Discovery Lab Answers

Renaud Evrard, PhD is a French psychologist and parapsychologist based at the Université de Lorraine, where he directs CIRCEE (Centre d’Information, de Recherche et de Consultation sur les Expériences Exceptionnelles). His work spans three distinct but interlocking areas: experimental and clinical parapsychology, the history of psychical research in France, and psychiatric/psychological approaches to anomalous experiences. The sources retrieved for this question are weighted toward his historical scholarship and review work; his experimental output is described more fully on his ESP-Nexus profile.

Experiments

The sources retrieved for this question document several lines of work, though they skew toward historical analysis and book reviews rather than primary experimental reports.

Neuroimaging and psi (with Acunzo and Rabeyron). Evrard co-authored a theoretical and methodological examination of functional neuroimaging as a tool for testing psi hypotheses, alongside David Acunzo and Thomas Rabeyron. The paper, published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience (2013), reviewed attempts to investigate telepathy, distant intentionality, and precognition using brain imaging, and assessed the rationale and challenges of that approach rather than reporting a new experimental dataset.

Precognition meta-analysis (with Rabeyron and collaborators). The ESP-Nexus page for Thomas Rabeyron records a meta-analysis of 90 precognition experiments across 33 laboratories in 14 countries on which Evrard was a collaborator. That analysis is cited on Rabeyron’s profile page; the retrieved sources for this question do not include the primary meta-analysis document itself.

Perinatal projective testing (with Štegrová). Evrard co-authored an exploratory study of a new projective drawing device in perinatal clinical psychology — a study of pregnant women’s drawings of their unborn child as a clinical assessment tool — published in Psychologie clinique et projective (2024) ^[6]. This sits within his clinical psychology work rather than psi research proper.

Historical case analysis. Multiple retrieved sources show Evrard conducting systematic archival and case-analytical work: a 2025 article reconstructing German Romantic philosopher Novalis as an overlooked precursor to parapsychology ^[1], a 2024 book review critically analyzing historical materialization séances involving the medium Marthe Béraud and researcher Charles Richet ^[3], and a 2025 book review examining the life of medium Eileen J. Garrett through archival sources ^[2].

Voice-hearing (auditory verbal hallucinations) review. A 2024 paper in History of Psychiatry, co-authored with Beauvais, Essadek, and Lighezzolo-Alnot, conducted a narrative systematic review of the evolving Western perception of voice-hearing from mystical and Enlightenment-era frameworks through to contemporary psychiatric and transdiagnostic models ^[5].

Methodology

Evrard’s methodological signature across the retrieved work is the integration of historical-critical analysis with clinical psychology frameworks rather than the design of laboratory psi protocols.

In the neuroimaging collaboration with Acunzo and Rabeyron, the approach was a theoretical review examining existing neuroimaging paradigms — telepathy, distant intentionality, precognition — for their methodological adequacy, not the running of new trials.

The voice-hearing paper ^[5] used a narrative systematic review design, tracing the perception of auditory verbal hallucinations (AVH) across historical periods — from mystical/religious frameworks through Enlightenment rationalism, the biomedical model, and into contemporary transdiagnostic approaches informed by the hearing-voices movement. The paper explicitly frames AVH as a transdiagnostic object of study rather than a symptom to be pathologized.

The perinatal drawing study ^[6] employed a projective assessment protocol in a clinical/exploratory design, with Rorschach-style symbolic scoring applied to pregnant women’s drawings. The study is described as exploratory in its own title, signaling it was not a pre-registered confirmatory trial.

The historical work uses archival and case-critical methods: for the Novalis article ^[1], Evrard situates the philosopher’s concept of “magical idealism” within the intellectual history of German natural philosophy and animal magnetism, tracing its relevance to parapsychological thought. For the Marthe Béraud review ^[3], he critically evaluates a source’s handling of Richet’s experimental séances, noting where the source conflates sessions Richet organized with sessions he did not attend — a methodological critique of the secondary historian rather than of the original experiments.

Data

The retrieved sources for this question do not include primary quantitative data from Evrard’s own experimental trials. The figures that exist in the literature — most notably those from the precognition meta-analysis on which he collaborated with Rabeyron — are not carried in the passages retrieved here. The retrieved excerpts do not show them; readers seeking those statistics should consult the Rabeyron page and the primary meta-analysis paper directly.

What the retrieved sources do carry:

• The neuroimaging review produced no new effect-size data — it was a theoretical/methodological analysis.
• The perinatal drawing study ^[6] includes a projective scoring table with symbolic elaboration indices (including an IES score example of 0/2 = 0), but these are illustrative scoring examples from the instrument, not outcome statistics from a completed trial.
• The voice-hearing review ^[5] is qualitative/historical and carries no psi-relevant quantitative outcomes.

The absence of primary experimental statistics in the retrieved passages reflects the nature of the sources retrieved — historical scholarship and review articles — and should not be read as a characterization of Evrard’s full research output.

Skeptical critiques

Evrard himself performs the critical analytical role in several of the retrieved sources. In his review of Granger’s La Saga de l’ectoplasme ^[3], he identifies what he reads as a methodological failure in the secondary source: the author “blithely mixes sessions organized by Richet with sessions where he was not present” and “ignores certain contradictions.” This is critique directed at a historian’s handling of evidence, not at the original experiments.

In his review of Garrett’s biography ^[2], Evrard notes that mediums — including Garrett — constructed “fictional characters when it comes to their back stories,” and frames this not as negating parapsychological performance but as a form of “social elusiveness” that may interact with the phenomena themselves, citing his own 2019 work on this theme.

The sources retrieved for this question do not include published criticism of Evrard’s own experimental or theoretical work by named external critics. His profile page at esp-nexus.org/scientists/renaud-evrard/ is the appropriate place to look for a fuller treatment of critical reception.