Skeptical Odysseys: Personal Accounts By the World's Leading Paranormal Inquirers - Review

Skeptical Odysseys: Personal Accounts By the World's Leading Paranormal Inquirers. Edited by Paul Kurtz. Prometheus Books, 59 John Glenn Drive, Amherst, NY 14228-2197. 2001. ISBN 1-57392-884-4. 430 pp. Hardcover, $27. To celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), founding chairman Paul Kurtz invited thirty-seven of the world's leading skeptics to write original essays or chapters.

Some pieces are autobiographical; others report on the current state of research into paranormal and fringe-science claims. Five comprising the first section, "Twenty-Five Years of CSICOP," have appeared in the SKEPTICAL INQUIRER this year (the final two in this issue) as part of its observance of CSICOP and SI's 25th anniversary. The eleven other sections are on parapsychology (Susan Blackmore, Leon Jaroff, Barry Beyerstein), UFOs (Philip J. Klass, Robert Sheaffer, Bill Nyc, Gary Posner), Astronomy and the Space Age (David Morrison, Neil deGrasse Tyson), Astrology (Geoffrey Dean, Ivan Kelly, Jean-Claude Pecker), Popular Investigations (Joe Nickell, Henry Gordon), Creationism (Eugenic Scott), Alternative Medicine (Wallace Sampson), Skepticism Around the World (Cornelis de Jager, Jan Willem Nienhuys, Massimo Polidoro, Mario Mendez-Acosta, Valerii Kuvakin, Sanal Edamuruku, Luis Alfonso Gamez), Some Personal Reflections (Vein Bullough, Michael Shermer, Steve Allen, Bela Scheiber), Religion (Martin Gardner, Victor Stenger, Antony Flew, David Thomas), and from Skepticism to Humanism (Robert Baker).

COPYRIGHT 2001 Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal
COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group