James Alcock

Alcock is married to Karen Hanley. His son Erik Alcock is a professional musician/songwriter; two of his songs were included on Eminem's Recovery album, the best-selling album of 2010.

In October 2004 Alcock spoke at the World Skeptics Congress in Italy. As a member of the executive council of CFI, he addressed the opening session of the 2012 6th World Skeptic Congress in Berlin. He outlined the history of the modern skeptical movement as begun by CSICOP in April 1976 in Buffalo, NY.

A long–time member of the Skeptic's Toolbox faculty, Alcock lectures at the 4-day workshop that teaches attendees critical thinking skills for their daily lives. Alcock told a Register-Guard reporter who attended the 2003 conference, "Science has many voices... We encourage people to listen to scientific evidence, but how (in the case of expert testimony in American courts) do we determine who to listen to?" And in the case of printed media, "There are lots of things published that are sheer nonsense." Learning to evaluate evidence is why workshops like the Toolbox are important.

In 2003 Alcock published Give the Null Hypothesis a Chance: Reasons to Remain Doubtful about the Existence of Psi, where he claimed that parapsychologists never seem to take seriously the possibility that psi does not exist. Because of that, they interpret null results as indicating only that they were unable to observe psi in a particular experiment, rather than taking it as support for the possibility that there is no psi. The failure to take the null hypothesis as a serious alternative to their psi hypotheses leads them to rely upon a number of arbitrary "effects" to excuse failures to find predicted effects, excuse the lack of consistency in outcomes, and to excuse failures to replicate.

Alcock's book Belief: What it Means to Believe and Why Our Convictions Are So Compelling is a 638 page expansion on his 1995 article "The Belief Engine," where he wrote, "Our brains and nervous systems constitute a belief-generating machine, a system that evolved to assure not truth, logic, and reason, but survival". In the book's foreword, Ray Hyman's writes that this book is an "ideal textbook for a course that provides an integrated overview of all the areas of psychology" and that every "psychologist and psychology student should read it".

Alcock's 1981 book, "Parapsychology-Science Or Magic?: A Psychological Perspective," was instrumental in transforming Professor Chris French's skeptical understanding of paranormal events and explaining unusual experiences:

In 1976, Alcock attended the organizing conference at which the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal was founded, and was invited to be a Fellow of CSICOP at that time. He was appointed to the Executive Council a few years later.

In his first television appearance, in 1974, Alcock appeared on the TVOntario magazine show, The Education of Mike McManus, in Toronto. He sat on a panel discussing current paranormal research with a parapsychologist and a psychic healer. When asked if he was closed-minded to the possibility of psi, Alcock responded that there is no good research out there that would change his position. "The experiments that have been done... are filled with flaws... they just don't satisfy the canons of science. Until the parapsychologists can present evidence that satisfies the criteria of science there's nothing to investigate, there's no phenomenon there."

James E. Alcock (born 24 December 1942) is a Canadian educator. He has been a Professor of Psychology at York University (Canada) since 1973. Alcock is a noted critic of parapsychology and is a Fellow and Member of the Executive Council for the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. He is a member of the Editorial Board of The Skeptical Inquirer, and a frequent contributor to the magazine. He has also been a columnist for Humanist Perspectives Magazine. In 1999, a panel of skeptics named him among the two dozen most outstanding skeptics of the 20th century. In May 2004, CSICOP awarded Alcock CSI's highest honor, the In Praise of Reason Award. Alcock is also an amateur magician and is a member of the International Brotherhood of Magicians. As of 2020, he is currently on leave from York University.