COMMENT:Highly recommended. This is not a book going over the deficiencies of individual experiments or alleged super-psychics, taking instead a wider view of the field and its conflicts with the rest of science. Alcock sets parapsychology in the context of magical beliefs, and discusses the psychological reasons such beliefs can be sustained without a basis in physical reality. His description of parapsychology as a pseudoscience depends too much on views of science open to dispute, but it still is valuable. The part of the book which best retains its significance is Alcock's critique of the use of statistics in arguments for psi.
