue, in light of the previous discussion, is the degree to which parapsychology meets the criteria of pseudoscience as opposed to real science. In a true scientific spirit, therefore, I will sometimes draw upon the empirical approach taken by Marie-Catherine Mousseau (2003) in addressing this issue. She compared the contents of a sample of mainstream scientific journals (e.g., British Journal of Psychology, Molecular and Optical Physics) with a sample of "fringe" journals (e.g., Journal of Parapsychology, Journal of Scientific Exploration) with respect to several common criteria of pseudoscience. ...
... This kind of article is completely absent from the mainstream sample." (vii) Lack of overlap with other fields of research: According to Mousseau (2003), in fringe-journals, 36% of citations were of articles in mainstream science journals (e.g., psychology, physics, neuroscience). In her sample of mainstream science journals, however, 90% of citations were to articles in the same field (99% in the case of physics)