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PARAPSYCHOLOGY AND THE SKEPTICS: A SCIENTIFIC ARGUMENT FOR THE EXISTENCE OF ESP by Chris Carter. Pittsburgh, PA: SterlingHouse, 2007. Pp. xi + 218. $18.95 (paperback). ISBN 1-58501-108-8
This book ought to be required reading for recalcitrant skeptics who are dead sure that parapsychology is a pseudoscience, or for those who aspire to enter some sort of scientistic Shangri-La by mindlessly repeating the skeptic's mantra: "there's not a shred of evidence." Unfortunately, such obstinate folks are unlikely to pick up this book, for all the reasons the book so amply explains: unexamined ideological assumptions, scientistic or religious prejudices, and fears of various kinds. Readers of this Journal will not find much that is new here, so I suspect this book will be most useful to scientists and scholars who are open-minded about psi but confounded by the controversy and unsure what to make of it. It would also be a good textbook for use in a college class on critical thinking or the sociology of science.
Carter writes well and the book is digestibly compact; I read it in two sittings. Rupert Sheldrake provides a foreword. This is followed by an introduction...