Short answers, pulled from the story.
Johann Karl Friedrich Zöllner published his book Transcendental Physics in 1877. The book claimed that the medium Henry Slade could manipulate physical objects through supernatural means. Critics later found that the experiments were flawed because no one watched the table from above and below simultaneously.
Philosopher Max Dessoir coined the term parapsychology in 1889. Psychologist Joseph B. Rhine later popularized the term to describe the field of study involving extrasensory perception. Rhine began using Zener cards to test for telepathy and clairvoyance at Duke University in 1930.
The Central Intelligence Agency terminated the Stargate Project in 1995. The program had handled remote viewing research for the U.S. federal government since the early 1950s. Officials concluded the project was never useful in any intelligence operation due to vague and erroneous data.
Psychiatrist Ian Stevenson conducted more than 2,500 case studies over 40 years. He focused on children who claimed to remember past lives between the ages of three and seven years. Some 35 percent of the subjects examined had birthmarks or congenital disabilities that Stevenson believed provided evidence for reincarnation.
Ray Hyman discovered flaws in all of the 42 Ganzfeld experiments. He devised a set of 12 categories of flaws to assess each experiment. Over half of the studies failed to safeguard against sensory leakage, and all of the studies contained at least one of the 12 flaws.
The U.S. National Academy of Sciences published a report on the subject in 1988. The report concluded that no scientific justification existed from research conducted over a period of 130 years for the existence of parapsychological phenomena. Scientists state that the entire body of evidence is of poor quality and not adequately controlled.