Michael Shermer, editor of ‘The Skeptic’ wrote the other day to tell me that he shan’t be publishing the article he accepted for publication back in 2005. The magazine is backlogged with material and whilst he likes the piece he doesn’t know when it would go into print, so he’s ‘released’ it.
A shame really, since I did all that work on the extensive rewrite he asked for[1].
Still, now it means I can either seek a new home for the article or sling it online here. It also gives me a chance to do another rewrite; I’m fairly sure I can make the article slightly breezier.
The piece is a defense of a certain account of the Paranormal. I suppose it would be better to describe it as a critique of a certain fundamentalist strain of scepticism, the kind that denies that we could ever have evidence of paranormal phenomena. As we know, even idiots and idealogues can be sceptics (as I’ve said in the past, some of the most irrational people I have ever met were atheists and rationalists (the two don’t have to go together, but they often do…)). I run through three reasons why we should be open to the possibility that paranormal phenomena does occur, based upon what we can plausibly say about the methodology of Western Scientific practice.
In other news, someone wants to interview me in re getting the JREF Scholarship.
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1. This will also come as a bit of a blow to all those people I used as editors whilst writing the first few drafts. Sorry guys.