The Skeptic's Guide to the Paranormal PDF Download

Author: Lynne Kelly
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
ISBN: 9781741140590
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
Guaranteed to liven up any dinner party, this delightful, highly readable book offers color photos and scientific case-by-case explanations for 27 phenomena that appear to defy known science, including ghosts and poltergeists, the predictions of Nostradamus, and yogic levitation.

Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Parapsychology
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description

Author: Dr. Steven Novella
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
ISBN: 1538760517
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 505

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Book Description
An all-encompassing guide to skeptical thinking from podcast host and academic neurologist at Yale University School of Medicine Steven Novella and his SGU co-hosts, which Richard Wiseman calls "the perfect primer for anyone who wants to separate fact from fiction." It is intimidating to realize that we live in a world overflowing with misinformation, bias, myths, deception, and flawed knowledge. There really are no ultimate authority figures-no one has the secret, and there is no place to look up the definitive answers to our questions (not even Google). Luckily, The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe is your map through this maze of modern life. Here Dr. Steven Novella-along with Bob Novella, Cara Santa Maria, Jay Novella, and Evan Bernstein-will explain the tenets of skeptical thinking and debunk some of the biggest scientific myths, fallacies, and conspiracy theories-from anti-vaccines to homeopathy, UFO sightings to N- rays. You'll learn the difference between science and pseudoscience, essential critical thinking skills, ways to discuss conspiracy theories with that crazy co- worker of yours, and how to combat sloppy reasoning, bad arguments, and superstitious thinking. So are you ready to join them on an epic scientific quest, one that has taken us from huddling in dark caves to setting foot on the moon? (Yes, we really did that.) DON'T PANIC! With The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe, we can do this together. "Thorough, informative, and enlightening, The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe inoculates you against the frailties and shortcomings of human cognition. If this book does not become required reading for us all, we may well see modern civilization unravel before our eyes." -- Neil deGrasse Tyson "In this age of real and fake information, your ability to reason, to think in scientifically skeptical fashion, is the most important skill you can have. Read The Skeptics' Guide Universe; get better at reasoning. And if this claim about the importance of reason is wrong, The Skeptics' Guide will help you figure that out, too." -- Bill Nye

Author: Amber Bonnette
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780473658014
Category : Parapsychology
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Author: Jessica Arden
Publisher: Wayfarer
ISBN: 1946188018
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 154

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Book Description
Can a believer and a skeptic move beyond their haunted pasts and find a way back ? to each other? Julie Deveaux is used to believing in things she cannot see. But when a Jackson Square psychic calls her over for an impromptu prediction, she?s as skeptical as the mystery blogger who?s trying to take down her family?s ghost tour business. According to the psychic, the grandson of her thesis subject, infamous French Quarter murderess Sophia Durocher, holds the key to solving Julie?s problems. Griffin Durocher, the anonymous blogger behind Debunked, is tired of two things: people digging into his past, and businesses cashing in on hoaxes. His once-beloved grandmother Sophia and lauded NOLA psychic had everyone fooled--including him--before she was revealed as a fraud. He?s ready to take down businesses doing the same to unsuspecting people, and next on his list is Deveaux?s Historical Haunts. A chance collision in Jackson Square brings Julie and Griffin together, and an undeniable attraction sparks fanned by a shared love of obscure history. When the two accidentally exchange copies of a rare book and read each other?s margin notes their connection intensifies. But everything comes crashing down when their true identities are revealed.

Author: Robert McLuhan
Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd
ISBN: 1848764944
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 429

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Book Description
James ‘The Amazing’ Randi is a stage magician who says he has a million dollars for anyone who can convince him they have psychic powers. No one has even come close to winning, proof, say sceptical scientists, that there is no such thing as ‘the paranormal’. But are they right? In this illuminating and often provocative analysis, Robert McLuhan examines the influence of Randi and other debunking sceptics in shaping scientific opinion about such things as telepathy, psychics, ghosts and near-death experiences. He points out that scientific researchers who investigate these things at first hand overwhelmingly consider them to be genuinely anomalous. But this has shocking implications, for science, for society and for even perhaps for ourselves as individuals. Hence the sceptics’ insistence that they should rather be attributed to fraud, imagination and wishful thinking. However, this extraordinary and little understood aspect of consciousness has much to tell us about the human situation, McLuhan suggests. And at a time when militants are polarising the debate about religion, its mystical, spiritual element offers an optimistic and enlightened way forward. Randi’s Prize is aimed at anyone interested in spirituality or those curious to know the truth about paranormal claims. It’s an intelligent and readable analysis of scientific research into the paranormal which, uniquely, also closely examines the arguments of well-known sceptics.

Author: Terence Hines
Publisher: Prometheus Books
ISBN: 1615920854
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 516

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Book Description
Television, the movies, and computer games fill the minds of their viewers with a daily staple of fantasy, from tales of UFO landings, haunted houses, and communication with the dead to claims of miraculous cures by gifted healers or breakthrough treatments by means of fringe medicine. The paranormal is so ubiquitous in one form of entertainment or another that many people easily lose sight of the distinction between the real and the imaginary, or they never learn to make the distinction in the first place. In this thorough review of pseudoscience and the paranormal in contemporary life, psychologist Terence Hines teaches readers how to carefully evaluate all such claims in terms of scientific evidence.Hines devotes separate chapters to psychics; life after death; parapsychology; astrology; UFOs; ancient astronauts, cosmic collisions, and the Bermuda Triangle; faith healing; and more. New to this second edition are extended sections on psychoanalysis and pseudopsychologies, especially recovered memory therapy, satanic ritual abuse, facilitated communication, and other questionable psychotherapies. There are also new chapters on alternative medicine, which is now marketed in our drug stores, and on environmental pseudoscience, with special emphasis on the evidence that certain technologies like cell phones or environmental agents like asbestos cause cancer.Finally, Hines discusses the psychological causes for belief in the paranormal despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. This valuable, highly interesting, and completely accessible analysis critiques the whole range of current paranormal claims.

Author: Monte Cook
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1440504423
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
Did the noble order of the Knights Templar guard a secret about Jesus’ birth? Was the moon landing faked in a Hollywood movie studio? Is the government keeping the remains of an alien spacecraft in the top-secret Area 51? Monte Cook takes a look at conspiracy theories—ranging from the historically complex to the seriously whacked out. With a disbelieving eye, he traces the history of some of the world's weirdest ideas and even includes a chart showing readers how to make up conspiracy theories for themselves. Scattered through the book are the paranoid "notes" of an anonymous reader who claims to know what's really going on. You can make up your own mind as to who's telling the truth!

Author: Jonathan C. Smith
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1444358944
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 287

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Book Description
Pseudoscience and Extraordinary Claims of the Paranormal: A Critical Thinker's Toolkit provides readers with a variety of "reality-checking" tools to analyze extraordinary claims and to determine their validity. Integrates simple yet powerful evaluative tools used by both paranormal believers and skeptics alike Introduces innovations such as a continuum for ranking paranormal claims and evaluating their implications Includes an innovative "Critical Thinker's Toolkit," a systematic approach for performing reality checks on paranormal claims related to astrology, psychics, spiritualism, parapsychology, dream telepathy, mind-over-matter, prayer, life after death, creationism, and more Explores the five alternative hypotheses to consider when confronting a paranormal claim“/li> Reality Check boxes, integrated into the text, invite students to engage in further discussion and examination of claims Written in a lively, engaging style for students and general readers alike Ancillaries: Testbank and PowerPoint slides available at www.wiley.com/go/pseudoscience

Author: Sylvia Hart Wright
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781786770998
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
Two out of five Americans report sensing meaningful contacts with lost loved ones. Such contacts are usually comforting and surprisingly intense. Most do not involve mediums, and unlike near-death experiences, they come unexpectedly to healthy people going about their normal lives.