Post by fellow blogger Michael Prescott, slightly abridged and with a few comments by Yours Truly.
Stephen E. Braude’s new book, The Gold Leaf Lady and Other Parapsychological Investigations, isn’t even out yet, but a blogger named Jason Kuznicki has already taken aim at it, on the basis of an excerpt that appears on the publisher’s Web site.
The tone of Kuznicki’s review is captured by its title: “University of Chicago Press: Why Are You Publishing This Nonsense?” Skeptics are always sure they know what is or is not nonsense. Kuznicki is no exception. “I know nonsense sells,” he fumes. “University presses, however, have certain responsibilities, including above all scientific rigor.” Skeptics are always telling other people how to do science, even though few of them have done any science themselves.
The excerpt from the book concerns Braude’s personal investigation of a woman named Katie, who has the purported ability to produce brass foil on her body. The ability is not under her control and the manifestations cannot be predicted. Kuznicki dismisses the whole issue impatiently.
How does brass foil get a pressed or rolled structure? It is pressed or rolled. And then it’s applied through sleight of hand….
It is vastly easier to believe that observers’ minds play tricks on them, and that a woman performs some pretty clever sleight of hand, than it is to believe that this woman’s skin is vigorously pressing away tiny sheets of brass foil that are identical in structure to those produced on a modern metal press. It does not matter that we can’t explain every step in her sleight of hand. What matters is that, until better evidence convinces us otherwise, we must go with the simplest explanation. That’s what science does.
There are several omissions in this brief and casual dismissal.
- Kuznicki does not mention the strenuous efforts made by Braude to prevent sleight of hand.
- He does not mention that Katie was strip searched by a doctor before each session, and that the sessions were videotaped.
- He does not mention that large quantities of foil were found under Katie’s shirt – quantities too large to have escaped detection in the search, and too extensive to have been applied by sleight of hand while the camera was running.
- He does not mention that Katie is not a professional psychic, earns no money with her abilities, shuns publicity, and seems embarrassed and annoyed by the phenomena.
- He does not mention that Braude discussed the case with a professional conjurer, who said that manipulating the foil by sleight of hand would be extremely difficult because of its “clingy” qualities.
- He does not mention the attempt by another conjurer to duplicate the phenomenon – an attempt that reportedly failed.
- He does not mention that Katie has other equally mysterious abilities. Although functionally illiterate, she can write original quatrains in medieval French. She has made highly specific predictions that proved correct. And she has helped the police solve crimes – including one case, investigated by Braude and discussed in detail in the excerpt, where she facilitated the recovery of nearly $185,000 in stolen goods.
In other words, Kuznicki leaves out any and all details that would be harmful to the simplistic case he wants to make – that it’s all fraud. There’s also a problem with Kuznicki’s conclusion that “we must go with the simplest explanation.”
[Yours Truly: I am reminded of Einstein's advice: Everything should be made as simple as possible — but not simpler!]
Simple explanations are certainly good – but they have to fit the facts. Not just some of the facts – all the facts. Conveniently omitting most of the facts is not “science,” but laziness. Conveniently omitting all of the most convincing evidence and then piously asserting that we must wait for “better evidence” is, well, not quite kosher.
[Yours Truly: You are too generous Michael. It's much worse than laziness or being not quite kosher.]
As part of his post, Kuznicki refers to a positive review of Braude’s book in the journal AntiMatters. Here we find some other misinterpretations and one glaring omission. Kuznicki begins his assault on the AntiMatters reviewer, whom he does not name, with this broadside:
Contrary to what one reviewer of this book wrote, science isn’t a myth.
But the reviewer never says that science is a myth. (Click here for the review; PDF file) Here is what he does say:
Braude dispels a widespread myth: that parapsychological data derived from formal experimentation are necessarily superior to data from outside the lab.
Which is hardly the same thing as calling science a myth. It’s a recognition of the obvious fact that some perfectly valid data can be gathered outside the laboratory. This is true of many sciences. Try studying the migratory patterns of birds without leaving the lab.
Kuznicki then goes on to quote a longer passage from the AntiMatters review… He prefaces the quotation with the caveat that “the following critique of mainstream science — in favor of parapsychology — is wrong from start to finish.” Again, though, it seems as if Kuznicki has misunderstood the passage. The passage he cites is not a “critique of mainstream science — in favor of parapsychology.” It is a simple acknowledgment of a blind spot shared by both mainstream science and parapsychology – namely, that neither has so far developed a satisfactory explanation of how matter interacts with matter. As the AntiMatters reviewer notes, there are algorithms in physics that successfully predict such interactions, but the algorithms don’t explain the mechanism. The mechanism itself remains mysterious – just as the mechanisms of psi are mysterious.
Bafflingly, Kuznicki jumps in to announce that “mechanism is conspicuously absent in most accounts of parapsychological phenomena, too.” Of course it is. That is precisely the point of the quoted passage, as even the most casual reading ought to make clear. “In its place,” he continues, “we get not the modest silence of the scientific method, but a noisy insistence that no one can possibly explain these things.” Wrong again. Parapsychologists do not say that the mechanism cannot possibly be explained, only that it is unknown at present. (Some of them have made tentative stabs at a theoretical explanation, though not, I think, with much success so far.)
So much for the misinterpretations. How about the glaring omission? It concerns the AntiMatters reviewer himself, who remains anonymous throughout all of this fulmination. Why does he go unnamed?
Well, maybe because he is Ulrich Mohrhoff, a famed quantum physicist and the originator of the influential Pondicherry interpretation of quantum mechanics.
[Yours Truly = Ulrich Mohrhoff: Famed? Influential? You are again too generous, Michael. You don't win yourself many friends among physicists when you point out the sleights-of-hand by which they bamboozle themselves into believing they know the furniture of the universe and how it works, as it is my sadistic pleasure to do. All they have done, and all they can do, is transmogrify into physical processes their algorithms for making predictions. Obviously the psi researchers won't be able to do better.]
Now, it’s a safe bet that most readers, gauging the scientific expertise of an unknown blogger against that of a leading quantum physicist, would put their money on the physicist. Which is perhaps why Mohrhoff must be made a nameless unperson. If he were identified, Kuznicki’s conclusions would suddenly look a lot less authoritative.
Kuznicki’s review is a sadly typical product of the skeptical mindset. Rather than grappling with the evidence as presented, it omits the most salient facts and casts derision on the resulting straw-man case. Like much skeptical material, it exhibits what we might regard as a reverse Midas touch – turning the potential gold of exciting new discoveries into the worthless dross of preconceived, half-digested banalities.
The review does have one positive feature, though: it reminds us that Dr. Braude’s book will be coming out soon – on October 1, in fact.
