Scully and Mulder, Eat Your Heart Out
Jun. 9th, 2007 11:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
le_bebna_kamniI have certainly committed a heresy, but prior to a couple of weeks ago, I've never watched the X-Files *gasp!*. However, I have set about trying to remedy that and have been regularly getting them from Netflix. I'm now up to Season 2, Disk 2, which I hope to watch this weekend.
So when I was browsing non-Fiction at the library and ran into a book called Real-Life X-Files, I jumped on it out of curiosity.
Book #12: Real-Life X-Files: Investigating the Paranormal, by Joe Nickell
Joe Nickell is a Senior Research Fellow for the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP). For anyone familiar with the organization, it's not your typical credulous bunch of half-baked psychic people trying to prove there is life after death or alien conspiracies. On the contrary, CSICOP seems to consist mostly of skeptics that try to keep anyone with claims of the unusual from gaining any credibility.
In Nickell's introduction, he claims that he's open-minded and not a skeptic, but his 47 short chapters of debunking material don't even leave open the possibility that paranormal activity could exist. Many of his chapters deal with older historical cases, e.g. specific mediums from the 1800's and early 1900's and local lake monsters. But he also devotes chapters to larger phenomena like spontaneous human combustion (SHC), talking with the dead, crop circles, and the Roswell incident.
His book is well-written, and a very interesting read for anyone interested in his small-incident cases. However, I tend to believe that his debunking efforts on larger issues (like the afterlife and Roswell) need books of their own to truly be convincing to readers who don't already share his views.
I have no problem with Nickell being a skeptic ‒ good scientific and/or rational investigation into an issue is always a welcome counter to some of the more New-Agey style books out there; however, I do take issue with the claim in his introduction:
His first chapter is an excellent example of this. Nickell tackles a local legend of a supposedly petrified girl in eastern Kentucky, presumably a young girl named Nannie Wheeler who died of flux in 1885 and who was discovered to be petrified in 1888. Petrification in that short amount of time is highly improbable, and as Nickell points out, many corpses thought to be petrified are actually naturally mummified (however, I would like to add that there has been at least one case of mine workers finding a petrified hat that was believed to have been lost in the mine 30 years prior). Other processes that can occur after death may give the impression that the corpse is still "fresh", when waiting several months would reveal that they are decomposing naturally. Nickell gives an excellent survey of historical "petrifications" and their actual causes. Unfortunately, he can't draw any conclusions about the body, because it was supposedly reinterred in an unmarked grave and no one has access to examine it. However, rather than admitting that there is no way to test if the legend is real or not, Nickell rather dishonestly leaves the impression that the case is solved and that Nannie Wheeler was certainly not petrified.
His stance toward people who claim paranormal abilities is also rather irksome, and another indicator of his pre-judged skepticism. I myself am rather neutral on the issue: I generally believe that people who parade themselves as psychics on television are fakes, but I neither credit nor discredit the possibility that psychic ability could (either now or in the future) exist. However, Nickell has a rather circularly-reasoned classification called the "fantasy-prone personality" that he frequently cites in his book to both simultaneously diagnose and discredit people who have, say, seen ghosts or claim to see the future.
The classification list is cited in his chapter "Cult of the 'UFO Missionaries'". I won't list all of them, but I will say that I disagree with 11 of the 14 characteristics he has listed. The first three seem like reasonable psychological criteria: being easily hypnotized, having lots of imaginary friends as a child and doing a lot of make-believe ‒ all of these seem like things that might indicate a person likes to "make things up" or believe something is real that isn't.
However, the remaining criteria read like a checklist from "12 Steps to Becoming a Psychic". For example, simply by claiming you have psychic powers (criteria h) you already have one strike towards labeling you a "fantasy-prone personality". If you have seen "apparitions" (l), ghosts, or aliens (n), if you've had an out-of-body experience (i), or if you've ever communicated with the dead (j), then you clearly have a "fantasy-prone personality".
Since most people who claim psychic sensitivity have more than one of the experiences on the list, it's very easy to dismiss them (as Nickell does in his "Haunted Inns" chapter) with a pejorative phrase like "fantasy-prone" without thoroughly investigating their claims**. The problem, of course, is that it's a self-justifying list. The list is used to track the credibility of people who are making psychic claims, but it assumes before hand that such claims are automatically false (i.e., a fantasy). Therefore, because the list says that the person is "fantasy-prone", it implies the person is deluded even before their claims are tested. While I'm sure Nickell might argue that he's far more objective than his list suggests, I would think a man of science with his rational thinking would realize just how circular and biased his "fantasy-based personality" classification is.
My criticisms aside, it's an excellent book worth reading and well researched. It spawned the check-out of another book of a paranormal nature, which I hope to review this weekend if I have the time.
___________________________________________
**Which brings up the interesting point of, if psychic abilities did exist, that they could be interlinked and cause multiple abilities ‒ kind of like someone being naturally athletic and good at playing multiple sports.
So when I was browsing non-Fiction at the library and ran into a book called Real-Life X-Files, I jumped on it out of curiosity.
Book #12: Real-Life X-Files: Investigating the Paranormal, by Joe Nickell
Joe Nickell is a Senior Research Fellow for the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP). For anyone familiar with the organization, it's not your typical credulous bunch of half-baked psychic people trying to prove there is life after death or alien conspiracies. On the contrary, CSICOP seems to consist mostly of skeptics that try to keep anyone with claims of the unusual from gaining any credibility.
In Nickell's introduction, he claims that he's open-minded and not a skeptic, but his 47 short chapters of debunking material don't even leave open the possibility that paranormal activity could exist. Many of his chapters deal with older historical cases, e.g. specific mediums from the 1800's and early 1900's and local lake monsters. But he also devotes chapters to larger phenomena like spontaneous human combustion (SHC), talking with the dead, crop circles, and the Roswell incident.
His book is well-written, and a very interesting read for anyone interested in his small-incident cases. However, I tend to believe that his debunking efforts on larger issues (like the afterlife and Roswell) need books of their own to truly be convincing to readers who don't already share his views.
I have no problem with Nickell being a skeptic ‒ good scientific and/or rational investigation into an issue is always a welcome counter to some of the more New-Agey style books out there; however, I do take issue with the claim in his introduction:
"I decry both a credulous and a close-minded approach, holding that mysteries should neither be fostered nor dismissed but rather carefully investigated with a view toward solving them.".As several of his chapters attest, he seems to have his mind already made up before he goes into the case, even when there is not enough evidence to make a pronouncement either way.
His first chapter is an excellent example of this. Nickell tackles a local legend of a supposedly petrified girl in eastern Kentucky, presumably a young girl named Nannie Wheeler who died of flux in 1885 and who was discovered to be petrified in 1888. Petrification in that short amount of time is highly improbable, and as Nickell points out, many corpses thought to be petrified are actually naturally mummified (however, I would like to add that there has been at least one case of mine workers finding a petrified hat that was believed to have been lost in the mine 30 years prior). Other processes that can occur after death may give the impression that the corpse is still "fresh", when waiting several months would reveal that they are decomposing naturally. Nickell gives an excellent survey of historical "petrifications" and their actual causes. Unfortunately, he can't draw any conclusions about the body, because it was supposedly reinterred in an unmarked grave and no one has access to examine it. However, rather than admitting that there is no way to test if the legend is real or not, Nickell rather dishonestly leaves the impression that the case is solved and that Nannie Wheeler was certainly not petrified.
His stance toward people who claim paranormal abilities is also rather irksome, and another indicator of his pre-judged skepticism. I myself am rather neutral on the issue: I generally believe that people who parade themselves as psychics on television are fakes, but I neither credit nor discredit the possibility that psychic ability could (either now or in the future) exist. However, Nickell has a rather circularly-reasoned classification called the "fantasy-prone personality" that he frequently cites in his book to both simultaneously diagnose and discredit people who have, say, seen ghosts or claim to see the future.
The classification list is cited in his chapter "Cult of the 'UFO Missionaries'". I won't list all of them, but I will say that I disagree with 11 of the 14 characteristics he has listed. The first three seem like reasonable psychological criteria: being easily hypnotized, having lots of imaginary friends as a child and doing a lot of make-believe ‒ all of these seem like things that might indicate a person likes to "make things up" or believe something is real that isn't.
However, the remaining criteria read like a checklist from "12 Steps to Becoming a Psychic". For example, simply by claiming you have psychic powers (criteria h) you already have one strike towards labeling you a "fantasy-prone personality". If you have seen "apparitions" (l), ghosts, or aliens (n), if you've had an out-of-body experience (i), or if you've ever communicated with the dead (j), then you clearly have a "fantasy-prone personality".
Since most people who claim psychic sensitivity have more than one of the experiences on the list, it's very easy to dismiss them (as Nickell does in his "Haunted Inns" chapter) with a pejorative phrase like "fantasy-prone" without thoroughly investigating their claims**. The problem, of course, is that it's a self-justifying list. The list is used to track the credibility of people who are making psychic claims, but it assumes before hand that such claims are automatically false (i.e., a fantasy). Therefore, because the list says that the person is "fantasy-prone", it implies the person is deluded even before their claims are tested. While I'm sure Nickell might argue that he's far more objective than his list suggests, I would think a man of science with his rational thinking would realize just how circular and biased his "fantasy-based personality" classification is.
My criticisms aside, it's an excellent book worth reading and well researched. It spawned the check-out of another book of a paranormal nature, which I hope to review this weekend if I have the time.
___________________________________________
**Which brings up the interesting point of, if psychic abilities did exist, that they could be interlinked and cause multiple abilities ‒ kind of like someone being naturally athletic and good at playing multiple sports.
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Missing out
on 2007-06-10 12:27 am (UTC)Now the movie? That was fantastic. :)