A mathematical approach to the paranormal

People with "extrasensory" abilities—or rather, people supposedly endowed with such abilities—are said to be a couple's first-born child. The power would pass to the eldest son. He, and perhaps he alone, could inherit his mother's healing gifts or his father's gift for magnetic healing... In other words, the transmission of such a gift seems to be governed by the primacy of the first-born.

Consider the puzzling birthright enjoyed by mediums (see also the book referenced at the end of the article). A psi subject is someone capable of perceiving a purported phenomenon involving the mind and its interaction with the environment. Imagine that extensive field investigations have led to the following finding: most leading psi subjects and mediums are eldest sons (or daughters). Well, strange as it may seem, investigations and verifiable statistics bear this out: the undeniable conclusion remains that most leading psi subjects or mediums are indeed eldest sons and therefore do not—and never did—have any older brothers or sisters.

This is the first step in the process: establishing that the facts are real, as Bernard Le Bouyer de Fontenelle reminded us in his 1687 book Histoire des oracles: "Let us make quite sure of the fact before troubling ourselves about the cause. It is true that this method is far too slow for most people, who naturally rush to the cause and skip over the truth of the fact; but at least we shall avoid the absurdity of having found the cause of something that does not exist."

Mediums and vampires --------------------