Book 'Shroom' falsley called "rigorous"

This post is from Michael Hoffman (egodeath.com). I whole-heartedly agree. I, also, was upset when this general audience book came out attempting to debunk decades or scholarly research:


Talks of Letcher's "findings":
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/490/book_review_andy_letcher_shrooms_mag

I also spoke with a modernity-focused psychedelics researcher who also bought into Letcher's illusion of rigor. I'm starting to agree with Jan Irvin that the shortcomings of Letcher's book could cause some harm and serve as the biggest setback to the field of entheogen scholarship since Wasson's dismissal of the Plaincourault fresco as Amanita and Wasson's complete failure to consider entheogens throughout the Bible & Christian history.

Anyone who hasn't read much entheogen scholarship, and hasn't made that their main focus, is likely to come away from Letcher's book with the mis-impression that the entheogen theory of religion has been proven baseless. Letcher needs to publish corrections and clarifications to reduce the harm that his half-informed, abridged "popular audience" book has done
to the field of entheogen scholarship.

We need more issues of Entheos magazine to dispel the pernicious illusion that the entheogen theory of religious origins = the mushroom theory as popularized using Wasson/Allegro/McKenna, and the illusion that Letcher's book treated all the evidence and arguments for the entheogen or mushroom theory of religious origins & history. Shroom is a biased treatment: it waves aside much evidence, carelessly treats the existing evidence, and waffles on which hypothesis it is purporting to refute.

The popular version of the mushroom theory of religion that is based on
Wasson/Allegro/McKenna has flaws, but neither is Shroom correct. Letcher is not a general entheogen scholar; he researched the popular Wasson/Allegro/McKenna mushroom theory in isolation. The resulting biased, distorted picture and treatment demonstrates why authors must be cautious when writing a book about only a single visionary plant. Authors need to do all their homework across the overall field, to contribute valid studies in the subfields.

Demonstrates Shroom is not rigorous as it needs to be:
http://www.egodeath.com/ViewsOnEntheogensInReligiousHistory.htm - high-level
analysis of the situation and state of the field; categorizes Letcher's view
within a typology of competing paradigms

http://www.egodeath.com/ShroomLetcher.htm - relevant book excerpts

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/egodeath/message/4577 - my Amazon review

-- Michael Hoffman, Egodeath.com