Psi Wars - Getting to Grips with the Paranormal

This is a special issue of the Journal of Consciousness Studies, with which most readers will be familiar. For reasons explained by Anthony Freeman in his editorial introduction, this was a difficult volume to bring together since a substantial proportion of psychologists dispute the very existence of psi, a point forcefully (but erroneously in my view) made by one of the other editors James Alcock of CSICOP. The third editor is physicist Jean Burns, who acknowledges the field but asks very good questions about the nature of consciousness in relation to psi as well as highlighting the problem that there is as yet no good general theory to account for psi, quite apart from the fact that many scientists think that psi contravenes known physical laws. The other essays discuss some experimental evidence for psi (Ganzfeld, Dream ESP), the status of anecdotal evidence and theoretical perspectives. The volume does not add substantially to the sum total of knowledge in the field but it does raise the questions that need addressing; however I am always irritated by the CSICOP view expressed by Alcock that parapsychology is 'belief in search of data, rather than data in search of explanation'. The trouble is that Alcock et al are so uncritical in relation to their own beliefs and assumptions.