How Socially Distinctive is Cognitive Deviance in an Emergent Science? The Case of Parapsychology

Abstract

In the 1930s a deviant science, parapsychology, penetrated the boundaries of academia and underwent a degree of institutionalization therein. This paper analyzes these developments using the analytic categories found in recent sociological studies of the emergence of new disciplines (and subdisciplines) in science. It is shown that parapsychology's emergence displays characteristics typical of non-deviant sciences at their emergence, and, more particularly, that those who undertook parapsychological research had a similar distribution of social status to psychologists who were active in similar well-established fields.