Negative Positive
Title: Scientific approach, but not convincing.
Review: Most of the book presents anecdotes with no mention of how useless they are without controls. The author DOES attempt a scientific statistical analysis of published studies of psychic phenomena. However the crucial "file drawer effect" (the fact that studies with negative, neutral or inconclusive results are often not published) is not dealt with satisfactorily. The author simply asserts large values for the estimated number of studies that would have to languish unpublished to explain his statistical results, without giving the reasoning. These estimates (~10 to 1000 times the number of studies published) are obviously way too large: it is clear that unpublished studies numbering on the same order as those published would have a large effect on the results. If this is the best evidence for the reality of psychic phenomena, I don't see any reason to accept same.
Is the review positive or negative? 