Content area
Full text
SCIENCE AND PSYCHIC PHENOMENA: THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF SKEPTICS by Chris Carter. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions. 2012. Pp. xiii + 303. $18.95 (paperback). ISBN 978-1-59477-451-5.
This book is a revised edition of Parapsychology and the Skeptics: A Scientific Argument for the Existence of ESP, originally published in 2007.
This book presents a very judgmental black and white perspective of parapsychology: Virtually everything skeptics say is wrong, and virtually everything proponents of psi say is right. Carter says he wrote the book to challenge the most biased skeptical opinions about the existence of psi. The result is an almost equally biased book in favor of psi.
Those who realize that scientific progress often involves gray areas will need to look elsewhere for an objective, insightful présentation of the strengths and weaknesses of parapsychological methods and findings. This book takes the position that the evidence for psi is absolutely compelling and those who are skeptical of the methodology or findings are ignorant of the research, intellectually incompetent, or dishonest. This is the counterpoint of the skeptical writings that imply that those who believe in paranormal phenomena are intellectually deficient.
The judgmental black and white perspective is apparent in the discussion of meta-analyses. Following certain other proponents of experimental parapsychology, Carter considers meta-analyses as providing definitive evidence for psi. He does not mention the limitations of meta-analyses or the strong arguments and increasing consensus that retrospective or post hoc meta-analyses as used in parapsychology cannot resolve controversial issues.
For example, he claims the nonsignificant meta-analysis results by Milton and Wiseman occurred because they "botched their statistical analysis of the ganzfeld experiments" (p. 99). According to Carter, the statistical mistakes included not doing an analysis of direct hits that pooled all the experiments and using a cutoff time that excluded a certain study.
However, these controversial decisions are examples of the large number of decisions that must be made in a post hoc meta-analysis, and they show why post hoc meta-analyses are intrinsically unconvincing for controversial topics. The many methodological decisions for post hoc meta-analyses have no clearly right or wrong answer, and different decisions produce different results. For example, the analysis of pooled direct hits is not a standard meta-analysis technique, but it can be applied...