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Chris French - Five Way Interview

As well as being Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Goldsmiths College, University of London, and the head of the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit, Chris French regularly appears on TV and radio and is an expert skeptic on the popular BBC show, Uncanny. His new book is The Science of Weird Shit.

Why science?

Science may not be perfect – because scientists are only human and are susceptible to the same foibles as everybody else – but for my money it is by far the best approach we have for trying to figure out the truth about how the universe works and our place in it.

Why this book?

I taught an optional module on anomalistic psychology for over 20 years at Goldsmiths, University of London. The topics covered, including alien abduction claims, ghosts, people claiming psychic abilities, and belief in conspiracies, are topics that most people, whether believers or sceptics, find inherently fascinating. The module allowed me to discuss a wide range of relevant psychological phenomena, such as the unreliability of memory, hallucinatory experiences, and various cognitive biases, but also to emphasise the need for critical thinking. I had wanted to write a popular science book on anomalistic psychology for many years but only found the time to complete that project following my retirement.

There are clearly two very different questions: do paranormal abilities and other weird phenomena exist at all, and why people believe in them. Is the starting assumption in anomalistic psychology that they are all misunderstandings of psychological or biological phenomena, or do you start with an open mind?

The primary focus of anomalistic psychology is to see if we can come up with non-paranormal explanations for ostensibly paranormal phenomena and, wherever possible, to produce evidence in support of those alternative explanations. So, we assume, purely as a working hypothesis, that paranormal phenomena do not exist. But an important part of proper scepticism is to always be open to the possibility that you may be wrong. I am not convinced that paranormal phenomena really do exist on the basis of the current evidence as I see it. However, stronger evidence may be produced in the future that leads me to change my mind. Also, I have put a great deal of time and effort into directly testing paranormal claims. To date, the results have not supported the claims. Being open to changing one’s mind in the light of evidence is, I would argue, true open-mindedness.

What’s next?

For the foreseeable future I will be very busy promoting my new book. I am doing talks all over the UK as well as at conferences in Lyon, Visegrad, and Las Vegas, and lots and lots of podcast interviews. Once things calm down a bit, I’ll give some thought to writing another book. I’ve got some ideas on that front but I’m keeping them under wraps for the time being.

What’s exciting you at the moment?

I’m still excited about finally getting my book over the finish line. I realised the other day that I had written the original proposal back in 2010 but my day job at Goldsmiths was so busy that I just never found time to move the project forward. I’m still ridiculously busy even though I’ve retired but much more of my time is now taken up doing things I actually want to do!

 Photo © Stuart Gennery


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