Zhang Baosheng

Chinese "super psychic" whose claimed abilities — metal-bending, moving objects out of sealed containers — made him one of the most closely studied test subjects of China's 1980s human-body-ESP research programs, and whose eventual exposure as a fraud became a flashpoint in the country's science/pseudoscience debate.

Matters to this vault as the concrete case study the abstract Qian Xuesen–Yu Guangyuan dispute over somatic science ultimately turned on: He Zuoxiu's 1988 test of Zhang is the one specific, adjudicated instance located so far where the dispute's abstract claims met an empirical result.

References

• Capture: 10-inbox/raw/2026-08-28-do-qian-xuesens-own-1989-book-and-the.md (entity candidate; no dedicated claim-note yet — He Zuoxiu's 1988 test and its 1995 publication are the natural next primary source)