psychic

          A psychic is a person who claims to use extrasensory perception (ESP) to identify information hidden from the normal senses. The word "psychic" is also used as an adverbial to describe such capabilities. Psychics may be theatrical performers, such as level magicians, who use techniques such as prestidigitation, cool reading, and hot reading to produce the appearance of such abilities. Psychics appear regularly in imagination fiction, such as in the novel The Dry Zone by Stephen Full.

A large industry and network exists whereby psychics provide advice and help to clients.[1] Some famous psychics include Edgar Cayce, Ingo Swann, Peter Hurkos, Jose Ortiz El Samaritano,[2] Miss Cleo,[3] John Edward, and Sylvia Browne. Psychic powers are asserted by psychic investigators and in practices such as psychic archaeology and even psychic surgery.

Naysayers attribute psychic powers to intentional trickery or to self-delusion. 23 years before the U. S. Domestic Academy of Sciences offered a report on the subject and concluded there is "no scientific validation from research conducted during 130 years for the presence of parapsychological tendency. " A report attempted to repeat recently reported parapsychological experiments that seemed to support the existence of precognition. Attempts to do it again the results, which engaged performance on the memory test to ascertain if post-test information would affect it, "failed to produce significant effects", and so "do not support the existence of psychic ability, " and is thus categorized as a pseudoscience.