New book! Randi's Prize - Why Skeptics are Wrong

[Scepcop]

Check out this new book I heard about on Skeptiko:

http://astore.amazon.com/religion-spiri ... 1848764944

RANDI'S PRIZE: What sceptics say about the paranormal, why they are wrong and why it matters
By Robert McLuhan

Product Description

James 'The Amazing' Randi is a stage magician who says he has a million dollars for anyone who can convince him they have psychic powers. No one has even come close to winning, proof, say sceptical scientists, that there is no such thing as 'the paranormal'. But are they right? In this illuminating and often provocative analysis, Robert McLuhan examines the influence of Randi and other debunking sceptics in shaping scientific opinion about such things as telepathy, psychics, ghosts and near-death experiences. He points out that scientific researchers who investigate these things at first hand overwhelmingly consider them to be genuinely anomalous. But this has shocking implications, for science, for society and for even perhaps for ourselves as individuals. Hence the sceptics' insistence that they should rather be attributed to fraud, imagination and wishful thinking. However, this extraordinary and little understood aspect of consciousness has much to tell us about the human situation, McLuhan suggests. And at a time when militants are polarising the debate about religion, its mystical, spiritual element offers an optimistic and enlightened way forward. Randi's Prize is aimed at anyone interested in spirituality or those curious to know the truth about paranormal claims. It's an intelligent and readable analysis of scientific research into the paranormal which, uniquely, also closely examines the arguments of well-known sceptics.

Most helpful review:

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful.
A superb contribution to an ongoing debate
By Sauropod

There are thousands of books about the paranormal, but few of them approach the subject as judiciously as "Randi's Prize," by Robert McLuhan. Though the title suggests that the main focus will be James Randi's Million Dollar Challenge, the book actually ranges much more widely, as McLuhan examines skeptical responses to such reported phenomena as poltergeists, apparitions, telepathy, mediumship, near-death experiences, and children's memories of past lives. In each case he shows that the skeptical explanation, while superficially persuasive, falls apart when subjected to close analysis. His conclusion is that most skeptics do not really engage with the material they are critiquing; in their rush to explain it away, they tend to fasten on the first non-paranormal interpretation they can think of, even if it does not fit all the facts or is grossly implausible in its own right. McLuhan describes this tendency as "rational gravity" - the pull exerted by the "rational," mechanistic worldview that instinctively rejects anomalous phenomena.

The book is crowded with specific cases, examined in detail. For instance, McLuhan looks at an argument made by British skeptic Richard Wiseman, who has claimed that famed "physical medium" Eusapia Palladino could have been assisted by an accomplice who entered the locked seance room through a trapdoor. McLuhan writes, "Much later, when I had spent some time reading and thinking about Palladino, I returned for another look [at the skeptical argument], and it was only then that I grasped how cheeky Wiseman was being. As his critics pointed out, Palladino was tested many times in many different situations and [Wiseman's suggested] modus operandi could not apply to all of them (in the south of France she was tested successfully in the open air). One would think that a method that involves clambering through a hole in the wall a few feet away from three investigators on the look-out for tricks, concealed merely by a flimsy curtain, is hard to sustain. In any case, the report [of Palladino's sittings in Naples] mentions three occasions when the investigators looked behind the curtain, which would at once have given the game away.... On one occasion the phenomena continued after the sitting had ended, when they had turned up the lights and pulled back the curtain." (p. 97)

Again, looking at the case in detail demolishes the skeptical explanation. But skeptics like Wiseman seem to count on the fact that most of their readers are unfamiliar with the details. They are thus free to offer facile interpretations that reassure their audience, even while ignoring troublesome facts that they themselves must be aware of. This may be a clever debating strategy or a useful propaganda ploy, but it hardly looks like a search for truth.

"Randi's Prize" is a brisk, bracing look at this continuing controversy, exhaustively researched and offering 48 pages of endnotes and a 28-page bibliography. It's a must-read for anyone with a serious interest in parapsychology and its critics. Just don't expect a detailed treatment of the Million Dollar Challenge. McLuhan has bigger fish to fry.

[Arouet]

I have it. Read a few chapters. He presents a pretty biased view IMO, though I've seen worse!

[really?]

[Craig Browning]

I'll have to check it out but I fear both of you are wrong when it comes to the things said here; yes, the instant anything in a conversation even remotely hints as the surreal/paranormal or mystical (and oft times "faith" based precepts) the typical "skeptic" of today roll their eyes and seem to jump directly to a long list of assumptions.

While this book may be "biased" I've yet read anything from the skeptic's world that wasn't the same -- let's face it, either side is trying to sell their point of view; their version of the gospel.

As most know, I stand in between these two worlds leaning far closer to the skeptic's side of things than that of the "blind & deaf" believer. Put another way, Ignorance can be corrected through study, but stupidity is a thing people volunteer to be by not being willing to learn. This is a double-edge ideology in that it requires us to see an issue fairly, from all available points of view. Based on the reactions I'm betting this book has gone to the extreme opposite end of the proverbial scale, failing to find and share the common ground factor which actually does exist -- there is a very intellectual side to esoteric philosophy, the problem is however, so few graduate beyond that first "elementary" sphere of things -- they are in love with the idea of things fantastic rather than the harder truth such things actually represent. As an old country minister pointed out to me once, less than 10% of any church congregation actually does the work and understands the mission -- it's an unfortunate truth in many aspects of life.

[Arouet]

[Scepcop]

Here is the interview with Robert McLuhan, the author of this book, on Skeptiko:

http://www.skeptiko.com/randi-prize-exp ... -new-book/

[Jayhawker30]

[Arouet]

[Jayhawker30]

I got to a few parts that read like it blatantly condemned skeptics as a whole.

However, I think it might just be a problem with how he's phrasing it. He could just be talking about the stick-in-the-ass garden variety of naysayers rather than those who take a genuinely skeptical look at things.

[derrida]

evidence is such a taboo word for believers..

[Jayhawker30]

...now that's just a tad derogatory, isn't it?

[Craig Browning]

[Scepcop]

[craig weiler]

Like the author, I spent a long time going over the work of skeptics and believers before drawing any conclusions. As a psychic, my question was "have they proven this?" Whether psi exists was never really in question. Direct experience is like that.

What I found was exactly what the author found: The skepticism is weaker than the science and in many cases passes over into outright lies. I am intolerant of lies and stretching the truth and bending the facts and that is what I have found over and over again in the literature. (not on this board) When you have someone who is a supposedly respected scientist spewing lies, like Wiseman, and to a lesser extent, Hyman, I don't feel that I have to take them seriously.

For those high profile skeptics that don't fall into the category of outright lies, I have also noticed that withholding positive evidence is common. Steve Novella has been guilty of this as well as fudging the figures for the Ganzfeld to fit his narrative. Why? If his position is so strong and he's so confident, why does he resort to this? Because he has to. His position isn't actually strong and he has to in order to maintain his point of view. No other conclusion makes sense.

Never, have the scientists on the parapsychology side done anything like this. In fact, they often publish criticisms of their work on their site.

You see enough of this and you think, hmmmm, who's right?

[ProfWag]