The Heretics by Will Storr, review But Storr hasn't come to snigger. He wants to understand these "heretics"; to understand how they came to believe what they believe, and why they continue to do so in the face of all the opposing evidence. More than that: he wants to know whether, to some degree, they might actually be right. Even if they aren't, he's interested to see if there are ways in which rationalists are wrong. He attends a conference of self-proclaimed "Sceptics" and is irked by their complacency. Many attendees tell him there's "no evidence for homoeopathy." He asks them what studies of homoeopathy they've read. The answer, time and again, is none. This isn't necessarily to say there is evidence for homoeopathy; merely that some people who call themselves rationalists aren't as rational as they think. They, like UFO spotters and the rest, can be susceptible to the easy answer that confirms or seems to confirm their own biases. Biases they don't even realise they have. Unconscious bias lurks in us all. Storr notes studies that show overweight job applicants are often assumed to be less intelligent than thinner ones. "One sad experiment demonstrated that interviewers can unconsciously attach negative qualities to an applicant after they have seen them sitting next to an overweight person in the waiting room." Fundamentally this is a book about how the mind works, and how it doesn't. How we see what we want to see and ignore what we don't. How we edit our memories to our advantage. How, rather than base our opinions on evidence, we form our opinions first, then seek evidence that supports them. How those opinions are often reinforced not by fresh evidence but by our anger when someone dares to challenge us. Anyone who's had an argument with a stranger on Twitter will recognise the truth of that. The book is funny, serious, richly vivid. "Vered [the past-life regression therapist] has hair perhaps best described as "excited." It is long and dark and has been pinned about her head with a complex arrangement of clips and gives the impression of being frozen, mid-explosion. It is hair that has been told incredible secrets about the universe and is just bursting to tell you all about it. Storr is anxiously analytical, fretting even about his own biases as a reporter. Why, he asks himself, does he feel such sympathy for some "heretics"? Is he skewing his findings, he wonders, to make these people's ideas seem, if not correct, at least less mad? The Heretics may sound like the sort of thing Jon Ronson would write (Ronson has devoted his career to investigating the irrational), but it isn't like Ronson in style. It's darker, more personal, even confessional: Storr examines his own irrationalities, mainly from his unhappy youth (heavy drinking, petty theft, obsessive jealousy over girlfriends). Read this book. Then, for the sake of your sanity, convince yourself that none of its findings apply to you, and forget them as quickly as you can. The Heretics by Will Storr 464pp, Picador, t £14.99 (PLUS £1.35p&p) Buy now from Telegraph Books (RRP £16.99)