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DECEPTION AND SELF-DECEPTION: INVESTIGATING PSYCHICS by Richard Wiseman. Amherst, NY Prometheus Books, 1997. Pp. 0 + 266. $25.95 (hardcover). ISBN 1-57392-121-1(1)
This book is largely a collection of previously published journal papers, some from parapsychology journals and some from psychology journals. After an introduction for this volume, the chapters, collectively, consist of one review, one rudimentary conceptual model, one critique of a research report, and eight research reports. In the latter, Wiseman always is joined by one or more coauthors.
This volume's introduction describes Wiseman's personal history of interest in investigating claims of the paranormal, and it makes a case, using some dramatic, even terrifying, examples, that what soi-disant psychics offer the public is not always something benign. The latter circumstance is seen as indicating a need for careful scientific investigation of such claims.
The core of the volume begins ("Toward a Psychology of Deception") with a once-over-all-too-lightly review of the psychology of deception in a variety of settings that range far beyond the domain of the ostensibly psychic. This chapter touches on conjuring, psychic fraud, lying, confidence games, military deception, and animal deception. Although this chapter probably will tantalize more than it satisfies, its references will make useful reading for the seriously curious. Research citations, although plentiful and often very useful, nonetheless sometimes are not up to date, and the reader will miss some valuable, more contemporary, discussions of relevant topics than typically are cited in this volume. This problem is fairly common in other chapters, too.
Chapter 2,"Modeling the Stratagems of Psychic Fraud," with Robert L. Morris as junior author (material first presented in the European Journal of Parapsychology, 1994), is an effective treatment of the principles of pseudopsychic practice. The chapter seems aimed primarily at investigators of psi claims and admirably serves their purposes. On the other hand, it might well be valued, also, by those wishing to successfully produce fraudulent effects. The chapter headings read like a set of condensed instructions on how to succeed at faking psi events. This might, ironically, provide more targets for exposes. The following are the first of the superordinate chapter headings and its subordinate headings: framing, followed by, Appear Incapable of Fraud, Appear to Have No Motivation for Fraud, Appear to Be Unwilling to Engage...