A response from John Catt to a piece in John Rippin's View Point column stating that "In the nine years since the last experiment was held, not a single piece of evidence has been produced to cast doubt on the authenticity of the amazing range of phenomena" resulting from the Scole experiment was not published. There are good grounds for doubting the evidence.

A relevant quotation from John Poynton (an ex President and currently a Vice President of the Society for Psychical Research) can be found in this interview (click here) .

A discussion of the Scole experiment can be found here.

John Catt responded to a letter from John Cope, under the headline "You can test phenomena"(Echo 29 Feb.), criticising "ultra sceptical 'scientists'" for not examining all the reported "paranormal" events.

The explanation for this is quite simple, once scientists have tested something and produced consistent results, they do not generally go back to check whether the laws of nature have changed. For the paranormal to hold true, nature would have to be inconsistent.

Scientists can find better things to do than keep following up all the reports of the paranormal events, when over a long period of time and involving many different experiments, nothing has been proved apart from how vivid the self deceptions of the human brain can be.

Follow the links below for more information on the paranormal phenomena he referred to:

• Telepathy
• The spiritual world
• Astrology
• Ghosts
• UFO sightings
• Psychokinesis
• Precognition
• Retrocognition
• Reincarnation

To indicate that the stories of Colin Wilson are genuine Josheph Rhine and Uri Geller are cited. If you click on their names to further links you will see why these fail to add any credibility to claims of the paranormal.

Those interested in Geller might like to follow this link to James Randi's newsletter.

John Catt responded to a piece by John Rippin in the 25 January edition in which accused those who advocate the Scientific Method of not having "open minds". He asserted that "Great damage was done when a deal was agreed in the 17th century in which the material world of science was separated from the spiritual world of religion". Sam Harris in a recent talk explained why science and the supernatural are inimicable and this can be viewed by following this link.

The "deal" he refers to appears to be The Enlightenment. A conference call Beyond Belief - Enlightenment 2.0 was held in November and the speakers included Daniel Dennet and Nobel Laurate Harold Kroto. These talks include both the history and the continuing evolution of "Enlightenment" ideas and can be viewed over the web.

John Rippin also referred to Tom Lethbridge, a famous dowser. Dowsing has been discredited on every occasion that it has been properly investigated. The Munich experiments are probably the most thorough experiments into dowsing, undertaken with German government funding. Whilst initially the results were seen as positive for dowsing, a proper statistical analysis showed that there was no discernible benefit compared what might be expected from chance.

He also stated that "many scientists have been telling us that the material and spiritual world are interlinked". Recent surveys indicate that religion amongst scientists is in a continuing decline. See this link.

Geoff Gay's letter to the Echo was slightly censored. The full original text appears below.

Dear Sir,

During the past few months, for various reasons, I have not given public voice to my criticisms of the Echo's policy. But your relentless promotion of the "supernatural" ( i.e. anti-science ) goes on .

In the December 28th issue, you devote a whole page ( not to mention the free front page plug ) to a free advertisement for a "celebrity astrologer", inviting readers to waste their time and money on "Claire's special year ahead phone line" ( although I can find no sign of the phone number ! ), and claiming that her "in-depth view of the next twelve months" could change our lives. But anyone who bases their life decisions on the meaningless musings of an "astrologer" would be very foolish : quite simply ( as I explained in an article some time ago ), the idea that being born at a particular time of the year or that the planets are in particular positions in relation to the "signs of the Zodiac" ( purely a line of sight effect as the stars of the "Zodiac" signs are many orders of magnitude further away from us than the planets and similar distances from each other ) should have any bearing on your life decisions has no basis in reality whatsoever. Quite simply, I contend, without fear of the libel laws, that Claire Petulengro ( or whatever her real name is ) and her ilk are charlatans and con-merchants.

In the same issue, John Rippin's return to his perennial theme of "psychic orbs" makes me feel like despair !

The recent tragic events in Pakistan and elsewhere, and the foot-dragging of the US administration on climate change ( and Rippin can't resist his little dig on that one ! ) yet again demonstrate that anti-rationalism is a major force holding back progress towards a better world, and beg the questions as to what can be done to promote the scientific view. Individuals like Dawkins and Hitchins work hard to promote rationalism, but they are individuals; secularist and humanist organisations, while serving useful purposes as far as they go, are not pro-actively pro-rationalist ; neither is the British Association for the Advancement of Science. Organised anti-rationalism needs to be combated by organised pro-rationalism : we need an organisation which is dedicated to promoting science and exposing anti-science in all its forms.