The Unpersuadables Is A Cock-Up NewAge Investigation

These are three pictures of the author.

Having had a bit of experience with the NewAge offshoots, pro and con, that are covered in Will Storr's new book, The Unpersuadables: Adventures with the Enemies of Science, I grew rather frustrated reading it's reviews. That's because Storr seems to have reached the conclusion that, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em - just don't believe what they say - and that, my fellow bugaboos, will not do. Why not? Since I don't want to recount my own tale again, I'll let Mark Henderson of The Observer explain:

 It is the very quality of these chapters,...that makes Storr's book disappointing and infuriating. For having shown he can achieve the kind of sceptical distance that makes Jon Ronson and Louis Theroux such effective chroniclers of weirdness, he casts it aside in an indulgence of wishful thinking. It is not enough for Storr to consider why people believe weird things; he also wants to challenge whether these things really are weird. He seems to accept, deep down, that they are, but he doesn't want to admit this. He is like the child who still wants to believe in Father Christmas, but who is just old enough to know better. Life would be more magical, more fun, if the story were true.

So it is that homeopaths are given a more sympathetic hearing than sceptics, with no discussion of the harm that unscientific medicine can do: Storr's storytelling does not extend to children like Neon Roberts, denied timely radiotherapy for his brain tumour as his mother sought an "alternative"... 

Someone Storr didn't interview.

That's it, right there, and anyone knowledgeable knows it - people die behind indulging these beliefs. Usually other people - not the "happy" ones Storr was searching out. They've already "moved on" to the next sucker. This is something Storr never considers (nor do most others) as he assumes his position as NewAge's latest entry in the cheerleading line-up. 

A mind so open his brains fell out.

Storr wrote the book he wanted, no doubt, but, if you ask me, from the very beginning, he was asking the wrong questions to all the wrong people, and, thus, getting all the wrong answers. 

Accept them as they are.

And, if that's the case, how could anyone expect otherwise?