Jan Willem Nienhuys,
Ph. D in Mathematics (Utrecht University), Retired teacher of Mathematics (Eindhoven University of Technology), a Board member and Secretary of Stichting Skepsis, and Editor of its magazine Skepter
(Photo from Wikipedia)
Skepter reaches about 2800 subscribers in a country with 17 million people (i.e. more per capita than The Skeptical Inquirer).
Skepsis has tried to get believers in the paranormal to take part in tests, and the best of these tests was an astrology test: over 40 experienced astrologers tried to match birth data of seven people with extensive files with answers to many questions posed by the astrologers themselves. The expected average number of matches was 1 and there was a 1 in 5040 chance of getting everything right. No one got everything right and the average number of correct matches was 0.75. The result was indistinguishable from the situation that all participants would have used dice. We would have liked to do more testing, and once it looked as if homeopaths were willing to take up a challenge, but then they withdrew.
After Skepsis had dedicated part of an international conference (1991) to discussion of the astrological claims of Gauquelin, I became interested in this matter and helped out with the publication of a book on a French test of the so-called Mars Effect and discovered a formerly unknown bias in Gauquelin’s data, namely selective treatment of erroneous data.
Together with another board member, Marcel Hulspas, I wrote a Dutch Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience in 1997, which went through five printings. It is now in pdf-form on the Skepsis website.
The number of readers of the magazine slowly increased to about 2800 in 2023. This should be seen in the perspective of the existence of the Association against Quackery (about 1800 members, established 1881) which is mostly concerned with medical pseudoscience and fraud. Together with this organisation Skepsis has a stand on an annual ‘Health Fair’.
Skepsis tries to distance itself from religious matters. For Dutch interested in atheism, there is a separate association (established 1856) which is nowadays called De Vrije Gedachte (meaning The Free Thought).
Just before Skepsis was established an opinion poll had shown that in the Netherland quite a few (30 tot 40 percent) of the people believed in such things as graphology, clairvoyance, paranormal healing, dowsing for earth rays and telepathy: mostly belief in special powers of some people. The belief in about twenty other subjects was also considerable. Recently Skepsis ordered a new poll, and for most of these subjects the belief was almost halved. The only thing that seemed to have increased is belief in ‘invisible’ entities such as ghosts, angels and extraterrestrials.
A risk for organisations such as Skepsis is that they incur great costs for defamation and/or libel suits. Essentially this has happened only once with Skepsis: a rich American sued a board member of Skepsis for making fun (on his personal blog) of the rich man’s invention of a telescope with negative lenses to observe antilight, and then also Skepsis’s chairman because he suspected the chairman to be a member of an international conspiracy dedicated to suppress that rich man’s theories. Actually the chairman was completely unaware of this person. Eventually the case against our chairman was dropped, and the other case was settled.
When Skepsis was founded we paid a lot of attention to parapsychology and pseudoscience, for example pseudoscientific support for racism. Nowadays the articles in the magazine are more about bad science. Another change is that nowadays most authors of the magazine are professional science journalists and the magazine pays standard fees to its authors. This has improved the quality of the magazine.
In Belgium a bit more than half of the people speaks Dutch. We had hoped to become a Dutch-Belgian organization. However, notorious Dutch charlatans are unknown in Belgium and vice versa. Also, famous activists against quackery and superstition are unknown across the border.
The same is true across the language border in Belgium. So, the contents of the Dutch magazine didn't appeal to Belgian readers and after some time the Flemish skeptics started their own organization with their own magazine.
After Skepsis had dedicated part of an international conference (1991) to discussion of the astrological claims of Gauquelin, I became interested in this matter and helped out with the publication of a book on a French test of the so-called Mars Effect and discovered a formerly unknown bias in Gauquelin’s data, namely selective treatment of erroneous data.
Together with another board member, Marcel Hulspas, I wrote a Dutch Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience in 1997, which went through five printings. It is now in pdf-form on the Skepsis website.
The number of readers of the magazine slowly increased to about 2800 in 2023. This should be seen in the perspective of the existence of the Association against Quackery (about 1800 members, established 1881) which is mostly concerned with medical pseudoscience and fraud. Together with this organisation Skepsis has a stand on an annual ‘Health Fair’.
Skepsis tries to distance itself from religious matters. For Dutch interested in atheism, there is a separate association (established 1856) which is nowadays called De Vrije Gedachte (meaning The Free Thought).
Just before Skepsis was established an opinion poll had shown that in the Netherland quite a few (30 tot 40 percent) of the people believed in such things as graphology, clairvoyance, paranormal healing, dowsing for earth rays and telepathy: mostly belief in special powers of some people. The belief in about twenty other subjects was also considerable. Recently Skepsis ordered a new poll, and for most of these subjects the belief was almost halved. The only thing that seemed to have increased is belief in ‘invisible’ entities such as ghosts, angels and extraterrestrials.
A risk for organisations such as Skepsis is that they incur great costs for defamation and/or libel suits. Essentially this has happened only once with Skepsis: a rich American sued a board member of Skepsis for making fun (on his personal blog) of the rich man’s invention of a telescope with negative lenses to observe antilight, and then also Skepsis’s chairman because he suspected the chairman to be a member of an international conspiracy dedicated to suppress that rich man’s theories. Actually the chairman was completely unaware of this person. Eventually the case against our chairman was dropped, and the other case was settled.
When Skepsis was founded we paid a lot of attention to parapsychology and pseudoscience, for example pseudoscientific support for racism. Nowadays the articles in the magazine are more about bad science. Another change is that nowadays most authors of the magazine are professional science journalists and the magazine pays standard fees to its authors. This has improved the quality of the magazine.
In Belgium a bit more than half of the people speaks Dutch. We had hoped to become a Dutch-Belgian organization. However, notorious Dutch charlatans are unknown in Belgium and vice versa. Also, famous activists against quackery and superstition are unknown across the border.
The same is true across the language border in Belgium. So, the contents of the Dutch magazine didn't appeal to Belgian readers and after some time the Flemish skeptics started their own organization with their own magazine.
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