There is no scientific evidence backing psychics

The argument

Although there have been many studies exploring the ideas that psychics are rooted in, none have come up with any scientific evidence for it. The point is not that the question has been ignored, which would leave room for the claim to be untested; it is that the question has been investigated repeatedly and the investigations have come back empty. In many studies carried out by scientists at Berkeley, the result of their experiments showed that "...receivers [weren't] particularly accurate in these experiments; no evidence of mind reading or any other sort of ESP [was] found." The design of such experiments matters to what the null result means. Under controlled conditions the ordinary channels of information are closed off, so a receiver who performs no better than chance is being tested on the specific ability claimed, rather than on the impression of insight a reading can produce in an informal setting. In multiple studies carried out by Harvard's School of Psychology, a test based in neuro-imaging found no support for the claims of participants having ESP. That approach sets a different kind of trap for the claim: it looks for the process rather than the outcome, and finds nothing in the participants' own brain activity corresponding to the reception they report. Two independent lines of evidence, behavioural and physiological, therefore converge on the same absence. Whilst there may be certain support to the claim that seeing isn't always believing, there is no scientific basis for psychics and their abilities. What they claim to be able to do cannot be supported factually, and because there is no scientific evidence backing psychics, psychics are not real.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Perhaps the psychic ability is beyond science. Perhaps ESP and the predictions of the future are just phenomena that cannot be understood by scientists, and cannot be proved in a lab or a test tube.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] "Many studies have found nothing" is the right shape of claim, but the support offered is two vaguely identified sources — unnamed Berkeley experiments and a "Harvard School of Psychology" that does not exist under that name — with no publication, date or author. A conclusion resting on the scientific record ought to cite it. [Rejecting P2] Absence of evidence is presented as though it settled the matter by itself. The stronger and more standard case is that well-designed studies have repeatedly failed to find an effect, that reported effects have not replicated under controlled conditions, and that the burden of proof rests with the claim — none of which this premise states. [Rejecting P3] "Cannot be substantiated" is a claim about the present evidence, while the position asserts that psychics are not real. The gap is narrow but real, and the counter-argument exploits it directly by proposing that the ability lies beyond science. The reply the argument needs — that a claim insulated from any possible test gains no support from being untestable — is never made.