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

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

The bottom line here is that although these authors are admirably frank in admitting mistakes, those who wish to critically evaluate claims of materialization should come expecting impromptu demonstrations and be as ready as possible to carefully observe and collect relevant physical evidence. (It would have been very interesting had the vibuti-like material turned out to be fan debris.) Relying on memory, as they did, about the nature (e.g., color and structural appearance) of the materialized substance is highly unreliable. We are not told whether on-site notes were made. Even having used a sheet of paper to brush the vibuti-like material onto another sheet, the latter folded for safekeeping, would have been far better than nothing. Investigators must also ensure that the evidence they collect is the true evidence, not surrogate evidence. Wiseman well understands the latter point, as is clear from examples elsewhere in this volume. Impromptu demonstrations were the rule, not the exception, in their work on alleged macro-PK in India. "Be prepared" is the Boy Scout oath, and it also should become that of field investigators of alleged macro-psi. Another thought: Are skeptics sometimes so focused on human deceit (e.g., sleight of hand) that they fail to gather evidence, oradequate evidence, to allow their study to examine other hypotheses (e.g., the possibility of genuinely inexplicable events, as in the chapter on extrasensory detectives, or normal events, as in the case of fan debris)?

For the psychologically oriented reader, the last three chapters (9, 10, and 11) of this volume maybe the most interesting. The first of these ("Recalling Pseudopsychic Demonstrations," coauthored by Wiseman and Robert L. Morris; material first published in the British Journal of Psychology, 1995) examines how the sheep/goat (psi believer/psi nonbeliever) distinction relates to subsequent memory for a pseudopsychic demonstration. The second ("The Effect of Belief in the Paranormal and Prior Set upon the Observation of a 'Psychic' Demonstration," by Matthew D. Smith and Richard Wiseman; material first published in the European Journal of Parapsychology, 1992, but modified here) examines, jointly, psi belief and observational set (i.e., is the feat stated to be "authentic" or "trick") in relation to recognition memory for events that happened during such a demonstration. The third ("Manifestations: An Experimental Investigation into Seance Room Phenomena," by Richard Wiseman, Jeff Wiseman, and Matthew Smith; m aterial not previously published) examines memory for events during a seance-like setting. Readers of these chapters may find, as I did, that the results of these studies are disappointing in their lack of definitive, conceptually clear outcomes and in terms of how, in a number of instances, the studies were conducted and analyzed. These three chapters are, despite these problems, well worth reading because they involve innovative efforts to address problems of interest both to parapsychology and to cognitive psychology. Most of my remarks here will focus on the first two of these chapters.