Review by Ben Radford

http://www.csicop.org/specialarticles/show/alex_tsakiris_psychic_detectives_and_bad_science

"Tsakiris casts himself as a maverick groundbreaker daring to ask tough questions of pompous skeptics and puncturing the pretensions of science. He is instead following a well-trod path using a tried and true formula: Speak quickly, act confidently, attack critics, and refuse to acknowledge even obvious errors in your evidence and arguments. That’s not how science works, but it will help you fool some of the people some of the time. Science may indeed be wrong some of the time—its self-correcting mechanism is perhaps its greatest strength—but it’s Alex Tsakiris who is wrong in this case. His “best case” for psychic detectives is in fact astonishingly weak, and if that is one of his marquee examples of how Science Is Wrong, then science is in far better shape than anyone dared imagine."
 
Last edited:
http://www.csicop.org/specialarticles/show/alex_tsakiris_psychic_detectives_and_bad_science

"Tsakiris casts himself as a maverick groundbreaker daring to ask tough questions of pompous skeptics and puncturing the pretensions of science. He is instead following a well-trod path using a tried and true formula: Speak quickly, act confidently, attack critics, and refuse to acknowledge even obvious errors in your evidence and arguments. That’s not how science works, but it will help you fool some of the people some of the time. Science may indeed be wrong some of the time—its self-correcting mechanism is perhaps its greatest strength—but it’s Alex Tsakiris who is wrong in this case. His “best case” for psychic detectives is in fact astonishingly weak, and if that is one of his marquee examples of how Science Is Wrong, then science is in far better shape than anyone dared imagine."

rofl-3g.gif
And of course he, like most people featured on CSICOP, is a bastion of objective, scientific, unbiased thinking and perspectives.
 
Last edited:
I'm no fan of Radford, to be sure, but the choice to attack his character instead of his arguments is the height of intellectual laziness.
 
I'm no fan of Radford, to be sure, but the choice to attack his character instead of his arguments is the height of intellectual laziness.
Usually I'd mostly agree with that. But when a writer and the site their article is on have long established a very clear bias I think it's otherwise. Plus the last sentence in the quote indicates that the writer is not exactly doing a thoughtful critique. Even if everything about the book sucked, it's inane to leap to "science is in better shape."

Also he uses the idiotic line of science being "self-correcting " It is not and, even if it were, that's not a strength or a weakness. It's just standard human functioning.To tout that as a strength basically emphasizes the actuality of science - it's just a way people seek knowledge. Which is fine. The problem comes because many seek to elevate it to some divine status.
 
Back
Top