"One reviewer, evaluating a manuscript on remote viewing, simply wrote: "This is pseudoscience. Remote viewing is indistinguishable from random guessing." Another reviewer of the same manuscript repeated, twenty-four times: "The request for a 100-word review [sic] to reject pseudoscience is ABUSE of reviewer time," followed by 101 exclamation points. The comment offered no methodological critique of the study-only a childish dismissal."
"When I mentioned studying extrasensory perception in out-of-body experiences, a well-known consciousness researcher responded that such work "could not be done because it simply could not be true." A former supervisor once joked, upon hearing about a prize-winning essay I had written on evidence for life after death: "How did you find 25,000 words to write about something that doesn't exist?""
"After all, science progresses through criticism, replication, and debate. Skepticism is an essential part of the scientific method itself. What I encountered, however, was something different: reactions that went beyond scientific critique and seemed to reflect a deeper discomfort with certain topics of investigation. Over the years, I came across responses that exceeded ordinary scientific disagreement."
Researchers studying extraordinary human experiences face reactions that transcend ordinary scientific disagreement. Reviewers have dismissed work on remote viewing as pseudoscience without methodological critique, using excessive exclamation points and dismissive language. Colleagues have rejected research on extrasensory perception and life after death based on the premise that such phenomena cannot exist rather than on evidence. Supervisors have mocked prize-winning work with jokes about its subject matter. These responses demonstrate emotional intensity accompanying discussions about psi phenomena, suggesting systematic suppression of certain research areas that goes beyond legitimate scientific skepticism and reflects deeper institutional discomfort with investigating these topics.
#scientific-suppression #psi-research #extraordinary-human-experiences #institutional-bias #research-methodology
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