Paranormal and Ufology
Paranormal subjects have been subject to critiques from a wide range of sources including the following claims of paranormal significance:
- Animal mutilations – cases of animals, primarily domestic livestock, with seemingly inexplicable wounds. These wounds have been said to be caused by natural predation, extraterrestrials, cults, or covert government organizations.
- Channeling – communication of information to or through a person allegedly from a spirit or other paranormal entity.
- Crop circles – geometric designs of crushed or knocked-over crops created in a field. Aside from skilled farmers or pranksters working through the night, explanations for their formation include UFOs and anomalous, tornado-like air currents. The study of crop circles has become known as "cerealogy".
- Cryptozoology – search for creatures that are considered not to exist by most biologists. Well known examples of creatures of interest to cryptozoologists include Bigfoot, Yeren, Yeti, and the Loch Ness Monster. According to leading skeptical authors Michael Shermer and Pat Linse, "Cryptozoology ranges from pseudoscientific to useful and interesting, depending on how it is practiced."
- Dowsing refers to practices said to enable one to detect hidden water, metals, gemstones or other objects.
- Electronic voice phenomenon – purported communication by spirits through tape recorders and other electronic devices.
- Extra-sensory perception – paranormal ability (independent of the five main senses or deduction from previous experience) to acquire information by means such as telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, psychic abilities, and remote viewing.
- Ghost hunting – use of scientific methods and instrumentation in an unconventional manner to hunt ghosts.
- Levitation – act of rising up from the ground without any physical aids, usually by the power of thought.
- Pseudoarchaeology – investigation of the ancient past using alleged paranormal or other means which have not been validated by mainstream science.
- Psychic surgery – type of medical fraud, popular in Brazil and the Philippines. Practitioners use sleight of hand to make it appear as though they are reaching into a patients body and extracting "tumours". Psychic surgery is usually explicit deception; i.e., the "practitioners" are aware that they are practicing fraud or "quackery", unlike most pseudosciences, in which the practitioners actually believe their theory.
- Psychokinesis – paranormal ability of the mind to influence matter or energy at a distance.
- Rumpology – neologism referring to a pseudoscience akin to physiognomy, performed by examining crevices, dimples, warts, moles and folds of a person's buttocks in much the same way a chirologist would read the palm of the hand.
- Séances – ritualized attempts to communicate with the dead.
- Tutankhamun's curse – was allegedly placed on the discoverers of Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun's tomb, causing widespread deaths and other disastrous events.
- The Tunguska event – was a large explosion, possibly caused by a meteoroid or comet, in what is now Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia in June 1908. Night skies as far away as London were markedly brighter for several evenings. Unsupported theories regarding the event include the impact of a miniature black hole or large body of antimatter, ball lightning, a test by Nikola Tesla of the apparatus at Wardenclyffe Tower, and a UFO crash. Another theory is that the explosion was caused by a piece of Biela's Comet from 1883.
- Ufology – the study of unidentified flying objects (UFO) that frequently includes the belief that UFOs are evidence for extraterrestrial visitors.
Read more about this topic: List Of Topics Characterized As Pseudoscience