Book review: Randi's Prize

There are thousands of books about the paranormal, but few of them approach the subject as judiciously as Randi's Prize, by Robert McLuhan. 

Though the title suggests that the main focus will be James Randi's Million Dollar Challenge, the book actually ranges much more widely, as McLuhan examines skeptical responses to such reported phenomena as poltergeists, apparitions, telepathy, mediumship, near-death experiences, and children's memories of past lives. In each case he shows that the skeptical explanation, while superficially persuasive, falls short when subjected to close analysis. His conclusion is that most skeptics do not really engage with the material they are critiquing; in their rush to explain it away, they tend to fasten on the first non-paranormal interpretation they can think of, even if it does not fit all the facts or is grossly implausible in its own right. McLuhan describes this tendency as "rational gravity" - the pull exerted by the "rational," mechanistic worldview that instinctively rejects anomalous phenomena. 

What I appreciated above all about Randi's Prize was the care shown by McLuhan in approaching these controversial claims. This is not one of those books that take all paranormal accounts at face value. Quite the opposite. Throughout the book, McLuhan details his struggle to determine the truth about cases that have been subject to starkly different interpretations by skeptics on one hand and parapsychologists on the other. In this respect, the book reminded me of Sittings with Eusapia Palladino, by Everard Feilding, which documented the gradual change in attitude on the part of Feilding and other investigators at the famous Naples séances. Fittingly, the first item that McLuhan has made available in his new archive of original paranormal literature is Feilding's report on the Naples investigation.

A good example of McLuhan's cautious approach is found in his treatment of the celebrated Tina Resch poltergeist case early in the book. First he provides a brief summary similar to what we would read in any standard skeptical account:

[Paul] Kurtz mentions an episode that occurred in Columbus, Ohio in 1984. In March of that year stories started appearing in the local press about strange goings on in the home of the Resch family, which some speculated were caused by a poltergeist. Eventually a press photographer snapped the spook in action, and the photo was syndicated around the world -- causing a sensation. In reality, Kurtz says, the effects were being caused by the family's fourteen-year-old foster child, Tina, as James Randi discovered when he went to investigate. 

A few pages later he returns to the case and presents the skeptical side in more detail, pointing out that when Randi appeared in Columbus, the Resch family would not let him into their house. To debunk the story, Randi examined the famous newspaper photo and some unpublished frames, concluding that Tina could have faked the effect captured on film. He also viewed a videotape that clearly showed Tina simulating some of the subsequent "phenomena." Unaware that the camera was still running, Tina, in Randi's words, "reached up and pulled a table-lamp toward herself, simultaneously jumping away, letting out a series of bleating noises, and feigning, quite effectively, a reaction of stark terror." Furthermore, Randi found that the reporters covering the case were unimpressed with it, and he cast doubt on the capabilities of the parapsychologist, William Roll, who investigated and vouched for the claims.

McLuhan observes, "All this struck me as effective debunking. It didn't demonstrate beyond doubt that the Columbus affair was a hoax, but it did weaken any sense I might have had that the incident was paranormal." 

But he doesn't end there. As he read many other accounts of poltergeist incidents, McLuhan couldn't help noticing repetitive patterns. The Columbus case was not an isolated episode; it fit into a larger framework, an ongoing series of similar events reported throughout history. He notes:

Despite their decidedly odd character, the claims are quite uniform. When Gauld and Cornell analyzed their five hundred cases [in their 1979 book Poltergeists] they found that nearly half began with noises that were described as raps or 'knockings' or sometimes as loud thumps or thuds or 'bangings'. The descriptions suggested that they often occurred after dark, often close to someone who was sleeping, although they were sometimes also heard in daylight hours.

He gives specific examples, one from the mid-19th century and three from the mid- to late-20th century, noting that "these examples make up only about three per cent of Gauld and Cornell's data." 

Then there was the psychological context. McLuhan writes:

If you read the literature on the subject you'll find that poltergeist incidents tend to be extraordinarily fraught. The people involved are overcome with panic and confusion, not just for a few hours but four days and weeks on end. This isn't an effect one expects to result from your children's pranks. And ... I often wondered how these children managed to create such convincing illusions and remain undetected.... When it comes to the anomalous movement of objects, it's striking how insistent witnesses are that no one present was responsible. They could see no link between the disturbance and any human action -- and it completely spooked them.

Again he gives specific examples. 

Returning to the Columbus case, he tells us, "There is a quantity of suggestive detail in the investigators' accounts that creates a rather different picture from the one provided by skeptics.... Immediately prior to the incidents Tina had been in growing conflict with her adoptive parents, particularly with her father John." Strange incidents with digital clock radios soon followed. Although Tina's parents initially suspected her of tricking them, they eventually found that the phenomena continued even when Tina could not possibly be at fault.

McLuhan writes:

The accumulated effect of reading [various poltergeist accounts] was to create in my mind the sense of a very distinct natural phenomenon, one which is widely (if infrequently) reported and quite unlike any other feature of human experience, yet which can be identified by the same group of curious features.

It was with this thought in mind that I started to review Randi's debunking in a different light. I realized that his article didn't get to grips with the goings on in Columbus in any depth; his approach was mostly centred on a single detail -- that is the photograph.... If you think about it, an image that claims to show psychokinesis in action is a moot object: there is nothing it could depict that could not easily be faked.... 

So Randi was simply adding substance to what many people would suspect anyway. But by doing so, and in such detail, he created the illusion that he had penetrated the whole mystery, despite the fact that he had not observed any of the claimed effects at first hand or interviewed any of the main witnesses....

Then there's Randi's off-repeated insistence that witnesses jump to conclusions: I did not feel this was really confirmed in the research literature. People who experience these disturbances, I found, tend to react exactly as one might expect -- and probably as you or I would. They don't instantly imagine that something paranormal is occurring; on the contrary, they start by assuming that a trick is being played, and, if a child seems to have something to do with it, treat him or her as the likely culprit.

Professional investigators also do the obvious things -- like taking up the floorboards to see if the noises have some concealed source, or setting traps that might reveal hoaxing by family members. As I say, in some cases they decide that trickery is probably the whole cause; in others they suspect it has a genuine basis, but subsequent trickery by the child makes that conclusion difficult to insist on. In other cases, the force of repeated observations at close quarters compels them to drop the idea of trickery altogether and look for something else. In short, they show what most people would consider to be proper judiciousness, discrimination and caution....

My impression is that the sceptics are not particularly concerned by [the psychological dimensions of the cases]. Nor do they seem bothered about the level of conjuring skill that their scenarios require -- something which I have to say has left me more than somewhat sceptical. I don't mean just the skill needed to achieve the effects that witnesses describe, but also the fact that the children seem to acquire such skills without ever giving anything away. I could accept that an emotionally confused girl like Tina Resch might want to attract attention, but it was a stretch to imagine that a person in her state of mind could spend months clandestinely preparing for her venture by learning how to make furniture come alive, let alone put this into effect without being detected.

He goes on to observe that the professional skeptics, in approaching poltergeist cases, generally cite only "a single contemporary investigator -- William Roll" and mostly refer to a handful of popularized incidents -- "Amityville and Borley, neither of which parapsychologists take very seriously, and which in any case are not really typical; Columbus and Seaford, which were dealt with respectively by Randi and [Milbourne] Christopher but ineffectually, as neither of them gained access to the houses involved, or interviewed the main witnesses, or observed any of the phenomena in question; and various incidents in Christopher's clutch of press cuttings, which give too little information to draw any reliable conclusions from." He writes:

The skeptics say they can't be expected to check out the truth of every claim.... Most people would consider this to be a perfectly fair argument. But they will be less impressed when they discover that debunking skeptics have made little attempt to investigate any such incidents. The implications the critics artfully convey is false: there is no independent body of cases that they have examined at first hand and satisfactorily explained in non-paranormal terms.

I might add that one argument sometimes made by skeptics to discredit Tina is that, later on, as a young adult, she got into trouble with the law. The implication they draw is that she was never trustworthy to begin with. But it would be at least equally valid to point out that the focal figures in most poltergeist cases are troubled adolescents, who of course are not unlikely to grow into troubled adults.

Coverage of poltergeists takes up only a small part of Randi's Prize. The book is crowded with specific cases in a variety of areas, examined in detail. For instance, in the second chapter, McLuhan looks at an argument made by British skeptic Richard Wiseman, who has claimed that Eusapia Palladino could have been assisted by an accomplice who entered the locked seance room through a trapdoor. McLuhan writes:

Much later, when I had spent some time reading and thinking about Palladino, I returned for another look [at the skeptical argument], and it was only then that I grasped how cheeky Wiseman was being. As his critics pointed out, Palladino was tested many times in many different situations and [Wiseman's suggested] modus operandi could not apply to all of them (in the south of France she was tested successfully in the open air). One would think that a method that involves clambering through a hole in the wall a few feet away from three investigators on the look-out for tricks, concealed merely by a flimsy curtain, is hard to sustain. In any case, the report [of Palladino's sittings in Naples] mentions three occasions when the investigators looked behind the curtain, which would at once have given the game away.... On one occasion the phenomena continued after the sitting had ended, when they had turned up the lights and pulled back the curtain.

Here, looking at the case in detail doesn't merely weaken the skeptical explanation; it demolishes it. But skeptics like Wiseman seem to count on the fact that most of their readers are unfamiliar with the details, leaving them free to offer facile interpretations that reassure their audience, even while ignoring bothersome facts that they themselves must be aware of. 

All told, Randi's Prize is a brisk, bracing look at this continuing controversy, exhaustively researched and offering 48 pages of endnotes and a 28-page bibliography. It's a must-read for anyone with a serious interest in parapsychology and its critics. 

What's more, the author is currently giving away free copies of the e-book to anyone who asks! I don't know how long this promotion will last, so if you're interested in the book, you'll never have a better time to get a copy. And I think readers of this blog will find it highly worthwhile.

Just don't expect a detailed treatment of the Million Dollar Challenge. Robert McLuhan has bigger fish to fry.  

Comments

[Matt Rouge]

Sounds great. I looked on Amazon, but it does not seem to be directly available in paperback ("available through one seller"). Any ideas where else I can get it? Thanks!

[Sandy]

Matt, you might want to check the free Christmas e-book version out at:
http://monkeywah.typepad.com/paranormalia/2010/12/christmas-giveaway.html

[Jane B]

That sounds like a really worthwhile read. Thanks for the review; I'm pretty excited about this book now.

I feel like every piece of level-headed, well-researched literature that gets added to the library of the paranormal is like a balm after all the chafing between the unquestioning believers and the die-hard skeptics.

[dmduncan]

His dedication to reason is Randi's greatest illusion.

So I wouldn't call it "rational gravity," since rationality is the means by which we know the skeptic is full of beans.

[Michael Prescott]

"I wouldn't call it "rational gravity'"

I'm not 100% sold on that term either. Robert McLuhan uses it in contrast to "irrational gravity," the tendency of some believers in the paranormal to cling to their beliefs even when, in specific cases, the phenomena in question have been debunked. This does happen; in his book The Psychic Mafia, M. Lamar Keene described how members of a spiritualist church refused to believe his own confession that he was a completely fraudulent medium. Keene called it "true believer syndrome."

[Michael Prescott]

By the way, another example of true believer syndrome, or irrational gravity, comes from the book The Siren Call of Hungry Ghosts by Joe Fisher. Fisher describes how he checked out details communicated through a medium and discovered that they were nearly all wrong. Yet when he informed the other sitters of this fact, they refused to accept the obvious conclusion that the channeled material was unreliable.

As a personal example, someone once said to me that all of Edgar Cayce's predictions had come true. I pointed out that one of his predictions was that the lost continent of Atlantis would rise from the ocean before the end of the 20th century, and this obviously had not happened. My acquaintance replied without missing a beat, "Well, maybe it did happen -- in a parallel universe!"

[rick49]

Michael,

Fisher's book is excellent. He tried to convince the small group of people involved in the circle that the entities who were speaking through a woman who didn't even believe in spirits or channel mediums that these striking and compelling claims made by these entities were extremely clever lies and that the other members lives and even his own were insidiously and intelligently being undermined and destroyed by these "liars". He attempted to point out that these entities were not the dead personages that they so convincingly claimed to be and the others in the group, despite Fisher's careful investigations and compelling demonstration of is investigations, refused to give up their belief. Fisher felt manipulated by these unknown entities who threatened him if he published his book. He did and within a year, I believe, he committed suicide after experiencing a number of bizarre psychic attacks that he chillingly reports at the end of the book.

The book is simply a must read for folks on this board interested in spirit phenomena. As any experienced paranormal investigator, psychologist such as myself who have dealt with paranormal auditory and visual hallucinations in patients diagnosed psychotic but in my opinion may be natural psychics who have a compromised and overwhelmed ego structure(see work of Dr Wilson Van Dusen), and experienced exorcists who all know that (lower)spirits are "liars and deceivers".

[J9]

Thanks, Michael. I'll pick it up and Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, and a wonderfully Happy, healthy New Year to you all! May we all find what we are looking for. Cheers!

[Robert McLuhan]

Thanks for the generous review, Michael. All helps to get the word around :)

Several readers have already taken advantage of my free ebook offer, and I hope many more will too.

I'm working on getting printed copies distributed by Amazon.com, however this may take a while. It was available for a while through third party sellers, but those copies seem to have been sold - I expect their stocks will be replenished in the New Year.

In the meantime the book can be easily purchased through the UK Amazon site. If you log onto www.amazon.co.uk you should find it carries your account details just the same.

The airmail postage is higher from the UK (around $10.80) and it will take 5-6 days to arrive. But with the discounted price ($10) the total should work out only $3 more than people have been paying on Amazon.com. (I'd venture to argue it's still good value!)

All the best to everyone for 2011.

[rick49]

Robert M,

I decided to buy your book on Kindle. I've followed your website and I appreciate your kind offer for a free e book but I very much appreciate the hard work and effort that goes into writing and publishing a book and feel strongly about paying for the book. I started it last night and find it spot on. I plan to review it on Amazon when I'm finished.

Thank you for putting yourself out there into the highly contentious hurly burly world of Skepticism. I too have examined the wealth of cross cultural literature, reams of consistent reporting, and decades of direct clinical experience with my patients and have been saying for years that the vast majority of debunkers have not properly engaged themselves with the evidence. You have clearly articulated this in your book extremely well.

[.]

Randi's Prize is good value and definitely worth buying.

[Michael Prescott]

"I very much appreciate the hard work and effort that goes into writing and publishing a book and feel strongly about paying for the book."

Now that's a reader after my own heart!

[Robert McLuhan]

Yes indeed. Thanks, guys!

[Ben]

An excellent review, Michael -thank you.

Robert effectively demonstrates that by refusing to engage open-mindedly in first hand investigation, the debunkers (perhaps unconsciously) fear turning anecdotal evidence into direct (eyewitness) evidence. They seem to be labouring under the misapprehension that they can only act as prosecutor and judge. Obviously, they believe that these officials can’t risk seeing the thing for themselves - that would remove their objectivity in the courtroom ;-)

Still, now we have Mr McLuhan for the Defence and MP as an expert witness!

Well done Mr McLuhan. Your book will take its place alongside Chris Carter's "Science and the Near Death Experience" in the library.

[Robert]

Michael, thank you very much for reviewing Randi's Prize. It prompted me to (now rather guiltily in light of the above comments!) take advantage of the author's generous offer.

I can't put it down. It's very readable. I like his method of taking us through his own process of discovery and change of perspective. I'm learning a great deal, as the early part of the book is about the poltergeist phenomenon, which I haven't read about in thirty years. I am finding his observations about how the skeptics have handled these cases to be quite insightful. He in essence turns the tables on them, putting them and their methods under the magnifying glass--and a much more honest magnifying glass than they themselves use on paranormal phenomena.

My only quibble, and it is an extremely small one, is that he makes a brief dismissive remark about the Shroud of Turin, which has been an avid interest of mine for decades, and which has been investigated with a great deal of "hard" science. All of the scientific evidence regarding the Shroud has been supportive of authenticity, with the exception of the famous 1988 carbon dating, which has in the last several years been discredited. However, the book, of course, is not about the Shroud.

Without your review I would not have read the book, so again I am very grateful for you doing it.

[Michael Prescott]

"he makes a brief dismissive remark about the Shroud of Turin"

Like you, I find the Shroud interesting and not easily dismissed. If you use the Google search tool on the left side of this page, you can find a couple of posts I've written about it.

It's one of those things that sound ridiculous and discredited, until you look into it.

[Robert]

Thanks, Michael. I think I've located your posts on the Shroud and look forward to reading them.

[Robert McLuhan]

My prejudices coming through there. Perhaps it's time I took a closer look :)

[Kevin W.]

I'll echo the kudos for Robert and Michael. This book will be my Christmas gift to myself (as soon as my holiday shopping list is completed at the usual last nanosecond), and I'll avail myself of Robert's suggestion of using Amazon's UK site. Given the present frozen state of affairs, perhaps a naval icebreaker could substitute for airmail delivery ;-). Will the Premier League ever get in another match, or is the table also "frozen" until spring?

[Robert]

Robert, that's very gracious of you. If you do decide to take a closer look, I would recommend www.shroud.com and www.shroudstory.com, especially the latter for a first look. Dan Porter, who runs that site, has quite a good head on his shoulders.

[Roger Knights]

I've just read through half of it. I couldn't put it down. I'll give proofreader-type comments for now:

A bit more than halfway through, at location 4295 on my Kindle, "with" should be "without" in:
"As a control group he found another twenty-five people who had gone through a medical crisis with reporting an experience."

"Who" should be "whom" several (four?) places, mostly early in the book.

Commas are used too sparingly; dozens more would improve the text.

[Roger Knights]

PS: There are too many long paragraphs that deal with more than one "point"; they should be broken in two, or three.

[Roger Knights]

PPS: At location 4267, after "around them", footnote 19 isn't in footnote form, but just ordinary text.

[Roger Knights]

PPPS: Introduction, last words:

"I have used the British spelling for 'sceptic' throughout rather than the American 'skeptic' ..."

Fowler recommends "skeptic."

(I recommend "scoftic.")

[Roger Knights]

PPPPS: The Table of Contents gives only chapter numbers, not chapter titles too. The latter would be helpful to a reader--that's why they're conventionally included.

[Roger Knights]

Ch. 7, at location 4938, there's a missing "at"in:

"... if we chose to talk about it all we are still like children ..."

[Robert McLuhan]

Oops. Back to work :)

Thanks, Roger

[The Major]

Roger must be a hit at parties!

[Roger Knights]

"Parties"?!? In Plymouth Plantation?!

(I should have e-mailed these items to the author, I now realize.)

Of course, I think the book is excellent, which is why "I couldn't put it down"--and also why I want to de-bug it before formal publication.

(But there's still a need for a book about Randi's Prize. This book barely touches on it.)

[-Gilgamesh]

Good grief Roger... this reminds me of the typical nightmare where one finds himself teaching a class or something public, only to notice at the very end, he has no pants on.

I wonder how you might review a book you dont like...:)

[Roger Knights]

"I wonder how you might review a book you don't like ..."

Check it out! (My review of Greg Long's Making of Bigfoot)--
http://www.amazon.com/review/R3BPK2J31N7EW9/ref=cm_cr_pr_perm?ie=UTF8&ASIN=1591021391&nodeID=&tag=&linkCode=

(I was once a proofreader, so these nits I mentioned in my earlier posts just jump off the page at me.)

[Roger Knights]

Oops--here's a clickable link to my review above:
http://www.amazon.com/review/R3BPK2J31N7EW9/ref=cm_cr_pr_perm?ie=UTF8&ASIN=1591021391&nodeID=&tag=&linkCode=

[Pavel Chichikov]

I'm pretty certain that Catholics are free to believe in the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin, disbelieve in it, or disregard it. The same is true of apparitions and locutions of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Nor need anyone's faith rest on these manifestations.

[Paul]

It might be better to send grammatical or spellings errors to rob via his website. Assuming of course he wants to see them now it is published,

[Roger Knights]

Hi, Paul,

Yep, as I noted, I should have sent them to him by e-mail. I didn't realize there'd be so many when I started, so this way seemed quicker.

It's not in hardcover yet, I don't think, or if it is it's in a POD (print-on-demand) version, which can be easily updated. anyhow, I got an e-mail from him yesterday saying, "thanks for your proofreading comments, appreciate it. I'll make the changes shortly."

[Paul]

Super duper.

[Julio Siqueira]

Hi Michael,

Rather coincidently, I just posted a review of Victor Stenger's (CSICOP physicist) book "The New Atheism: Taking a Stand for Science and Reason" at amazon.com. The link is the one below:

http://www.amazon.com/review/RZWE9OKGGJG4W/ref=cm_cr_pr_perm?ie=UTF8&ASIN=1591027519&nodeID=&tag=&linkCode=

Judging from your review of Robert McLuhan's book, I believe he (McLuhan) has met similar problems to the ones I (and, for that matter, we all!...) often meet when reading "skeptics." I think reading this book from McLuhan will be helpful to my site Criticizing Skepticism.

Thank you for this interesting thread.

Best Wishes,
Julio Siqueira

[Rudolf Smit]

There is an interesting interview with Robert McLuhan on Skeptiko.com

[Roger Knights]

The discussion of Typos has given me a tangential idea for the providers of blogging software:

How about a Typo-Alert Button, so the user can privately describe a typo to the thread-starter?

There ought to be a private way to describe a thread-starter’s typos to him/her. When authors fix these nits they do a service to site-visitors, and when visitors bring nits to the owner's attention they do him a favor, in the same way that it's a favor to tell someone his/her zipper is undone.

But it annoys lots of readers when they encounter these helpful hints in the public space, so the nit-picker is sometimes accused of being a grammar-N*z* or engaging in captious criticism. The absence of a private channel, such as a Typo button alongside the Report button, makes this an unsatisfactory situation all around.

[Michael Prescott]

It's not a bad idea, Roger, but speaking for myself, part of the appeal of blogging is that I can dash off a post without crossing every t or dotting every i. For that reason, I don't worry too much about typos. (Factual errors are a different story.)

Still, some bloggers might desire a Typo-Alert Button. Maybe you should suggest the idea directly to Six Apart, the outfit that owns TypePad.

[Roger Knights]

OK, I'll add "at the blogger's option--even down to activating/de-activating it for individual threads."

I did submit it about 12 hours ago, and got a response suggesting I also post it on their user forum, which I'll do.