Etzel Cardeña holds the endowed Thorsen Chair in psychology at Lund University in Sweden, where he directs the Center for Research on Consciousness and Anomalous Psychology (CERCAP). Among his books are Varieties of Anomalous Experience published by the American Psychological Association (APA) and now in its second edition, the two-volumes Altering Consciousness: A Multidisciplinary Perspective, and Parapsychology: A Handbook for the 21st Century, which provides a “state-of-the-art” account of the scientific evidence for parapsychology, as well as offering methodological and statistical know-how for beginner and advanced researchers. He is the editor of the Journal of Parapsychology.

Here he describes the reaction to his 2018 article in the American Psychologist summarizing the experimental evidence for parapsychology. He maintains that, although he has published more than 300 scientific papers, this was the most difficult. He was surprised that the journal agreed to publish it at all. The primary critical response is to claim that parapsychological phenomena are impossible and, therefore, the empirical evidence must be faulty.

(Recorded on August 7, 2019)

Published on August 10, 2019