Psychokinesis

Psychokinesis (PK), also called telekinesis, represents perhaps the most dramatic claimed psychic ability — the mind directly affecting the physical world. The phenomenon is reported across a spectrum from micro-PK (statistically influencing random number generators, dice, or other probability-based systems) to macro-PK (visible movement of objects, metal bending, or influence on biological systems). Laboratory research on micro-PK at Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) lab ran for 28 years, producing a massive dataset showing small but statistically significant deviations from chance when operators intended to influence random event generators. The effect size was tiny but remarkably consistent across thousands of trials. Poltergeist phenomena and some healing modalities may involve psychokinetic mechanisms — unconscious PK affecting the immediate environment or the body's healing processes. If PK is real, it suggests that consciousness has a more direct relationship with physical reality than mainstream physics currently acknowledges.

Modern laboratory study of psychokinesis begins with J. B. Rhine at Duke University in the 1930s, using dice-rolling experiments — the meta-analysis by Radin and Ferrari (*Journal of Scientific Exploration*, 1991) reported a small but statistically significant aggregate effect across 73 published studies (148 experiments by 52 investigators). The Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) laboratory, founded by Robert Jahn in 1979 and closing in 2007, ran the longest sustained PK research programme using random event generators (REGs); their 1989 *Margins of Reality* and the 2007 final summary in the *Journal of Scientific Exploration* reported tiny but cumulatively significant deviations from chance. Independent replication remains contested: Bösch, Steinkamp, and Boller's *Psychological Bulletin* (2006) meta-analysis of 380 REG studies found a significant overall effect but attributed it to publication bias and small-study effects. The dramatic macro-PK demonstrations of Uri Geller from 1973 onward were investigated at SRI by Targ and Puthoff (*Nature*, 1974) and demonstrated as conjuring techniques by James Randi (*The Truth About Uri Geller*, 1982). Susan Blackmore's *In Search of the Light* (1996) gives the standard skeptical position; Dean Radin's *The Conscious Universe* (1997) and *Entangled Minds* (2006) give the strongest proponent case.

If you want to test the claim honestly, use a calibrated random-event-generator app — the IONS PK test (noetic.org) or one of the open-source RNG-based protocols — and pre-register your expected effect direction and sample size before running trials. The documented effects are tiny (Cohen's d ~0.005 in the PEAR data), so you need thousands of trials to detect anything above noise. Read both the strongest proponent case (Dean Radin's *The Conscious Universe*, 1997) and the strongest skeptical case (Susan Blackmore's *In Search of the Light*, 1996) before drawing conclusions. Avoid macro-PK "training" claims — no replicated demonstration of macroscopic PK under controlled conditions exists, and the JREF/$1M Paranormal Challenge (1996–2015) never paid out.