A recent interview with evolutionary biologist Beth Shapiro is an interview that may deserve some careful scrutiny given its controversial subject.  The interview is entitled "What ‘de-extinction’ of woolly mammoths can teach us: a Q&A with evolutionary biologist Beth Shapiro."  Shapiro is the chief science officer of a company that claims that it will attempt to revive from extinction some extinct species such as the wooly mammoth and the dodo.  Early on Shapiro makes this strange statement: "I’ve really begun to appreciate how the technologies one would need in order ..read more

 It was documented by many nineteenth century writers and authorities that under hypnosis a person could show paranormal powers of clairvoyance or telepathy.  In the long posts here and here and here I discuss some of the abundant observational evidence for such a thing.  I may note that the reality of clairvoyance under hypnosis was firmly declared by a high-prestige French academic committee, a six-year investigation of the Royal Academy of Medicine that issued its report in 1831.  During the nineteenth century hynotized people were often ask ..read more

 In the 19th century Spiritualism arose in 1848 and the following years, almost exclusively in places where slavery had been abolished. Almost all of the reported spiritual manifestations in the United States between 1848 and 1861 (the start of the American Civil War) were in the US states where slavery had been abolished, such as New York, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts.  Spiritualism spread from the US to England after slavery had been abolished in the British Empire (which happened in 1834).  It should therefore come as no surprise that when examining the early S ..read more

 Below are some posts I have published about people reporting they saw mysterious orbs with the naked eye: Naked-Eye Sightings of Mysterious Orbs (Part 1 of 4) Naked-Eye Sightings of Mysterious Orbs (Part 2 of 4) Naked-Eye Sightings of Mysterious Orbs (Part 3 of 4) Naked-Eye Sightings of Mysterious Orbs (Part 4 of 4) Let us look at some more cases of this type.  The late Alex Tanous was a psychic and parapsychologist described in the encyclopedia article here. At the beginning of his memoir Beyond Coincidence: One Man's Experience With Psychic Phenomena, he m ..read more

 Here is the latest in a series of short videos I am making ..read more

In the minds of many people, ghosts or apparitions are something to be afraid of. In fiction we often see accounts like the fictional one below: But a  study challenges such stereotypes. The study (The Spectrum of Specters: Making Sense of Ghostly Encounters) was done after interviewing 39 people who claimed to have encountered ghosts. One surprising finding was that 6 of the people interviewed were professors. That doesn't exactly fit the stereotype that people who see ghosts are intellectually unsophisticated. Another way in which the study busts stereotypes is by ..read more

In my series of posts entitled "Spookiest Years"  (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here,  here and here), I have quoted some of the very many reports of dramatic spiritual manifestations that began appearing around the middle of the nineteenth century. In many different towns and cities and in quite a different countries, a host of witnesses began to report manifestations such as these: Mysterious raps that would occur without any physical cause that could be discovered, with ..read more

 Humans have more than 20,000 types of protein molecules, partially specified by about 20,000 genes, each of which lists the amino acid sequence used by a protein. Each protein uses a different sequence of amino acids. Different types of proteins combine to form teams of proteins called protein complexes.  Individual proteins might be called building blocks of protein complexes, although such a term might mislead you, because a building block such as a brick is very simple, while a protein typically consists of hundreds of well-arranged parts and thousands of well-arranged atoms.&nbs ..read more

In previous posts in this intermittently appearing "Spookiest Years" series on this blog (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here,  and here), I had looked at some very spooky events reported between 1848 and 1876. Let me pick up the thread and discuss some spooky events reported in the years 1877.  On page 51 of the February 2, 1877 edition of The Spiritualist, we have an example of an early account of a near-death experience. The previous page tells of a William Tenne ..read more

It seems that when mainstream scientists other than parapsychologists write about the paranormal, they usually give us their laziest efforts, failing to be diligent in either scholarship or logic. It's as if their rule was: when writing about the paranormal, just "phone it in." An example of the lazy responses scientists gave to the US Congress UFO hearing is a tweet by physicist Brian Cox, in which he stated, "I watched a few clips and saw some people who seemed to believe stuff saying extraordinary things without presenting extraordinary evidence."  How very lazy, to scol ..read more