The news that the lab investigating parapsychological phenomena around extra-sensory perception has closed makes for a bad week for pseudoscience.

The Engineering Anomalies Research laboratory operated on the fringes of Princeton University for almost 30 years. It was set up by the Ivy League school's former dean of applied science and engineering in 1979 as a result of his interest in people affecting machines with their minds.

It drew ridicule from Priceton's mainstream scientific community, and professional skeptics like James Randi, who has offered $1m to anyone who can demonstrate a paranormal event under experimental conditions.

Just last Friday, newspaper astrologer Jonathan Cainer's York Psychic Museum brought the shutters down in unforeseen cicumstances: not enough people were interested. ®

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