Journalist Steve Volk writes about the stranger side on life but from the perspective of neither a true believer or a skeptic. Instead he approaches all of this with the attitude of "I don't know." Whether interviewing a NASA astronaut-turned-mystic, a world-famous psychologist who taught about dying and decided death may not exist at all, or scientists attempting to verify what mystics have been reporting for millennia, the core of this book revolves around what it means to be human.

As someone who is skeptically open to these kinds of things what struck me most was realizing how much we *don't* know, and the fact that scientists can be just as dogmatic and close minded as the fundamentalists of the world. ( )

Cute book. But mis-titled...rather, the subtitle is mis-subtitled; do not be misled. Volk does not try to explain away the unexplainable. He does try to explain away the skeptics. To be fair, he does make a few points, one being skeptics can be just as extreme as believers. But...

I find the prefix "para-" to be interesting, particularly in the context Volk explores. I admit a logical fallacy or two of my own (Reductionism? Straw Man?) in making my next point: "Paralegal" is not quite a lawyer; "paramedic"...not quite a doctor. "Paramilitary," not quite military - sort of wannabe military. And "paranormal"? ...wannabe normal, something surpassing "not quite".

Volk wants his audience to believe he wants them to have an open mind, but he does a very poor job hiding his bias. One thing is clear in the narrative: Volk takes extra effort to humanize the believers and hides no disdain for the skeptics. It must be deliberate, and with editorial concurrence because the ostensibly unfairly maligned protagonists are painted in gentle, unassuming terms, whereas Richard Dawkins, for example, is referred to snarkily as "The Pope of the Godless". I am sure that the believers portrayed are quite possibly human, as humanized, but the "I'm not a New Ager, but..." is a worn out refrain.

Reading his accounts of NDEs, it was too comical of an image to not imagine the eerie music. And he forgets that anecdote is not a synonym for evidence. It goes downhill from there. Volk loads up a sources section with...sources...but does not tie them to his stories. There are a lot of sources (I use his term) but you're on your own. The lack of citations makes this, I guess, more readable, but the narrative is flimsy for it. He claims skeptics and believers are more alike than not, but ... doesn't connect them well. Lots of falling short in this book. What falls long is the filler material that has less to do with the topics than serving to dtstract: how Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (author of On Death and Dying) descended from reason to paranonsense, Edgar Mitchell's ... lunacy (could, but didn't resist); Dr. Andrew Newberg, a neuro-researcher about whom Volk says

“His findings, he cautions, do not comprise evidence that God exists."

...prompting the obvious question "What evidence?", which, obviously, goes unanswered (actually, unaddressed...) Volk's journalism does peek through...he noted that Newberg appeared in two films with radically different objectives - What the Bleep Do We Know? and Religulous – and comes off through the the miracle of editing as in support of each of the opposing themes. He ended the Newberg chapter with something from Newberg's last freshman class of a semester, after elaborating on science positing all things coming from a Big Bang and all things being composed of elementary particles:

“But isn’t it funny? There is this long fight between science and spirituality. But if we really pay attention to science and to profound mystical experiences, they are both essentially telling us the same thing—that this profound connection exists, lying underneath it all.”

Charming. And rather "What does it all mean?" silly. Angst ridden hormonal young adults ponder that. Then they grow up and adult themselves. And if they don't, they become philosophers.

By far the most humorous chapter - no, not the Stephensville UFOs - was the one on lucid dreaming. For a more detailed, and even sillier treatment, check out Lucid Dreams in 30 Days by Keith Harary. Well, the bit about communication after death was pretty up there near the same level.

A common tactic of cranks is an attempt to legitimize pseudoscience with pseudoscientific jargon, with stories of the "unexplainable", with simple - and quite erroneous - either/or presentations: "I couldn't find anything to explain or contradict, so we should accept these stories as evidence of something real." To be clear, I am not saying Volk is a crank, but he does manifest many of the characteristics. There is an awful lot of dichotomous writing here...see my observation in my third paragraph above. Another common tactic is cherry-picking. Making claims of mounds of data supporting say, telepathy (and not saying what the data are...kind of a vague snow job fallacy), and quoting a counter claim that New Atheists have no data...really, a poor presentation. This book does not appear to me to ever have been about explaining the unexplainable. But it was unintentionally entertaining.

Let me end with a James Morrow quote I like that the author didn't quite get: "Science does have all the answers. [...] We just don't have all of the science." ( )

Based on reviews here and an interview I heard on NPR,I expected this to be...different. While it is obvious that Volk did his research, he often seems quite credulous. I agree with him that what seems like quack science can be, 20 years down the road, the cutting edge. Also, that we as a society need to be more open minded. But open minded doesn't mean leave the barn door open. I did like the chapters on micro vs macro quantum physics. Based on what we know, that makes sense. I did find my (as my husband calls it) wacky woo woo alarm going off regulary. A lot of this book should be taken with a very large grain of salt. Are there limits to what we can know? Sure, there are things we just don't know right now. What happens to conciousness is one. On the other hand, do I think that some of those things are ghosts knocking on doors and UFOs flying out of the sky? Well. I think the basic premise of science - is it verifiable and repeatable - is where we should be, and where this book falls short. ( )

I've read a great many books on parapsychology, and this is definitely one of the best books on the subject. Volk handles a controversial subject with balance and grace, while steering clear of being dry or overly technical. Highly recommended for believers and skeptics alike, and I reckon both seasoned parapsych buffs and newcomers will be entertained and challenged by this book. ( )

It’s hard to believe in anything beyond this workaday world, trapped as we are in our fluorescent tombs--the places where imagination goes to die, its passing briefly noted in a spreadsheet of no particular use or function. But look around you. “Guh ‘head,” as they say in South Philly: prairie dog; take a peek. The middle-aged guy sitting to your left, who runs the office’s fantasy football league? He hunts Bigfoot on the weekends. And the blond hottie on your right? She’s into astrology. Not you though, right? Laugh it up; you’re too educated, too smart, to believe in any of that nonsense. Thing is, you’re the weirdo. Two out of three Americans hold some sort of belief in the paranormal. So maybe a little humility is in order, Negative Nancy.

Humility is evident in Philly-based journalist Steve Volk’s recent book, Fringe-ology, in which he explores the intersection of science and the paranormal. Reporter that he is, Volk admits up front that the easy angle--and the path usually chosen by his peers--would have been to portray the events he covers and the folks whose stories he tells for laughs: Dreamers high on New Age thought and rubes hopefully staring at the night sky--wink, wink. But Volk isn’t interested in easy laughs, or even easy conclusions; perhaps what’s most impressive about Volk is his willingness to say “I don’t know,” and to argue that there’s nothing wrong with that, an attitude of which both skeptics and believers alike might take note.

Volk covers a range of topics in Fringe-ology, from telepathy and the nature of consciousness to more personal issues, including a “Family Ghost” that may have served as inspiration for the book, if not Volk’s career. Particularly touching is Volk’s discussion of UFO sightings over a small Texas community in 2008 and the aftermath of those events. No credulous locals here: Volk portrays a town mystified and torn by things it can’t explain and struggling to come to grips with something it can’t understand. If we’re honest with ourselves, Volk’s saying, we’ll find that we’re all in that state of uncertainty, somewhere between the dictates of science and the paranormal potentialities the scientific mainstream rejects out of hand. If you’re interested in questioning scientific dogma--if you “want to believe”--or if you’re just looking for some great, thought-provoking storytelling, then Fringe-ology is the book for you.

Review originally posted at http://geekadelphia.com/2011/07/27/fringe-ology-edits/ ( )