Book Review: Parapsychology and the Skeptics

There have been many books – and the periodical Skeptical Inquirer – devoted to debunking the paranormal. Chris Carter’s book, the first in a series of three, is the first book (that I am aware of) that is devoted to directly challenging the arguments of the skeptics of parapsychology.

As Carter carefully documents, the so-called skeptics have gone to the most extraordinary lengths to deny, distort, and suppress the evidence in favor of psi phenomena. He makes the valid point that true skepticism involves the suspension of belief, not the refusal of belief, and so most of these people are not really skeptics, but actually dogmatists.

This book is an excellent accompaniment to Dean Radin’s book The Conscious Universe. Radin’s book focuses more on the empirical evidence; Carter’s book does cover the historical and experimental evidence, but is focused more on the scientific and philosophic aspects of the controversy regarding psi phenomena, and on the dark history of the “skeptical” movement.

The book also has its own website, which can be found by entering the title and author into any good search engine.