Joining PSICAN as an Affiliated Group...

Please read our F.A.Q thoroughly before continuing through this section. The link provided will open in another window. 

If you're the head of an existing group that thinks you might benefit from being affiliated with PSICAN and might help add to PSICAN's growing group of dedicated investigators and researchers, this is the beginning of a four-page document that will outline what we will hopefully be able to do for you... and what we expect from you to share the resources we have.

PSICAN, unlike a lot of other groups in North America, is not actively trying to recruit other's to an affiliation as we feel that quality of work within the study outstrips quantity. We want people who are truly interested in the paranormal... truly dedicated to the study and research of topics of the unknown... truly able to work within all confines of research and investigation and be comfortable with both believers and non-believers in these topics.

Some people see this as us "laying rules down" and dictating how everyone should go about these studies... this is not true. We are simply demonstrating practiced methodology of scientific, ethical, and secure ways of dealing with the study of the unknown. The only people "obligated" to work with us on these concepts are our own team members... but it's hardly surprising when we do receive the occasional nasty comment from other's in the field when we hold their efforts to the same levels as our own... that when they make any claim, they back up those claims with empirical evidence that stands up to scrutiny from all possible angles.

To that end, PSICAN's groups and members do tend to the legitimately sceptical (or the American spelling, skeptical). To be sceptical means to doubt... to demand better evidence before putting one's faith in a particular concept. Sadly, the word sceptic and scepticism in general have been usurped by cynical non-believers to "soften" their own public face... but a sceptic is not someone who outright denies things nor finds a pat-but-untested hypothesis that may be correct in one or two situations, but still applies it to all.

The late Marcello Truzzi is credited for coining the phrase, Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, which is a borderline mantra for the so-called sceptical community... a community Truzzi himself dropped out of because he felt that the "sceptics" had become little more than "deniers"... and then said he'd wished he'd not coined that phrase... but instead said, Claims require evidence... meaning as much as a claim of something out of the ordinary really does require evidence to be considered a fact, the claim that something can not have happened and does not exist also requires evidence.

Oh, and before we go any further, if you ever hear that one cannot prove a negative, read this (click here).

PSICAN is therefore a proudly sceptical group... we are sceptical about claims of the paranormal and look into them... and sceptical of those who say it all isn't real and demand evidence from them.

We are MORE than willing to admit when we don't know something... and more than willing to admit when we are wrong or a hypothesis we had doesn't pan out.

So, if your group is in essence, willing to be able to work from an agnostic and neutral standpoint... to be open to all possibilities, not just of the existence of the paranormal, but the possibility of the non-existence therein... if you're willing to ensure that everything you do is capable of and you're willing to have it peer reviewed and stand up to possible criticism.