Balls of fire Sir: Brian Inglis welcomes the recent article
in Nature on 'Balls of fire' as you called it (24 April), or spontaneous combustion to use its proper name. But equal credit is due to the Spectator in taking up the subject for airing on a layman's level. It is one of many such para-normal subjects, which although scarcely scientific, are almost never given serious discussion, even in the scientific or 'serious' press. Why not, is a subject for speculation.
Increasingly today, these subjects find their way into print via smaller publishing houses, but, once again, are not reviewed. It is true there are a number of cranks among them, pushing some pretty hare-brained ideas, but it is the literary editor's job to sort them out. Dare I say responsibility, even? Ignorance or even ill-favour is surely no excuse for self-respecting papers.
A book like The Book of the Damned by Charles Fort, first published in the early years of this century, was reviewed thus in the Wednesday Book Page of the Chicago Daily News, by Ben Hecht: 'Charles Fort has made a terrible onslaught upon the accumulated lunacy of fifty centuries. The onslaught will perish. The lunacy will survive, entrenching itself behind the derisive laughter of all good citizens'. An accusation against scientific man's logic, as true now as it was fifty years ago. To the apparent unconcern of even the most scandalmongering of editors. What's going wrong?
Anthony McCall-Judson
Lansdowne Club, Berkeley Square, London W1
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