Psience News - 16-22 February 2020
This is a listing, in progress, 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
- A short introduction, with extracts from reviews, to a book by Michael Hunter entitled "The Decline of Magic: Britain in the Enlightenment" (2020) has appeared at Andreas Sommer's "Forbidden Histories" blog (Discuss)
Periodicals, published papers, preprints and abstracts
- The Society for Psychical Research has made available the book of abstracts from its 2019 Annual Conference (Discuss)
Psi Encyclopedia
New entries in the Society for Psychical Research's Psi Encyclopedia
Interviews
- An interview with Eric Wargo by John Craig has appeared in the Real Rover podcast series (Discuss)
- An interview with Paul J. Leslie by Jeffrey Mishlove entitled Paranormal Experiences in Psychotherapy has appeared at New Thinking Allowed (Discuss)
Articles and blog posts
- An article by Monad Mantis entitled "The CIA Admits Psychic Abilities Are Real, But Cannot Figure Out The Science Behind It", discussing a briefing document on Co-ordinate Remote Viewing, written in 1983 and released in 2000, has appeared on the Medium website (Discuss)
- An article by Kate Whitehead entitled "A virus called Wuhan-400 causes outbreak ... in a Dean Koontz thriller from 1981. How is it that some books appear to prophesy events?", has appeared on the South China Morning Post website. Another article by Paul Seaburn entitled "Dean Koontz Predicted Wuhan Virus in 1981 Thriller – or Did He?" has appeared at Mysterious Universe (Discuss)
- A blog post by Tom Ruffles entitled "The American Society for Psychical Research: Recent Developments" has appeared (Discuss)
- A post by Undine about a poltergeist case in 1909 at Lafayette, Indiana has appeared on the Strange Company blog (Discuss)
- A blog post by by Lisette Coly entitled "The Rhine Center Milestones", about the 85th anniversary of the founding of J. B. Rhine's parapsychology lab and the 90th birthday of his daughter Sally Rhine Feather, has appeared on the Parapsychology Foundation blog (Discuss)
Videos
- The Society for Scientific Exploration has uploaded videos of presentations from its 2019 Convention (Discuss)
- Julia Mossbridge, "Screening for Precognition, Remote Viewing and Micro-Psychokinetic Skills"
- Roger D. Nelson, "Are Evoked Potentials a Model for GCP Event Data?"
- Garret Moddel, "Quantum Mechanics Does Not Explain Psi ... So Far"
- David Scharf, "Two Dogmas of Materialism"
Obituaries
- Mary Rose Barrington, a former Vice-President of the Society for Psychical Research and long-term member of the Society's Spontaneous Cases Committee, died on 21 Febuary 2020 aged 94. Here is the page about her on the Society's website (Discuss)
Philosophy of mind; consciousness science
Articles and blog posts
- An article by Tam Hunt entitled "How to Make the Study of Consciousness Scientifically Tractable" has appeared in the Scientific American blog section (Discuss)
Alternative Views on Science
Articles and blog posts
- An article by Merrit Kennedy entitled "'Ghost' DNA In West Africans Complicates Story Of Human Origins", has appeared on the NPR website (Discuss)
- An article by Tom Siegfried entitle "How a quantum technique highlights math’s mysterious link to physics" has appeared at ScienceNews (Discuss)
- An article by Preston Callicott entitled "Edge of Tech: How nature uses quantum mechanics" has appeared at The Bulletin (Discuss)
- An article by Ethan Siegel entitled "This Is Why Betelgeuse (Probably) Isn't About To Explode" has appeared at Forbes (Discuss)
Upcoming events
From this and previous pages of Psience News. For further details, see the Calendar section.
- 15 January - 31 March 2020: Online
- Nancy Zingrone's and Carlos Alvarado's free course, "Parapsychology Research & Education: Psychology and Parapsychology" (ParaMOOC2020) (Discuss)
- 3 February - 23 March 2020: Online
- An eight-week course entitled "Field Investigations: Apparitions, Hauntings, & Poltergeists," by Loyd Auerbach for the Rhine Education Center (Discuss)
- 22 February 2020: Edinburgh
- The Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Centre will hold a one-day meeting entitled "Psi Saturday" (Discuss)
- 23 February 2020: London
- Birkbeck, London, is holding an event called "A Day on Consciousness" with presentations by Iain McGilchrist (by video link), Anil Seth and Rupert Sheldrake (Discuss)
- 24 February 2020: London (NEW)
- Christopher Josiffe will give a talk entitled "Gef! The strange tale of an extra-special talking mongoose" at Kensington Central Library (Discuss)
- 3 - 24 March 2020: Online
- A four-week course entitled "How to Choose a Psychic," by Loyd Auerbach for the Rhine Education Center (Discuss)
- 4 - 25 March 2020: Online
- A four-week course entitled "Presentiment: Exploring the Nature and Theories of Time," by John G. Kruth for the Rhine Education Center (Discuss)
- 5 March 2020: London
- Matthew Colborn will give a lecture entitled "Sticky Bundles, Leaky Buckets and Rabbit Holes: Understanding the Survival Experience" (Gwen Tate Memorial Lecture) at the Society for Psychical Research (Discuss)
- 1 - 4 April 2020: Porto, Portugal
- The 13th Symposium in a series organised by the Bial Foundation on the theme "Behind and Beyond the Brain", entitled "The mystery of time," (Discuss)
- 2 April 2020: London
- Simon Duan will give a lecture entitled "Parallel Universe: Space for Psi" at the Society for Psychical Research (Discuss)
- 13 - 18 April 2020: Tucson, Arizona (NEW)
- The Center for Consciousness Studies at the University of Arizona is organising a six-day meeting entitled "The Science of Consciousness 2020" (Discuss)
- 25 April 2020: London
- 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" (Discuss)
- 25 April 2020: London
- The Consciousness and Experiential Psychology Section of the British Psychological Society is organising a symposium entitled "End-of-Life: Inner experience and unusual awareness in the dying" at the Society's headquarters (Discuss)
- 16 - 19 June 2020: Durham, North Carolina
- The Parapsychological Association and the Society for Scientific Exploration are jointly organising a four-day Convention entitled "2020 Vision" (Discuss)
- 2 July 2020: London
- Paul Gaunt will give a lecture entitled "Helen Duncan: Genuine or fraudulent?" (Gwen Tate Memorial Lecture) at the Society for Psychical Research (Discuss)