Psi-verts and psychic piracy: The future of parapsychology?

I woke up this morning with a psychic advert left lingering in my dreaming mind. It was some kind of oneiric flyer for a new type of yoga, it even had a telephone number on it to call. This fanciful hypnopompic intrusion brought me back to the idea that if science can identify techniques for reliably producing psychic abilities (termed ‘psi’) then PR executives will soon be pumping millions into pumping adverts directly into our minds. Forget the television, tube trains and pub toilets, we’ll have adverts (or perhaps ‘psiverts’) sneaking rudely into our subconscious and marauding around our dreamscapes at all times of night and day. We won’t even have to open our ears or eyes to be lured in by the latest product we probably don’t need. As a parapsychologist this is one of the annoying possibilities I’ll have to take responsibility for, if and when my research field starts producing practical commercial applications, but what’s the real likelihood of this? I’ll come back to this issue at the end, and instead begin by asking what is the current state of the art in psychical research?

To read Dr David Luke's full article got to http://www.brainwaving.com/2009/10/28/ps...