Author: Henri Broch
Publisher: John Hopkins University Press, 2010
Price: £13.00
Isbn: 9780801892462

There’s something about books of this sort that makes my heart sink. I don’t doubt that they are mostly right; and there’s no point in trying to sustain things as ‘mysteries’ when they have been thoroughly and repeatedly disproved, but you are left wondering “what is the point?”

It’s not as if there aren’t already lots of other books like this: James Randi and the CSICOP (now CSI) crew have been churning them out for years. And Broch isn’t breaking new ground. He’s not reporting stunning new research into hitherto impenet­rable weirdness; he’s just taking readers on a brief canter through a series of classic debunks we’ve all seen before. But then, given that any number of ‘Amazing Myst­eries’ books regurgitate the same mat­erial year after year, I suppose the opposite end of the spectrum has every right to cash in on their market too.

However, it is the tone of these books that grates. Broch has that sneering, smug, triumphalist hard-core ‘skeptic’ tone off pat, and every phrase drips with contempt for anyone who might possibly believe this ‘gibberish’, let alone perpetrate it. It’s diffi­cult to see someone who might need to be swayed by Broch’s arguments having the stomach to make it past the first few pages. But I suppose this is the nub of the matter, really: it’s not for the unconvinced.

This is an I’m OK, You’re OK book written by one ‘skeptic’ to be read by others to confirm their belief systems rather than to try and convince anyone else. Perhaps it is this that leads to his slovenly approach to his material: he knows he’s not going to be read by anyone who is not firmly on his side. So, apart from the usual hard-core ‘skeptic’s’ misunderstanding of Occam’s Razor (“Thou shalt not multiply entities under any circumstances. At any time. Whatever. No, siree”, not “Thou shalt not multiply entities unnecessarily” – ie, you can when required), you get a truly incoherent explanation of why seasons occur. It omits a key element of the process, rendering the whole thing gibberish.

Then there’s a chapter on paying attention to the detail of people’s arguments in which he seems not to have paid attention to the detail that a story he uses to support his position is a well-known urban legend. So much for making sure of your facts.

He cannot differentiate between believers and para­psychologists and gives the impression of being unaware of what para­psychologists do. He claims they are “apparently theor­eticians rather than experiment­alists” and that when they “try to conduct experiments”, the results are open to criticism as they are unaware of the “exceedingly simple ways” to set up controls.

Really?

Had Bloch read the literature, he would have understood that most professional para­psycho­logists are very much experiment­alists, and that a body of research clearly demonstrates that the experimental quality and standard of controls in parapsychology are better than in most other sciences. But then, he already knows parapsychology is gibberish. He goes so far as to print a sarkily annotated fairy story to make his point. When you’re that pleased with yourself, facts don’t get in the way.

And so he goes on, being sarc­astic about Ouija, horoscopes, relig­ious miracles etc. He gets very excited about a ‘haunting’ that was just an expanding pipe, as if it was all so simple.

This is a slipshod litany of self-basting smugness. Henri Bloch would be more impressive if he got out of his ivory tower and did some work in this field rather than jeering from the sidelines. Or even tried to write without this unappealing tone of contempt.