Brian St John Inglis (31 July 1916 – 11 February 1993) was an Irish journalist, historian and television presenter who worked in London.
[2] In 1962, he published his first memoir West Briton (a pejorative reference to the Anglo-Irish upper classes in Ireland, from whose cultural influence Inglis never entirely escaped).
[2] The title is taken from the preface to Immaturity by George Bernard Shaw, and is a play on the word upstart, as in one who pretends to a higher station in life than is merited.
In a review Brian Heeney wrote whilst not entirely objective it is a "well-written tract, full of lore about the masses who suffered and the classes who oppressed them.
William Sargant in the British Medical Journal wrote the book was a case of special pleading and some of the information that Inglis cited was misleading.
[15] Glenn Sonnedecker in the American Scientist gave Inglis's book The Forbidden Game: A Social History of Drugs (1975) a negative review.
[17] However, the book received a negative review by Charles Fletcher in the Journal of Medical Ethics who wrote Inglis was biased and his information was often inaccurate.
[19] Michael McVaugh positively reviewed Inglis's book Natural and Supernatural (1977) describing it as a "thoroughly serious study" and the reader "will acquire an excellent understanding of the frame of mind of the informed psychical researcher in the early twentieth century.
"[20] Karl Sabbagh gave the book a mixed review but concluded that the paranormal phenomena that Inglis endorsed was in contradiction to major tenets of modern science.
[22] Inglis responded claiming Emsley's suggestion was a smear story and that Crookes's mind being affected by thallium poisoning was not true because at the same time as his psychical research he was conducting valuable scientific work.
[26] In the early 1980s, Inglis was involved in a dispute with the skeptic Ruth Brandon over the mediumship of Daniel Dunglas Home in the New Scientist magazine.
"[5] Inglis in his book The Hidden Power (1986) invoked a conspiracy theory that established scientists have denied and suppressed evidence for the existence of a psi force.
Inglis suggested that an underlying psi force could explain biological evolution, extrasensory perception, mediumship, psychokinesis, social behaviour of insects, religious experiences, telepathy amongst other mysteries.
[32] The parapsychologist D. Scott Rogo complained that Inglis "had a bad habit in his writing of suppressing negative information about psychics and researchers he favored by failing to note cases of fraud that were uncovered.
"[33] Science writer Martin Gardner criticized Inglis for making "imbecilic" comments about alleged psychic "pseudopods" from the medium Eusapia Palladino.