Would You Want to Know If You Were Wrong?

Barry Markovsky (0:00)

The surveillance camera in his office, when no one was there, capturing a book, a Bible, he said, flying off of the corner of the desk on its own. And that was very different from everything else in the video. I interviewed parapsychologists, almost all of the most prominent ones, and I asked them what the biggest problem was in parapsychology, and the consensus was evidence, we need better evidence. I also interviewed most of the best known skeptics at the time, and asked them what the problem was. The biggest problem was parapsychology, and almost to a person, they said, the lack of a theory.

Michael Shermer (0:41)

All right. Hey, everybody. It's Michael Shermer. It's time for another episode of The Michael Shermer Show. Here we are. My guest today is Dr. Barry Markovsky. His new book here, Everyday Extraordinary.

A Scientist Ponders a Lifetime of Magical, Bizarre, and Paranormal Experiences. You could tell why I like this particular topic. Barry is a social psychologist who studies social influences on beliefs and behavior. He received his Ph.D. from Stanford University, served on the faculties of the University of Iowa and the University of South Carolina, and he directed the sociology program at the National Science Foundation. His recent publications include a series of popular articles at theconversation.com on superstitions, ghosts, and UFOs. Everyday Extraordinary is his first book written for a general audience. He also writes a blog column under the same title for Psychology Today. Barry lives in Asheville, North Carolina. You can check him out at bmarkovsky, bmarkovsky.com for more information. So there it is. All right. Love the book. It was fun. A lot of good topics there. Barry, nice to see you.

So just give us kind of a broad overview. What made you decide to write some popular articles and so forth, rather than just scholarly articles?

Barry Markovsky (2:04)

Well, my best published scholarly articles tended to reach an audience of double digits, I guess. But even in the top journals in my field, these things don't get very widely read. They can be influential within the discipline, but they don't really affect people very much.

And I was teaching this course, Sociology of the Paranormal, oh, 30 years probably, both at Iowa and at South Carolina. And so I had tons and tons of material. By the way, I probably sold a lot of books for you because-

Michael Shermer (2:44)

Oh, thanks, and magazines.

Barry Markovsky (2:47)

Yes, yes.

But after I retired in 2020, I thought I definitely have enough material here for a book. I ended up using very little of it. The book ended up being a lot more personal from my own experiences, similar topics, but it's not like I could take my class notes and write a book out of them. And just prior to that, starting in the late 20 teens, I was publishing at theconversation.com, they had journalists who collaborate with faculty around the country. And they said, would you do an article with us on, I think the first one was on the Havana syndrome. And that was great fun. And it's like within a day, it reaches 25,000 people. And then I had a series of articles over the next few years that have reached almost a million and a half people. So it's a very different style of writing and a lot of fun to work on that kind of writing. And it just feels good. It's a nice change.

Michael Shermer (4:00)

Yeah, I'll say. Well, and also the popularity is an indication of the market speaking in the sense that readers are really interested in this subject and a lot of them believe it. Or at least they think there might be something to it or, you know, I don't know. How do you make the distinction between the kinds of believers there are? I mean, they're hardcore people that think, you know, the paranormal and all that stuff is real. But I also think it's harder for pollsters to capture that people think, well, I don't know, you know, I mean, if I have to go yes or no, I'll go this way or this way. But really, they're not sure.

Like, yeah, I know, there's some weird stuff and maybe.

Barry Markovsky (4:35)

Yeah, at the population level, you have to think of it in terms of a kind of multi-dimensional distribution of beliefs, ranging from extreme belief to extreme indifference, and belief along a number of different dimensions at the same time. Like, how important is the belief to the person?

Unimportant, very important, that makes a difference. Who around them believes it? What's the context of the belief? What's the source of the belief? So I'm not trying to make this overly complicated, but yeah, a simple poll, you know, do you believe in astrology? It only gives you limited information, unfortunately. But I think taking that complexity into account when trying to reach people is crucial. I don't have any evidence for that yet, but we'll see. This, the book was written in a style, much more storytelling kind of style.