not detecting trickery that occurred in the séance room. For example, author Ronald Pearsall wrote that Barrett was duped into believing spiritualism by mediumship trickery. Skeptic Edward Clodd criticized Barrett as being an incompetent researcher to detect fraud and claimed his spiritualist beliefs were based on magical thinking and primitive superstition. Another skeptic Joseph McCabe wrote that Barrett "talks nonsense of which he ought to be ashamed" as he had poor understanding of conjuring tricks and failed to detect the fraud of the medium Kathleen Goligher. Psychical researcher Helen de G. Verrall gave Barrett's book Psychical Research a positive review describing it as a "clear, careful account of some of main achievements of psychical research by one who has himself taken part in these achievements and speaks to a large extent from personal knowledge and observation." However, in the British Medical Journal the book was criticized for ignoring critical work on the subject and being "a negative assault on scientific method generally". Bibliography Practical Physics: An Introductory Handbook for the Physical Laboratory. (1892) London: Percival & Co. On the Threshold of a New World of Thought: An Examination of the Phenomena of Spiritualism. (1908) London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co. [https://archive.org/stream/psychicalresear00barr#page/n5/mode/2up Psychical Research.] (1911) New York: Henry Holt & Co. Swedenborg: The Savant and the Seer. (1912) London: Watkins. On the Threshold of the Unseen: An Examination of the Phenomena of Spiritualism and of the Evidence for Survival After Death. (1917) London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co. (Volltext) The Divining Rod: An Experimental and Psychological Investigation. [with Theodore Besterman] (1926) London: Methuen & Co. Christian Science: An Examination of the Religion of Health [with Rosa M. Barrett] (1926) New York: Henry Holt & Co. Deathbed Visions. (1926) London: Methuen & Co. References 1844 births 1925 deaths English physicists Fellows of the Royal Society Parapsychologists English spiritualists