Abstract

The rebuttal by Reber and Alcock to an umbrella review of multiple meta-analyses on the evidence for parapsychological phenomena did not engage deliberately with its data or analyses. Instead, the authors proposed that because they and some physicists consider psi phenomena to be impossible, “the data are irrelevant”. After presenting some background information, this Commentary discusses how: 1) Reber and Alcock’s disregard for the data goes against a core tenet of science, 2) eminent physicists have not considered psi phenomena to be incompatible with their discipline and some have even proposed theories to explain it, so no defi nitive conclusion can be advanced with regard to the possibility or impossibility of psi phenomena based on physics, and 3) Reber and Alcock misrepresent the history and current status of psi research.