The paranormal is a realm where ghosts, aliens and mind reading rule. It’s a world that generates plenty of media attention and cash for people who believe — or at least hope to — see paranormal phenomena. It’s a place where inhuman entities roam the land and where an endless stream of orbs and ghostly apparitions are snapped up by hordes of photographers. And it’s a realm where the dead refuse to go quietly and creatures like Bigfoot and the Chupacabra stalk their prey.
As the name suggests, paranormal means “above normal,” or anything that goes beyond the accepted limits of current scientific explanation. But scientists and others who study paranormal phenomena acknowledge that not everything that’s unexplained is necessarily paranormal. Some events may be explained by legitimate science, or even by the fallibility of human perception.
One of the challenges of paranormal research is that most purported paranormal phenomenon cannot be validated using the scientific method. This is because most of the events being studied are not subject to acceptable physical evidence, as would be required by the scientific process.
Because of this, the study of paranormal phenomena often relies on anecdotal evidence, which is not a type of valid scientific evidence. Anecdotal evidence is based on the collection of stories by a person, which makes verification dependent upon the credibility of the person sharing the story and subject to logical errors such as cognitive bias, inductive reasoning and lack of falsifiability.