At a used bookstore, I came across the 1995 first edition of An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural, by James Randi – or as the title page has it, "exposed by" James Randi. I wasn't sure I would find it of much interest, since I have many qualms about Randi's honesty and accuracy when it comes to paranormal matters. Nevertheless, I figured I could get a blog post out of it.
What follows is not a book review, because I haven't read the entire book. Actually, I doubt that many people would read this book, or any other "encyclopedia," from cover to cover. It's intended as more of a reference work. I read the first three chapters covering the letters A through C, then thumbed through the rest.
In a foreword, noted science-fiction author Arthur C. Clarke wholeheartedly endorses Randi's crusade against the "New Agers," whom Clarke describes as "nitwits" whose New Age is "about a thousand years past its sale date." He goes on to wish that Randi’s Encyclopedia could be in every school library, opining that:
“Freedom of the press" is an excellent ideal, but as a distinguished jurist once said in a similar context, "Freedom of speech does not include freedom to shout 'Fire!' in a crowded theater." Unscrupulous publishers, out to make a cheap buck by pandering to the credulous and feebleminded, are doing the equivalent of this, by sabotaging the intellectual and educational standards of society, and fostering a generation of neobarbarians.
This quote does not particularly surprise me. I read a lot of Arthur C. Clarke when I was young, and even then I couldn't help but notice a strong strain of authoritarianism – one might say fascism – in his writing. This trait is often attributed to his contemporary Robert A. Heinlein, but Heinlein was really more of a libertarian, while Clarke endlessly fantasized about a utopian society in which the government would run everything, imposing mandatory social service on its citizen-subjects and determining which profession each of them should have, according to where he or she would prove the most useful. A technocrat, Clarke had boundless faith in the wisdom of experts, to whom the rest of us “credulous and feebleminded” types should genuflect. It's not a shock that he would also think that freedom of the press should be limited to the exposition of ideas he personally agreed with.
In any event, let's get to the book itself. The most notable thing about it is that a great deal of the content is devoted to subjects that are hardly controversial at all. Randi spends many pages on obvious fakes and frauds, some of them dating back to the Middle Ages or even earlier – people and movements no one would defend or even remember today. The very first entry is for Abaris, an ancient magician from the time of Pythagoras. It's doubtful that Abaris has many followers now.
Many of these entries are pretty extensive. An entry on the obscure Aetherius Society takes up most of a page, while more than a page – as well as two illustrations – are given over to a Renaissance Era mystic named Agrippa. More than two pages are spent on Cagliostro, an 18th century alchemist. More than a page covers the "curse of Princess Amen-Ra,” a tabloid newspaper story I’d never even heard of. You get the idea.
One of the most thoroughly covered topics is the case of the Cottingley fairies, in which Arthur Conan Doyle and a few other people were taken in by primitive photographs of "fairies" (actually paper cutouts). Not only does Randi devote roughly two pages and two illustrations to this trivial episode, but he refers to it again in his much briefer entry on Conan Doyle. There's nothing wrong with Randi's summary of the case, which is drawn from a more extensive presentation in his earlier book Flim-Flam! – in fact, I think the treatment of the episode in Flim-Flam! is the best I've read – but again, this is hardly a case that many people are going to be taken in by today.
Now you might say, What's the problem? It's supposed to be an encyclopedia of frauds and hoaxes, right? True enough ... but the problem is that these extended entries on obscure or long-debunked topics serve as cover for the superficial or nonexistent treatment of far more challenging topics. Randi goes into detail on stuff like the Cottingley fairies or Clever Hans the "counting horse," while largely skirting more serious cases.
Before we get to the serious cases, though, it's worth pointing out that he provides little detail about some of the more frivolous cases, as well. Take the entry on "ancient astronauts." After briefly describing the claim that extraterrestrials assisted in the development of civilization, and mentioning Erich von Daniken, he concludes:
The theory is presently promoted by tabloid newspapers, sensationalist journals, UFO periodicals and other fringe-science entities, but holds little interest for serious researchers.
I'm inclined to agree, but notice that there is no actual content here. Anyone using the Encyclopedia as a reference and hoping to find slam-dunk arguments against the “ancient astronauts” idea will come away disappointed.
There is a separate entry on Von Daniken, but this also lacks much detail. Randi simply asserts:
Von Daniken's work does not survive even cursory examination. His calculations are wrong, his facts are misquoted or invented, and he has admitted, during a 1978 PBS Nova television program, that some of his claims, conversations, and research did not take place at all; he simply invented material via what he termed "writer's license."
Other than the reference to the television interview, there's nothing here that a debunker could use to discredit Von Daniken – even though I think Von Daniken deserves to be discredited. What is the point of compiling an encyclopedia like this if it consists of nothing but unsupported opinions? Anyone can say that a particular theory is bunk, and it may well be, but what is needed – and what people who buy a book like this are presumably looking for – is the evidence and arguments to back up this opinion. For too many entries, this evidence is lacking, rendering the Encyclopedia of questionable value even to the skeptics who are its intended audience.
Nor is this an isolated example. Take the entry on “bilocation” – which is printed twice, presumably as a typo, although it's just possible that it' s a joke, inasmuch as bilocation means "appearing in two places at once." In any case, after mentioning four people who allegedly exhibited the ability to bilocate, Randi merely concludes:
An impossible phenomenon.
Yes, that's the whole of it. Bilocation may well be an impossible phenomenon, but he's provided no argument, no substance, almost no content at all.
Then we have cases that quite plausibly involve conjuring tricks, but unfortunately we have to take Randi's word for it, because he never explains how they were done. Consider a certain Kuda Bux, a mentalist from Kashmir. According to Randi:
Bux had a version [of the blindfold act] which involved large wads of cotton placed over bread dough to seal his eye sockets and the whole thing was then bound in place with multiple layers of bandages until his head appeared to be a huge ball of cloth. He would then drive a car, duplicate handwriting or drawings, and even fire a rifle at targets indicated by a volunteer. Once, he bicycled on New York's Broadway while blindfolded …
A photo is included that shows Bux's head completely wrapped in bandages. Randi writes, "Though his performance methods were and are well understood in the trade, he has been made into one of the Unexplained Mysteries so needed by the paranormalists to bolster their beliefs."
Okay, I'm very much open to the idea that this guy was using some kind of conjuring trick. But Randi never explains, or even hints at, how the trick is done. He simply assures us that the method is well understood "in the trade." Again, it's hard to see how this kind of approach can be of any use even to the skeptical debunker who wishes to rely on the Encyclopedia as a resource.
When we get into cases that, in my opinion, probably involve authentic phenomena, Randi's approach is even less successful. Take his entry on "astral projection." It consists of the following:
Traveling out of the body via astral planes, a notion probably derived from the experience of highly colorful and memorable dreams.
That's it. That's all he has to say. But wait! If we look up “out-of-body experience,” we get a little more. Randi talks about an obscure passage in 2 Corinthians that may describe an out-of-body experience, then supplies a definition provided by parapsychologist Charles Tart. He nitpicks the definition, which proves nothing except that maybe the definition isn't all that it could be. After this, he says:
Given the exceedingly complex nature of the cognitive processing human beings, it cannot be said with any degree of certainty that sensory/perception malfunctions do not occur to give the strong impression of being "real" while in actuality there is no corresponding situation or event.
Well, that doesn't get us very far. His only other remark is to recommend two books by parapsychologist (and skeptic) Susan Blackmore. Once again, the aspiring debunker is left with little to go on – quibbles about a definition, some boilerplate about the complexity of cognition, and then a handoff to other books.
Randi devotes more than a full page to the obscure 19th century medium Mary Rosina Showers, who was exposed as a fake. This is consistent with Randi's usual practice of devoting a lot of words to cases that are relatively uncontroversial. But here's how he treats Gladys Osborne Leonard, a far more famous medium who was tested by the SPR for two decades without scandal:
A failed British actress who at age thirty-two took up the profession of spirit medium, at which form of theater she was hugely successful. Her main claim to fame was bringing a message to Sir Oliver Lodge from his son Raymond, who had died in the war. Lodge was convinced of the validity of the message, but he was convinced of almost everything else anyone told him, as well.
Believe it or not, that's the entire entry. Maybe we ought to get Arthur C. Clarke on the case, because this is surely an abuse of "freedom of the press" if ever there was one. Randi omits any mention of the SPR's extensive investigations, including the remarkable book tests and newspaper tests, as well as the classic Bobby Newlove case. A reader of this encyclopedia, knowing nothing of parapsychology, would understandably conclude that there is nothing about Mrs. Leonard that would be worth further investigation.
And this is a book that's described on Amazon's sales page as "examin[ing] the shady world of manipulators, occultists, and shamanists in microscopic detail." Microscopic detail? When it comes to the more serious topics, there is little or no detail at all.
Just look at the entry on Eileen Garrett, one of the most famous mediums of the 20th century, known for the R-101 case, among others. Well, let me rephrase that. You can't look at the entry, because there is none. Garrett is never mentioned. She doesn't even appear in the index.
There is an entry on Leonora Piper, but it takes up less than half the space devoted to Rosina Showers and presents almost no details of Piper's mediumship, preferring to dwell on doubts about her spirit guides (doubts shared by the parapsychologists who investigated her, most of whom regarded the spirit guides as subpersonalities of the medium, a position seriously entertained by Piper herself), and to a failed prediction on her part regarding SPR investigator Richard Hodgson. There is no discussion of the remarkably evidential readings purportedly originating from George Pelham, which convinced many of the more skeptical researchers that they were genuinely in contact with the deceased. There is no mention of the proxy sittings used to eliminate the possibility of cold reading. There is no mention of Hodgson's method of bringing unscheduled visitors to see her, to preclude any possibility of advance research. There is no mention of tests performed on Piper while she was in trance that proved, even to hostile skeptical researchers, that the trance was genuine. There is no mention of Piper's trip to England, where she sat with people she had never met before, who used assumed names, and yet was able to give successful readings. And so on. (See Michael Tymn's Resurrecting Leonora Piper for details on all of the above.)
When all else fails, Randi can always fall back on sarcasm. Even though his own Encyclopedia frequently relies on the investigations carried out by the (British) Society for Psychical Research and its American counterpart, he is perfectly happy to tell us, under the entry for the American Society for psychical research, that:
It is currently headquartered at 5 W. 73rd St., New York City, NY, 10023, and has an adequate library and study facilities where members pursue various chimerae.
Lest his more obtuse readers miss the point, he also offers an entry for the topic “chimera,” where he writes:
The term is used today to describe an unrealistic goal such as squaring the circle, levitating by Transcendental Meditation, bending a spoon by looking at it, or parapsychology.
Naturally Randi's own organization, the Committee for Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, does not come in for such abuse. Randi presents it as "essentially a scientific group, [which] has no religious ties, and has a strong advocacy of truth and investigation of paranormal, occult and supernatural reports." He takes umbrage at Colin Wilson's description of CSICOP as "a society to combat belief in all forms of occultism." According to Randi, this description misses "the intent and value of the group." Actually, Wilson's description is dead-on. CSICOP – or CSI, as it's known today – clearly is intended to combat occultism, as is Randi's Encyclopedia, and for that matter Arthur C. Clarke's foreword. CSICOP/CSI has never been a neutral, unbiased, impartial research organization; in fact, it's not a research organization at all. As far as I know, the only research it's ever conducted is the so-called Starbaby case, which backfired on the group and discouraged further research studies.
Although I read only part of the Encyclopedia and thumbed through the rest, I found factual mistakes here and there. I'm not alone in this. Even Susan Blackmore, in her review of the UK edition of the book (which was titled The Supernatural A – Z: The Truth and the Lies), concluded that the book "has too many errors to be recommended." It's possible that some of these errors were corrected in later editions; I can only point to what I found in the first edition.
For instance, in an entry labeled “Margery Crandon,” Randi addresses the case of a Boston medium who was well-known in her day. But her name was not Margery Crandon; it was Mina Crandon. She used the name Margery (with no surname) as a pseudonym when she started to practice mediumship.
In his discussion of the medium Eva C. (who is listed in the Encyclopedia under the name of Eva Carriere), he says that her so-called materializations were "items not too difficult to conceal from the type of examination that was usually employed by researchers." But anyone familiar with the case would know that extensive precautions were taken to prevent this particular form of trickery. As I wrote in an otherwise skeptical essay some years ago,
[Eva] was stripped and searched before each séance, a search that included the examination of her hair, nose, mouth, armpits, knees, and even her rectum and vagina. On some occasions she was said to have been given an emetic, forcing her to void her stomach and esophagus, thereby removing any suspicion that she had swallowed some muslin to be later regurgitated as ectoplasm.
I'm not saying Eva C. was genuine; photographs taken of her "materializations" don't look convincing. But saying that she could easily smuggle in small objects because the experimenters did not take adequate precautions is untrue. Their body-cavity searches were humiliatingly thorough.
Then there's the the entry on Daniel Dunglas Home, which I've covered elsewhere.
I'm sure there's a lot of other questionable stuff in this book, but frankly, I got bored with it. Maybe I'll put The Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes in the bathroom and read it there. I'd say that's where it belongs.
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