I Chose To Believe

Space-Awe For Health

The replicability of the overview effect, whereby seeing the Earth from space induces a life-changing sense of wonder, could lead to virtual reality awe machines.  Alternatively, this may just tell us that those who go to the heavens come back lighter.

JREF Narrows Challenge

The overabundance of dowsers and psychics hoping to be tested but unwilling to submit to the arbitrary, fluid, and unfairly weighted experimental protocols established by an ornery stage magician -- The Amazing Randi -- has forced the James Randi Educational Foundation to limit applicants for the One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge to established psychics (sic) with a TV crew.

Star Wars, ancient Tibet, and Jedi training

"The conclusion of the study was that the reported subjective experience of exceptional spaciousness, or timelessness, reported by some advanced meditators, appears to be objectively correct. That is, their subjective sense of 'now' appears to expand substantially, and our experiment indicates that this was not an illusion."

Skepticism on the couch

A Skeptic encountering evidence of the paranormal is like the stereotypical woman in a movie farce who discovers a spider in her hair. Does she pause to calmly assess the situation? No, she starts batting wildly at her head, screaming, "Get it off me!" In this state of mind, even the most intelligent and knowledgeable person will be hard pressed to think logically. Panic makes anyone stupid.

The rise and fall of paranormal experimentation

"If you think your house is haunted, you don't need an exorcist, you just need a sceptic. Because I guarantee if I come along, nothing will happen."

Epidemic depression as a wake up call to humanity

"When participants attempted to influence how the dice turned, the dice rolled in the desired direction about 51.2% of the time. While this may seem negligible at first glance, considering that this was the meta effect observed from 2.6 million dice throws from 148 different experiments by 52 different investigators, it's significant."

Why The Afterlife Is Beyond Science

"'But he is merely dreaming all the time, or rather, living with the fantasy created by his strongest desires on earth.'  Over time, whatever form time takes in that condition, the 'dream' fades and the person or soul awakens to his true condition, Myers said."

Ludicrous

Mark Stout reads Putin's mind: he was referring to psychics reading Madeline Albright's mind, when he referred to hearing about foreign interest in Siberia.  As everyone knows, psychics are ridiculous, ergo, Putin is ridiculous.  A political pundit has no need of a nuanced understanding of parapsychology.

Someone with an interest in parapsychology has no need of a political pundit.  They can investigate phenomena themselves, and with others.

It's been shown that crowd-sourcing rubes can be just as effective as consulting experts.  It might even magnify psychic powers.  Hunter Lee Soik has developed an app called Shadow, intended for use as a dream journal, but conceivably useful as a seismometer for keywords in the precognitive unconscious.  A larger sample of users would be necessary to see if it works as such.

Making scientific breakthroughs through experiment and discussion occasionally entails a certain amount of risk, and the possibility that one will appear ridiculous.  Academics and scientists do not like to appear ridiculous.

A petition was signed by hundreds of scientists around the world to prevent the University of Mumbai from hosting a single session of the Indian Science Congress, the subject of the session being descriptions of flying vimanas in ancient texts.  As everyone knows, the portions of mythology that don't correspond to modern expectations are unequivocally the religious fictitious bits.  As such, science can't benefit from discussing what doesn't exist.

If you don't look, you'll never see.  If you know something can't be, you'll have a harder time observing it.  Conventional channels are not conducive to finding new perspectives.

Raquel Cepeda recounts for the Personal Journeys section of the New York Times exactly how to see UFOs:  "You [have] to open yourself to the ludicrous, be a fool, so to speak, to have faith, in life and in love."  The New York Times has printed the secret, if perhaps only online, and there is no way to debase that with irony.