This document discusses parapsychology and skeptical thinking. It provides polling data showing many people believe in concepts like extrasensory perception, communication with the dead, and psychic experiences. It defines parapsychology terms like telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, and telekinesis. It emphasizes that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and discusses the burden of proof and Occam's razor. Finally, it examines examples like aliens, UFOs, crop circles, and patterns that some claim provide evidence for parapsychology but can have natural or alternative interpretations.

1. PARAPSYCHOLOG
Y
GROUP 5
Karolina Gajek (Poland)
Roksana Zwolinska (Poland)
Klaudia Zak (Poland)
Joanna Mikoda (Poland)
Raquel Santana Ríos (Spain)
Iru Rodríguez García (Spain)
Jan (Germany)

2. Table of contents
 Be Skeptical!
 What are the (precise) claims?
 What is the (exact) evidence?
 Is the evidence credible?
 Are there alternative interpretations?
 Limitations & biases of human cognition
 Crop circles

3. Parapsychology
 1991 Gallup poll:
- Astrology...............................................52%
- Extrasensory Perception...................46%
- Witches..................................................19%
- Aliens have landed on earth..............22%
- Communication with the dead...........42%
- Ghosts....................................................35%
- Actually had a psychic experience..67%

4. Parapsychology
 Telepathy - refers to mind-reading, discerning
 another's thoughts through ESP.
 Clairvoyance - an ability to see things beyond the
 range of the power of vision.
 Precognition - psychic knowledge of something in
 advance of its occurrence.
 Telekinesis - the movement of objects by
 scientifically inexplicable means.

5. Skeptical Thinking
 Extraordinary claims require extraordinary
evidence
 The burden of proof is on the positive
 Occam’s Razor (Parsimony)

6. Extraordinary Claims Require
Extraordinary Evidence
 “The discovery that there are other intelligent beings in the
universe – and as a corollary, that life and intelligence can and has
evolved at locations other than Earth – and that, moreover, these
beings are visiting Earth on a semi-regular basis in spacecraft that
seem to defy the laws of physics as we know them, would
unquestionably rank as the greatest discovery in the history of
science, and most definitely is an extraordinary claim. Therefore, in
order for me to accept it, you must produce extraordinary evidence.
What might this evidence be? For one thing, the aliens themselves.
Not some story where someone says that someone says that
someone says that they saw aliens, but the actual physical aliens
themselves…” Hale (1997)

7. Alien Autopsy

8. UFO Merchandise

9. UFO Abduction Insurance

11. Area 51 NV & Roswell NM

12. Area 51 NV & Roswell NM

13. Area 51 NV & Roswell NM

15. Tarot Cards

21. Face on Mars

22. New Face on Mars

23. Patterns in Clouds

24. Patterns in Rocks

25. Patterns in Rocks

26. Skeptical Inquirer

27. Crop Circles

28. Thank you for
watching our
presentation!
;-)