Reber and Alcock categorically deny the possiblity of psi

Last updated Nov 18, 2022

Reber and Alcock categorically deny the possiblity of psi. Two skeptics called Reber and Alcock wrote an article that was published in Skeptical Enquirer: Why Parapsychological Claims Cannot Be True. The gist of their argument was pigs can’t fly, so any data that suggests they can must be faulty. This was in response to Cardeña’s article that came out in American Psychologist in 2018, where he did a meta-analysis on many psi experiments to prove the effect is significant.

They cite four tenets of physics that they say render parapsychological claims untenable

1. Causality – all effects have definite causes that preceded them.
2. Time’s arrow – the flow of time is one-directional, although its speed may vary from reference frame to reference frame.
3. Thermodynamics – energy cannot be created or destroyed, so parapsychological claims (such as the future influencing the present) require energy transfer that breaks the First Law.
4. The inverse-square law – the strength of a signal diminishes as a function of the square of the distance, and no such attenuation of signal strength is reported in cases of (for example) telepathy.

Responses to them:

• The realm of the impossible | Skeptophilia
• https://ian-wardell.blogspot.com/2019/08/skeptical-inquirer-attempts-to-explain.html
• “The data are irrelevant”: Response to Reber & Alcock (2019)
• Reassessing the “Impossible”: A Critical Commentary on Reber and Alcock’s “Why Parapsychological Claims Cannot Be True”
• Should We Accept Arguments from Skeptics to Ignore the Psi Data? A Comment on Reber and Alcock’s Searching for the Impossible
• Blind Watchers of PSI: A Rebuttal of Reber and Alcock (2019)