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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Clairvoyance | 3/3 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clairvoyance | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T09:18:04.683720+00:00 | kb-cron |
== Scientific reception == According to scientific research, clairvoyance is generally explained as the result of confirmation bias, expectancy bias, fraud, hallucination, self-delusion, sensory leakage, subjective validation, wishful thinking or failures to appreciate the base rate of chance occurrences and not as a paranormal power. Parapsychology is generally regarded by the scientific community as a pseudoscience. In 1988, the US National Research Council concluded "The committee finds no scientific justification from research conducted over a period of 130 years, for the existence of parapsychological phenomena." Skeptics say that if clairvoyance were a reality, it would have become abundantly clear. They also contend that those who believe in paranormal phenomena do so for merely psychological reasons. According to David G. Myers (Psychology, 8th ed.):
The search for a valid and reliable test of clairvoyance has resulted in thousands of experiments. One controlled procedure has invited 'senders' to telepathically transmit one of four visual images to 'receivers' deprived of sensation in a nearby chamber (Bem & Honorton, 1994). The result? A reported 32 percent accurate response rate, surpassing the chance rate of 25 percent. But follow-up studies have (depending on who was summarizing the results) failed to replicate the phenomenon or produced mixed results (Bem & others, 2001; Milton & Wiseman, 2002; Storm, 2000, 2003).One skeptic, magician James Randi, had a longstanding offer of U.S. $1 million—"to anyone who proves a genuine psychic power under proper observing conditions" (Randi, 1999). French, Australian, and Indian groups have parallel offers of up to 200,000 euros to anyone with demonstrable paranormal abilities (CFI, 2003). Large as these sums are, the scientific seal of approval would be worth far more to anyone whose claims could be authenticated. To refute those who say there is no ESP, one need only produce a single person who can demonstrate a single, reproducible ESP phenomenon. So far, no such person has emerged. Randi's offer has been publicized for three decades and dozens of people have been tested, sometimes under the scrutiny of an independent panel of judges. Still, nothing. "People's desire to believe in the paranormal is stronger than all the evidence that it does not exist." Susan Blackmore, "Blackmore's first law", 2004. Clairvoyance is considered a hallucination by mainstream psychiatry.
== In popular culture == In the 1979 novel The Dead Zone by Stephen King, the protagonist Johnny Smith gains the ability of clairvoyance working through simple touch after awakening from a coma that has lasted nearly five years. Chinese pop culture depictions of clairvoyance include Second Brother, one of the protagonists in Calabash Brothers, a popular animated series by Shanghai Animation Film Studio in the 1980s. The Chinese term for clairvoyance, qianliyan, appears in various machine vision and remote video products, such as China Mobile's Qianliyan product line and QLYBOT's robot products.
== See also ==
== References ==
== Bibliography == Jain, S. A. (1992). Reality. Jwalamalini Trust. Not in Copyright. Alt URL
== Further reading ==
== External links ==
Springer Psychic: "A Study in 'Clairvoyance'" – Joe Nickell "Debunking the Sixth Sense" – Science Daily "Clairvoyance" – The Skeptic's Dictionary