"At the heart of science is an essential tension between two seemingly contradictory attitudes—an openness to new ideas, no matter how bizarre or counterintuitive they may be, and the most ruthless skeptical scrutiny of all ideas, old and new."
~Carl Sagan, "The Fine Art of Baloney Detection," 1987

Apart from curiosity about women's supposedly superior intuition, no idea about intuition seems to evoke more fascination than that of a presumed sixth sense—a weird and wonderful human capacity for reading minds, thinking about someone just before they phone, intuiting what's happening elsewhere, communicating with the dead....

Chapter Contents

Claims of Psychic Discernment
- The art of the scam
- Prophetic dreams
Experimenting with Psychic Intuition
What if Psychic Intuition Existed?
Why Do People Believe?
- The power of coincidence
- The media
- Motivation
Science and Spirituality

Links to other websites about psychic intuition:

Carl Sagan's The Fine Art of Baloney Detection
Q & A with Ray Hyman, from PBS's Scientific American Frontiers "Ask the Scientists"
Ian Rowlands' The Full Facts of Cold Reading
Daryl Bem
Charles Honorton, ganzfeld procedure
Julie Milton and Richard Wiseman, article from Skeptical Inquirer about their further research with the ganzfeld procedure
James Randi
The Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal
PESTS (Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically) homepage
Koestler Parapsychology Unit at the University of Edinburgh
Robert Emmons

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