Psience News - 2-8 February 2020

This is a listing of news items about parapsychology, psi, the paranormal and related subjects, posted to the Psience Quest Forums. We hope that news about parapsychology is adequately covered here, but news about other topics will represent only a selection.

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Upcoming events are also listed in the Calendar section.

For news during other periods, see the Psience News Index.

Extended consciousness phenomena

Books and book reviews

• Two reviews of a book by Zak Bagans entitled "Ghost-Hunting for Dummies" (2019) have appeared (Discuss)
  • Kenneth Biddle, Skeptical Inquirer (with further commentary here)
  • Steven Parsons, Society for Psychical Research

• A review by Simon Young of "The New Prometheans: Faith, Science and the Supernatural Mind in the Victorian Fin de Siècle" (2019) by Courtenay Raia has appeared on the Times Higher Education website (Discuss)

Published papers and preprints

• A paper by Charland-Verville et al. entitled "Characterization of near death experiences using text mining analyses: A preliminary study" (2020) has appeared in the journal PLOS ONE and is freely available online (Discuss here and here)

Datasets

• A dataset entitled "Reactance in a picture-identification task using a fuzzy-set encoded target pool" was published by Lance Storm at the Society of Psychical Research's Psi Open Data (Discuss)

Psi Encyclopedia

New entries in the Society for Psychical Research's Psi Encyclopedia

• Charles Honorton (Discuss)

• Frederic W. H. Myers (Discuss)

Interviews

• An interview entitled "Leslie Kean goes beyond the Pentagon, UFOs to study the afterlife" has appeared on the website Punk Rock and UFOs (Discuss)

• An interview with Barry Taff by Jeffrey Mishlove entitled "Phenomena of High Strangeness" has appeared at New Thinking Allowed (Discuss)

Articles and blog posts

• An article by Christian Jarrett entitled "To death and back: what near-death experiences could tell us about dying" has appeared on the BBC website Science Focus (Discuss)

• A report entitled "Near-death experience: London man shares what it’s like to die — and then come back" has appeared at Global News (Discuss)

Videos

• The Society for Scientific Exploration has uploaded videos of presentations from the 5th and 6th sessions of its 2019 Convention (Discuss)
  • Nancy du Tertre, "TSP- The Next Generation of Remote Viewing"
  • Eric Wargo, "The Freudian Unconscious as Misrecognized Precognition"
  • Jennifer Lyke, "Psi Experiences & Entity Encounters in Self-Transcendent Experiences"
  • Nanci Trivellato, "Examining Non-Ordinary Phenomena Experienced During Childhood"
  • Gabriel Felley, "Visualizing” Morphic Fields with the Yi Jing and Synchronicity"

• A video entitled "Jim Bruton Shares His Near-Death Experience" has been uploaded to the IANDS Charlotte YouTube channel (Discuss)

Obituaries

• Professor Donald J. West, criminologist and parapsychologist, a former research officer and past president of the Society for Psychical Research, died on 31 January 2020 aged 95. An obituary notice has appeared on the website of the Institute of Criminology, Cambridge University (Discuss)

Upcoming events

From this and previous pages of Psience News.

• Nancy Zingrone's and Carlos Alvarado's free online course, "Parapsychology Research & Education: Psychology and Parapsychology" (ParaMOOC2020), 18 January-29 February 2020 (Discuss)

• An eight-week online course entitled "Field Investigations: Apparitions, Hauntings, & Poltergeists," by Loyd Auerbach for the Rhine Education Center, will be given between 3 February and 23 March 2020 (Discuss)

• John Fraser will give a lecture entitled "Are Poltergeists Rare? Or are all cases 'Intermediate' with a strange mix of phenomena?" on 13 February 2020 at the Society for Psychical Research (Discuss)

• The Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Centre, Edinburgh, will hold a one-day meeting on 22 February 2020 entitled "Psi Saturday" (Discuss)

• Birkbeck, London is holding an event called "A Day on Consciousness" on 23 February 2020, with presentations by Iain McGilchrist (by video link), Anil Seth and Rupert Sheldrake (Discuss)

• A four-week online course entitled "How to Choose a Psychic," by Loyd Auerbach for the Rhine Education Center, will be given between 3 March and 24 March 2020 (Discuss)

• A four-week online course entitled "Presentiment: Exploring the Nature and Theories of Time," by John G. Kruth for the Rhine Education Center, will be given between 4 March and 25 March 2020 (Discuss)

• Matthew Colborn will give a lecture entitled "Sticky Bundles, Leaky Buckets and Rabbit Holes: Understanding the Survival Experience" (Gwen Tate Memorial Lecture) on 5 March 2020 at the Society for Psychical Research (Discuss)

• The 13th Symposium in a series organised by the Bial Foundation on the theme "Behind and Beyond the Brain", entitled "The mystery of time," will be held on 1-4 April 2020 at Porto, Portugal (Discuss)

• Simon Duan will give a lecture entitled "Parallel Universe: Space for Psi" on 2 April 2020 at the Society for Psychical Research (Discuss)

• (NEW) The Society for Psychical Research will hold a study day on the theme of "Psi and post-materialist science: the search for a new paradigm" on 25 April 2020 (Discuss)

• The Parapsychological Association and the Society for Scientific Exploration are jointly organising a four-day Convention entitled "2020 Vision" on 16-19 June 2020 at Durham, North Carolina (Discuss)

Most active discussion threads on Psience Quest

• A window into Guerrilla Skeptics of Wikipedia

Philosophy of mind; consciousness science

Articles and blog posts

• An article by Bernardo Kastrup entitled "Consciousness Cannot Have Evolved" was published on the website of The Institute of Art and Ideas (Discuss)

Debates and dialogues

• On The Case for Panpsychism, the latest (seventh) letter, by Philip Goff, in the dialogue between himself and Massimo Pigliucci - On The Problem of Consciousness, Panpsychism & more - has been uploaded to Letter; it appears to be Philip Goff's last letter in the exchange (Discuss)

Most active discussion threads on Psience Quest

• Humans are hardwired to dismiss facts that don’t fit their worldview