Hofstadter referred to The Skeptical Inquirer as a David fighting Goliath. “Its pages are filled with lively and humorous writing—the combat of ideas in its most enjoyable form.” He ended by saying the goal of the Skeptical Inquirer is not “to empty the vast ocean of irrationality that all of us are surrounded by” but to serve as “a steady buoy to which one can cling in that tulmultous sea.” Hofstadter’s article (reprinted, with a lively update, in his book Metamagical Themas, Basic Books, 1985) directly resulted in thousands of new Skeptical Inquirer subscribers.
The second is Carl Sagan’s “The Fine Art of Baloney Detection” in Parade Magazine, Feb. 1, 1987. A popular primer for newspaper readers on critical thinking and how not to be fooled, it included a sidebar on The Skeptical Inquirer. It referred to CSICOP as “the leading organization” of scientists, conjurers, and others devoted to examining the borders of science. “Its periodical, The Skeptical Inquirer, is cheerful, irreverent, instructive, and often very funny.” He then included a listing of 39 specific subjects discussed in its pages plus “innumerable cases of acute credulity by newspapers, magazines and television specials and news programs.”
Not all the notices have been favorable. Critics of the committee are legion, not just among astrologers, UFO promoters, psychics, and the like, but among some of the more respected parapsychological organizations and in parts of academia.
One common assertion of critics is that CSICOP is engaged in self-appointed “scientific vigilantism” against believers in the paranormal. CSICOP counters that it is simply offering an alternative voice usually ignored by believers and much of the media and is only trying to encourage critical thinking and a scientific attitude toward questionable claims. CSICOP is often depicted by critics as cold-hearted “debunkers,” whereas CSICOP contends that claims must stand or fall on the evidence and that negative judgments after full evaluation of the evidence are not to be scorned but are a part of legitimate scientific inquiry. It also constantly warns its colleagues that making judgments without, or prior to, investigation is not in the scientific spirit. CSICOP scientists also frequently point out that real science is constantly unveiling all sorts of marvelous and awesome wonders that far outstrip anything pseudoscience offers.
Another criticism is that it tends to treat all claims with the same all-out blunderbuss attack, lacking a sense of proportion between the trivial and the serious. This is occasionally true, but while it has been merciless in attacking the grandiose and self-serving assertions of “psychics,” for example, it has, at least in recent years, been far more moderate in its criticisms of the more respected work of experimental parapsychology. Some commentators contend that CSICOP’s concerns about the threat to science and reason and the entire rational tradition in Western civilization are exaggerated and that science is a strong institution not readily tumbled. That complaint may have truth to it, but CSICOP-affiliated scientists point out that science must function within the society of which it is a part, and that serious lack of understanding of scientific principles and of methods of analyzing complex claims and issues is dangerous for a technological society. Furthermore, the same kinds of concerns are frequently expressed by scientists and others who have no connection with CSICOP.
In his recent book Science in the New Age (University of Wisconsin Press, 1993), David J. Hess of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute treats “skeptics” and the skepticism associated with CSICOP and its allies as one of three communities in parallel with “New Agers” and “parapsychologists.” They all have obvious differences, often vehement ones, about what constitutes valid and invalid knowledge, he says, but then contends they are nevertheless “also forging a shared culture….This emergent paranormal culture is enough ‘beyond’ (para) the mainstream that I think of it as a ‘paraculture.’“
Hess treats CSICOP members’ writings thoughtfully and seriously, but makes much of their martial and military metaphors and what he sees as tendency to adopt the role of self-conscious heroic underdog, “who may overstep the boundaries of scientific methods in order to preserve the rule of science” [p.88]. CSICOP has not responded in any institutional way, but its members typically see themselves as part of mainstream science and scholarship. This is so even though their level of concern about uncritical acceptance of paranormal claims may be greater than that of many of their colleagues.
Furthermore, CSICOP legitimately sees itself as far more heterogeneous and decentralized than do its critics. In an important sense, as noted earlier, there is no CSICOP. The organization is merely a small scientific and educational organization advocating science and reason. CSICOP has a tiny staff, mostly part-time, in Amherst, N.Y. Its chairman has numerous other responsibilities (founder of Prometheus Books, Editor of Free Inquiry magazine, chairman of the Council for Democratic and Secular Humanism, author of more than thirty books, for example) and has never received any CSICOP salary. The committee is financed entirely through subscriptions and donations and is always severely pressed for funds.
CSICOP is essentially a catalyst. It is the people out there in the universities, laboratories, and lecture halls who deal with these issues every day as part of their regular work—questions about the paranormal or fringe-science matters from their friends or students, queries from local radio stations or newspapers—it is they who are often considered “CSICOP.” They may be members of the organization (the several hundred Fellows or Scientific or Technical Consultants); oftentimes they are not. They’re just toilers in the field of ideas who share the concerns often enunciated by CSICOP members. That’s how it works.
The most visible work of CSICOP is The Skeptical Inquirer. It is edited far from CSICOP’s headquarters, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where Kendrick Frazier, the Editor since August 1977, lives. (He also works as a staff member at a large national laboratory.) Frazier had previously been Editor of Science News magazine in Washington, D.C., and before that had edited the National Academy of Sciences’ monthly News Report. In consultation with an editorial board and reviewers, he makes decisions about articles and other material from authors scattered across the globe. The magazine is then copyedited and prepared, on a desktop publishing system, at CSICOP’s headquarters and printed in Virginia.
Starting with its January-February 1995 issue, the Skeptical Inquirer increased its frequency from quarterly to bimonthly and expanded from digest-size to a standard magazine-size. It has a paid circulation of about 35,000. Although traditionally mostly a subscription-only publication, in recent years it has gradually added newsstand circulation. In 1995 it began to extend its editorial reach through an additional 20,000 or so newsstand distribution.
Over the years, the Skeptical Inquirer has published some notable investigations. A few examples:
*Cold Reading. In “How to Convince Strangers That You Know All About Them” (Vol. 1 No. 2, Spring/Summer 1977), psychologist Ray Hyman reveals the techniques “psychics,” fortune-tellers, palm-readers, and virtually all pretenders to the divination trade use to make you think they have special knowledge about you and your future. This is the Skeptical Inquirer’s most-requested article.
*“Fooling Some of the People All of the Time” (Winter 1980-81). Another much-cited article. Psychologists Barry Singer and Victor Benassi constructed an experiment to demonstrate and explore the phenomenon that amateur psychic demonstrations compel many people to strong occult beliefs. A magician was presented to two separate classes as a “psychic,” to two other classes correctly as a “magician.” Two-thirds of all the classes believed he was a psychic. Even large numbers of those who had been shown how the tricks were done still believed they were “psychic.” One conclusion: “People can stubbornly maintain a belief about someone’s psychic powers when they know better.” We are typically inept at reasoning through even the simplest conceptual task involving alternative hypotheses.
*Project Alpha Experiment (Summer 1983). Magician/investigator James Randi, a CSICOP founding Fellow, “planted” two young magician friends, Steve Shaw and Michael Edwards, in the McDonnell Laboratory for Psychical Research at Washington University, St. Louis. The intent was to see whether the pro-psychic experimenters would introduce controls necessary to detect trickery and whether they would accept expert conjuring assistance in designing proper control procedures. They failed on both counts, and Randi’s demonstration, reported intially in Discover magazine, caused a tremendous uproar. Randi was both praised and castigated, and the laboratory eventually lost its private funding and shut down.
*The Hundredth Monkey Phenomenon (Summer 1985). Philosopher Ron Amundson investigated writer Lyall Watson’s widely publicized New Age claim that Japanese macaques, even on different islands, suddenly all learned a particular new potato-washing behavior once a critical mass of the population (a hundred) learned it, a paranormal-like “group consciousness.” Amundson checked the scientific sources Watson cited and showed that these articles themselves invalidated his claims. There was no hundredth monkey. There was no spontaneously learned behavior. Watson later admitted that he had made up most of the details (Amundson, Spring 1987). “I accept Amundson’s analysis of the origin and evolution of the Hundredth Monkey without reservation,” said Watson. “It is metaphor of my own making, based—as he rightly suggests—on very slim evidence and a great deal of hearsay.”
*Firewalking (Fall 1985). Physicist Bernard Leikind and psychologist William McCarthy walked on coals and explained how the ability has nothing to do with powers of the mind but with the low heat capacity of charcoal.
*“The Moon Was Full and Nothing Happened” (Winter 1985-86). Psychologists Ivan W. Kelly and James Rotton and astronomer Roger Culver reviewed and did a meta-analysis of 37 studies of the moon and human behavior. Despite much folk belief to the contrary, they found no causal link between lunar phases and behavior. They described the cognitive biases that lead to the beliefs.
*“Serious” astrology. In a comprehensive and thorough two-part analysis (“Does Astrology Have to Be True?” Winter 1986-87, Spring 1987), Geoffrey Dean examined in detail real astrology (not the popular version of newspaper columns and fairground tents), the reasons astrologers believe in it, and the very latest evidence. The conclusion: Astrology doesn’t meet any scientific tests, but it does not need to be true in order to “work.” Authentic birth charts are not essential. Bogus ones work just as well. Different astrological systems contradict each other. “Thus the real thing emerges as a kind of psychological chewing gum, satisfying but ultimately without real substance.”
*Testing Psi in China (Summer 1988). A CSICOP delegation (Paul Kurtz, James Randi, James Alcock, Philip J. Klass, Kendrick Frazier, and Barry Karr) was invited to China in 1988, where they tested a variety of psychics, a Qigong master, and some of China’s famous “psychic children” (in Xian). All the tests produced negative results. Under double-blind conditions, there was no correlation between the Qigong master’s movements and the “responses” of a woman in a separate room he was trying to affect by a Qigong “energy” supposedly emanating from his fingers. The psychic children failed all tests where cheating was prevented, and cheated on all tests where it was purposely allowed (to see what they would do). Their mentor enforced no experimental controls of his own, allowing the children to roam around and even outside the building at will during tests he controlled. He seemed mystified even at the need for the controls.
*“Near-Death Experiences: In or Out of the Body?” (Fall 1991). Psychologist Susan J. Blackmore examined near-death experiences by looking at neurochemistry, physiology, and psychology. She proposed a theory based on her laboratory experiments and computer simulations that explains the “tunnel effect” and other vivid aspects of the NDE experience in naturalistic terms. She sympathetically discussed how “an essentially physiological event” can nevertheless seem completely real and can change people’s lives profoundly.
*Subliminal persuasion. In three articles (Spring 1992), psychologists Anthony Pratkanis, Timothy Moore, Brady Phelps, and Mary Exum recounted experiments revealing the facts, fallacies, and myths of subliminal persuasion and so-called subliminal advertising.
*Facilitated Communication (Spring 1993). In two lead articles, pediatric psychologists James Mulick, John Jacobson, and Frank Kobe and psychologist Kathleen Dillon showed persuasively that the claims of facilitated communication, used in well-meant attempts to communicate with autistic and other children, were bogus. Controlled experiments revealed that the person doing the communicating is the adult “facilitator,” not the patient.
*Reincarnation (Fall 1994). Leonard Angel examined one of the strongest of Ian Stevenson’s 20 “most impressive” cases for reincarnation (the Imad Elawar case) and concluded that it fails on six fundamental points in providing any case for reincarnation. (Stevenson disputed the analysis.)
In addition to these articles the Skeptical Inquirer has published in every issue since Summer 1983 a “Notes of a Fringe-Watcher” column by Martin Gardner. Gardner, a CSICOP founding Fellow, has been perceptive observer and critic of fringe-science, pseudoscience, and paranormalism for close to five decades. His first book on the subject, Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science (Dover Books) is a classic. He followed that with Science: Good, Bad, and Bogus in 1981, and his Skeptical Inquirer columns have appeared in his more recent books The New Age: Notes of a Fringe-Watcher (1988, 1991) and On the Wild Side (1992), all from Prometheus. (Likewise, approximately 120 of the Skeptical Inquirer’s most important articles are available in three anthologies published by Prometheus Books,Paranormal Borderlands of Science,1981; Science Confronts the Paranormal, 1986; and The Hundredth Monkey and Other Paradigms of the Paranormal, 1991.)
Most of the specific articles described earlier are investigative, and that may be the image of the prototypical Skeptical Inquirer article. They tend to be the most controversial ones. But probably the greatest share of articles the magazine publishes are explanatory, informational, or tutorial. (Examples of the latter: “The Right Hemisphere: An Esoteric Closet?” sorting through what’s true and untrue in popular concepts about underuse of the brain’s right hemisphere, Summer 1993, and “Why You Are Unmoved as the Oceans Ebb and Flow,” about tides and the body, Fall 1994.) Or they might discuss philosophical, scientific, educational, or social issues involving science, fringe-science, and the paranormal, and how they interrelate. (Two recent examples: Carl Sagan’s “Wonder and Skepticism,” January-February 1995, and William Grey’s two-part “Philosophy and the Paranormal,” Winter and Spring 1994.)
The magazine has also published a number of articles intended to help people gain an understanding of unusual experiences so that they may see alternative explanations to the paranormal one. A good example is psychologist Susan Blackmore’s “Psychic Experiences: Psychic Illusions” (Summer 1992), where she showed how psychic experiences are the inevitable consequence of how we think and that they are comparable to visual illusions. The Skeptical Inquirer has even published an occasional entertaining profile, such as “Luis Alvarez and the Explorer’s Quest” (Fall 1989), “Penn and Teller: The Magical Iconoclasts” (Spring 1991), and “Jack Horkheimer, ‘Star Hustler,’“ (Summer 1993). When Isaac Asimov died, editor Frazier wrote a long personal essay about Asimov’s phenomenal body of work and solicited tributes from prominent scientists and science fiction authors worldwide (Fall 1992). Likewise, when Carl Honorton died, Susan Blackmore wrote about his legacy to parapsychology (Spring 1993).
In a column “New Directions, Awesome Science, and Critical Inquiry” (Winter 1990), the editor announced a widening of the scope of the Skeptical Inquirer to include occasional pieces on scientific advances and a sense of the adventure of science. He also inaugurated a series of articles and essays on science education and on critical thinking. A later column, “Our Wide and Fertile Field” (Summer 1993), noted how the magazine had begun exploring more topics along the borderlands of science—the “broad and fuzzy area” where “good science and bad science, real science and bogus science, and everything in between, coexist in uncomfortable disharmony”. These are areas that “don’t fit any classic description of the ‘paranormal.’“ Examples: multicultural pseudoscience, self-help books, claims of ritualistic cult abuse, probability paradoxes, misuses of hypnosis, and “honesty” tests for employment. “Many involve important issues that make mainstream news, cause problems, raise disturbing questions, affect our lives. All merit serious, scientifically informed analysis.”
This slowly broadening scope of the magazine extends its reach well beyond the core paranormal topics and concerns. Evaluating paranormal claims will probably always be its central mission. But the Skeptical Inquirer plans to continue to broaden its scope to examine more mainstream issues that affect broad segments of society.
CSICOP Congress in Stanford, California, in 1984.
From left to right: Leon Jaroff, Paul Kurtz, Philip Klass and Mark Plummer.
This broadening scope has also been true of CSICOP’s series of annual conferences. Held at somewhat more than yearly intervals since 1983, the conferences have covered a wide range of issues, some related to the paranormal and some not. But they seem always to attract knowledgeable persons, usually from academia, able to address important issues with balance, authority, and responsibility. The latest, “The Psychology of Belief,” in Seattle in June 1994, was said by many attendees to have been the best yet. It had sessions on “The Belief Engine: How Worldviews are Formed,” “How We Fool Ourselves: Anomalies of Perception and Interpretation,” “Memory: How Reliable Is It?” “Influencing Beliefs in the Courtroom,” “Conspiracy Theories,” “Near-Death Experiences,” and the keynote address by Carl Sagan. Those who have attended have given the conferences high marks for their quality.
In 1989, lawsuits began to occupy CSICOP’s time and absorb its financial resources. Two major libel lawsuits, the first (in 1989) by Maryland “paranormal researcher” Eldon Byrd and the second (in 1991) by self-proclaimed “psychic” Uri Geller, were filed against James Randi, with CSICOP named as codefendant. The Byrd suit requested $38 million in damages, the Geller suit $15 million. Both involved remarks allegedly made by Randi, outside of any CSICOP forum, the first in a lecture in New York City and in a now-defunct magazine, the second in an interview in the International Herald-Tribune. (A third suit, filed by Geller against Randi and CSICOP in New York, was dismissed early on a technicality.) Randi had been in an extended dispute with Geller ever since Geller’s rise to prominence in the 1970s, when Randi had set about exposing various Geller feats as conjuring tricks.
The suits proved very costly for CSICOP and Randi to defend—and it more ways than just financial. CSICOP was initially constrained for legal reasons from openly discussing details of the cases, but in “On Being Sued: The Chilling of Freedom of Expression” (Skeptical Inquirer, 16:114-117, Winter 1992), chairman Paul Kurtz spoke to the larger issues of the threat the suits posed to the freedom of speech, scientific inquiry, and dissent. He said such lawsuits were an attempt to “drain skeptics financially” and tie up all their time and resources. He said CSICOP always hoped to avoid legal wrangles and sought to deal with all issues at an intellectual level, but added: “. . . When the principles upon which CSICOP was founded are at stake, we are prepared to do battle all the way, if it should prove necessary. CSICOP and the Skeptical Inquirer have often presented controversial and provocative critiques that we consider important scientific contributions. We believe deeply in a free press, freedom of speech and scientific inquiry and the importance of dissent.” He said the suits had had a “chilling effect on full and frank discussion of these issues,” but vowed, “in these stormy seas of misfortune” to attempt to “keep the skeptics’ ship afloat. . . .We do not intend to be silenced.”
Kurtz also candidly discussed the pain the lawsuits had caused in the committee’s relationships with Randi, one of its original founding Fellows and a longtime member of its Executive Council. Randi had by then separated from CSICOP, partly to protect it from further suits and partly because of ill feelings enCSICOP by necessity had to insist that it should not and cannot be held legally liable for statements made by its Fellows outside of CSICOP forums. Randi was, and is, a hero to CSICOP and to the worldwide skeptical movement generally, and the whole matter was a sad and extremely painful episode for all involved.
The legal defenses proved successful. In the Byrd case, CSICOP was found not to have libeled Byrd. Randi was found guilty but the judgment nevertheless proved to be a victory because the jury set damages at zero.
In the Geller case, the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., agreed with CSICOP’s contention that its inclusion on the suit constituted legal harassment and awarded CSICOP monetary sanctions. Geller filed motions for reconsideration, which were denied, and the court on July 27, 1993, entered judgment against Geller for $149,000, representing fees and costs incurred by CSICOP in defending the actions. Geller then appealed, and on December 9, 1994, the U.S. Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia found “ample support for the district court’s imposition of sanctions against Geller. . . . Given Geller’s litigious history, we find no abuse of discretion in this direct imposition of sanctions.” It affirmed the sanctions against Geller.
Despite the legal victory, CSICOP in early 1995 had yet to receive any money from Geller. It appeared the organization would have to expend still more legal resources in an attempt to recover the monetary sanctions. The committee had been saved from financial ruin only by supporters’ and subscribers’ contributions to a Legal Defense Fund it had set up to help pay for the costs of defending itself against the suits. Randi, with a series of his own victories, continued his legal fights with Geller, but they had cost him dearly. A private James Randi Legal Defense Fund had helped pay some of his legal costs, but he had nevertheless suffered terribly both financially and otherwise.
After years in a less than desirable location in Buffalo, N.Y., CSICOP in 1992 finally occupied permanent quarters in suburban Amherst, N.Y., across from the campus of SUNY-Buffalo where it was founded. CSICOP made plans to celebrate its twentieth anniversary there in 1996. In recent years, CSICOP has been carrying out a capital campaign to modernize an existing building on the new site and erect a new one to bring a sense of permanence and long-term stability to an organization of which Paul Kurtz said at its founding, “We don’t know how large our committee will become or how ambitious its efforts will be.”
Kurtz wrote in the Skeptical Inquirer (January-February 1995): “When CSICOP was founded 18 years ago, little did we imagine that it would receive such a positive reception from thoughtful persons in the scientific community and elsewhere who were skeptical of psychic phenomena, astrology, ufology, homeopathy, and the newer, bizarre beliefs of the New Age. Nor did we imagine that paranormal claims would continue to proliferate throughout the world….Thank you…for helping make the Skeptical Inquirer and CSICOP so relevant and vital.”
In his book The New Skepticism (Prometheus 1992) and a Skeptical Inquirer essay by the same title (18:139, Winter 1994), Paul Kurtz contrasted pragmatic “skeptical inquiry” or what he called the new skepticism with other forms of skepticism. “A key difference between this and earlier forms of skepticism is that it is positive and constructive. It involves the transformation of the negative critical analysis of the claims to knowledge into a positive contribution to the growth and development of skeptical inquiry. . . .This skepticism is not total, but is limited to the context under inquiry.” He called for its application to many areas, not just the formal sciences. And he called upon investigators always to be open-minded about new possibilities, “always be willing to question or overturn even the most well-established principles in light of further inquiry.” The “new skepticism” may well serve as a philosophical guide for the committee’s future course.
In his keynote address to the 1994 CSICOP conference (published in the Skeptical Inquirer as “Wonder and Skepticism,” 19(1):24-30, January-February 1995), CSICOP Fellow Carl Sagan gave a ringing endorsement of the positive virtues of scientific skepticism. “Why is it so successful?” he asked. “Science has built in error-correcting mechanisms…There are no forbidden questions. Arguments from authority are worthless. Claims must be demonstrated. Ad hominem arguments…are irrelevant….Our preferences do not determine what’s true. We have a method, and that method helps us to reach not absolute truth, only asymptotic approaches to the truth—never there, just closer and closer, always finding vast new oceans of undiscovered possibilities.” And he warned fellow skeptics against an “Us vs. Them” polarization—“the sense that we have a monopoly on the truth….This is nonconstructive. It does not get our message across.” He called instead for acknowledging “the human roots of pseudoscience and superstition” and noting “that the society has arranged things so that science is not well taught.” He said what’s necessary is “a judicious mix” of “almost complete openness to new ideas” and “the most vigorous and uncompromising skepticism.” Skeptical questioning, he said, “is the affordable price we pay for having the benefits of so powerful a tool as science.”
(Adapted from: https://skepticalinquirer.org/history-of-csicop/)
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