Reading one rigorous book can complete a belief change that discussion never triggered

Evidence

That one can go through a rather similar process of changing one’s mind even after achieving a certain academic status can be seen in the example of London psychology professor Chris French. In his youth, he was also fascinated by paranormal phenomena and at the time encountered only texts that presented such phenomena as facts. As a Ph.D. student, he made some money giving lectures in adult education, reporting, among other things, completely uncritically about supposedly sound results from parapsychology. Apart from that, however, he now remembers himself as a “silent believer” who hardly talked about it and therefore never got into discussions with skeptics. There still was no well-organized, publically active skeptics’ movement at the time. Whenever in the media he got background information that for example the spectacular show effects presented by Uri Geller could be reproduced with common illusionist tricks, he found that irrelevant, simply because he was convinced that Geller wasn’t using tricks. “I just didn’t see the relevance. Thinking about it today, I ask myself, how could I not see the relevance, but… that was it.” Then he encountered the book “Parapsychology - Science or Magic?” by Canadian psychologist James Alcock, which shows the fallacies and statistical weaknesses of that field of research. “In Jim Alcock, I found the first consistent, well founded voice of skepticism and… it worked.” French was convinced by the stringency of Alcock’s scientific arguments and, after that, read more and more skeptical literature, however, still without publically talking about it. Only later, already teaching at the university, he let skeptical and parapsychology-critical topics become part of his teaching routine and began to do research in that field himself, which brought him nationwide recognition through a number of television appearances. As in the case of Hayley Stevens, his view on paranormal beliefs has become more tolerant over time. He now stresses that not all psychics are frauds, but some are simply victims of self-deception, and that not all belief systems that are almost certainly wrong have to be harmful, for example if people find solace in the belief in life after death. Also, he appreciates that, while the phenomena looked for by parapsychology very probably don’t exist, the majority of the people doing research there does good scientific work, from which one can learn much about the psychology of beliefs and perceptions, but also about methods and mistakes in other fields of the social sciences . Chris French’s process of changing his mind was quick and basically complete after reading just one book, but he now puts it into the perspective of a personal development that has lasted for decades and still continues today. … In the decisive step, personal discussions didn’t play a role, but the systematic presentation of skeptical arguments in the form of a book did. — Holm Gero Hümmler, Ulrike Schiesser, Fact and Prejudice, 210

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels the Hayley Stevens case structure already seen elsewhere in this book, and speaks to how information access failures sustain belief.