Pseudo-Skepticism: A Case Study

[Ninshub]

Michael Grosso responds to Joe Nickell's review of his recent book.

Pseudo-skepticism is definitive in Nickell’s “review” of my book, The Man Who Could Fly: St. Joseph of Copertino and the Mystery of Levitation,  which appeared in the Skeptical Inquirer: Volume 42.4. July/August 2018, and is titled “Secrets of ‘The Flying Friar’: Did St. Joseph of Copertino Really Levitate?” 

The author begins by defining without qualification Joseph’s 17th century lifetime (1603-1663) as “superstitious” and mentions the European witch craze, as if that fact is going to explain everything about Joseph.  Thus, in the next paragraph he writes: “The superstitious believed Joseph was able to divine the thoughts of others, to effect cures, to engage in combat with the devil (at least in a story he himself told), to have the supposed power of bilocation . . . .”  And that’s it.  With a sweeping ad hominem (“the superstitious believed”) Nickell glides over all the specific accounts in the book he’s supposed to be reviewing that testify to, and discuss, these and other reported phenomena.

Nickell's article on Joseph of Copertino (which doesn't actually describe itself as a review of Grosso's book) is here:
https://www.csicop.org/si/show/secrets_o...y_levitate

Oh boy, I usually stay out of these kind of debates, but I found this critical "review" by Nickell absolutely absurd.

His only criticism appears to be multiple variants of "In what I suspect was......" or " I suspect such acts were........"

The thing is, I think scepticism and critical reviews are extremely important, but this is just mindless ideology masquerading as rational or scientific investigation. Absolutely worthless!

"I suspect" Joe Nickell really hasn't got a clue what he's talking about, and only similarly minded ideologues and dogmatists would find his post hoc rationalising convincing in any way!

PS - the Grosso book was quite interesting, I enjoyed it anyway!

EDIT - Wait a minute, I just noticed this was an article posted on the CSICOP website......getting upset at it's ideological, vacuous, entirely speculative & potentially dishonest dismissal of the phenomena is like getting upset at a dog for having a wet nose. As you were everybody!