Why does the mere possibility of psi provoke ridicule instead of curiosity?

When a scientific question becomes taboo, something deeper may be at stake.

The strongest reactions to psi may reveal more about us than the phenomenon itself.

If even the possibility of psi unsettles us, what exactly are we afraid to discover?

When I first began studying extraordinary human experiences, I expected skepticism. 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. Some were subtle; others were remarkably direct.

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. The editor then advised me to reconsider my professional trajectory if I intended to continue conducting this kind of research.

Early in my career, I had already encountered rejection and disbelief from colleagues. 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 death¹: “How did you find 25,000 words to write about something that doesn’t exist?”

These reactions illustrate something curious: the emotional intensity that often accompanies discussions about psi. They also echo a pattern described by psychologist Etzel Cardeña in a notable article published more than a decade ago but, unfortunately, still relevant today: “The Unbearable Fear of Psi: On Scientific Suppression in the 21st Century.”²

When skepticism turns into censorship

Skepticism is essential to science. Good scientists are trained skeptics. We design........

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