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Quantum Pings Library
The Psychology of the Psychic
- Type
- Book
- By
- David Marks and Richard Kammann
- Publisher
- Prometheus Books
- Source
- Prometheus Books
- Published
- 1980
A classic skeptical examination of psychic and coincidence claims, showing how bad methods, selective reporting, and misattribution produce the appearance of the paranormal.
David Marks and Richard Kammann set out to test paranormal claims with ordinary scientific tools, and The Psychology of the Psychic (1980, revised 2000) is the record of what they found: effects that vanish under control, methods that fool even their practitioners, and the steady, unglamorous work of error.
The book matters to this shelf because coincidence is a recurring ingredient in the claims it dismantles. Marks and Kammann do not deny that people have extraordinary experiences; they show how genuinely ordinary experiences get read as paranormal through misattribution and selective memory. It is the definitive skeptical case, made by researchers who took the subject seriously enough to study it properly.
The meaning
Even skeptics concede the book is a serious attempt to engage the evidence rather than wave it away.
The skeptic
It is the definitive skeptical case: a systematic account of how genuine experiences can be explained without anything paranormal.
About the author
Two psychologists who set out to test paranormal claims and documented how easily flawed methods produce false results.
Key takeaways
- A landmark skeptical treatment of psychic and coincidence claims.
- Shows how flawed methods and selective reporting manufacture false effects.
- Now a standard reference in the psychology of anomalous experience.