Hi all here!

My reading of new articles in parapsychology has been rather poor during the
last year, but after all I dare to write about a topic that is very
important in my opinion.

As I understand it, the area of priority in parapsychology has already for a
long time been shifted from research trying to get more evidence for psi to
process-oriented research, trying to understand the underlying psi
processes. This in hope that the field would have much stronger development
with this policy. Has this hope been realized? No, in my opinion.

The psi processes are unreachable to our sense organs and measuring
instruments, and it is possible to get information of the processes only
indirectly. All information that has been gathered is naturally very
important and valuable. But for the time being we are still fumbling in the
dark, because we cannot know for sure what _really_ happens. The task has
turn out to be much more difficult than has been assumed. Therefore I don't
expect any scientific breakthrough in parapsychology in the near future.

Concentrating on the process-oriented experimental research has been so
strong that the research of spontaneous cases has been left aside. Adrian
Parker tells us in his important state-of-the-art article

www.zem.demon.co.uk/parker.htm

that Ian Stevenson retired from the membership in PA in protest to
neglecting the spontaneous phenomena by PA.

Experimental research yields nearly without exception only very small effect
sizes, that are not interesting to the general public. Perhaps it is
therefore the PEAR institute is now closing. In my opinion, the
parapsychologists are too much concerned within their internal affairs to
notice what is happening in the world outside. What is needed is really
strong evidence to show that psi-phenomena really exist in the real world.
When there is more interest in the topic, there is also more funding and
more progress. And spontaneous cases yield by far the strongest phenomena
and strongest evidence for psi.

Good New Year to all!

- Olavi