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Why is PSI so elusive? A review and proposed model
Journal of Parapsychology, The, Sept, 2001 by J.E. Kennedy
The hypothesis of backward influence does not explain why the net integrated psi effect would make psi elusive rather than completely suppressed or enhanced. This hypothesis appears to require additional, questionable factors such as resistance to psi (Hypothesis 6).
Conclusion
The available data are inconclusive regarding the hypothesis that a psi result could be influenced by multiple future observers. Also, this hypothesis by itself does not explain why the integrated result would make psi elusive.
HYPOTHESIS 11. Psi Is CONTROLLED BY NONPHYSICAL BEINGS OR POWERS
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Psi may be the result of nonphysical beings such as spirits or gods, and the elusive nature of psi may reflect the will of those beings. The hypothesis that psi is an entity or power that directs evolution is also in this category.
Supporting Arguments
It is common throughout many cultures for people and particularly psi practitioners to believe that psi effects are due to nonphysical beings such as spirits, gods, or God. These ideas appear to be at least as consistently held and predictive of psi phenomena as the speculations that motivation and expectancy are important for successful psi experiments or that unknown unconscious factors control psi. There have been extensive investigations of possible spirit survival after death (Gauld, 1982). Although there are alternative explanations for these findings, there is no compelling evidence that the effects are not due to spirits. Scientists generally reject or ignore the possibility that nonphysical beings cause psi phenomena because this possibility is less testable than the hypothesis that living people cause psi effects (Kennedy, 1994). This scientific position is based on philosophy rather than empirical data.
The lack of scientific progress in parapsychology supports the hypothesis that psi effects are not caused solely by the motivations of those directly involved as traditionally assumed. Within the scientific framework, the failure of a more testable hypothesis to provide scientific progress is evidence in favor of some type of less testable hypothesis.
The recurring theme in psychical research that psi appears to be "capricious" or "self-obscuring" (e.g., Batcheldor, 1994; Beloff, 1994; Braud, 1985; James, 1909/1960) implies independent intentions by psi. These ideas are more consistent with the hypothesis of nonphysical beings as the source of psi than with the traditional assumptions for parapsychological experiments.
Several writers have argued that some type of nonphysical guiding power is needed to fully explain the evolution of life (reviewed in Stokes, 1997, pp. 208-211).
Opposing Arguments
There is no convincing scientific evidence for these speculations about nonphysical beings or powers. As J. B. Rhine (1960) and others (e.g., Braude, 1992a, 1992b) have long pointed out, the phenomena in survival research could be due to psi by the living, which is a more parsimonious and therefore scientifically acceptable alternative. Evidence for survival would require that phenomena occur that are outside established limits for psi from living beings. There is little hope of establishing reasonably noncontroversial limits on psi by living beings in the foreseeable future.
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