Skepticism and controversy

The field which studies certain types of telepathic phenomena such as telepathy is called parapsychology. There is a agreement among parapsychologists that some instances of telepathy are real. Skeptics say that instances of obvious telepathy are explain as the result of fraud or self-delusion and that telepathy does not exist as a telepathic power.

Parapsychologists and skeptics agree that many of the instance of more popular psychic phenomena, such as mediumism, can be attributed to non-paranormal technique such as cold reading. Magicians such as Ian Rowland and Derren Brown have established techniques and results similar to those of popular psychics, but they prefer mental explanations instead of telepathic ones. They have identified, described, and developed complex psychological technique of cold reading and hot analysis.

A technique which shows statistically significant confirmation of telepathy on every time has yet to be discovered. This lack of reliable reproducibility has led skeptics to argue that there is no believable scientific evidence for the survival of telepathy at all. Skeptics also point to past cases in which were exposed flaws in experimental design and infrequent cases of fraud. Parapsychologists such as Dean Radin, president of the Parapsychological union, argues that the statistical significance and constancy of results shown by a meta-analysis of many studies provides evidence for telepathy that is almost not possible to account for use any other means.