“Violations of common sense have to be earned” (Schwitzgebel). Indeed. But whose common sense? It could consist in recognising that weirdness is inevitable in descriptions of existence, or in the outing of those and their followers who trade in a (to some, common sensical) weirdness, sometimes for money, power or to make themselves feel better. Or (worse?) to those who sincerely believe their own apparent nonsense, the “Weird Shit” of Chris French’s title which I suppose was a good marketing idea.

Both Schwitzgebel and French are doing us a favour. Both are famous sceptics. Both have an “open”approach. French, for example, Emeritus Professor and head of the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit at Goldsmiths, University of London (which institution also houses the excellent Gustav Kahn's unit studying the science of magic) writes that many psychics genuinely believe they do have special powers. Both authors demystify for us the processes by which we can recognise and begin to handle weirdness. It's not a straw-man alternative to the “truths” of the weaponisers of assertive dubiety, and it's not magic.

French’s “weird shit” has nothing to do with the weirdness of the world. Just because we should believe six impossible things before breakfast does not entail us taking afternoon tea with alien lizards. But in admirably explaining everything from ectoplasm to exploding head syndrome, and privileging psychology over wishful thinking in areas from dowsing to divination, he unravels, not unsympathetically, the psychology of those who need simple answers (even if weird ones) to the big human questions, and who often find magic energies and conspiracies to be far more congenial than any of Schwitzgebel's scientific and philosophical delights.

He also questions the questioners, looking sceptically at parapsychological research methods, his own included. But nearly all the most stringent critiques applied to those believing “conventional” weird stuff (as opposed to Schwitzgebel's emergent, “logically” weird hypotheses) can be applied to the researchers into ostensibly paranormal phenomena as well as their audience. Lack of repeatability and (possibly un-) conscious selectivity in data manipulation and statistics worthy of any dodgy drug company seem rampant. Indeed an argument could be made that both books' major contribution is to render exotic, exciting and vivid a principled search for truth, in any and all areas. In the end both are about our own capacities for self-deception and bias in every important aspect of life.

Two chapters in “The Science of Weird Shit”, about remembering being abducted by aliens, and the near death experiences beloved by believers, exemplify French's methods and clear-headed approach. In the former, we learn that the term “flying saucer” appeared in 1947 following press interest in reports of strange craft flying at amazing speeds. These were reported and drawn by Kenneth Arnold as being boomerang shaped, but their motion he described as like a saucer skimming over water. The media found headlines using “flying saucers” excited people and that took hold. So people started describing, in great detail, saucer shaped UFOs in subsequent sightings. The advent of photoshopping makes the author nostalgic for the old days when photographic “evidence” depended on (usually saucer-shaped) models or household objects suspended on string.

In a nice example of how people can spot UFO's without intentional deception involved, French points out how objects in photos seen from unusual perspectives, that would have been perfectly explicable when the photo was made, can take on an alien dimension when seen later. A flying bird in a photo, however strange it may look, was not remarkable in a photo of the countryside at the time. Photos of sunsets taken through windows might also include reflections of globular or of course saucer-shaped interior lights, even sparkling chandeliers. Quite normal. But years later…

As for the strangely common factors in really close encounters of various kinds, we have the usual misguided, delusional, fantasising or simply mistaken people (and some right nutters) talking of Scandinavian-ish blondes, naughty breeding attempts and the usual anal probes and strange marks left on bodies after the dream, sorry encounter, was over.

Why do people believe in these stories in the face of overwhelming evidence against them being real? Perhaps they are convinced by the tellers' own sincere beliefs. A majority seem not to be deliberate hoaxers. They have raised levels of psychophysiological activity when recounting the events. They were not more prone to serious mental illness. They seem to believe their dreams, or whatever, were real, and can often recall further and better particulars in recovered memory or hypnotic explorations. Yet alien implants often mysteriously disappear when about to be examined, or turn out to be a dental filling. Recovered memories are to say the least to be regarded with deep suspicion. 

What about the public? A majority of US adults surveyed believed that hypnosis can recover repressed memories, for which there is no good evidence. Studies have however shown the ease with which false memories can be induced in volunteers. When people were asked if they had seen footage of an aircraft hitting a block of flats in Amsterdam, over half said they had. No such footage exists. Your reviewer has shown the well known video of Christopher Chabris’ and Daniel Simons’ celebrated “Disappearing Gorilla” to people well versed in cognitive aspects of attention, building up to it as a highlight of his talk. (Two teams in black or white shirts pass a handball between them and you have to count the number of passes one team makes. In the middle of the video a person in a gorilla costumes ambles into shot, thumps its chest and walks away. Many people don't even notice it.) Some people who should know better, when asked if they saw anything unusual, claim with boredom and disdain that of course they saw a gorilla. Except they didn't. In the naughtily and unofficially edited version I made with apologies, the gorilla was indeed invisible, being totally absent.

Perhaps the most entertaining thing French recounts is that many ufologists believe the initial lack of memories noted in accounts of the (in one way or another arousing) abductions is that the aliens wipe the memories of the victims afterwards, which would indeed explain a lot. Fortunately there are always a few tiny give-away details, enabling later recovery of the whole weird story. And there is a checklist! Have you ever woken paralysed with a strange sensation of someone or something in the room? Experienced a period of time, an hour or more, in which you were apparently lost but couldn’t remember why or where? Felt yourself flying through the air though not knowing how or why? Seen unusual lights in a room? Found marks on your body that you don't remember receiving? Four to five yeses and you've been abducted by aliens. But they probably wiped the other, more specific memories. Several million Americans qualify (an extrapolated figure) and people claim that these millions say they were abducted. But they don't, they were never asked that question and I must stop using that figure as an amusing statistic confirming their gullibility, though I now strangely believe it to be true.

Another interesting chapter is headed Dying To Know The Truth. Yes, you guessed. Near death experiences (NDEs): out of body experiences (OBEs) or seeing yourself from above, tunnels with lights at the end, pain-free peace, someone appropriately dressed in white and light telling you your time hasn't come yet, waking up back in your hospital bed. What was said, if anything, to the non-returners we shall of course never know. How we long to not die, you know, not really really die. And here at last is evidence of our specialness. It's not just arrogance! We really do live on and hence know what consciousness, at least, is not. (We shall float over in silence the less talked about terrifying experiences of devilish torture or being alone forever in an infinite void. I suppose it depends on your background.)

There are explanations aplenty. One is that it is just what it sounds like: the soul separating from the body. Untestable. Another, supported “surprisingly” by Carl Sagan, was that it's a memory of travelling down the birth canal. Against that: babies aren't usually born headfirst, it wouldn't be peaceful, and babies can't lay down memories. Crucially, surely, babies born by Cesarian section can also have NDE's when grown up. There's also the dying brain theory. The problem there is that not all the brains of patients were dying, and that NDEs can happen to people who only believe they are dying but aren't really, and surely this latter should give a clue?

There are striking similarities between NDEs and testimonies from fighter pilots passing out and experiencing effects of lack of blood going to the brain because of extreme gravitational manoeuvre. Characteristics shared with NDEs are impressive: floating, tunnels, bright lights, OBEs, euphoria, friends and families felt present, not wanting to be disturbed out of it, dissociation… There is much more evidence that some or all of the NDE experiences can be produced by means not depending upon a soul or other such concepts. There is also exaggeration and downright fabrication in the stories of people floating up and seeing things on top of cupboards. A famous case of a blind person who could describe everything going on during an NDE was later admitted to have been made up by a researcher “for illustrative purposes”! People do so want to believe. But why?

We are very good at fooling ourselves, switching off rational thought when it suits us. This can lead us into beliefs far more dubious and counter-intuitive than any weird scientific hypothesis. In fact after reading the (to me) tragically crazy stuff demolished or made dubious in French's book, to return to scientifically likely cosmic madness was a relief.

As French’s book reached its end via stories of dowsing rods and TV programmes “testing” the existence of a psi energy but designed to give some positive results, I realised that several debunkings I had read seemed familiar. Or seemed to seem familiar? Perhaps my own strong scepticism was persuading me that surely everyone already knew the the tricks and delusions of the psychic trade? I realised I was never going to change my mind, just as the believers rarely change theirs.

In syllogistic reasoning, whether the premise or conclusion are true is not the point. The question is simply whether the conclusion would validly follow from the premise if the latter were to be true. But it's easy to manipulate and made believable to those who need or want to believe it.

For example: If aliens had crash-landed on Earth leaving materials with incredible properties that would change life as we know it, the authorities would deny it —The authorities deny it, therefore such an event has happened.

The least unlikely theories about life, the universe and everything are very weird — My theory that it's turtles all the way down is very weird. Therefore my theory is likely to be true.

But isn't much of the most interesting and thought provoking, weirdly great art deliberately falsely syllogistic? AI generated art is often “falsely syllogistic” in a sense. Is AI generated art weirdly great art? Oh dear.

Supported, I believe, by this book, I feel that to cling on to simplistic explanations when they are problematic even if better ones are weird, or to adhere to weird theories when all the evidence is against them and none for them, is the ultimate human arrogance and yet defining quality.

Will any general AI and its philosophical and scientific apparatuses become steps on the way to making us more intelligent, more open, rational and (sorry) less nasty? Or will it give rise to a new, unanswerable, self-certifying charlatanism and gullibility 2.0, where people do the mental equivalent of drinking bleach to cure viral infections, forever? Neither of these excellent and frequently amusing books gives grounds for supposing there's any third alternative. I’m not sure that Chris French's moderate, sympathetic look at the scientific explanations of “paranormal” phenomena, nor the psychological investigation of what leads people to believe the irrational, the unhinged and the provably false, is going to change the minds of those who already “know” that any attempt to induce scepticism or self-questioning in their minds is further evidence that they are not wrong. Because, putting myself into the state of an ardent believer in the ludicrously absurd: Why would they be bother questioning my thinking if I am wrong? They would only be doing it if they know I'm right… QED. 

Art, on the other hand, should and often does contain within its representations or “statements”, for want of a better word, questions about its own ambiguities. More than any fuzzy logic or hedging bets, it can say “this and its opposite are both true, and part of some bigger thing, if looked at like this.”Where tabloid newspapers, mad social media users and much popular culture normalise hard binary attempts to make sense of the world, art and literature are surely one of the few resources we now have left to open things up rather more. In between the zombie and the soul are where we live, in realms of justifiable weirdness. In consciousness studies, you needn't try to visualise a zombie identical to humans in every respect except it's a zombie, as part of an anti-materialist thought experiment whose result may be the concept of a soul. You can just read a story about someone doing that, or see a picture of it, when the true and false exist in a different kind of thought space. Books such as this give permissions, perhaps obligations, to be usefully, even rigorously weirder than is generally expected of us. 

How do we gain insights into the big, basic questions about life, the universe and everything? It seems so difficult, so self-referential or recursive. But there have always been those who by accident or design seemed to pop out from these cloudy balloons of unknowing, or worse of “certainties”, however briefly, and glimpse either a calming unity or an amazing, spiky path towards more specific knowledge. Some of these people have been artists. Let's live dangerously, leaving decoration, pretty pictures and other artistic inadequacies aside, and become philosophical artists, explorative, unlikely, dubious, and above all rigorously, usefully, weird.

Humans tend to think that when something happens (or is represented or displayed) near them it happens to them, for a purpose. They seem to think this in every situation except bookshops and art galleries. Yet perhaps there is a hope. What upsets the conjurors of normalcy the most? The crazy, dubious, commodified, cynical, conservative, revolutionary, useless, spectacular, distracting, gouging, woke, stupid, brilliant, kind, cruel, sometimes magnificently weird work of artists, writers, musicians and (even!) philosophers and psychologists.