I have just finished reading “Things You Can Do When You’re Dead” by Tricia J. Robertson, one of my fellow panel members at the Q&A session at the SSPR Conference on Saturday in Glasgow. Tricia is a previous President of the SSPR and a close working associate of the late Professor Archie Roy. In her book she discusses how we must examine every reported account of anomalous phenomena in its own merit. To highlight this she uses the wise words of Groucho Marx: “They said Galileo was mad when he claimed the Earth revolved the Sun – but it does. They said Wilbur and Orville Wright were out of their minds when they said men could fly – but they did. They said my uncle Waldorf was crazy – and he was as mad as a hatter!” In other words some ideas and beliefs that are rejected by science are rejected for very good reasons … and some are rejected simply because they challenge the status quo … the skill is spotting the genuine article from the false one …