Deception And Self-Deception: Investigating Psychics. - Review - book review

Journal of Parapsychology, The, June, 2000 by Rex G. Stanford

DECEPTION AND SELF-DECEPTION: INVESTIGATING PSYCHICS by Richard Wiseman. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1997. Pp. 0 266. $25.95 (hardcover). ISBN 1-57392-121-1 [1]

This book is largely a collection of previously published journal papers, some from parapsychology journals and some from psychology journals. After an introduction for this volume, the chapters, collectively, consist of one review, one rudimentary conceptual model, one critique of a research report, and eight research reports. In the latter, Wiseman always is joined by one or more coauthors.

This volume's introduction describes Wiseman's personal history of interest in investigating claims of the paranormal, and it makes a case, using some dramatic, even terrifying, examples, that what soi-disant psychics offer the public is not always something benign. The latter circumstance is seen as indicating a need for careful scientific investigation of such claims.

The core of the volume begins ("Toward a Psychology of Deception") with a once-over-all-too-lightly review of the psychology of deception in a variety of settings that range far beyond the domain of the ostensibly psychic. This chapter touches on conjuring, psychic fraud, lying, confidence games, military deception, and animal deception. Although this chapter probably will tantalize more than it satisfies, its references will make useful reading for the seriously curious. Research citations, although plentiful and often very useful, nonetheless sometimes are not up to date, and the reader will miss some valuable, more contemporary, discussions of relevant topics than typically are cited in this volume. This problem is fairly common in other chapters, too.

Chapter 2, "Modeling the Stratagems of Psychic Fraud," with Robert L. Morris as junior author (material first presented in the European Journal of Parapsychology, 1994), is an effective treatment of the principles of pseudopsychic practice. The chapter seems aimed primarily at investigators of psi claims and admirably serves their purposes. On the other hand, it might well be valued, also, by those wishing to successfully produce fraudulent effects. The chapter headings read like a set of condensed instructions on how to succeed at faking psi events. This might, ironically, provide more targets for exposes. The following are the first of the superordinate chapter headings and its subordinate headings: Misframing, followed by, Appear Incapable of Fraud, Appear to Have No Motivation for Fraud, Appear to Be Unwilling to Engage in Fraud, Create a Believable Claim, and Produce a Claim that the Individual "Wants" to Believe, (pp. 36-41). To further capture the flavor, savor the remaining set of superordinate headi ngs: Hinder the Development of "Normal" Explanations, Manipulate an Individual into Incorrectly Believing Normal Explanations Implausible, Exploit Ineffective Controls, Exploit the Conditions Apparently Needed to Elicit Psi, and Have "Outs" Ready in Case Something Goes Wrong (pp. 42-50). This material should be read by anyone wishing to investigate (or evaluate reported investigations of) those claiming to be psychics. Readers should not, though, expect to be told how specific pseudopsychic tricks are done. This chapter is concerned only with operational principles that could help to ensure that the deployment of deceit truly is effective.

The authors state that this chapter "outlines the beginnings of a cognitive model which identifies the main stratagems of psychic fraud" (p. 36). The information in this chapter seems, though, more like raw material for this purpose, because its level of discourse hardly seems abstract enough and because the structural and functional features associated with traditional cognitive models are essentially absent. There is, for example, not a single diagram. Nonetheless, this essay is a thoughtful and highly useful one for the audiences mentioned earlier.

Chapter 3, "The Feilding Report: A Reconsideration," may be the most likely of the chapters (material first appeared in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, 1992) to arouse the ire of parapsychologists who cherish ostensible psi events of high magnitude and who have regarded the Feilding Report (Feilding, Baggally, & Carrington, 1909) as providing some of the best evidence for the alleged phenomena of physical mediumship. Wiseman has found evidence of important inconsistencies in the report and has pinpointed ambiguities and vagueness. His writing, although usually restrained and fair, at times lapses here into a tone that might be seen as accusative or prosecutorial.

Wiseman assuredly has contributed some valuable insights and commentary. One of the most important is his pointing out the bothersome disparity between various published diagrams of the seance room and what is shown in three photographs of that room that are contained in the original report. The photographs show the seance curtain stretched across a back corner of the room and positioned so that it obscures vision of much of the right side of a double door to an adjoining room. The published diagrams, on the other hand, unlike one in the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) archives, show the curtain hung so that no obscuration of this door would be possible. It is through a rigged lower panel on the obscured portion of the double door that, Wiseman suggests, an accomplice might have entered and left the room during seances.