title: Parapsychology

text: The Ganzfeld experiment studies that were examined by Ray Hyman and Charles Honorton had methodological problems that were well documented. Honorton reported only 36% of the studies used duplicate target sets of pictures to avoid handling cues. Hyman discovered flaws in all of the 42 Ganzfeld experiments and to assess each experiment, he devised a set of 12 categories of flaws. Six of these concerned statistical defects, the other six covered procedural flaws such as inadequate documentation, randomization and security as well as possibilities of sensory leakage. Over half of the studies failed to safeguard against sensory leakage and all of the studies contained at least one of the 12 flaws. Because of the flaws, Honorton agreed with Hyman the 42 Ganzfeld studies could not support the claim for the existence of psi.


title: Parapsychology

text: Possibilities of sensory leakage in the Ganzfeld experiments included the receivers hearing what was going on in the sender's room next door as the rooms were not soundproof and the sender's fingerprints to be visible on the target object for the receiver to see. Hyman reviewed the autoganzfeld experiments and discovered a pattern in the data that implied a visual cue may have taken place. Hyman wrote the autoganzfeld experiments were flawed because they did not preclude the possibility of sensory leakage.


title: Parapsychology

text: In 2010, Lance Storm, Patrizio Tressoldi, and Lorenzo Di Risio analyzed 29 Ganzfeld studies from 1997 to 2008. Of the 1,498 trials, 483 produced hits, corresponding to a hit rate of 32.2%. This hit rate is statistically significant with Participants selected for personality traits and personal characteristics thought to be psi-conducive were found to perform significantly better than unselected participants in the Ganzfeld condition. Hyman (2010) published a rebuttal to Storm "et al". According to Hyman, "Reliance on meta-analysis as the sole basis for justifying the claim that an anomaly exists and that the evidence for it is consistent and replicable is fallacious. It distorts what scientists mean by confirmatory evidence." Hyman wrote that the Ganzfeld studies were not independently replicated and failed to produce evidence for psi. Storm "et al". published a response to Hyman stating that the Ganzfeld experimental design has proved to be consistent and reliable, that parapsychology is a struggling discipline that has not received much attention, and that therefore further research on the subject is necessary. Rouder "et al". 2013 wrote that critical evaluation of Storm "et al".'s meta-analysis reveals no evidence for psi, no plausible mechanism and omitted replication failures.


title: Parapsychology

text: Remote viewing is the practice of seeking impressions about a distant or unseen target using subjective means, in particular, extrasensory perception. Typically a remote viewer is expected to give information about an object, event, person or location that is hidden from physical view and separated at some distance. Several hundred such trials have been conducted by investigators over the past 25 years, including those by the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Laboratory (PEAR) and by scientists at SRI International and Science Applications International Corporation. Many of these were under contract by the U.S. government as part of the espionage program Stargate Project, which terminated in 1995 having failed to document any practical intelligence value.


title: Parapsychology

text: The psychologists David Marks and Richard Kammann attempted to replicate Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff's remote viewing experiments that were carried out in the 1970s at the Stanford Research Institute. In a series of 35 studies, they were unable to replicate the results, motivating them to investigate the procedure of the original experiments. Marks and Kammann discovered that the notes given to the judges in Targ and Puthoff's experiments contained clues as to the order in which they were carried out, such as referring to yesterday's two targets, or they had the date of the session written at the top of the page. They concluded that these clues were the reason for the experiment's high hit rates. Marks was able to achieve 100 per cent accuracy without visiting any of the sites himself but by using cues. James Randi wrote controlled tests in collaboration with several other researchers, eliminating several sources of cuing and extraneous evidence present in the original tests; Randi's controlled tests produced negative results. Students were also able to solve Puthoff and Targ's locations from the cues that had inadvertently been included in the transcripts.


title: Parapsychology

text: In 1980, Charles Tart claimed that a rejudging of the transcripts from one of Targ and Puthoff's experiments revealed an above-chance result. Targ and Puthoff again refused to provide copies of the transcripts and it was not until July 1985 that they were made available for study, when it was discovered they still contained sensory cues. Marks and Christopher Scott (1986) wrote "considering the importance for the remote viewing hypothesis of adequate cue removal, Tart's failure to perform this basic task seems beyond comprehension. As previously concluded, remote viewing has not been demonstrated in the experiments conducted by Puthoff and Targ, only the repeated failure of the investigators to remove sensory cues."


title: Parapsychology

text: PEAR closed its doors at the end of February 2007. Its founder, Robert G. Jahn, said of it that, "For 28 years, we've done what we wanted to do, and there's no reason to stay and generate more of the same data." Statistical flaws in his work have been proposed by others in the parapsychological community and within the general scientific community. The physicist Robert L. Park said of PEAR, "It's been an embarrassment to science, and I think an embarrassment for Princeton".


title: Parapsychology

text: The advent of powerful and inexpensive electronic and computer technologies has allowed the development of fully automated experiments studying possible interactions between mind and matter. In the most common experiment of this type, a random number generator (RNG), based on electronic or radioactive noise, produces a data stream that is recorded and analyzed by computer software. A subject attempts to mentally alter the distribution of the random numbers, usually in an experimental design that is functionally equivalent to getting more "heads" than "tails" while flipping a coin. In the RNG experiment, design flexibility can be combined with rigorous controls, while collecting a large amount of data in a very short period of time. This technique has been used both to test individuals for psychokinesis and to test the possible influence on RNGs of large groups of people.


title: Parapsychology

text: Major meta-analyses of the RNG database have been published every few years since appearing in the journal "Foundations of Physics" in 1986. PEAR founder Robert G. Jahn and his colleague Brenda Dunne say that the experiments produced "a very small effect" not large enough to be observed over a brief experiment but over a large number of trials resulted in a tiny statistical deviation from chance. According to Massimo Pigliucci the results from PEAR can be explained without invoking the paranormal because of two problems with the experiment "the difficulty of designing machines capable of generating truly random events and the fact that statistical "significance" is not at all a good measure of the importance or genuineness of a phenomenon." Pigluicci has written the statistical analysis used by the Jahn and the PEAR group relied on a quantity called a "p-value" but a problem with p-values is that if the sample size (number of trials) is very large like PEAR then one is guaranteed to find artificially low p-values indicating a statistical "significant" result even though nothing was occurring other than small biases in the experimental apparatus.


title: Parapsychology

text: Two German independent scientific groups have failed to replicate the PEAR results. Pigliucci has written this was "yet another indication that the simplest hypothesis is likely to be true: there was nothing to replicate." The most recent meta-analysis on psychokinesis was published in "Psychological Bulletin", along with several critical commentaries. It analyzed the results of 380 studies; the authors reported an overall positive effect size that was statistically significant but very small relative to the sample size and could, in principle, be explained by publication bias.


title: Parapsychology

text: Formerly called bio-PK, "direct mental interactions with living systems" (DMILS) studies the effects of one person's intentions on a distant person's psychophysiological state. One type of DMILS experiment looks at the commonly reported "feeling of being stared at". The "starer" and the "staree" are isolated in different locations, and the starer is periodically asked to simply gaze at the staree via closed circuit video links. Meanwhile, the staree's nervous system activity is automatically and continuously monitored.


title: Parapsychology

text: Parapsychologists have interpreted the cumulative data on this and similar DMILS experiments to suggest that one person's attention directed towards a remote, isolated person can significantly activate or calm that person's nervous system. In a meta-analysis of these experiments published in the "British Journal of Psychology" in 2004, researchers found that there was a small but significant overall DMILS effect. However, the study also found that when a small number of the highest-quality studies from one laboratory were analyzed, the effect size was not significant. The authors concluded that although the existence of some anomaly related to distant intentions cannot be ruled out, there was also a shortage of independent replications and theoretical concepts.


title: Parapsychology

text: Parapsychological studies into dream telepathy were carried out at the Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, New York led by Stanley Krippner and Montague Ullman. They concluded the results from some of their experiments supported dream telepathy. However, the results have not been independently replicated.


title: Parapsychology

text: The picture target experiments that were conducted by Krippner and Ullman were criticized by C. E. M. Hansel. According to Hansel there were weaknesses in the design of the experiments in the way in which the agent became aware of their target picture. Only the agent should have known the target and no other person until the judging of targets had been completed; however, an experimenter was with the agent when the target envelope was opened. Hansel also wrote there had been poor controls in the experiment as the main experimenter could communicate with the subject. In 2002, Krippner denied Hansel's accusations, claiming the agent did not communicate with the experimenter.


title: Parapsychology

text: An attempt to replicate the experiments that used picture targets was carried out by Edward Belvedere and David Foulkes. The finding was that neither the subject nor the judges matched the targets with dreams above chance level. Results from other experiments by Belvedere and Foulkes were also negative.


title: Parapsychology

text: In 2003, Simon Sherwood and Chris Roe wrote a review that claimed support for dream telepathy at Maimonides. However, James Alcock noted that their review was based on "extreme messiness" of data. Alcock concluded the dream telepathy experiments at Maimonides have failed to provide evidence for telepathy and "lack of replication is rampant".


title: Parapsychology

text: A near-death experience (NDE) is an experience reported by a person who nearly died, or who experienced clinical death and then revived. NDEs include one or more of the following experiences: a sense of being dead; an out-of-body experience; a sensation of floating above one's body and seeing the surrounding area; a sense of overwhelming love and peace; a sensation of moving upwards through a tunnel or narrow passageway; meeting deceased relatives or spiritual figures; encountering a being of light, or a light; experiencing a life review; reaching a border or boundary; and a feeling of being returned to the body, often accompanied by reluctance.


title: Parapsychology

text: Interest in the NDE was originally spurred by the research of psychiatrists Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, George G. Ritchie, and Raymond Moody. In 1975, Moody wrote the best-selling book "Life After Life" and in 1977 he wrote a second book, "Reflections on Life After Life". In 1998 Moody was appointed chair in "consciousness studies" at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. The International Association for Near-death Studies (IANDS) was founded in 1978 to meet the needs of early researchers and experiencers within this field of research. Later researchers, such as psychiatrist Bruce Greyson, psychologist Kenneth Ring, and cardiologist Michael Sabom, introduced the study of near-death experiences to the academic setting.


title: Parapsychology

text: Psychiatrist Ian Stevenson, from the University of Virginia, conducted more than 2,500 case studies over a period of 40 years and published twelve books. He wrote that childhood memories ostensibly related to reincarnation normally occurred between the ages of three and seven years then fade shortly afterwards. He compared the memories with reports of people known to the deceased, attempting to do so before any contact between the child and the deceased's family had occurred, and searched for disconfirming evidence that could provide alternative explanations for the reports aside from reincarnation.


title: Parapsychology

text: Some 35 per cent of the subjects examined by Stevenson had birthmarks or birth defects. Stevenson believed that the existence of birth marks and deformities on children, when they occurred at the location of fatal wounds in the deceased, provided the best evidence for reincarnation. However, Stevenson has never claimed that he had proved the existence of reincarnation, and cautiously referred to his cases as being "of the reincarnation type" or "suggestive of reincarnation". Researchers who believe in the evidence for reincarnation have been unsuccessful in getting the scientific community to consider it a serious possibility.


title: Parapsychology

text: Ian Wilson argued that a large number of Stevenson's cases consisted of poor children remembering wealthy lives or belonging to a higher caste. He speculated that such cases may represent a scheme to obtain money from the family of the alleged former incarnation. Philosopher Keith Augustine has written "the vast majority of Stevenson's cases come from countries where a religious belief in reincarnation is strong, and rarely elsewhere, seems to indicate that cultural conditioning (rather than reincarnation) generates claims of spontaneous past-life memories." According to the research of Robert Baker many of the alleged past-life experiences investigated by Stevenson and other parapsychologists can be explained in terms of known psychological factors. Baker has written the recalling of past lives is a mixture of cryptomnesia and confabulation. Philosopher Paul Edwards noted that reincarnation invokes logically dubious assumptions and is inconsistent with modern science.


title: Parapsychology

text: The scientific consensus is that there is insufficient evidence to support the existence of psi phenomena.


title: Parapsychology

text: Scientists critical of parapsychology state that its extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence if they are to be taken seriously. Scientists who have evaluated parapsychology have written the entire body of evidence is of poor quality and not adequately controlled. In support of this view, critics cite instances of fraud, flawed studies, and cognitive biases (such as clustering illusion, availability error, confirmation bias, illusion of control, magical thinking, and the bias blind spot) as ways to explain parapsychological results. Research has also shown that people's desire to believe in paranormal phenomena causes them to discount strong evidence that it does not exist.


title: Parapsychology

text: The psychologists Donovan Rawcliffe (1952), C. E. M. Hansel (1980), Ray Hyman (1989) and Andrew Neher (2011) have studied the history of psi experiments from the late 19th century up until the 1980s. In every experiment investigated, flaws and weaknesses were discovered so the possibility of sensory leakage and trickery were not ruled out. The data from the Creery sister and the Soal-Goldney experiments were proven to be fraudulent, one of the subjects from the Smith-Blackburn experiments confessed to fraud, the Brugmans experiment, the experiments by John Edgar Coover and those conducted by Joseph Gaither Pratt and Helmut Schmidt had flaws in the design of the experiments, did not rule out the possibility of sensory cues or trickery and have not been replicated.


title: Parapsychology

text: According to critics, psi is negatively defined as any effect that cannot be currently explained in terms of chance or normal causes and this is a fallacy as it encourages parapsychologists into using any peculiarity in the data as a characteristic of psi. Parapsychologists have admitted it is impossible to eliminate the possibility of non-paranormal causes in their experiments. There is no independent method to indicate the presence or absence of psi. Persi Diaconis has written that the controls in parapsychological experiments are often loose with possibilities of subject cheating and unconscious sensory cues.


title: Parapsychology

text: The existence of parapsychological phenomena and the scientific validity of parapsychological research is disputed by independent evaluators and researchers. In 1988, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences published a report on the subject that concluded that "no scientific justification from research conducted over a period of 130 years for the existence of parapsychological phenomena." No accepted theory of parapsychology currently exists, and many competing and often conflicting models have been advocated by different parapsychologists in an attempt to explain reported paranormal phenomena. Terence Hines in his book "Pseudoscience and the Paranormal" (2003) wrote "Many theories have been proposed by parapsychologists to explain how psi takes place. To skeptics, such theory building seems premature, as the phenomena to be explained by the theories have yet to be demonstrated convincingly." Skeptics such as Antony Flew have cited the lack of such a theory as their reason for rejecting parapsychology.


title: Parapsychology

text: In 1998, physics professor Michael W. Friedlander noted that parapsychology has "failed to produce any clear evidence for the existence of anomalous effects that require us to go beyond the known region of science." Philosopher and skeptic Robert Todd Carroll has written research in parapsychology has been characterized by "deception, fraud, and incompetence in setting up properly controlled experiments and evaluating statistical data." The psychologist Ray Hyman has pointed out that some parapsychologists such as Dick Bierman, Walter Lucadou, J. E. Kennedy, and Robert Jahn have admitted the evidence for psi is "inconsistent, irreproducible, and fails to meet acceptable scientific standards." Richard Wiseman has criticized the parapsychological community for widespread errors in research methods including cherry-picking new procedures which may produce preferred results, explaining away unsuccessful attempted replications with claims of an "experimenter effect", data mining, and retrospective data selection.


title: Parapsychology

text: In a review of parapsychological reports Hyman wrote "randomization is often inadequate, multiple statistical testing without adjustment for significance levels is prevalent, possibilities for sensory leakage are not uniformly prevented, errors in use of statistical tests are much too common, and documentation is typically inadequate". Parapsychology has been criticized for making no precise predictions.


title: Parapsychology

text: In 2003, James Alcock Professor of Psychology at York University published "Give the Null Hypothesis a Chance: Reasons to Remain Doubtful about the Existence of Psi", where he claimed that parapsychologists never seem to take seriously the possibility that psi does not exist. Because of that, they interpret null results as indicating only that they were unable to observe psi in a particular experiment, rather than taking it as support for the possibility that there is no psi. The failure to take the null hypothesis as a serious alternative to their psi hypotheses leads them to rely upon a number of arbitrary "effects" to excuse failures to find predicted effects, excuse the lack of consistency in outcomes, and to excuse failures to replicate.


title: Parapsychology

text: Basic endemic problems in parapsychological research include amongst others: insufficient definition of the subject matter, total reliance on negative definitions of their phenomena (E.g.- psi is said to occur only when all known normal influences are ruled out); failure to produce a single phenomenon that can be independently replicated by neutral researchers; the invention of "effects" such as the psi-experimenter effect to explain away inconsistencies in the data and failures to achieve predicted outcomes; unfalsifiability of claims; unpredictability of effects; lack of progress in over a century of formal research; methodological weaknesses; reliance on statistical procedures to determine when psi has supposedly occurred, even though statistical analysis does not in itself justify a claim that psi has occurred; and failure to jibe with other areas of science. Overall, he argues that there is nothing in parapsychological research that would ever lead parapsychologists to conclude that psi does not exist, and so, even if it does not, the search is likely to continue for a long time to come. "I continue to believe that parapsychology is, at bottom, motivated by belief in search of data, rather than data in search of explanation."


title: Parapsychology

text: Alcock and cognitive psychologist Arthur S. Reber have criticized parapsychology broadly, writing that if psi effects were true, they would negate fundamental principles of science such as causality, time's arrow, thermodynamics, and the inverse square law. According to Alcock and Reber, "parapsychology cannot be true unless the rest of science isn't. Moreover, if psi effects were real, they would have already fatally disrupted the rest of the body of science".


title: Parapsychology

text: Richard Land has written that from what is known about human biology it is highly unlikely that evolution has provided humans with ESP as research has shown the recognized five senses are adequate for the evolution and survival of the species. Michael Shermer, in the article "Psychic Drift: Why most scientists do not believe in ESP and psi phenomena" for "Scientific American", wrote "the reason for skepticism is that we need replicable data and a viable theory, both of which are missing in psi research."


title: Parapsychology

text: In January 2008 the results of a study using neuroimaging were published. To provide what are purported to be the most favorable experimental conditions, the study included appropriate emotional stimuli and had participants who are biologically or emotionally related, such as twins. The experiment was designed to produce positive results if telepathy, clairvoyance or precognition occurred, but despite this no distinguishable neuronal responses were found between psychic stimuli and non-psychic stimuli, while variations in the same stimuli showed anticipated effects on patterns of brain activation. The researchers concluded that "These findings are the strongest evidence yet obtained against the existence of paranormal mental phenomena." Other studies have attempted to test the psi hypothesis by using functional neuroimaging. A neuroscience review of the studies (Acunzo "et al". 2013) discovered methodological weaknesses that could account for the reported psi effects.


title: Parapsychology

text: Some researchers have become skeptical of parapsychology such as Susan Blackmore and John Taylor after years of study and no progress in demonstrating the existence of psi by the scientific method.


title: Parapsychology

text: The ideas of psi (precognition, psychokinesis and telepathy) violate well-established laws of physics. Psychokinesis violates the inverse-square law, the second law of thermodynamics, and the conservation of momentum. There is no known mechanism for psi.


title: Parapsychology

text: On the subject of psychokinesis, the physicist Sean M. Carroll has written that both human brains and the spoons they try to bend are made, like all matter, of quarks and leptons; everything else they do emerges as properties of the behavior of quarks and leptons. And the quarks and leptons interact through the four forces: strong, weak, electromagnetic and gravitational. Thus either it is one of the four known forces or it is a new force, and any new force with range over 1 millimetre must be at most a billionth the strength of gravity or it will have been captured in experiments already done. This leaves no physical force that could possibly account for psychokinesis.


title: Parapsychology

text: Physicist John G. Taylor who investigated parapsychological claims has written an unknown fifth force causing psychokinesis would have to transmit a great deal of energy. The energy would have to overcome the electromagnetic forces binding the atoms together. The atoms would need to respond more strongly to the fifth force while it is operative than to electric forces. Such an additional force between atoms should therefore exist all the time and not during only alleged paranormal occurrences. Taylor wrote there is no scientific trace of such a force in physics, down to many orders of magnitude; thus if a scientific viewpoint is to be preserved the idea of any fifth force must be discarded. Taylor concluded there is no possible physical mechanism for psychokinesis and it is in complete contradiction to established science.


title: Parapsychology

text: Felix Planer, a professor of electrical engineering, has written that if psychokinesis was real then it would be easy to demonstrate by getting subjects to depress a scale on a sensitive balance, raise the temperature of a water bath which could be measured with an accuracy of a hundredth of a degree Celsius or affect an element in an electrical circuit such as a resistor which could be monitored to better than a millionth of an ampere. Planer writes that such experiments are extremely sensitive and easy to monitor but are not utilized by parapsychologists as they "do not hold out the remotest hope of demonstrating even a minute trace of PK" because the alleged phenomenon is non-existent. Planer has written parapsychologists have to fall back on studies that involve only statistics that are unrepeatable, owing their results to poor experimental methods, recording mistakes and faulty statistical mathematics.


title: Parapsychology

text: According to Planer, "all research in medicine and other sciences would become illusionary, if the existence of PK had to be taken seriously; for no experiment could be relied upon to furnish objective results, since all measurements would become falsified to a greater or lesser degree, according to his PK ability, by the experimenter's wishes." Planer concluded the concept of psychokinesis is absurd and has no scientific basis.


title: Parapsychology

text: Philosopher and physicist Mario Bunge has written that "psychokinesis, or PK, violates the principle that mind cannot act directly on matter. (If it did, no experimenter could trust his readings of measuring instruments.) It also violates the principles of conservation of energy and momentum. The claim that quantum mechanics allows for the possibility of mental power influencing randomizers—an alleged case of micro-PK—is ludicrous since that theory respects the said conservation principles, and it deals exclusively with physical things."


title: Parapsychology

text: The physicist Robert L. Park questioned if mind really could influence matter then it would be easy for parapsychologists to measure such a phenomenon by using the alleged psychokinetic power to deflect a microbalance which would not require any dubious statistics but "the reason, of course, is that the microbalance stubbornly refuses to budge." Park has suggested the reason statistical studies are so popular in parapsychology is because they introduce opportunities for uncertainty and error which are used to support the biases of the experimenter. Park wrote "No proof of psychic phenomena is ever found. In spite of all the tests devised by parapsychologists like Jahn and Radin, and huge amounts of data collected over a period of many years, the results are no more convincing today than when they began their experiments."


title: Parapsychology

text: Parapsychological theories are viewed as pseudoscientific by the scientific community as they are incompatible with well-established laws of science. As there is no repeatable evidence for psi, the field is often regarded as a pseudoscience.


title: Parapsychology

text: The philosopher Raimo Tuomela summarized why the majority of scientists consider parapsychology to be a pseudoscience in his essay "Science, Protoscience, and Pseudoscience".


title: Parapsychology

text: The methods of parapsychologists are regarded by critics, including those who wrote the science standards for the California State Board of Education, to be pseudoscientific. Some of the more specific criticisms state that parapsychology does not have a clearly defined subject matter, an easily repeatable experiment that can demonstrate a psi effect on demand, nor an underlying theory to explain the paranormal transfer of information. James Alcock has stated that few of parapsychology's experimental results have prompted interdisciplinary research with more mainstream sciences such as physics or biology, and that parapsychology remains an isolated science to such an extent that its very legitimacy is questionable, and as a whole is not justified in being labeled "scientific".


title: Parapsychology

text: Alcock has written "Parapsychology is indistinguishable from pseudo-science, and its ideas are essentially those of magic... There is "no" evidence that would lead the cautious observer to believe that parapsychologists and paraphysicists are on the track of a real phenomenon, a real energy or power that has so far escaped the attention of those people engaged in "normal" science."


title: Parapsychology

text: The scientific community considers parapsychology a pseudoscience because it continues to explore the hypothesis that psychic abilities exist despite a century of experimental results that fail to conclusively demonstrate that hypothesis. A panel commissioned by the United States National Research Council to study paranormal claims concluded that "despite a 130-year record of scientific research on such matters, our committee could find no scientific justification for the existence of phenomena such as extrasensory perception, mental telepathy or 'mind over matter' exercises... Evaluation of a large body of the best available evidence simply does not support the contention that these phenomena exist."


title: Parapsychology

text: There is also an issue of non-falsifiability associated with psi. On this subject Terence Hines has written:


title: Parapsychology

text: Mario Bunge has written that research in parapsychology for over a hundred years has produced no single firm finding and no testable predictions. All parapsychologists can do is claim alleged data is anomalous and lying beyond the reach of ordinary science. The aim of parapsychologists "is not that of finding laws and systematizing them into theories in order to understand and forecast" but to "buttress ancient spiritualist myths or to serve as a surrogate for lost religions."


title: Parapsychology

text: The psychologist David Marks has written that parapsychologists have failed to produce a single repeatable demonstration of the paranormal and described psychical research as a pseudoscience, an "incoherent collection of belief systems steeped in fantasy, illusion and error." However, Chris French who is not convinced that parapsychology has demonstrated evidence for psi, has argued that parapsychological experiments still adhere to the scientific method, and should not be completely dismissed as pseudoscience. "Sceptics like myself will often point out that there's been systematic research in parapsychology for well over a century, and so far the wider scientific community is not convinced." French has noted his position is "the minority view among critics of parapsychology".


title: Parapsychology

text: Philosopher Bradley Dowden characterized parapsychology as a pseudoscience as parapsychologists have no valid theories to test and no reproducible data from their experiments.


title: Parapsychology

text: There have been instances of fraud in the history of parapsychology research. In the late 19th century the Creery Sisters (Mary, Alice, Maud, Kathleen, and Emily) were tested by the Society for Psychical Research and believed them to have genuine psychic ability; however, during a later experiment they were caught utilizing signal codes and they confessed to fraud. George Albert Smith and Douglas Blackburn were claimed to be genuine psychics by the Society for Psychical Research but Blackburn confessed to fraud:


title: Parapsychology

text: The experiments of Samuel Soal and K. M. Goldney of 1941–1943 (suggesting precognitive ability of a single participant) were long regarded as some of the best in the field because they relied upon independent checking and witnesses to prevent fraud. However, many years later, statistical evidence, uncovered and published by other parapsychologists in the field, suggested that Soal had cheated by altering some of the raw data.


title: Parapsychology

text: In 1974, a number of experiments by Walter J. Levy, J. B. Rhine's successor as director of the Institute for Parapsychology, were exposed as fraudulent. Levy had reported on a series of successful ESP experiments involving computer-controlled manipulation of non-human subjects, including rats. His experiments showed very high positive results. However, Levy's fellow researchers became suspicious about his methods. They found that Levy interfered with data-recording equipment, manually creating fraudulent strings of positive results. Levy confessed to the fraud and resigned.


title: Parapsychology

text: In 1974 Rhine published the paper "Security versus Deception in Parapsychology" in the Journal of Parapsychology which documented 12 cases of fraud that he had detected from 1940 to 1950 but refused to give the names of the participants in the studies. Massimo Pigliucci has written:


title: Parapsychology

text: Most damning of all, Rhine admitted publicly that he had uncovered at least twelve instances of dishonesty among his researchers in a single decade, from 1940 to 1950. However, he flaunted standard academic protocol by refusing to divulge the names of the fraudsters, which means that there is unknown number of published papers in the literature that claim paranormal effects while in fact they were the result of conscious deception.


title: Parapsychology

text: Martin Gardner claimed to have inside information that files in Rhine's laboratory contain material suggesting fraud on the part of Hubert Pearce. Pearce was never able to obtain above-chance results when persons other than the experimenter were present during an experiment, making it more likely that he was cheating in some way. Rhine's other subjects were only able to obtain non-chance levels when they were able to shuffle the cards, which has suggested they used tricks to arrange the order of the Zener cards before the experiments started.


title: Parapsychology

text: A researcher from Tarkio College in Missouri, James D. MacFarland, was suspected of falsifying data to achieve positive psi results. Before the fraud was discovered, MacFarland published two articles in the "Journal of Parapsychology" (1937 & 1938) supporting the existence of ESP. Presumably speaking about MacFarland, Louisa Rhine wrote that in reviewing the data submitted to the lab in 1938, the researchers at the Duke Parapsychology Lab recognized the fraud. "...before long they were all certain that Jim had consistently falsified his records... To produce extra hits, Jim had to resort to erasures and transpositions in the records of his call series." MacFarland never published another article in the Journal of Parapsychology after the fraud was discovered.


title: Parapsychology

text: Some instances of fraud amongst spiritualist mediums were exposed by early psychical researchers such as Richard Hodgson and Harry Price. In the 1920s, magician and escapologist Harry Houdini said that researchers and observers had not created experimental procedures which absolutely preclude fraud.


title: Parapsychology

text: Critical analysts, including some parapsychologists, are not satisfied with experimental parapsychology studies. Some reviewers, such as psychologist Ray Hyman, contend that apparently successful experimental results in psi research are more likely due to sloppy procedures, poorly trained researchers, or methodological flaws rather than to genuine psi effects. Fellow psychologist Stuart Vyse hearkens back to a time of data manipulation, now recognized as "p-hacking", as part of the issue. Within parapsychology there are disagreements over the results and methodology as well. For example, the experiments at the PEAR laboratory were criticized in a paper published by the "Journal of Parapsychology" in which parapsychologists independent from the PEAR laboratory concluded that these experiments "depart[ed] from criteria usually expected in formal scientific experimentation" due to "[p]roblems with regard to randomization, statistical baselines, application of statistical models, agent coding of descriptor lists, feedback to percipients, sensory cues, and precautions against cheating." They felt that the originally stated significance values were "meaningless".


title: Parapsychology

text: A typical measure of psi phenomena is statistical deviation from chance expectation. However, critics point out that statistical deviation is, strictly speaking, only evidence of a statistical anomaly, and the cause of the deviation is not known. Hyman contends that even if psi experiments could be designed that would regularly reproduce similar deviations from chance, they would not necessarily prove psychic functioning. Critics have coined the term "The Psi Assumption" to describe "the assumption that any significant departure from the laws of chance in a test of psychic ability is evidence that something anomalous or paranormal has occurred...[in other words] assuming what they should be proving." These critics hold that concluding the existence of psychic phenomena based on chance deviation in inadequately designed experiments is "affirming the consequent" or "begging the question."


title: Parapsychology

text: In 1979, magician and debunker James Randi engineered a hoax, now referred to as Project Alpha to encourage a tightening of standards within the parapsychology community. Randi recruited two young magicians and sent them undercover to Washington University's McDonnell Laboratory where they " fooled researchers ... into believing they had paranormal powers." The aim was to expose poor experimental methods and the credulity thought to be common in parapsychology. Randi has stated that both of his recruits deceived experimenters over a period of three years with demonstrations of supposedly psychic abilities: blowing electric fuses sealed in a box, causing a lightweight paper rotor perched atop a needle to turn inside a bell jar, bending metal spoons sealed in a glass bottle, etc. The hoax by Randi raised ethical concerns in the scientific and parapsychology communities, eliciting criticism even among skeptical communities such as the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), which he helped found, but also positive responses from the President of the Parapsychological Association Stanley Krippner. Psychologist Ray Hyman, a CSICOP member, called the results "counterproductive".


title: Parapsychology

text: Selective reporting has been offered by critics as an explanation for the positive results reported by parapsychologists. Selective reporting is sometimes referred to as a "file drawer" problem, which arises when only positive study results are made public, while studies with negative or null results are not made public. Selective reporting has a compounded effect on meta-analysis, which is a statistical technique that aggregates the results of many studies in order to generate sufficient statistical power to demonstrate a result that the individual studies themselves could not demonstrate at a statistically significant level. For example, a recent meta-analysis combined 380 studies on psychokinesis, including data from the PEAR lab. It concluded that, although there is a statistically significant overall effect, it is not consistent and relatively few negative studies would cancel it out. Consequently, biased publication of positive results could be the cause.


title: Parapsychology

text: The popularity of meta-analysis in parapsychology has been criticized by numerous researchers, and is often seen as troublesome even within parapsychology itself. Critics have said that parapsychologists misuse meta-analysis to create the incorrect impression that statistically significant results have been obtained that indicate the existence of psi phenomena. Physicist Robert Park states that parapsychology's reported positive results are problematic because most such findings are invariably at the margin of statistical significance and that might be explained by a number of confounding effects; Park states that such marginal results are a typical symptom of pathological science as described by Irving Langmuir.


title: Parapsychology

text: Researcher J. E. Kennedy has said that concerns over the use of meta-analysis in science and medicine apply as well to problems present in parapsychological meta-analysis. As a post-hoc analysis, critics emphasize the opportunity the method presents to produce biased outcomes via the selection of cases chosen for study, methods employed, and other key criteria. Critics say that analogous problems with meta-analysis have been documented in medicine, where it has been shown different investigators performing meta-analyses of the same set of studies have reached contradictory conclusions.


title: Parapsychology

text: In anomalistic psychology, paranormal phenomena have naturalistic explanations resulting from psychological and physical factors which have sometimes given the impression of paranormal activity to some people when, in fact, there have been none. According to the psychologist Chris French:


title: Parapsychology

text: Whilst parapsychology has been said to be in decline, anomalistic psychology has been reported to be on the rise. It is now offered as an option on many psychology degree programmes and is also an option on the A2 psychology syllabus in the UK.


title: Parapsychology

text: Organizations that encourage a critical examination of parapsychology and parapsychological research include the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, publisher of the "Skeptical Inquirer"; the James Randi Educational Foundation, founded by illusionist and skeptic James Randi, and the Occult Investigative Committee of the Society of American Magicians a society for professional magicians/illusionists that seeks "the promotion of harmony among magicians, and the opposition of the unnecessary public exposure of magical effects."


title: Startup company

text: A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship refers to all new businesses, including self-employment and businesses that never intend to become registered, startups refer to new businesses that intend to grow large beyond the solo founder. At the beginning, startups face high uncertainty and have high rates of failure, but a minority of them do go on to be successful and influential.


title: Startup company

text: Startups typically begin by a founder (solo-founder) or co-founders who have a way to solve a problem. The founder of a startup will begin market validation by problem interview, solution interview, and building a minimum viable product (MVP), i.e. a prototype, to develop and validate their business models. The startup process can take a long period of time (by some estimates, three years or longer), and hence sustaining effort is required. Over the long term, sustaining effort is especially challenging because of the high failure rates and uncertain outcomes. Having a business plan in place outlines what to do and how to plan and achieve an idea in the future. Typically, these plans outline the first 3 to 5 years of your business strategy.


title: Startup company

text: Models behind startups presenting as ventures are usually associated with design science. Design science uses design principles considered to be a coherent set of normative ideas and propositions to design and construct the company's backbone. For example, one of the initial design principles is "affordable loss".


title: Startup company

text: Because of the lack of information, high uncertainty, the need to make decisions quickly, founders of startups use many heuristics and exhibit biases in their startup actions. Biases and heuristics are parts of our cognitive toolboxes in the decision-making process. They help us decide quickly as possible under uncertainty but sometimes become erroneous and fallacious.


title: Startup company

text: Entrepreneurs often become overconfident about their startups and their influence on an outcome (case of "the illusion of control"). Entrepreneurs tend to believe they have more degree of control over events, discounting the role of luck. Below are some of the most critical decision biases of entrepreneurs to start up a new business.


title: Startup company

text: Startups use several action principles to generate evidence as quickly as possible to reduce the downside effect of decision biases such as an escalation of commitment, overconfidence, and the illusion of control.


title: Startup company

text: Many entrepreneurs seek feedback from mentors in creating their startups. Mentors guide founders and impart entrepreneurial skills and may increase the self-efficacy of nascent entrepreneurs. Mentoring offers direction for entrepreneurs to enhance their knowledge of how to sustain their assets relating to their status and identity and strengthen their real-time skills.


title: Startup company

text: Lean startup is a clear set of principles to create and design startups under limited resources and tremendous uncertainty to build their ventures more flexibly and at a lower cost. It is based on the idea that entrepreneurs can make their implicit assumptions about how their venture works explicit and empirically testing it. The empirical test is to de/validate these assumptions and to get an engaged understanding of the business model of the new ventures, and in doing so, the new ventures are created iteratively in a build–measure–learn loop. Hence, lean startup is a set of principles for entrepreneurial learning and business model design. More precisely, it is a set of design principles aimed for iteratively experiential learning under uncertainty in an engaged empirical manner. Typically, lean startup focuses on a few lean principles:


title: Startup company

text: A key principle of startup is to validate the market need before providing a customer-centric product or service to avoid business ideas with weak demand. Market validation can be done in a number of ways, including surveys, cold calling, email responses, word of mouth or through sample research.


title: Startup company

text: Design thinking is used to understand the customers' need in an engaged manner. Design thinking and customer development can be biased because they do not remove the risk of bias because the same biases will manifest themselves in the sources of information, the type of information sought, and the interpretation of that information. Encouraging people to “consider the opposite” of whatever decision they are about to make tends to reduce biases such as overconfidence, the hindsight bias, and anchoring (Larrick, 2004; Mussweiler, Strack, & Pfeiffer, 2000).


title: Startup company

text: In startups, many decisions are made under uncertainty, and hence a key principle for startups is to be agile and flexible. Founders can embed options to design startups in flexible manners, so that the startups can change easily in future.


title: Startup company

text: Uncertainty can vary within-person (I feel more uncertain this year than last year) and between-person (he feels more uncertain than she does). A study found that when entrepreneurs feel more uncertain, they identify more opportunities (within-person difference), but entrepreneurs who perceive more uncertainties than others do not identify more opportunities than others do (no between-person difference).


title: Startup company

text: Startups may form partnerships with other firms to enable their business model to operate. To become attractive to other businesses, startups need to align their internal features, such as management style and products with the market situation. In their 2013 study, Kask and Linton develop two ideal profiles, or also known as configurations or archetypes, for startups that are commercializing inventions. The "inheritor" profile calls for a management style that is not too entrepreneurial (more conservative) and the startup should have an incremental invention (building on a previous standard). This profile is set out to be more successful (in finding a business partner) in a market that has a dominant design (a clear standard is applied in this market). In contrast to this profile is the "originator" which has a management style that is highly entrepreneurial and in which a radical invention or a disruptive innovation (totally new standard) is being developed. This profile is set out to be more successful (in finding a business partner) in a market that does not have a dominant design (established standard). New startups should align themselves to one of the profiles when commercializing an invention to be able to find and be attractive to a business partner. By finding a business partner, a startup has greater chances of becoming successful.


title: Startup company

text: Startups usually need many different partners to realize their business idea. The commercialization process is often a bumpy road with iterations and new insights during the process. Hasche and Linton (2018) argue that startups can learn from their relationships with other firms, and even if the relationship ends, the startup will have gained valuable knowledge about how it should move on going forward. When a relationship is failing for a startup it needs to make changes. Three types of changes can be identified according to Hasche and Linton (2018):


title: Startup company

text: Startups need to learn at a huge speed before running out of resources. Proactive actions (experimentation, searching, etc.) enhance a founder's learning to start a company. To learn effectively, founders often formulate falsifiable hypotheses, build a minimum viable product (MVP), and conduct A/B testing.


title: Startup company

text: With the key learnings from market validation, design thinking, and lean startup, founders can design a business model. However it's important not to dive into business models too early before there is sufficient learning on market validation. Paul Graham said "What I tell founders is not to sweat the business model too much at first. The most important task at first is to build something people want. If you don’t do that, it won’t matter how clever your business model is."


title: Startup company

text: Founders or co-founders are people involved in the initial launch of startup companies. Anyone can be a co-founder, and an existing company can also be a co-founder, but the most common co-founders are founder-CEOs, engineers, hackers, web developers, web designers and others involved in the ground level of a new, often venture. The founder that is responsible for the overall strategy of the startup plays the role of founder-CEOs, much like CEOs in established firms. Startup studios provide an opportunity for founders and team members to grow along with the business they help to build. In order to create forward momentum, founders must ensure that they provide opportunities for their team members to grow and evolve within the company.


title: Startup company

text: The language of securities regulation in the United States considers co-founders to be "promoters" under Regulation D. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission definition of "Promoter" includes: (i) Any person who, acting alone or in conjunction with one or more other persons, directly or indirectly takes initiative in founding and organizing the business or enterprise of an issuer; However, not every promoter is a co-founder. In fact, there is no formal, legal definition of what makes somebody a co-founder. The right to call oneself a co-founder can be established through an agreement with one's fellow co-founders or with permission of the board of directors, investors, or shareholders of a startup company. When there is no definitive agreement (like shareholders' agreement), disputes about who the co-founders are, can arise.


title: Startup company

text: Self-efficacy refers to the confidence an individual has to create a new business or startup. It has a strong relation with startup actions. Entrepreneurs' sense of self-efficacy can play a major role in how they approach goals, tasks, and challenges. Entrepreneurs with high self-efficacy—that is, those who believe they can perform well—are more likely to view difficult tasks as something to be mastered rather than something to be avoided.


title: Startup company

text: Entrepreneurs often feel stressed. They have internal and external pressures. Internally, they need to meet deadlines to develop the prototypes and get the product or service ready for market. Externally they are expected to meet milestones of investors and other stakeholders to ensure continued resources from them on the startups. Coping with stress is critical to entrepreneurs because of the stressful nature of start up a new firm under uncertainty. Coping with stress unsuccessfully could lead to emotional exhaustion, and the founders may close or exit the startups.


title: Startup company

text: Sustaining effort is required as the startup process can take a long period of time, by one estimate, three years or longer (Carter et al., 1996; Reynolds & Miller, 1992). Sustaining effort over the long term is especially challenging because of the high failure rates and uncertain outcomes.


title: Startup company

text: Some startup founders have a more casual or offbeat attitude in their dress, office space and marketing, as compared to executives in established corporations. For example, startup founders in the 2010s wore hoodies, sneakers and other casual clothes to business meetings. Their offices may have recreational facilities in them, such as pool tables, ping pong tables, football tables and pinball machines, which are used to create a fun work environment, stimulate team development and team spirit, and encourage creativity. Some of the casual approaches, such as the use of "flat" organizational structures, in which regular employees can talk with the founders and chief executive officers informally, are done to promote efficiency in the workplace, which is needed to get their business off the ground.


title: Startup company

text: In a 1960 study, Douglas McGregor stressed that punishments and rewards for uniformity in the workplace are not necessary because some people are born with the motivation to work without incentives. Some startups do not use a strict command and control hierarchical structure, with executives, managers, supervisors and employees. Some startups offer employees incentives such as stock options, to increase their "buy in" from the start up (as these employees stand to gain if the company does well). This removal of stressors allows the workers and researchers in the startup to focus less on the work environment around them, and more on achieving the task at hand, giving them the potential to achieve something great for both themselves and their company.


title: Startup company

text: The failure rate of startup companies is very high. A 2014 article in "Fortune" estimated that 90% of startups ultimately fail. In a sample of 101 unsuccessful startups, companies reported that experiencing one or more of five common factors were the reason for failure; lack of consumer interest in the product or service (42% of failures), funding or cash problems (29%), personnel or staffing problems (23%), competition from rival companies (19%) and problems with pricing of the product or service (18%). In cases of funding problems it can leave employees without paychecks. Sometimes these companies are purchased by other companies if they are deemed to be viable, but oftentimes they leave employees with very little recourse to recoup lost income for worked time. More than one-third of founders believe that running out of money led to failure. Second to that, founders attribute their failure to a lack of financing or investor interest. These common mistakes and missteps that happen early in the startup journey can result in failure, but there are precautions entrepreneurs can take to help mitigate risk. For example, startup studios offer a buffer against many of the obstacles that solo entrepreneurs face, such as funding and insufficient team structure, making them a good resource for startups in their earliest phases.


title: Startup company

text: Failed entrepreneurs, or restarters, who after some time restart in the same sector with more or less the same activities, have an increased chance of becoming a better entrepreneur. However, some studies indicate that restarters are more heavily discouraged in Europe than in the US.


title: Startup company

text: Many institutions and universities provide training on startups. In the context of universities, some of the courses are entrepreneurship courses that also deal with the topic of startups, while other courses are specifically dedicated to startups. Startup courses are found both in traditional economic or business disciplines as well as the side of information technology disciplines. As startups are often focused on software, they are also occasionally taught while focusing on software development alongside the business aspects of a startup.


title: Startup company

text: Founders go through a lot to set up a startup. A startup requires patience and resilience, and training programs need to have both the business components and the psychological components. Entrepreneurship education is effective in increasing the entrepreneurial attitudes and perceived behavioral control, helping people and their businesses grow. Most of startup training falls into the mode of experiential learning (Cooper et al., 2004; Pittaway and Cope, 2007), in which students are exposed to a large extent to a real-life entrepreneurship context as new venture teams (Wu et al., 2009). An example of group-based experiential startup training is the Lean LaunchPad initiative that applies the principles of customer development (Blank and Dorf, 2012) and Lean Startup (Ries, 2011) to technology-based startup projects.


title: Startup company

text: As startups are typically thought to operate under a notable lack of resources, have little or no operating history, and to consist of individuals with little practical experience, it is possible to simulate startups in a classroom setting with reasonable accuracy. In fact, it is not uncommon for students to actually participate in real startups during and after their studies. Similarly, university courses teaching software startup themes often have students found mock-up startups during the courses and encourage them to make them into real startups should they wish to do so. Such mock-up startups, however, may not be enough to accurately simulate real-world startup practice if the challenges typically faced by startups (e.g. lack of funding to keep operating) are not present in the course setting.


title: Startup company

text: To date, much of the entrepreneurship training is yet personalized to match the participants and the training.


title: Startup company

text: The size and maturity of the startup ecosystem is where a startup is launched and where it grows to have an effect on the volume and success of the startups. The startup ecosystem consists of the individuals (entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, angel investors, mentors, advisors); institutions and organizations (top research universities and institutes, business schools and entrepreneurship programs and centres operated by universities and colleges, non-profit entrepreneurship support organizations, government entrepreneurship programs and services, Chambers of commerce) business incubators and business accelerators and top-performing entrepreneurial firms and startups. A region with all of these elements is considered to be a "strong" startup ecosystem.


title: Startup company

text: One of the most famous startup ecosystems is Silicon Valley in California, where major computer and internet firms and top universities such as Stanford University create a stimulating startup environment. Boston (where Massachusetts Institute of Technology is located) and Berlin, home of WISTA (a top research area), also have numerous creative industries, leading entrepreneurs and startup firms. Basically, attempts are being made worldwide, for example in Israel with its Silicon Wadi, in France with the Inovallée or in Italy in Trieste with the AREA Science Park, to network basic research, universities and technology parks in order to create a startup-friendly ecosystem.


title: Startup company

text: Although there are startups created in all types of businesses, and all over the world, some locations and business sectors are particularly associated with startup companies. The internet bubble of the late 1990s was associated with huge numbers of internet startup companies, some selling the technology to provide internet access, others using the internet to provide services. Most of this startup activity was located in the most well-known startup ecosystem - Silicon Valley, an area of northern California renowned for the high level of startup company activity:


title: Startup company

text: Startup advocates are also trying to build a community of tech startups in New York City with organizations like NY Tech Meet Up and Built in NYC. In the early 2000s, the patent assets of failed startup companies were being purchased by people known as patent trolls, who assert those patents against companies that might be infringing the technology covered by the patents.


title: Startup company

text: Startup investing is the action of making an investment in an early-stage company. Beyond founders' own contributions, some startups raise additional investment at some or several stages of their growth. Not all startups trying to raise investments are successful in their fundraising.


title: Startup company

text: In the United States, the solicitation of funds became easier for startups as result of the JOBS Act. Prior to the advent of equity crowdfunding, a form of online investing that has been legalized in several nations, startups did not advertise themselves to the general public as investment opportunities until and unless they first obtained approval from regulators for an initial public offering (IPO) that typically involved a listing of the startup's securities on a stock exchange. Today, there are many alternative forms of IPO commonly employed by startups and startup promoters that do not include an exchange listing, so they may avoid certain regulatory compliance obligations, including mandatory periodic disclosures of financial information and factual discussion of business conditions by management that investors and potential investors routinely receive from registered public companies.


title: Startup company

text: Investors are generally most attracted to those new companies distinguished by their strong co-founding team, a balanced "risk/reward" profile (in which high risk due to the untested, disruptive innovations is balanced out by high potential returns) and "scalability" (the likelihood that a startup can expand its operations by serving more markets or more customers). Attractive startups generally have lower "bootstrapping" (self-funding of startups by the founders) costs, higher risk, and higher potential return on investment. Successful startups are typically more scalable than an established business, in the sense that the startup has the potential to grow rapidly with a limited investment of capital, labor or land. Timing has often been the single most important factor for biggest startup successes, while at the same time it's identified to be one of the hardest things to master by many serial entrepreneurs and investors.


title: Startup company

text: Startups have several options for funding. Revenue-based financing lenders can help startup companies by providing non-dilutive growth capital in exchange for a percentage of monthly revenue. Venture capital firms and angel investors may help startup companies begin operations, exchanging seed money for an equity stake in the firm. Venture capitalists and angel investors provide financing to a range of startups (a portfolio), with the expectation that a very small number of the startups will become viable and make money. In practice though, many startups are initially funded by the founders themselves using "bootstrapping", in which loans or monetary gifts from friends and family are combined with savings and credit card debt to finance the venture. Factoring is another option, though it is not unique to startups. Other funding opportunities include various forms of crowdfunding, for example equity crowdfunding, in which the startup seeks funding from a large number of individuals, typically by pitching their idea on the Internet.


title: Startup company

text: Startups can receive funding via more involved stakeholders, such as startup studios. Startup studios provide funding to support the business through a successful launch, but they also provide extensive operational support, such as HR, finance and accounting, marketing, and product development, to increase the probability of success and propel growth.


title: Startup company

text: While some (would-be) entrepreneurs believe that they can't start a company without funding from VC, Angel, etc. that is not the case. In fact, many entrepreneurs have founded successful businesses for almost no capital, including the founders of MailChimp, Shopify, and ShutterStock.


title: Startup company

text: If a company's value is based on its technology, it is often equally important for the business owners to obtain intellectual property protection for their idea. The newsmagazine "The Economist" estimated that up to 75% of the value of US public companies is now based on their intellectual property (up from 40% in 1980). Often, 100% of a small startup company's value is based on its intellectual property. As such, it is important for technology-oriented startup companies to develop a sound strategy for protecting their intellectual capital as early as possible. Startup companies, particularly those associated with new technology, sometimes produce huge returns to their creators and investors—a recent example of such is Google, whose creators became billionaires through their stock ownership and options.


title: Startup company

text: When investing in a startup, there are different types of stages in which the investor can participate. The first round is called seed round. The seed round generally is when the startup is still in the very early phase of execution when their product is still in the prototype phase. There is likely no performance data or positive financials as of yet. Therefore, investors rely on strength of the idea and the team in place. At this level, family friends and angel investors will be the ones participating. At this stage the level of risk and payoff are at their greatest. The next round is called Series A. At this point the company already has traction and may be making revenue. In Series A rounds venture capital firms will be participating alongside angels or super angel investors. The next rounds are Series B, C, and D. These three rounds are the ones leading towards the Initial Public Offering (IPO). Venture capital firms and private equity firms will be participating. Series B: Companies are generating consistent revenue but must scale to meet growing demand. Series C & D: Companies with strong financial performance looking to expand to new markets, develop new products, make an acquisition, and/or preparing for IPO.


title: Startup company

text: After the Great Depression, which was blamed in part on a rise in speculative investments in unregulated small companies, startup investing was primarily a word of mouth activity reserved for the friends and family of a startup's co-founders, business angels, and Venture Capital funds. In the United States, this has been the case ever since the implementation of the Securities Act of 1933. Many nations implemented similar legislation to prohibit general solicitation and general advertising of unregistered securities, including shares offered by startup companies. In 2005, a new Accelerator investment model was introduced by Y Combinator that combined fixed terms investment model with fixed period intense bootcamp style training program, to streamline the seed/early-stage investment process with training to be more systematic.


title: Startup company

text: Following Y Combinator, many accelerators with similar models have emerged around the world. The accelerator model has since become very common and widely spread and they are key organizations of any Startup ecosystem. Title II of the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act (JOBS Act), first implemented on 23 September 2013, granted startups in and startup co-founders or promoters in US. the right to generally solicit and advertise publicly using any method of communication on the condition that only accredited investors are allowed to purchase the securities. However the regulations affecting equity crowdfunding in different countries vary a lot with different levels and models of freedom and restrictions. In many countries there are no limitations restricting general public from investing to startups, while there can still be other types of restrictions in place, like limiting the amount that companies can seek from investors. Due to positive development and growth of crowdfunding, many countries are actively updating their regulation in regards to crowdfunding.


title: Startup company

text: The first known investment-based crowdfunding platform for startups was launched in Feb. 2010 by Grow VC, followed by the first US. based company ProFounder launching model for startups to raise investments directly on the site, but ProFounder later decided to shut down its business due regulatory reasons preventing them from continuing, having launched their model for US. markets prior to JOBS Act. With the positive progress of the JOBS Act for crowd investing in US., equity crowdfunding platforms like SeedInvest and CircleUp started to emerge in 2011 and platforms such as investiere, Companisto and Seedrs in Europe and OurCrowd in Israel. The idea of these platforms is to streamline the process and resolve the two main points that were taking place in the market. The first problem was for startups to be able to access capital and to decrease the amount of time that it takes to close a round of financing. The second problem was intended to increase the amount of deal flow for the investor and to also centralize the process.


title: Startup company

text: Internal startups are a form of corporate entrepreneurship. Large or well-established companies often try to promote innovation by setting up "internal startups", new business divisions that operate at arm's length from the rest of the company. Examples include Bell Labs, a research unit within the Bell System and Target Corporation (which began as an internal startup of the Dayton's department store chain) and threedegrees, a product developed by an internal startup of Microsoft. To accommodate startups internally, companies, such as Google has made strides to make purchased startups and their workers feel at home in their offices, even letting them bring their dogs to work.


title: Startup company

text: Some startups become big and they become unicorns, i.e. privately held startup companies valued at over US$1 billion. The term was coined in 2013 by venture capitalist Aileen Lee, choosing the mythical animal to represent the statistical rarity of such successful ventures. According to "TechCrunch", there were 452 unicorns as of May 2019, and most of the unicorns are in the USA, followed by China. The unicorns are concentrated in a few countries. The unicorn leaders are the U.S. with 196 companies, China with 165, India with 107 and the U.K. with 16. The largest unicorns included Ant Financial, ByteDance, DiDi, Uber, Xiaomi, and Airbnb. When the value of a company is over US$10 billion, the company will be called as a Decacorn. When the company is valued over US$100 billion, Hectocorn will be used.


title: Eric Lively

text: Eric Lawrence Lively (né Brown; born July 31, 1981) is an American actor. He played the role of Andy Evans in "Speak" (2004), Carey Bell in "So Weird" (1999–2001), and Mark Wayland in "The L Word" (2005).


title: Eric Lively

text: Eric Lawrence Lively was born in Atlanta, Georgia. He has a sister, actress Blake Lively, half-sisters Lori and Robyn Lively, and a half-brother, Jason Lively, who played Rusty in "National Lampoon's European Vacation". He is the son of actor Ernie Lively ("né" Ernest Wilson Brown Jr.) and talent manager Elaine Lively ("née" McAlpin). All of his four siblings have been in the entertainment industry.


title: Eric Lively

text: Lively's first film was as a baby in the 1983 film "Brainstorm". After graduating from high school, Lively moved to New York City to study photography, his first passion. He studied photography at Parsons The New School for Design in New York City. At one time, he was an Abercrombie and Fitch model.


title: Eric Lively

text: He guest starred on an episode of "Full House" at age 13, where he played Stephanie Tanner's first boyfriend. He had a role in "American Pie" (1999). He followed this up on the television series "So Weird", on which he played Carey Bell from 2000 to 2001. He learned to play the guitar for his character on "So Weird". Lively then became a cast member of the short-lived 2003 Norm Macdonald series "A Minute With Stan Hooper". In 2004 he acted in "Speak" with Kristen Stewart. In 2005, Lively was offered two different television roles – on "24" and "The L Word". He took the role on "The L Word" as documentary filmmaker Mark Wayland. He chose a recurring role on "The L Word" over a regular role on "24" because he felt the subject matter was more important. He was part of the cast of the WB series "Modern Men" from March until May 2006. He was the main character in "The Butterfly Effect 2" in 2006.


title: Eric Lively

text: Lively played the president's son, Roger Taylor, in "", a television film prequel to the seventh season of "24".


title: Eric Lively

text: He appeared as Pink's on-screen boyfriend in her music video "Please Don't Leave Me" in 2009, with stuntman Justin Sundquist serving as his stunt double. In 2012, he guest starred in the Lifetime series "The Client List". In 2013 Lively played in "A Madea Christmas" as Conner.


title: Jeppson's Malört

text: Jeppson's Malört is a brand of bäsk liquor, introduced in the 1930s, and long produced by Chicago's Carl Jeppson Company. In 2018, as its last employee was retiring, the brand was sold to CH Distillery of Chicago's Pilsen neighborhood. Jeppson's Malört is named after Carl Jeppson, a Swedish immigrant who first distilled and popularized the liquor in Chicago. (literally "moth herb") is the Swedish word for wormwood, which is the key ingredient in a bäsk, a bitter-flavored type of Swedish brännvin.


title: Jeppson's Malört

text: Malört is known for its bitter taste. It can be found in some Chicago-area taverns and liquor stores, and is growing in popularity there, but is hard to find elsewhere in the United States.


title: Jeppson's Malört

text: In the 1930s Carl Jeppson, a Swedish immigrant to Chicago, began marketing his homemade brew. He sold it from door to door for medicinal and other purposes, and one legend says he preferred the strong taste because years of smoking had dulled his taste-buds. Attorney George Brode purchased the original recipe from Jeppson and created the famous Jeppson's Malört testimonial that once appeared on every bottle. Patricia Gabelick was hired by Brode as his secretary in 1966, and took over the business after Brode's death in 1999, running it out of her Lakeview apartment.


title: Jeppson's Malört

text: It was made in Chicago until the mid-1970s, when the Mar-Salle distillery that produced it for the Carl Jeppson Company closed. It was then made in Kentucky briefly, after which it was produced in Florida for many years. In 2018, Jeppson's Malört was acquired by Chicago-based CH Distillery, and in 2019 production was moved back to Chicago.


title: Jeppson's Malört

text: The label contains a shield with a version of Chicago's flag. Although the city's flag has had four red stars since 1939, the label bears the three red stars of the 1933 flag.


title: Jeppson's Malört

text: While Gabelick acknowledged that the drink is a "niche liquor," selling a comparatively small number of cases annually, it has gained increased relevance among bartenders, bikers, and Chicago's southside community, where Gabelick notes that it has become "a rite of passage." The satirist John Hodgman has also adopted the drink in his stage show, offering shots to his audience. In an interview with Gothamist blog "Chicagoist", John Hodgman said Jeppson's Malört "tastes like pencil shavings and heartbreak."


title: Jeppson's Malört

text: For many years, it was only sold in the Chicago area. In summer 2013, Chicago bar Red Door featured Malört–infused snow cones (it has a summer tradition of serving snow cones doused with alcohol). The liquor is mixed with Benedictine and Angostura orange. West Town's Hoosier Mama Pie Co. used Jeppson's in 2017 for "a meringue-style pie", called the Chicago Sunrise.


title: Jeppson's Malört

text: In Joe Swanberg's 2013 film "Drinking Buddies", drinking a shot of Malört is described as a Chicago tradition for erasing past mistakes. In it, actor Jason Sudeikis' character riffs that Malört is like swallowing a burnt condom filled with gasoline. In a similar vein, Tremaine Atkinson, founder of CH Distillery, was introduced to Malört when he first moved to Chicago, when he compared it to "taking a bite out of a grapefruit and then drinking a shot of gasoline". Malört makes up half of the beer boilermaker called the Chicago Handshake (the other half is an Old Style beer).


title: Jeppson's Malört

text: In August 2015, the High-Hat Club was voted Best Malört Bar in Chicago and was awarded the Carl Cup, a perpetual trophy that is passed from past to current champions in a manner similar to the Stanley Cup.


title: Jeppson's Malört

text: While "Malört" is sometimes mistaken for the common name of the style of liquor, the word is the trademarked brand name owned by Carl Jeppson Company. The company secured the trademark on November 3, 2015. Other distillers that produced a similar spirit renamed theirs beforehand. Letherbee reverted to the generic "Bësk", while FEW Spirits dubbed theirs "Anguish and Regret".


title: Diana Hyland

text: Diana Hyland (born Diane Gentner; January 25, 1936 – March 27, 1977) was an American stage, film and television actress.


title: Diana Hyland

text: Hyland was born Diane Gentner to John Theodore and Mary (Gorman) Gentner in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. She had one sibling, a brother, John Gorman Gentner.


title: Diana Hyland

text: She made her acting debut in 1955 at age 19 in an episode of "Robert Montgomery Presents". Over the next decade she appeared often in guest and supporting roles in various television series, including "Naked City", "The Eleventh Hour", "The Fugitive", "The Invaders" and "The Twilight Zone" as well as cast in the feature film "The Chase" (1966) with Marlon Brando, Jane Fonda, and Robert Redford.


title: Diana Hyland

text: In 1959, she originated the role of Heavenly Finley in Tennessee Williams' "Sweet Bird of Youth" on Broadway, appearing with Geraldine Page and Paul Newman.


title: Diana Hyland

text: In 1966, she co-starred in the movie "Smoky" in which she played Julie Richards, owner of the Rockin' R Ranch, who falls in love with Clint Barkeley (Fess Parker), owner of Smokey, a black stallion turned cutting horse. The same year she appeared in an episode of the TV series "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." titled "The Candidate's Wife Affair", and in another episode titled "The Nowhere Affair". From 1958 to 1963, Hyland was a regular on the NBC soap opera "Young Doctor Malone", playing Gig Houseman, wife of the younger Dr. Malone.


title: Diana Hyland

text: Hyland's debut in a feature film was in "One Man's Way" (1963), playing the wife of Norman Vincent Peale. She had a continuing role as Susan Winter in the prime-time soap opera "Peyton Place" from 1968 to 1969. She appeared in the 1976 television movie "The Boy in the Plastic Bubble", for which she won a posthumous Emmy Award. The following year, she co-starred with Dick Van Patten in the series "Eight Is Enough", but appeared in only four episodes before her death, and her character, Joan Bradford was written to have died as well.


title: Diana Hyland

text: Hyland married actor Joe Goodson on April 24, 1969. The couple had one son, Zachary, born in July 1973. Hyland and Goodson divorced in August 1974.


title: Diana Hyland

text: She began a romantic relationship with actor John Travolta, 18 years her junior, in 1976 after meeting him when she played his mother in the television movie "The Boy in the Plastic Bubble".


title: Diana Hyland

text: Hyland was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1977, and underwent a mastectomy. However, the cancer spread and her health deteriorated. Hyland and Travolta remained together until her death at age 41 on March 27, 1977, in Los Angeles.


title: Ken Norton

text: Kenneth Howard Norton Sr. (August 9, 1943 – September 18, 2013) was an American professional boxer who competed from 1967 to 1981, and held the WBC world heavyweight championship in 1978. He is best known for his fights with Muhammad Ali, in which Norton won the first by split decision, lost the second by split decision, and lost the final by a controversial unanimous decision. Norton also fought a slugfest with Larry Holmes in 1978, narrowly losing a split decision.


title: Ken Norton

text: Norton retired from boxing in 1981, and was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1992.


title: Ken Norton

text: Norton was an outstanding athlete at Jacksonville High School in Jacksonville, Illinois. He was selected to the all-state football team on defense as a senior in 1960. His track coach entered him in eight events, and Norton placed first in seven. As a result, the "Ken Norton Rule", which limits participation of an athlete to a maximum of four track and field events, was instituted in Illinois high school sports. After graduating from high school, Norton went to Northeast Missouri State University (now Truman State University) on a football scholarship and studied elementary education. In an interview with "ESPN Fitness Magazine" in 1985, Norton said that he would have become a teacher or a policeman if he had not taken up boxing.


title: Ken Norton

text: Norton enlisted into the United States Marines Corps after leaving school, serving from 1963 to 1967. Norton was a manual morse intercept (MOS 2621), graduating from NCTC Corry Station, Pensacola, Florida. During his time with the Corps, he took up boxing, compiling a 24–2 record en route to three all-Marine heavyweight titles. In time, he became the best boxer to ever fight for the Corps and was awarded the North Carolina AAU Golden Gloves, International AAU, and Pan American titles. Following the National AAU finals in 1967, he turned professional.


title: Ken Norton

text: Norton built up a steady string of wins, some against journeyman fighters and others over fringe contenders like the giant Jack O'Halloran. He suffered a surprise defeat in 1970 just after "The Ring" magazine had profiled him as a prospect, to heavy-hitting Venezuelan boxer Jose Luis Garcia, who was unknown at the time. Norton overpowered Garcia in their rematch five years later, when both were rated contenders.


title: Ken Norton

text: Norton was given the motivational book "Think and Grow Rich" by Napoleon Hill, which he said "changed my life dramatically. I was going to fight Muhammad Ali. I was a green fighter, but yet I won, all through reading this book." Upon reading "Think and Grow Rich", he went on a 14-fight winning streak, including the shock victory over Muhammad Ali in 1973 to win the North American Boxing Federation heavyweight champion title. Norton said, "These words [from Napoleon Hill's "Think and Grow Rich"] were the final inspiration in my victory over Ali: 'Life's battles don't always go to the stronger or faster man, but sooner or later the man who wins is the man who thinks he can'." Norton also took a complete course by Hill on gaining wealth and peace of mind. "It can be related to anybody, to be the best in a career, to think positive", said Norton.


title: Ken Norton

text: In an article which appeared in "The Southeast Missourian" Norton said, “One thing I do is only watch films of the fights in which I've done well or in which my opponent has done poorly.'" He also said, "In boxing, and in all of life, nobody should ever stop learning!"


title: Ken Norton

text: 'Name' opponents were elusive in Norton's early career. His first big break came with a clear win over respected contender Henry Clark, which helped him gain world recognition. His big break was when Ali agreed to a match. Joe Frazier, who'd sparred with Norton and defeated Ali presciently said of Ali, "He'll have plenty of trouble!" Though both were top boxers in the mid 1970s, Norton and Frazier never fought each other, in part because they shared the same trainer, Eddie Futch, and also because they were good friends and didn't want to fight each other.


title: Ken Norton

text: For the first match, on March 31, 1973, Muhammad Ali entered the ring at the San Diego Sports Arena wearing a robe given to him by Elvis Presley, as a 1–5 favorite versus Norton, then rated a number 6 world contender in a bout televised by ABC's "Wide World of Sports". Norton won a 12-round split decision over Ali in his adopted hometown of San Diego to win the NABF heavyweight title. In this bout, Norton broke Ali's jaw in the second round causing Ali to fight defensively for the remaining 10 rounds. This led to only the second defeat for "The Greatest" in his career. (Ali's only previous loss was to Frazier, and Ali would later go on to defeat George Foreman to regain the heavyweight title in 1974.)


title: Ken Norton

text: Almost six months later at The Forum in Inglewood, California, on September 10, 1973, Ali won a close split decision. Norton weighed in at 206 lbs (5 pounds lighter than his first match with Ali) and some boxing writers suggested that his preparation was too intense and that perhaps he had overtrained. There were some furious exchanges in this hard-fought battle. From Ali's point of view, a loss here would have seriously dented his claim of ever being "The Greatest." During the ABC broadcast of the fight, broadcaster (and Ali confidant and friend) Howard Cosell repeatedly told viewers a dancing and jabbing Ali was dominating the action despite Norton's constant offense and Ali's inability to penetrate Norton's awkward crab-like cross-armed defensive style. The close scoring and decision favoring Ali were both controversial.


title: Ken Norton

text: In 1974, Norton fought Foreman for the world heavyweight championship at the Poliedro de Caracas in Caracas, Venezuela, suffering a second-round knockout. After an even first round, Foreman staggered Norton with an uppercut a minute into round two, pushing him into the ropes. Norton did not hit the canvas, but continued on wobbly legs, clearly not having recovered. He shortly went down a further two times in quick succession, with the referee intervening and stopping the fight.


title: Ken Norton

text: In 1975, Norton regained the NABF heavyweight title when he impressively defeated Jerry Quarry by TKO in the fifth round. Norton then avenged his 1970 loss to Jose Luis Garcia by decisively knocking out Garcia in round five.


title: Ken Norton

text: On September 28, 1976, Norton fought his third and final bout against Ali at Yankee Stadium in New York City. Since their last meeting Ali had regained the world heavyweight championship title with an eighth-round knockout of George Foreman in 1974. Many observers have felt this fight marked the beginning of Ali's decline as a boxer. The Norton bout was a tough bruising battle for Ali. In one of the most disputed fights in history, the contest was even on the judges' scorecards going into the final round, which Ali won on both the referee's and judges' scorecards to retain the championship. The two judges, Harold Lederman and Barney Smith, scored the bout 8–7 for Ali, while referee Arthur Mercante scored it 8–6-1 for Ali. At the end of the last round, the commentator announced he would be "very surprised" if Norton has not won the fight.


title: Ken Norton

text: At the time of the bout the last time a heavyweight champion had lost the title by decision was Max Baer to Jimmy Braddock 41 years earlier. The January 1998 issue of "Boxing Monthly" listed Ali-Norton as the fifth most disputed title fight decision in boxing history. The unofficial United Press International scorecard was 8–7 for Norton, and the unofficial Associated Press scorecards were 9–6 for Ali (Ed Schuyler), and 8–7 Norton (Wick Temple).


title: Ken Norton

text: Despite earning a victory, Ali received a pounding. His tactics were to try to push Norton back, but they had failed. He'd refused to 'dance' until the 9th. Norton has said the third fight with Ali was the last boxing match for which he was fully motivated, owing to his disappointment at having lost a fight he believed he had clearly won.


title: Ken Norton

text: In 1977, Norton knocked out previously unbeaten top prospect Duane Bobick in one round, then dispatched European title holder Lorenzo Zanon in a 'tune-up' fight. Light-hitting but fast, Zanon was well ahead until a burst of heavy punches put him down and out.


title: Ken Norton

text: Norton then defeated polished number two contender Jimmy Young (who had beaten Foreman for the former champion's second loss, as well as twice top heavyweight contender Ron Lyle) via 15-round split decision in a WBC title-elimination bout, with the winner to face reigning WBC champion Ali. (However, Ali's camp told "The Ring" they did not want to fight Norton for a fourth time.) Both boxers fought a smart fight, with Norton using a heavy body attack whilst Young moved well and countered. The decision was controversial, with many observers thinking Young had done enough to win.


title: Ken Norton

text: Although Norton was expected to face Ali for a fourth time, to fight for the WBC heavyweight championship, plans changed due to Ali's loss of his title to Leon Spinks on February 15, 1978. The WBC then ordered a match between the new champion and Norton, its number one contender. Spinks however, chose to face Ali in his first title defence, instead of facing Norton. The WBC responded on March 18, 1978, by retroactively giving title fight status to Norton's victory over Young the year before and awarding Norton their championship, which split the heavyweight championship for the first time since Jimmy Ellis and Joe Frazier were both recognized as champions in the early 1970s.


title: Ken Norton

text: In his first defense of the WBC title on June 9, 1978, Norton and new number one contender Larry Holmes met in a brutal 15-round fight. Holmes was awarded the title via an extremely close split decision. Two of the three judges scored the fight 143–142 for Holmes while the third scored the bout 143–142 for Norton. The Associated Press scored it 143–142 for Norton. The March 2001 edition of "The Ring" listed the final round of the Holmes–Norton bout as the seventh most exciting round in boxing history and International Boxing Research Organization (IBRO) member Monte D. Cox ranked the bout as the tenth greatest heavyweight fight of all time. Holmes went on to become the third-longest reigning world heavyweight champion in the history of boxing, behind Joe Louis and Wladimir Klitschko. Years later, Holmes wrote that the bout was his toughest fight of all his seventy-five contests.


title: Ken Norton

text: After losing to Holmes, Norton won his next fight by knockout over sixth-ranked Randy Stephens in 1978 before taking on legendary puncher Earnie Shavers in another compulsory WBC title eliminator fight in Las Vegas on March 23, 1979. Shavers took the former champion out in the first round. underscoring Norton's difficulty with hard hitters such as Foreman, Shavers and later Cooney. However Norton himself always denied this, saying that he was past his prime when he was stopped by Shavers and Cooney.


title: Ken Norton

text: In his next fight, he fought to a split draw with unheralded but durable lower ranked contender Scott LeDoux at the Met Center in Minneapolis. Norton dominated until sustaining an injury when he took a thumb in the eye in the eighth round, which immediately changed the bout. LeDoux rallied from that point and Norton became decidedly fatigued. Norton was down two times in the final round, resulting in the draw; Norton fell behind on one scorecard, kept his lead on the second, and dropped to even on the third (the unofficial AP scorecard was 5–3–2 Norton).


title: Ken Norton

text: After the fight, Norton decided that at 37 it was time to retire from boxing. However, not satisfied with the way he had gone out, Norton returned to the ring to face the undefeated Randall "Tex" Cobb in Cobb's home state of Texas on November 7, 1980. In an all action back-and-forth fight, Norton escaped with a split decision, with referee Tony Perez and judge Chuck Hassett voting in his favor and judge Arlen Bynum giving the fight to Cobb. In the March 1981 issue of "The Ring", Norton was still one of the world's top ten ranked heavyweights.


title: Ken Norton

text: The win over the title-contending Cobb gave Norton another shot at a potential title-fight, and on May 11, 1981, at Madison Square Garden he stepped into the ring with top contender Gerry Cooney, who, like Cobb, was undefeated entering the fight. Very early in the fight Norton was buckled by Cooney's punches. Norton continued to take shots from Cooney in his corner for nearly a full minute before Tony Perez stepped in to stop the fight fifty-four seconds into the first round, as Norton was slumped in his corner, leaving Cooney the victor by first-round technical knockout. Norton decided to retire following the match and turned his attention to charitable pursuits.


title: Ken Norton

text: Norton was a forward-pressing fighter who was notable for his unusual crab-like cross-armed defense. In this stance his left arm was positioned low across the torso with his right hand up by the right or left ear. When under heavy pressure both arms were brought up high across at face level whilst leaning forward, covering his head and leaving little room for his opponent to extend his arms. The guard was also used by boxers Archie Moore and Tim Witherspoon, as well as by Frazier in parts of his third fight with Muhammad Ali and Foreman during his famous comeback years.


title: Ken Norton

text: Norton would bob and weave from a crouch, firing well placed heavy punches. He was best when advancing, unconventionally dragging or sliding his right foot behind him, relying on immense upper body strength to deliver his heavy blows. By comparison, most conventional boxers have elbows in at the torso with forearms vertically parallel to each another, the gloves being both near sides of the face and driving off their rear foot to deliver power punches.


title: Ken Norton

text: Angelo Dundee wrote that Norton's best punch was the left hook. Many others lauded his overhand right. In a "Ring Magazine" article, Norton himself said that a right uppercut to Jerry Quarry was the hardest blow he recalled landing.


title: Ken Norton

text: Norton was a 1989 inductee of the World Boxing Hall of Fame, a 1992 inductee of the International Boxing Hall of Fame, a 2004 inductee into the United States Marine Corps Sports Hall of Fame, and a 2008 inductee into the World Boxing Council Hall of Fame.


title: Ken Norton

text: The 1998 holiday issue of "The Ring" ranked Norton #22 among "The 50 Greatest Heavyweights of All Time." Norton received the Boxing Writers Association of America J. Niel trophy for "Fighter of the Year" in 1977.


title: Ken Norton

text: In 2001, Norton was inducted by the San Diego Hall of Champions into the Breitbard Hall of Fame honoring San Diego's finest athletes both on and off the playing surface. Norton was also inducted into the California Sports Hall of Fame in 2011.