Content area
Full Text
Paranormality: Why We See What Isn't There by Richard Wiseman. London: Macmillan, 2011. Pp. 340. $20.87 (paperback). ISBN 978-0-230-75298-6.
Richard Wiseman is well known (at least in the UK) as a psychologist, magician, and nowadays Professor of the Public Understanding of Psychology. Wiseman's latest book, Paranormality, happens to differ from all my other books in two ways: first because on its spine is printed the word "Professor," and second because on its back cover is a quote by the biologist Richard Dawkins, a former Professor of the Public Understanding of Science. The book's subtide, Why We See What Isn't There, clearly indicates Wiseman's stance and the equally skeptical Dawkins thinks that the book "... blows away the psychic fog and lets in die clear light of reason."
Paranormality is a highly selective popular scientific treatment of psychological and parapsychological research as seen from a skeptic's perspective. According to Wiseman (2011b) this was not what the major American publishers wanted (although one wonders whether Prometheus Books in New York was contacted since tfiey would likely love to publish it). Wiseman thus decided to produce it as an e-book and let his British publisher ship hard copies to America. Furthermore, he has actively promoted the book with popular articles that derive from the book (e.g., Wiseman, 2011a, 2012), and I daresay it sells well, because Wiseman is a good writer. His latest and several of his previous books also reveal that he possesses a sense of humour. Getting the facts straight is, however, more important than writing style, and those well read in the parapsychology literature are unfortunately bound to get more than a bit annoyed more than once.
Initially Wiseman tells us that he became interested in magic when just 8 years old and that he, like most magicians, was deeply skeptical about the existence of genuine paranormal phenomena. The latter is an oft-repeated claim by skeptics, and what they (including Wiseman) fail to mention is that the results of surveys with magicians around 1980 did in fact reveal that the majority of them believed ESP exists. Although the results of more recent surveys, including Wiseman's (2008) own (still unpublished?), indicate that magicians as a group have become more skeptical with time (see Truzzi, 1997). However,...