New: The British Anomalistic Research Society

[Hayley]

Hello,

Some of you may know me as the founder of Wiltshire Phenomena Research who, until recently, conducted rational research into anomolous phenomena in the county of Wiltshire (as the name may suggest).

However, it became clear that simply researching claims on a local level and offering rational explanations for them wasn't having as big an effect as it could have. After much thought and discussion myself and some others (basically, it's all Bob Dezons fault) have set up The British Anomalistic Research Society (BARsoc) in the hope of taking rational, skeptical paranormal research to a larger audience.

You can see from our website linked to above that we already have a small number of researchers and investigators who are contributing to the site, as well as acting as field-based researchers in their locality if and when we recieve cases that need studying. However, the hope is that BARsoc can become a network for independent investigators and researchers to work with and so we are looking for people to join the society to help us create a great, online resource for rational information regarding paranormal phenomena. Ghosts, UFO's, Crop circles, psychic phenomena, strange animals and creatures, folklore and related topics are the things we want to cover and it would be wonderful if we could build up a list of members who can contribute their research and work into these subjects.

Broken down, this is how we aim for BARsoc to work:

- Independent researchers become a member os BARsoc,
- They contribute articles, videos, audio reports and written reports to the site
- If BARsoc recieve reports from eye witnesses, the members of BARsoc from the geographical area in question will act as a contact, and if deemed suitable, a field-based researcher for the case, using BARsoc as a resource for help, tips and guidance from other members.

If you are interested in joining BARsoc, or you know somebody who is then please get in contact. I am really eager to get this off of the ground and get the website ticking over with content.

[Dr B]

Good luck

The only problem i have with yet more groups, is that we already have (or had) groups that did this before they imploded. I assume ASSAP no longer functions in this way and has been infested with too much woo to be credible. In which case - good luck.

Another approach might be to change existing groups which have become infected by too much woo (i.e., back to assap).

I dont mean to be unsupportive (I am very supportive) - just that, I feel we have been here many times before and i struggle to excited about it all over again. Maybe its just me and my age...

Besides....many of us here at UKS are already doing this - though admitedly, we are not all about anomalous cognition here. I guess I am skeptical about how much so many separate groups can do rather than try to do it together....

[Hayley]

We had serious discussions about this very issue, but we're not aiming to be a new ASSAP or similar. BARsoc is designed to link individual investigators together and to also provide a resource for rational information.

As it is it's very unlikely that we will do anything along the lines of 'affiliated groups' or huge training events like ASSAP do. BARsoc isn't a group either, it's just a society built from individuals who rationally research the paranormal.

[Dr B]

We had serious discussions about this very issue, but we're not aiming to be a new ASSAP or similar. BARsoc is designed to link individual investigators together and to also provide a resource for rational information.

As it is it's very unlikely that we will do anything along the lines of 'affiliated groups' or huge training events like ASSAP do. BARsoc isn't a group either, it's just a society built from individuals who rationally research the paranormal.

In reality this is what ASSAP was / is all about. Forget the affiliated groups thing, it never meant much anyway to those of us too busy doing research. ASSAP used to be much more than that. However, I concur that as ASSAP has gone too woo in recent years, came off the rails a bit, and lost sight of what it used to be about and what it should be about, perhaps there is room for a new group.

My only concern is that we could all do more if we did it together and i dont see anything particularly original about your aims. There is an argument against having more and more groups (skeptical or otherwise). In addition, as I said before UKS is aimed at tackling some of your issues.

However, I do wish you the very best with it . Try not to get too frustrated when nothing much happens and no one wants to actually 'do' anything. We need more people that want to actively 'do' things around here...