Customer Reviews

The Skeptic's Guide to the Paranormal

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

It's a strange world out there, full of mysteries that no one has gotten a grip on. It is even stranger that some have taken grips on mysteries that are artificial, imaginary, or delusional. You can read the astrology column in today's paper, for instance; millions do, and of those millions, many feel it is instructive and that the stars and planets affect our lives. There are those who insist that they can bend spoons not as a magic trick but by using mental powers that physicists cannot yet measure. Psychic detectives claim they have used extrasensory powers to catch criminals. Into the Bermuda Triangle vanish untold numbers of ships and airplanes. The letters in your name, or the numbers in your birth date, reveal your personality and fate. Aliens are picking us up to do gastrointestinal tests and impregnations. People seem sincere in advancing such beliefs. They can't all be lying, can they? What's the rational way to examine such ideas? Lynne Kelly knows. In _The Skeptic's Guide to the Paranormal_ (Thunder's Mouth Press), she devotes one chapter to all of them, and many more. The aim of her book is that it "gives a rational explanation for some of the most widely known claims of the paranormal." Kelly takes tangible claims and examines any applicable tangible evidence. She knows that there are book-length refutations of most of the paranormal phenomena that people believe in, but the beauty of her book is that each is pithily examined, and although not all evidence pro and con is given, there is advice on how to look at the evidence that will make each case clear.

Skeptics have some sensible rules to go by, like extraordinary claims requiring extraordinary evidence, or for the acceptance of the simplest explanation that covers all the evidence. Kelly is a teacher of physics and mathematics who for thirty years has employed such tools on paranormal claims. "Not cynicism, but a healthy skepticism," is her motto. "Not disbelief, but a reluctance to believe without substance." In each chapter, Kelly takes one phenomenon and examines evidence pro and con. She repeatedly confronts the human eagerness to believe in fun and fanciful explanations; it is more delightful, for instance, to conceive of aliens mystically bending crops rather than a couple of guys doing it with ropes and planks and stomping. Desire for fanciful explanations does not, however, trump the need for good evidence. She has acted as a psychic, using cold readings and impressing the credulous with her psychic powers. She insightfully reports how easy it would be in cold readings to fool herself into thinking she was getting her hits from some psychic source, just as she explains that when she has used a dowsing rod, she has been astounded by how real is the feeling that the rod is actually being pulled down. She'd like for such an indicator to really mean something, just as she'd love to be around when aliens do drop in for a visit, or she would enjoy having veridical prognostications via dreams. It's sometimes tough to be a skeptic.

Other topics here include the Shroud of Turin, spontaneous human combustion, ESP, levitation, Bigfoot, reincarnation, and many more. Kelly has repeatedly confronted those who are eager to believe in paranormal explanations for such things, and she admits, "Some believers accuse skeptics of having nothing left but a dull, cold, scientific world." She shows, however, that rigorously trying to examine the way the world works by our best investigative method, that of science, is anything but dull, and that anyway, our world presents plenty of enchanting realms like music, sex, love, and imagination that call upon no explanations, scientific or paranormal, to enjoy in full. She has written an instructive and useful guide about some very strange matters that can eventually be explained without recourse to anything beyond physics and human nature.

This is a wonderful book that sets the record straight. I remember when I was a kid, it was the latest thing to read about the Bermuda Triangle, or spoon-bending and so on. What a thrill it was, although now we grew up and we see the world through different spectacles. Lynne Kelly uses great insight to pick the most intriguing cases of paranormal claims. Her respect, humor and scientific logic do miracles (although I am sure she would question this last word). Some of these claims she deals with are just the product of our wrong attribution but most of them have remained a question mark in our minds. For example back in the seventies I was reading about numerology and trying to make it work for me, or then the horrible spontaneous human combustion - never expected to see an explanation for this one. Astrology, which always intrigued me, is approached and explained in a very logical and straight-forward way and Nessy is treated with charm. Whoever is interested in setting the record straight should definitely read this book. Highly recommended.

I found this book to be an excellent, easy-to-read and understand explanation of many paranormal events that are constantly having the scientific or rational explanations ignored. I whole-heartedly congratulate the author and highly recommend this book to all - skeptics and non-skeptics alike. It isn't at all the "usual" skeptic book!

With all the weird pseudo science stuff around it is nice to see a book that cuts through all this and presents clear and simple explanations of lots of unusual topics ranging from spontaneous combustion to the Shroud of Turin and Area 51. Well done.

This is an excellent introduction to many paranormal phenomena (UFO's, psychics, astrology, and spontaneous human combustion). A very easy and fun read, lots of references and background info but not overly dense.

It's a sad thing to be this jaded and cynical. When a useful, cogent, and entirely accessible book like THE SKEPTIC'S GUIDE TO THE PARANORMAL arrives on my desk -- which it did some time ago; it's a 2004 book that I picked at work up sometime in the three years or so after publication and finally read over this last year -- my immediate reaction was a bone-deep weariness. [1]

I did eventually make my way through this SKEPTIC'S GUIDE, which is well-reasoned and always honest -- in fact, author Lynne Kelly (a teacher of math and science and member of Australian Skeptics) is more than fair with extraordinary claims, and at times goes out of her way to point out places where science can't 100% prove that something doesn't exist. I would, personally, be much more dismissive: idiots need to be told firmly that they are being idiots, and will take the slightest scrap of possibility as proof that they're secretly correct. But Kelly is more polite than I am, and clearly has vastly more patience.

This is not a work of original scholarship and investigation; it's a layman's guide to a whole range of extraordinary claims (including UFOs, Bigfeet, lake monsters, mentalism and spiritualism, crop circles, ghosts, astrology, reincarnation, various prophecies including Nostradamus, dowsing, the Bermuda Triangle, and more), which patiently explains why every single one of them is bunk. Anyone mildly familiar with the skeptical literature -- I subscribed to Skeptical Inquirer for a decade or so myself, though that lapsed back in the '90s, and read at least my share of James Randi and Martin Gardner books -- will not be surprised by anything here, but the more gullible or less-informed will find more to confound their magical thinking. In fact, if anything, Kelly is conservative and backwards-looking in her deubunkery: her spiritualism chapters are mostly about the great 19th century frauds, and there's nothing about the most recent bunkum, such as "theraputic touch," in THE SKEPTIC'S GUIDE.

So this book is useful in two ways: as a reference to point the way to definitive and more comprehensive works in each of its subject areas (Kelly has good references for each chapter) for those more deeply interested in paranormal claims, or as a primer on skeptical thinking for younger or still-influenceable readers. I may try to pass it on to my two sons, in fact, in hopes that some of Kelly's knowledge and common sense rubs off.

[1] To expand on that: do we really need to keep explaining to the idiots of the world that UFOs are not alien spacecraft, that undiscovered megafauna are vanishingly unlikely, that crop circles are all fakes, and that mentalists are all charlatans? Of course the depressing answer is "Yes;" there's always a new cohort of idiots. Even worse, they probably won't listen anyway.

This is a breezy, easy-to-read book which exposes a lot of metaphysical claptrap, but since one cannot disprove a negative, she states "Without examining every case individually, it is impossible to state categorically that no medium has ever contacted the spirits" and "The failure of spiritualism to produce any tangible proof says nothing about the reality or otherwise of an afterlife." She mistakenly thinks that astrology somehow is based on "the gravitational effect of the planets;" whereas it has nothing to do with gravity. She also bases her criticism of astrology on the fact that most people's sun signs do not completely describe their personalities. Astrologers would agree, since there is also the rising sign, and all the signs all the planets are in in all 12 houses, plus the aspects they make with each other. So she does not completely disprove every topic covered.

This book is a good start but if you want a detailed analysis of various paranormal scams you have to look else where, I wish there was more substance to this book , it started with a bang but fizzled toward the end, and UFO/alien treatment was tad bit too long.

My two star rating reflects the poor production value of this book by Thunder's Mouth Press. Multiple typo's and broken sentences are to be found throughout this edition. On page 5, a line reads, "They didn't have sufficient for the normal, fast burn of a body doused in petrol." Chapter 8 refers to multiple photographs in the, 'plate section,' that does not exist in this book edition. The content of the book is another matter. Lynne Kelly attempts to be a fair reporter and her writing style is accessible. Unfortunately, her statement that it is up to the claimant of paranormal events to prove said claims, is watered down by her own sloppy research. In the chapter on human combustion, she refers to proof of the, "candle effect," based on a woman's body found in the woods of Medford, Oregon in 1991. There is no mention of this woman identity or how she initially caught fire. She references a forensic scientist (Dr. John DeHaan) who claims, "He knew that what he was looking at was an example of the candle effect." How did he know? If this is the field test case, I would like much more detailed information on his methods and theories. There is nothing new or dynamic in this edition. I would steer interested readers to the work of George P. Hansen and his book, "The Trickster and the Paranormal." This is not always a easy work but delivers a great read and inspires even greater questions on paranormal phenomenon.

As is typical of the "skeptic" (read as, the diehard naysayer who inappropriately credits himself with a balanced viewpoint), only the provable hoaxes are addressed--material from which those who advocate the legitimacy of the phenomenon are always careful to distance themselves--while anything out of range of trivial dismissal is covered by generalities. For example, it may indeed be that "a bear is easily mistaken for a sasquatch," but this glib statement is insufficient to dismiss thousands of pieces of quality evidence--footprints, aboriginal sculptures and traditions, eyewitness reports--that date back centuries. As an educated man who is careful to grant a balanced analysis to that to which he promises a balanced analysis, I find the likes of Dr. Joe Nickell and other self-styled "skeptics" to be a disgrace. Put them in a debate against an educated, experienced field researcher and watch these "skeptics" unravel like cheaply finished garments. Bah!