I think your OP is misleading.
The article begins with a slight discussion of the controversy around the Mars Effect study, but the remainder is a criticism of skepticism in general, albeit generally using as examples of supposed fallacies people with some affiliation to CSICOP.
I didn't read the whole thing. Couldn't make myself slog through 52 pages yet when in the first five or six it demonstrated so many fallacies itself.
It is not a good omen when it's opening quotation is from a book touting astrology.
It is a worse omen when that same opening quotation misrepresents what it is criticizing.
The criticisms I did read pretty much boiled down to:
"Skeptics haven't proven that paranormal claims are false, therefore they are only pseudo-skeptics."
The article begins with a slight discussion of the controversy around the Mars Effect study, but the remainder is a criticism of skepticism in general, albeit generally using as examples of supposed fallacies people with some affiliation to CSICOP.
I didn't read the whole thing. Couldn't make myself slog through 52 pages yet when in the first five or six it demonstrated so many fallacies itself.
It is not a good omen when it's opening quotation is from a book touting astrology.
It is a worse omen when that same opening quotation misrepresents what it is criticizing.
The criticisms I did read pretty much boiled down to:
"Skeptics haven't proven that paranormal claims are false, therefore they are only pseudo-skeptics."
DangerousBeliefs
Graduate Poster
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- Aug 25, 2003
- Messages
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Any article that attacks the skeptical viewpoint with cold fusion and homeopathy has my vote! 
metacristi
Muse
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- Messages
- 760
Unfortunately the problem of 'pseudo-skepticism' is genuine (this does not mean that I advocate the stance of dogmatic parapsychologists). Too many skeptics are convinced (implying certitudes) that all paranormal is a fraud...Unfortunately for them the actual failure of research into paranormal to convince the scientific community (indeed the actual evidence is not at all concludent) does not automatically imply that the null hypothesis is true (in absolute), that we have arguments beyond all reasonable doubt to think that 'psi' is inexistent and that further experiments (and especially seeking to find a scientific theory explaining 'psi') are a waste of time. At most we can grant to anti psi movement, provisionally, a fallible epistemological privilege, meaning that currently science cannot see the experiences (many subjective) pointed out by parapsychologists as being really 'anomalies' for the actual scientific theories.
