What are the central scientific issues related to distant healing?
The idea that mental intention can causally influence distant living systems evokes two scientific problems: The first is the assumption that “action at a distance” is impossible. Restated, this assumption presumes that all observable phenomena are causally connected, and that all causal connections must be proximally (i.e., spatiotemporally) contiguous. Thus a phenomenon based on “distant influence,” with no (known) observable causal connections, is scientifically forbidden. The second problem is that there are no accepted theoretical reasons to expect that mind can directly interact with matter, excepting perhaps a mind interacting with “its” brain. These two problems are sufficient to cause most scientists to seriously doubt that DHI is genuinely “distant healing.” As a result, it is understandable why skeptics assume that apparent DHI effects can be completely explained as a combination of wishful thinking, poor methodologies, embellishment, and in extreme cases, fraud.
