Do They Have Your Numb3r? Strange Visions - Skeptical ...

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Published by the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry

MARTIN GARDNER ON VACUUM ENERGY • WEIGHING THE SOUL • ENTITIES OF THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST

T H E M A G A Z I N E F O R S C I E N C E A N D R E A S O NVolume 31, No. 1 • January/February 2007 • INTRODUCTORY PRICE U.S. $4.95 • Canada $5.95

Do They Have Your Numb3r?

Energy Pseudo-science

Mass Hysteria in Schools

How Can Scientists

Persuade?

New Directionsfor SkepticalInquiry

ID’s ‘Vise Strategy’Undone

StrangeVisions

SPECIALREPORTS:• World Trade

Center Illness• Gulf War Syndrome

SI J-F 07 Cover V1 11/13/06 12:32 PM

James E. Alcock,* psychologist, York Univ., TorontoJerry Andrus, magician and inventor, Albany, OregonMarcia Angell, M.D., former editor-in-chief, New

England Journal of MedicineStephen Barrett, M.D., psychiatrist, author,

consumer advocate, Allentown, Pa.Willem Betz, professor of medicine, Univ. of

Brussels Barry Beyerstein,* biopsychologist, Simon Fraser

Univ., Vancouver, B.C., CanadaIrving Biederman, psychologist, Univ. of Southern

CaliforniaSusan Blackmore, Visiting Lecturer, Univ. of the

West of England, BristolHenri Broch, physicist, Univ. of Nice, FranceJan Harold Brunvand, folklorist, professor

emeritus of English, Univ. of UtahMario Bunge, philosopher, McGill UniversityJohn R. Cole, anthropologist, editor, National

Center for Science EducationFrederick Crews, literary and cultural critic,

professor emeritus of English, Univ. of California, Berkeley

Richard Dawkins, zoologist, Oxford Univ.Geoffrey Dean, technical editor, Perth, AustraliaDaniel C. Dennett, University Professor and Austin

B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy, Director ofthe Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts Univ.

Ann Druyan, writer and producer, and CEO,Cosmos Studios, Ithaca, New York

Cornelis de Jager, professor of astrophysics, Univ.of Utrecht, the Netherlands

Kenneth Feder, professor of anthropology, Central Connecticut State Univ.

Antony Flew, philosopher, Reading Univ., U.K.Andrew Fraknoi, astronomer, Foothill College, Los

Altos Hills, Calif.Kendrick Frazier, science writer, editor, SKEPTICAL INQUIRER

Yves Galifret, vice-president, Affiliated Organizations: France

Martin Gardner, author, criticMurray Gell-Mann, professor of physics, Santa Fe

Institute; Nobel laureateThomas Gilovich, psychologist, Cornell Univ.Henry Gordon, magician, columnist, TorontoSaul Green, Ph.D., biochemist, president of ZOL

Consultants, New York, NYSusan Haack, Cooper Senior Scholar in Arts

and Sciences, Professor of Philosophy and Professor of Law, University of Miami

C. E. M. Hansel, psychologist, Univ. of WalesDavid J. Helfand, professor of astronomy,

Columbia Univ.Douglas Hofstadter, professor of human under-

standing and cognitive science, Indiana Univ.Gerald Holton, Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics

and professor of history of science, Harvard Univ.Ray Hyman,* psychologist, Univ. of OregonLeon Jaroff, sciences editor emeritus, TimeSergei Kapitza, former editor, Russian edition,

Scientific AmericanLawrence M. Krauss, author and professor of physics

and astronomy, Case Western Reserve UniversityEdwin C. Krupp, astronomer, director, Griffith

ObservatoryPaul Kurtz,* chairman, Center for InquiryLawrence Kusche, science writerLeon Lederman, emeritus director, Fermilab;

Nobel laureate in physicsScott Lilienfeld, psychologist, Emory Univ.Lin Zixin, former editor, Science and Technology

Daily (China)Jere Lipps, Museum of Paleontology, Univ. of

California, BerkeleyElizabeth Loftus, professor of psychology, Univ. of

California, IrvinePaul MacCready, scientist/engineer,

AeroVironment, Inc., Monrovia, Calif.John Maddox, editor emeritus of NatureDavid Marks, psychologist, City University, London.Mario Mendez-Acosta, journalist and

science writer, Mexico City, MexicoMarvin Minsky, professor of media arts and

sciences, M.I.T.David Morrison, space scientist, NASA Ames

Research CenterRichard A. Muller, professor of physics, Univ. of

Calif., BerkeleyJoe Nickell, senior research fellow, CSILee Nisbet,* philosopher, Medaille CollegeBill Nye, science educator and television host, Nye LabsJames E. Oberg, science writerIrmgard Oepen, professor of medicine (retired),

Marburg, GermanyLoren Pankratz, psychologist, Oregon Health

Sciences Univ.

Robert L. Park, professor of physics, Univ. of MarylandJohn Paulos, mathematician, Temple Univ.Steven Pinker, cognitive scientist, HarvardMassimo Polidoro, science writer, author,

executive director CICAP, ItalyMilton Rosenberg, psychologist, Univ. of ChicagoWallace Sampson, M.D., clinical professor of

medicine, Stanford Univ., editor, Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine

Amardeo Sarma, manager NEC Europe Ltd.,executive director, GWUP, Germany.

Evry Schatzman, former president, French PhysicsAssociation

Eugenie Scott, physical anthropologist, executivedirector, National Center for Science Education

Robert Sheaffer, science writerElie A. Shneour, biochemist, author, president and

research director, Biosystems Research Institute, La Jolla, Calif.

Dick Smith, film producer, publisher, Terrey Hills,N.S.W., Australia

Robert Steiner, magician, author, El Cerrito, Calif.Victor J. Stenger, emeritus professor of physics

and astronomy, Univ. of Hawaii; adjunct professor of philosophy, Univ. of Colorado

Jill Cornell Tarter, astronomer, SETI Institute,Mountain View, Calif.

Carol Tavris, psychologist and author, Los Angeles, Calif.David Thomas, physicist and mathematician,

Peralta, New MexicoStephen Toulmin, professor of philosophy, Univ. of

Southern CaliforniaNeil deGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist and director,

Hayden Planetarium, New York CityMarilyn vos Savant, Parade magazine

contributing editorSteven Weinberg, professor of physics and

astronomy, Univ. of Texas at Austin; Nobel laureate

E.O. Wilson, University Professor Emeritus, Harvard University

Richard Wiseman, psychologist, University of Hertfordshire

Benjamin Wolozin*, professor, department of phar-macology, Boston University School of Medicine

Marvin Zelen, statistician, Harvard Univ.

* Member, CSI Executive Council(Affiliations given for identification only.)

The SKEPTICAL INQUIRER (ISSN 0194-6730) is published bimonthly by the Committee forSkeptical Inquiry, 1310 Sweet Home Rd., Amherst, NY 14228. Printed in U.S.A. Periodicals post-age paid at Buffalo, NY, and at additional mailing offices. Subscription prices: one year (six issues),$35; two years, $60; three years, $84; single issue, $4.95. Canadian and foreign orders: Payment inU.S. funds drawn on a U.S. bank must accompany orders; please add US$10 per year for shipping.Canadian and foreign customers are encouraged to use Visa or MasterCard. Canada PublicationsMail Agreement No. 41153509. Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to: IMEX, P.O. Box4332, Station Rd., Toronto, ON M5W 3J4.

Inquiries from the media and the public about the work of the Committee should be made toPaul Kurtz, Chairman, CSI, P.O. Box 703, Amherst, NY 14226-0703. Tel.: 716-636-1425. Fax:716-636-1733.

Manuscripts, letters, books for review, and editorial inquiries should be addressed to Kendrick Fra-zier, Editor, SKEPTICAL INQUIRER, 944 Deer Drive NE, Albuquerque, NM 87122. Fax: 505-828-2080. Before submitting any manuscript, please consult our Guide for Authors for format and refer-ences requirements. It is on our Web site at www.csicop.org/si/guide-for-authors.html and on page 69

of the November/December 2006 issue. Or you may send a fax request to the editor.

Articles, reports, reviews, and letters published in the SKEPTICAL INQUIRER represent the viewsand work of individual authors. Their publication does not necessarily constitute an endorse-ment by CSI or its members unless so stated.

Copyright ©2007 by the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. All rights reserved. The SKEPTICAL

INQUIRER is available on 16mm microfilm, 35mm microfilm, and 105mm microfiche from Uni-versity Microfilms International and is indexed in the Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature.

Subscriptions and changes of address should be addressed to: SKEPTICAL INQUIRER, P.O. Box 703,Amherst, NY 14226-0703. Or call toll-free 1-800-634-1610 (outside the U.S. call 716-636-1425).Old address as well as new are necessary for change of subscriber’s address, with six weeks advance no-tice. SKEPTICAL INQUIRER subscribers may not speak on behalf of CSI or the SKEPTICAL INQUIRER.

Postmaster: Send changes of address to SKEPTICAL INQUIRER, P.O. Box 703, Amherst, NY14226-0703.

• • • Visit the CSICOP Web site at www.csicop.org • • •

THE COMMITTEE FOR SKEPTICAL INQUIRYAT THE CENTER FOR INQUIRY–TRANSNATIONAL (ADJACENT TO THE UNIVERSITY AT BUFFALO)

A N I N T E R N AT I O N A L O R G A N I Z AT I O N Paul Kurtz, Chairman; professor emeritus of philosophy, University at Buffalo

Barry Karr, Executive DirectorJoe Nickell, Senior Research Fellow Massimo Polidoro, Research Fellow Richard Wiseman, Research Fellow Lee Nisbet, Special Projects Director

FELLOWS

SI J-F 2007 pgs 11/13/06 11:24 AM

Skeptical InquirerJanuary / February 2007 • VOL. 31, NO. 1

C O L U M N S

EDITOR’S NOTEMen of the Cosmos. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

NEWS AND COMMENTEnergy Department Will End Most Polygraph Testing / MoscowRound Table Discusses False Science in Russia / Pluto/PlanetRoundtable Now Online / UCS Releases Science Idol Calendar /Michigan Supports Evolution, Rejects ID for Science Classes . . 8

NOTES OF A FRINGE WATCHER

‘Dr.’ Bearden’s Vacuum EnergyMARTIN GARDNER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

INVESTIGATIVE FILESMysterious Entities of the Pacific Northwest, Part IJOE NICKELL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

THINKING ABOUT SCIENCEEvolutionary Epistemology, Anyone?MASSIMO PIGLIUCCI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

NOTES ON A STRANGE WORLDThe Devious Art of Improvising, Lesson TwoMASSIMO POLIDORO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

PSYCHIC VIBRATIONSThe Flashlight of the GodsROBERT SHEAFFER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

SKEPTICAL INQUIREESoul ScalesBENJAMIN RADFORD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

NEW BOOKS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61

FORUMBigfoot, Pluto, and ?CHRIS VOLKAY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65

B O O K R E V I E W

12 World Trade Center Illness:Manufactured Mass Hysteria

MICHAEL FUMENTO

13 New Report Casts Doubt on Gulf War Syndrome

BENJAMIN RADFORD

S P E C I A L R E P O R T S

A R T I C L E S

Intelligent Thought: Science versus the Intelligent DesignMovementEdited by John BrockmanMATT YOUNG . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

29 Man for the Cosmos: Carl Sagan’sLife and Legacy as Scientist,Teacher, and SkepticDAVID MORRISON

37 Do They Have Your Numb3r?KENDRICK FRAZIER

40 The ‘Vise Strategy’ UndoneKitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School District

BARBARA FORREST

47 Strange VisionsHaloes, Dust Storms, and Blood on the Walls

A. CHARLES CATANIA

51 Pep TalkHow to Get Rid of the Energy You Don’t Need

WILLIAM H. BAARSCHERS

55 Mass Hysteria at Starpoint HighROBERT E. BARTHOLOMEW AND BENJAMIN RADFORD

E D I T O R I A L

5 It’s CSI Now, Not CSICOPKENDRICK FRAZIER AND THE EXECUTIVE COUNCIL

7 New Directions for Skeptical InquiryPAUL KURTZ

C O M M E N T A N D O P I N I O N

15 The Art of Persuasion in Politics(and Science)BENJAMIN WOLOZIN

Cover: Carl Sagan ©1994 byMichael Okoniewski

SI J-F 2007 pgs 11/13/06 11:25 AM

4 Volume 30, I s sue 6 SKEPTICAL INQUIRER

Skeptical InquirerT H E M A G A Z I N E F O R S C I E N C E A N D R E A S O N

EDITORKendrick Frazier

EDITORIAL BOARDJames E. AlcockBarry BeyersteinThomas CastenMartin Gardner

Ray HymanPaul KurtzJoe NickellLee Nisbet

Amardeo SarmaBenjamin Wolozin

CONSULTING EDITORSSusan J. Blackmore

John R. ColeKenneth L. FederC. E. M. Hansel

Barry KarrE. C. Krupp

Scott O. LilienfeldDavid F. MarksEugenie Scott

Richard Wiseman

CONTRIBUTING EDITORSAustin DaceyChris Mooney

James E. ObergRobert SheafferDavid E. Thomas

MANAGING EDITORBenjamin Radford

ART DIRECTORLisa A. Hutter

PRODUCTIONChristopher Fix

Paul Loynes

EDITORIAL ASSISTANTDavid Park Musella

CARTOONISTRob Pudim

WEB-PAGE DESIGNPatrick Fitzgerald, Designer

Amanda Chesworth

PUBLISHER’S REPRESENTATIVEBarry Karr

CORPORATE COUNSELBrenton N. VerPloeg

BUSINESS MANAGERSandra Lesniak

FISCAL OFFICERPaul Paulin

VICE PRESIDENT OF PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT

Sherry Rook

DATA OFFICERJackie Mohr

STAFFDarlene Banks

Patricia BeauchampCheryl Catania

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PUBLIC RELATIONSNathan BuppHenry Huber

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INQUIRY MEDIA PRODUCTIONSThomas Flynn

DIRECTOR OF LIBRARIESTimothy S. Binga

The SKEPTICAL INQUIRER is the official journal of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry,

an international organization.

Men of the Cosmos

It seems entirely fitting that our cover article in appreciation of Carl Sagan, mark-ing the tenth anniversary of his death, is written by David Morrison.Morrison, in many respects, follows in Sagan’s footsteps. Sagan was David’s thesis

advisor at Harvard, where Morrison got his PhD in astronomy. As was Sagan,Morrison is a leading planetary scientist. He is the Senior Scientist at the NASAAstrobiology Institute, where he participates in research programs in the study of lifein the universe. There he follows Sagan’s example of interest in life on other worlds andin bridging biological and astronomical sciences. He also leads programs studying andtracking near-Earth objects, asteroids in orbits that intersect Earth’s. Before his currentposition he was Chief of the Space Science Division and Director of Space at the NASAAmes Research Center. And before that he was a professor of astronomy at theUniversity of Hawaii and the university’s vice-chancellor for research.

Like Sagan, he’s devoted a fair amount of his career to communicating. He haspublished twelve books. I have four on my shelves, Voyage to Jupiter, Voyages toSaturn (both NASA books), and two astronomy textbooks, Abell’s Exploration of theUniverse, seventh edition, and Voyages Through the Universe, both by Morrison,Sydney Wolff, and Andrew Fraknoi. The latter two are successors to the highly pop-ular textbook of the late George O. Abell (a beloved member of the SI EditorialBoard until his death in 1983). That tradition continues in regularly updated edi-tions of Voyages Through the Universe. Other Morrison titles include the first mod-ern planetary science text, The Planetary System (with Tobias Owen, now in its thirdedition), and Exploring Planetary Worlds (Scientific American Library).

As did Sagan, Morrison works to counter pseudoscience and fringe-science andto help the public distinguish between real science and its pretenders. A longtimeCSICOP Fellow, he has been a regular contributor to the SKEPTICAL INQUIRER overthe years. Recent examples include his “Astrobiology Is the New Modern Frameworkfor SETI” (May/June 2006), “Only a Theory? Framing the Evolution/CreationIssue” (November/December 2005), and “Hyperbole in Media Reports on Asteroidsand Impacts” (March/April 2005). “Facts and Fantasies of Extraterrestrial Life”(March/April 2000) was his review of Joel Achenbach’s book Captured by Aliens. Hisfirst SI cover article (with Clark Chapman) was “The New Catastrophism: Earth,Life, and Impacts” (Winter 1990). And he championed the SI publication of one ofthe most provocative and controversial articles ever to appear in the SKEPTICAL

INQUIRER, “A Skeptical Look at September 11th” by Clark Chapman and Alan W.Harris (SI, September/October 2002), which Richard Dawkins selected for inclu-sion in The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2003 (Houghton Mifflin).

I’ve merely touched on David Morrison’s work, but you can begin to see why theAmerican Astronomical Society recently honored him with its Carl Sagan Medal forhis contributions to the public understanding of science.

We can be grateful for the contributions to public understanding by both theseplanetary scientists, both distinguished citizens of the cosmos.

Editor’s Note

SI J-F 2007 pgs 11/13/06 11:25 AM

EDITORIAL

SKEPTICAL INQUIRER January / February 2007 5

CSICOP’s name has been short-ened. The Executive Council ofthe Committee for the Scientific

Investigation of Claims of the Para-normal (CSICOP) has formally adopteda shorter name for the organization:Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI).

The decision came in a daylongmeeting of the Executive Council(which also serves as SI’s EditorialBoard) in Oak Brook, Illinois, onSeptember 23, 2006. It will becomeofficial as soon as the appropriate legalpapers have been filed and processed.

CSICOP and our flagship publica-tion the SKEPTICAL INQUIRER celebratedthirtieth anniversaries in 2006 (see SIMarch/April 2006, p. 13; July/August2006, pp. 13–14; September/October2006, pp. 13–19).

During those three decades, the namehas been both a help and a hindrance.

The “CSICOP” acronym is widelyknown and has served the organizationwell, but the full name of the committeehas always been somewhat problematic.

Because so many of you have beenwith us a long time and feel a deepattachment to the organization, forwhich we are grateful, we thought wewould discuss with you some of therationale for the name change.

The first and less substantive concernhas been the name’s length. A shorter,more succinct name has long beendesired by many of us within CSICOP(now CSI). Almost nobody can remem-ber our full, ten-word name properly. Ittakes a long time even to say it. In thismodern media age, brevity is important.Newspapers and most magazines areobligated by style and usage to publishthe full name of any organization theywrite about, but they obviously prefer

shorter names; radio and TV can’t andwon’t use a long name for an organiza-tion. CSICOP staff and associatedscholars and investigators who do mediainterviews often have resorted to a vari-ety of shortcut references to get anymention of the organization at allincluded. These same concerns come uprepeatedly in discussions with peoplenot already familiar with us about whowe are and what we do.

The more substantive concerninvolved the last word in our name,“paranormal.” For one thing, we havenever been limited to just the “paranor-mal.” From the beginning we have beenconcerned with all manner of empiricalclaims credulously accepted without suf-ficient critical examination. Our goalhas been to provide scientific examinationsof these claims, so that reliable, fact-based, verified information can be

It’s CSI Now, Not CSICOPKENDRICK FRAZIER

AND THE EXECUTIVE COUNCIL

SI J-F 2007 pgs 11/13/06 11:25 AM

EDITORIAL


used in making judgments aboutthem. We have used terms such as“pseudoscientific” and “fringe-science”or even “paranatural” as adjectives toportray that larger realm. But eventhose terms, broad as they may seem,are limiting.

Our broader, overarching purpose isto encourage critical inquiry, scientificthinking, and the scientific outlook. Inshort, to promote science and reason.More and more we are concerned withscience-related issues that have broadpublic-policy importance, especiallywhere the science is being misrepre-sented or misused or ignored. Our orig-inal core focus on the “paranormal” waspartly because that was where a lot ofmisinformation and intentional disin-formation existed. Also, paranormaltopics had broad appeal to the publicand the media, and the scientific com-munity was basically ignoring them,allowing promoters of the paranormalto go unchallenged. To a certain extentall that is still true. Nevertheless, ourunderlying interest has never been theparanormal per se, but larger topics andissues such as how our beliefs in suchthings arise, how our minds work todeceive us, how we think, how our crit-ical thinking capabilities can beimproved, what are the answers to cer-tain uninvestigated mysteries, whatdamage is caused by uncritical accep-tance of untested claims, how criticalattitudes and scientific thinking can bebetter taught, how good science can beencouraged and bad science exposed,and so on and on.

CSI’s mission to promote the appli-cation of rational thought to public dis-course has always attracted world-classscientists and scholars to this endeavor.But many of them (or at least their col-leagues) feel that the word “paranormal”in the name of CSICOP makes thescope of the committee appear narrowerthan it actually is. It always required anexplanation that we weren’t the promot-ers of the paranormal but the scientificinvestigators, the critical evaluators.Finally, many academics and others just

didn’t want to be associated at all withanything with the paranormal in itsname, no matter the context. Many ofus understood, and some even sharedthe feeling. As we look to the future,CSI seeks to expand its reach, and theExecutive Council felt that focusing CSIon skepticism rather than the paranor-mal would convey the interests of CSImore broadly.

In 1996 the Executive Councilformed a subcommittee to consider apossible name change. The subcommit-tee did so, but in the end decided not torecommend a change. But this time theExecutive Council, after an extendeddiscussion, decided on a change.

The decision to shorten the namecame first and was easiest. Deciding onthe actual name proved more compli-cated. One goal was to shorten the namebut maintain key words. Another was,ideally, to keep the same first initials. Allpermutations of many possible nameswere discussed, but the choice finallycame down to three: Committee forSkeptical Inquiry, Committee for Scien-tific Investigation, and Committee forScientific Inquiry. “Committee forScientific Investigation” had the advan-tage of maintaining intact the first fourwords of our name, but some felt it wasoverly broad, even a little presumptu-ous. “. . . Scientific Inquiry” was alsoseriously considered. But in the end,“Committee for Skeptical Inquiry” waschosen, in large part because it was themost specific and it includes the rootwords of our magazine’s title, theSKEPTICAL INQUIRER. (The ExecutiveCouncil members, by the way, felt ourmagazine’s name works well and shouldnot be tinkered with. Our subtitle, TheMagazine for Science and Reason, wasalso praised.)

(Another side note: “Council,”“Commission,” “Association” and othersuch words were considered for the firstword of the name but rejected for a vari-ety of reasons, including the fact that weare often referred to or thought of as“the Committee.”)

CSICOP is to many of us a beloved

name (or acronym), and we expect manyof us will continue to use it for some timewhile transitioning in our own minds toCSI. The new abbreviation, by the way, ispronounced C-S-I (not “psi”!). And yes,we know there is a popular science-oriented television program (actuallythree of them) with CSI in the title butthought, frankly, that that was as muchan advantage for us as a disadvantage.

* * *

These same discussions led theExecutive Council, at the same meet-ing, also to make several changes to theorganization’s mission statement,which appears in short form on theback cover of every issue of SI. Themore general, overarching statement ofour mission was placed first: “. . . pro-motes science and scientific inquiry,critical thinking, science education,and the use of reason in examiningimportant issues.” The reference to“investigation of paranormal andfringe-science claims” from a responsi-ble point of view was replaced with“investigation of controversial or extra-ordinary claims.” This thus ratifies thebroader mission we have already longbeen pursuing. In fact, the ExecutiveCouncil encouraged CSI and theSKEPTICAL INQUIRER to continue towiden their purview to new science-related issues at the intersection of sci-ence and public concerns, while notignoring our core topics.

Implicit in all this is that, as before,we provide quality, informed scientificanalysis and deal preferentially, if notalways exclusively, with empirical,testable, fact-based claims, not assertionsbased mostly on opinion or ideology.

—Kendrick Frazier (Member, ExecutiveCouncil, and editor, SKEPTICAL

INQUIRER), for all members of theExecutive Council: James E. Alcock,Barry Beyerstein, Thomas Casten,Kendrick Frazier, Ray Hyman, PaulKurtz, Lee Nisbet, Amardeo Sarma,and Benjamin Wolozin [newlyelected]; Barry Karr, ex officio)

SI J-F 2007 pgs 11/13/06 11:26 AM

EDITORIAL


New Directions for Skeptical Inquiry

PAUL KURTZProfessor Emeritus of Philosophy, University at Buffalo; Chairman, CSI

The Committee for the ScientificInvestigation of Claims of theParanormal (CSICOP) has

reached an historic juncture: the recog-nition that there is a critical need tochange our direction. Under the newname, the Committee for SkepticalInquiry (CSI) will not confine itself pri-marily to the scientific investigation ofclaims of the paranormal—we neverhave—but will deal with a wider rangeof questionable claims that haveemerged in the contemporary world.Actually, the subtitle of SKEPTICAL

INQUIRER—The Magazine for Scienceand Reason—is the best description ofour overall mission: to explicate anddefend the importance of scientificinquiry, thus contributing to the publicunderstanding of science.

When we founded CSICOP in 1976,we were concerned with the proliferationof paranormal claims in the media thatwere unexamined by scientific investiga-tors. These were often on the borderlinesof science. When we announced ourintention of creating CSICOP, many sci-entists heralded the role that we were toplay. At long last an organization com-posed of scientists, educators, investiga-tors, and journalists proposed to carefullyinvestigate alleged mysterious phenom-ena, which were not being adequatelyexamined by the scientific community.

These questions were generally inter-disciplinary; they fell between the cracksof existing disciplines. Distinguished sci-entists rallied under our banner from thestart—including Carl Sagan, Steven JayGould, Isaac Asimov, Richard Dawkins,and Nobel Prize winners Murray Gell-Mann, Francis Crick, Glenn Seaborg,Leon Lederman, and others. We alsoenlisted well-known investigators of theparanormal, such as James Randi, Philip

J. Klass, Martin Gardner, Ray Hyman,and others. Scientists worldwide em-braced our agenda such as astronomerCornelius de Jaeger (The Netherlands),Jean-Claude Pecker (France), and Nobellaureate scientists in Italy. We were inter-ested in criticizing the distortions in themedia of alleged phenomena, from psy-chics and UFOlogists to astrologers andfaith healers. These posed, in our view, athreat to the integrity of science, for theyfudged the differences between genuinescience and pseudoscience. We soon dis-covered that it was often difficult to drawa sharp demarcation line between thesetwo areas; empirical inquiry was the onlysensible approach. We were ever carefulnot to squelch new proto-sciences thatmight emerge. After thirty years we haveestablished a record in which naturalisticcausal explanations for such alleged phe-nomena are now available. The “paranor-mal” has been deflated in field after field.

We of course had a broader motive:to explicate the methods of scientificmethodology and the scientific outlook,to encourage scientific education, andthe development of critical thinking. Weviewed ourselves as the defenders of theEnlightenment.

Today there are new challenges to sci-ence. For example, the field of biogeneticengineering provides exciting opportuni-ties for the growth of knowledge and itsapplications to human betterment. Yetpowerful moral, theological, and politi-cal forces have opposed scientificresearch on a whole number of issues—such as stem-cell embryonic research.On the other hand, pro-scientific propo-nents say that we are faced with “a NewSingularity,” and that life-extension pro-grams of research offer great promises forextending life. Science demands rigorouspeer review. The excessive extrapolation

of possible breakthroughs needs carefulevaluation. Thus skeptical inquiry needsto examine such claims impartially.There are still other challenges that willno doubt emerge.

Under its new title, the Committeefor Skeptical Inquiry will endeavor tobe true to its early mission. We intendto invite leading scientific investigatorsfrom a variety of fields to carefullyevaluate questionable claims and willcriticize those who would block sci-ence in the name of occult force—suchas the imposition of the concept of“soul” to thwart the investigation ofthe brain. As such, CSI will function asa Socratic gadfly, using the best toolsof scientific inquiry and analysis to fer-ret out what is at stake. Hopefully itcan contribute to the public apprecia-tion of science and also distinguishpseudoscientific claims from genuineones. We have not abandoned theexamination of paranormal claims, butwe have extended our net more widelyto deal with other areas that have pro-voked controversy.

The Executive Council of CSICOPembarks in this new direction with greatenthusiasm. The “new skepticism” thatwe have cultivated recognizes that skepti-cism is an important part of the processof scientific inquiry. This it is not simplynegative debunking; it can make signifi-cant constructive contributions to thedevelopment of reliable knowledge.

The Committee for Skeptical Inquiryis part of the broader Center for Inquiry/Transnational movement. It likewise iscommitted to science, reason, and freeinquiry in every area of human interest.This, we hope, will greatly enhance thecooperative worldwide efforts to extendthe frontiers of scientific knowledge forthe benefit of humanity. �

SI J-F 2007 pgs 11/13/06 11:26 AM


N E W S A N D C O M M E N T

KENDRICK FRAZIER

After years of controversy, ranging fromcomplaints from national labs’ scientists(SI, July/August 2001) to a criticalNational Academy of Sciences report (SIJanuary/February 2003), the U.S. De-partment of Energy is ending requiredpolygraph tests for thousands of workersat its nuclear weapons facilities, includingmost scientists at the three nationalweapons labs, Los Alamos, LawrenceLivermore, and Sandia.

In new requirements that went intoeffect October 30, 2006, DOE will nolonger require polygraph tests as part ofa general screening of new applicants, orautomatically for employees in areas ofhigh security. Tests will still be requiredfor narrow purposes where there is spe-cific cause.

The new requirements enact an earlierpreliminary decision and recommendationto scale back polygraph testing reported toa Senate committee in September 2003(SI, November/December 2003).

Current workers will still undergobroad security reviews on a periodic basis,as will new applicants. But, with narrowexceptions, the Associated Press reportedin early October 2006, these workers willno longer be subject a “lie detector” test.

Up to 20,000 workers were at least the-oretically subject to polygraph tests underthe old program, which went into effect in1999. Government officials gave no num-bers for those who will be subject to poly-graphs under the new criteria but say theiruse would be limited to workers whosejobs require them to work with or in otheragencies that require polygraphs; thosewhere there is “a specific indication” of aclandestine relationship with a foreigncountry, organization, or terrorist group;and those where a test is ordered inresponse to a specific incident or concern.DOE said a polygraph exam may also beadministered as part of random counter-intelligence evaluations.

“This is a significant retreat from the[more widespread] use of the polygraph,”said Steven Aftergood, director of the project

on government secrecy at the Federation ofAmerican Scientists. “DOE deserves creditfor responding to the scientific critique andemployee concerns” about the uncertaintiessurrounding polygraph tests, he said.

Employees complained that the tests, dueto the prevalence of false positives, couldimproperly endanger their careers. TheNational Academy of Sciences study, issuedin October 8, 2002, and chaired by CarnegieMellon professor Stephen E. Fienberg, saidthe polygraph results are too inaccurate to beused for general screening of employees. Itsaid the tests had “weak scientific underpin-nings . . . belief in its accuracy goes beyondwhat the evidence suggests.”

Legislation sponsored by Sen. JeffBingaman, D-New Mexico, then chair-man of the Energy and NaturalResources Committee, and Sen. PeteDomenici, R-New Mexico, requiredDOE to overhaul its polygraph programbased on the findings of the NAS report.

Kendrick Frazier is editor of the SKEPTICAL

INQUIRER.

Energy Department Will End Most Polygraph Testing

SI J-F 2007 pgs 11/13/06 11:26 AM


Within the framework of the 2006CFI/Amherst/CFI/Moscow InternationalSummer School (held in Novosibirsk,Siberia), a roundtable discussion was heldon Humanism, Science, and False Sciencein Russia on July 20. The major speaker,Edward Kruglyakov, Chair of theCommittee against Antiscience of theRussian Academy of Sciences (see Krugly-akov, Edward, “Why Is PseudoscienceDangerous?” SKEPTICAL INQUIRER, July/August 2002), presented a report on“Whether Russia Will Be Able to Avoidthe New Rasputin Times.”

He reviewed the most scandalous casesin the field of charlatanism in today’sRussia. Kruglyakov reminded listenersthat the extremely aggressive charlatanGrigori Grabovoi was finally arrested.Nevertheless, for a long time, Grabovoihad a mysterious immunity and was,according to his claims (such as thosemade in an interview on Radio EchoMoscow, September, 28, 2005), responsi-ble for the security of President Putin’s air-craft and for the aircraft of other presi-dents of the Commonwealth of theIndependent States, “and he claimed todo it with the help of mental control.”

His cynical activity was marked by hispromise to resurrect more then 150 chil-dren, killed during a terrorist act in thetown of Beslan (in the North Caucasus),for about $1,300. Last summer, on thetelevision talk show, Let’s Talk, he pro-claimed himself the New Savior.

Kruglyakov said it has now becomean unfortunate trend for top Russianbureaucrats to get scientific degrees.Some underpaid scholars are ready tomake some extra money, and they dothe dissertations for the politicians ofvarious levels of government. The qual-ity of such dissertations is very poor.Nevertheless, because of the corruptionand connections of the clients, getting a

PhD poses no problem. The shamefulresults of this practice occur within thehighest levels of government.

As an example, Kruglyakov analyzedthe statement of the Vice Secretary ofthe Security Council of the RussianFederation, N. Spasskii, from his paper,“Preparing for G-8,” which was pub-lished in the official governmental news-paper, Rossiiskaya Gazeta (April 24,2006). In this paper, Spasskii proposesto revise some basic positions on the eveof the summit in St. Petersburg in July2006. Among others subjects, thisimportant official writes about the com-ing breakthroughs in energy sources(conducted thermonuclear synthesis,hydrogen, and vacuum energy.)

This statement, according to Krugly-akov, reveals the fact that this official hasadvisers who are either ignorant or char-latans. Until now, only yellow-pressjournalists would propose getting“energy from a vacuum.” Never beforehave such statements been made on thestate level, Kruglyakov said. Accordingto him, hydrogen energy can solve rela-tively local problems, but it is not ableto solve the problem of the world short-age of energy and cannot be the basis forthe energy industry. As for thermo-nuclear synthesis (controlled fusion), itis a promising source of energy indeed.Nevertheless, we cannot expect this kindof energy to be a breakthrough technol-ogy in the near future.

As a participant in this round table, Imay add only that these and many othersuch cases drastically undermine theimage of Russia as a world energy sup-plier, as well as Putin’s picture of Russiaas an energy superpower.

—Valerii Kuvakin

Valerii Kuvakin is the chairman of theCenter for Inquiry/Moscow.

Moscow RoundtableDiscusses False Science

in Russia

If, like many educators, you are notquite sure what to do in your ownwork about the recent definition of

planet by the International Astro-nomical Union, you may want to readwhat fourteen experts on planetary sci-ence and education think.

A roundtable in the online journalAstronomy Education Review (AER)looks at the science, politics, and edu-cational implications of the contro-versy. It also includes a historical time-line and a guide to educationalresources concerning the definition ofa planet.

See it at the Web site http://aer.noao.edu—where it begins the tenthissue of the journal. When you go tothe AER site, you can find the fullninth issue by clicking on “backissues” and then on “vol. 5, no. 1.”

AER actively solicits interestingpapers and articles on all aspects ofspace science education and outreach.The site gets over 200,000 hits permonth from ninety-one countries.

Pluto/PlanetRoundtable Now Online


SI J-F 2007 pgs 11/13/06 11:26 AM

As construction of the Center for Inquiry–Transnational expansion iscompleted, we turn to new challenge goals in our multi-year, $26.26million New Future Fund campaign.

The New Future Fund is an ambitious campaign to support theCenter for Inquiry, the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, and the Councilfor Secular Humanism through endowment funding and support forexpanded programming. The New Future Fund was launched afterthorough study, and its goals reflect needs judged indispensable if theCenter for Inquiry is to continue serving society as the leading cham-pion of reason, scientific naturalism, and humanist values.

The Center for Inquiry, the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI), and the Council for Secular Humanism are 501(c)(3) tax-exempt charitable organizations.

The Center for Inquiry movement began with publishing, still essentialto our mission. Skeptical Inquirer and Free Inquiry headline a family ofmagazines in three languages, newsletters, and Web sites. Professionalpublic education and media relations further amplify our message.Campus outreach presents our message of science and reason to theleaders of tomorrow.

Your gift to the New Future Fund can help to support core pub-lishing outreach (this issue of Skeptical Inquirer is four pages longerthan early-2005 issues, thanks to support from the New Future

Fund), fuel our exploitation of new communications technologies, andfund more aggressive on-campus programs. The New Future Fund iskey to the future promotion of skepticism, science, reason, and human-ism by the Center for Inquiry and its affiliates.

REACH OUT TO A NEW FUTURE!

This phase of the campaignspotlights a family of high-impact projects.

Intelligent design (ID) theory is creationism’s newface, sparking some 70 new controversies in anastonishing 26 states. CSICOP is gearing up to fight

back with grassroots outreach to mobilize skepticsat the local level when ID proposals loom; a stimu-lating new Web site, www.csicop.org/creationwatch;and media outreach, from new literature to books totop-shelf online columnists.

As ID advocates plan to shoulder Darwin and the scientific viewpointout of public schools, the New Future Fund helps CSICOP say no!

The Center for Inquiry has obtained United Nations recognition as anongovernmental organization (NGO), opening new avenues foractivism and human enrichment.

The Center for Inquiry presses for humanism, science, and reasonworldwide. Centers for Inquiry have been established in Argentina,China, Egypt, France, Germany, India, Nepal, Nigeria, Peru, Russia, andelsewhere, pursuing regionally tailored agendas.

The Center and its affiliates have facilitated international meetingsof humanists and skeptics for more than two decades. Your gift to theNew Future Fund will help this transnational expansion continue.

Please join us and declare your support today.Write, call, e-mail, or return the bound-in

postcard (at right) today!

Contact Sherry Rook, Vice President of Planning and DevelopmentCenter for Inquiry–Transnational

PO Box 741, Amherst NY 14226-0741(716) 636-4869, ext. 311

E-mail: [email protected] site: http://www.centerforinquiry.net

Your gift to the New Future Fund can support these and otherurgent priorities. We gratefully accept gifts of cash, publicly tradedsecurities, paid-up insurance policies, and other assets. We arepleased to offer attractive incentive and naming opportunities tohonor major contributors. All gifts are fully tax-deductible as pro-vided by law. Campaign personnel are available to meet with donorsto provide updates on our plans and to discuss other commemora-tive opportunities tailored to particular needs and interests.

SI J-F 2007 pgs 11/13/06 11:27 AM


UCS ReleasesScience Idol

CalendarThe Union of Concerned Scientists(UCS), in response to the many ways inwhich “government science is being cen-sored, manipulated, and distorted on anunprecedented scale,” conducted Sci-ence Idol: The Scientific IntegrityEditorial Cartoon Contest.

More than four hundred entries werereceived in response to the organization’scall for submissions of cartoons humor-ously depicting some aspect of the unfor-tunate trend. The field was winnowed byUCS to the twelve finalists whose workappears in the calendar, with the help ofeditorial cartoonists Tony Auth (of ThePhiladelphia Inquirer) and Clay Bennett(of The Christian Science Monitor), BobMankoff (the cartoon editor for The NewYorker), and Hilary Price (the creator ofthe daily comic strip Rhymes withOrange). Then, the final winner wasselected from the remaining field by a vote taken among UCS members and supporters.

James MacLeod, of Evansville,Indiana, submitted the work that waschosen as the top entry. Besides havinghis cartoon appear in the 2007 ScientificIntegrity Calendar and the UCS maga-zine, Catalyst, MacLeod will receive a$500 cash prize, an autographed copy ofDude: The Big Book of Zonker, by GaryTrudeau, a copy of the calendar auto-graphed by the four celebrity judges,and fifty copies to distribute to hisfriends and family; he will also havelunch with Bob Mankoff. The othereleven finalists will each receive a signedcopy of the calendar. (MacLeod’s car-toon appears above.)

Regarding the purpose of the contestand the calendar that it produced,Michael Halpern, Outreach Coordi-nator for the UCS Scientific IntegrityProgram, said, “While editorial cartoonscan be funny, political interference inscience is not. The calendar communicates

the impact of political interference onour health, safety, and environment in avery accessible way. And as a bonus, thecalendar is packed with interesting datesin science history.

“We hope that scientists and non-scientists alike will use the calendarfirst for a laugh—for the cartoons arequite funny—but also as an educa-tional tool to teach their friends andfamily about the importance of restor-

ing scientific integrity to federal pol-icy making.”

The calendar is available from UCS;go to www.ucsusa.org/scientific_integrity/science_idol/ and click on “2007 sci-entific integrity calendar” for more infor-mation.

—David Park Musella

David Park Musella is an editorial assis-tant with the SKEPTICAL INQUIRER. �

James MacLeod/UCS

Michigan SupportsEvolution, Rejects ID for

Science Classes

Add Michigan to the list of states that have given intelligent designthe bum’s rush. Michigan’s state Board of Education on October10, 2006, approved public school curriculum guidelines that

support the teaching of evolution in public schools, but not intelligentdesign. Intelligent design doesn’t belong in the science class, according tothe guidelines unanimously adopted. “The intent of the board needs tobe very clear,” said board member John Austin. “Evolution is not understress. It is not untested science.”


SI J-F 2007 pgs 11/13/06 11:27 AM


S P E C I A L R E P O R T S

World Trade Center Illness:Manufactured Mass Hysteria

MICHAEL FUMENTO

Starting in early 2002, firefighterswho responded to the World TradeCenter (WTC) on that awful day

the previous September began reportingwhat became labeled “World TradeCenter Cough.” Since then, numerousother first responders, later responders,and people who simply lived in the gen-eral WTC area have also reported a vari-ety of respiratory and other ills.

Clearly, these people are suffering.But are they suffering from a variety oftoxins or alleged toxins that filled the airafter the fiery explosions? Or is theirproblem stress-caused psychogenic ill-ness with perhaps some non-psy-chogenic illness mixed in?

Some scientific papers indicate stressas a major factor. But the media alwaysfavor the multiple toxin or “environmen-tal illness” theory, and now insist as achorus that a new report from theMount Sinai School of Medicine in thejournal Environmental Health Perspec-tives has settled it.

“Many who worked at Ground Zeroin the early days after the attacks havesustained serious and lasting healthproblems as a direct result of their expo-

sure to the environment there,” DennisCharney, Mount Sinai’s dean for acade-mic and scientific affairs, said in a state-ment issued with the study.

What the report found was that 69percent of some 9,500 responders saidthey suffered new or worsened breathingproblems at the time of their WTCwork. Further, in 59 percent symptomspersisted until their examinations (con-ducted from 2002 to 2004). But theseare self-reported claims with no way ofverifying them.

The best indication these people havereal symptoms is that, among nonsmok-ing responders, twice as many had abnor-mal readings on spirometer (a device thataccurately measures your ability tobreathe) as the general population.

Case closed? Not by a long shot.One glaring problem is that those

9,500 evaluated in the Mount Sinai studyaren’t a representative sample of respon-ders, merely an assessment of specificresponders from a total of about 40,000.

That is, this is not an epidemiologi-cal study, which would deliberately“want a group of people who areselected using a sampling design, wherethe group represents a study popula-tion,” observes John Fairbank, co-direc-tor of the UCLA-Duke UniversityMedical Center National Center forChild Traumatic Stress. “This doesn’t.”

This study looked only at the minor-ity of responders who came to MountSinai to have their health monitored.

People who participate in such medicalstudies tend to do so because theybelieve they’re sick. So you can’t makeany meaningful comparisons to respon-ders who didn’t volunteer for the studyor to the general public. They simplyaren’t random or representative. Thisproblem alone wholly invalidates thesignificance that Mount Sinai and themedia gave the report.

But what about those spirometerreadings? All this device (invented 150years ago) can do is measure breathingcapacity. And labored breathing is amain symptom of psychogenic illness.

Ultimately, nothing in the reportoffers the least shred of evidence that thesuffering responders aren’t by and largesuffering from psychogenic illness. Theterm is commonly misinterpreted asmeaning “it’s all in your heads.” But itactually means the symptoms can bequite real and debilitating but that theyoriginated with stress. September 11 issynonymous with stress for the entirenation, and certainly far more so for theresponders.

Medical annals are filled with inci-dents of mass psychogenic illness hyste-ria. For example, in Kosovo in 1990 atleast 4,000 residents suffered a mysteryillness that began at a high school.Observed researchers: “An outbreak ofrespiratory infection within a singleclass appears to have triggered fears thatSerbs may have dispensed poison.”They hadn’t. Rumors of Israeli-spread

Michael Fumento, a former Army para-trooper, is a senior fellow at the HudsonInstitute, and the author of Science UnderSiege and The Myth of HeterosexualAIDS. This article originally appeared onthe Web site ChronWatch (www.chronwatch.com).

SI J-F 2007 pgs 11/13/06 11:27 AM


Astudy recently pub-lished by the NationalAcademy of Sciences

casts doubt on the reality ofGulf War Syndrome (GWS)as a specific disease or syn-drome. About 60,000 of thenearly 700,000 Gulf War vet-erans began reporting healthproblems in the months andyears following their militaryservice. Complaints includeinsomnia, irritability, hair loss, chronic fatigue, musclespasms, skin rashes, memoryloss, diarrhea, headaches, andunexplained aches and pains.Some veterans believe that GWS is alsoresponsible for birth defects and cancer;others claim that GWS is a sexuallytransmitted disease that threatens thehealth of not only the veterans but theirspouses and partners as well.

The precise etiology of Gulf WarSyndrome is very difficult to pinpoint;nearly everyone agrees that many veter-

ans are suffering; the question iswhether the symptoms are related in anyway to military service and have a com-mon cause. The controversy over GulfWar Syndrome—now in its seconddecade—highlights the difficulties ofscientific and medical certainty, as wellas a common logical fallacy: post hoc ergopropter hoc (“after this, therefore becauseof it”). Gulf War veterans may assume

that because they became illafter their tour of duty, thatexperience is what causedtheir symptoms. While thatmay indeed be true, the mal-adies could also be from anynumber of other, unrelatedcauses. Part of the problem isthat the symptoms are sodiverse—and so common—that attributing a specificcause to a specific illness canbe difficult or impossible. Is askin rash or persistent coughcaused by toxic chemicalsinhaled years ago at an Iraqimunitions dump, or toxic

chemicals inhaled over months or yearsfrom a nearby, polluting factory up-wind? Or both, or neither?

In the real world, correlation can bevery difficult to distinguish from causation:

poison gas caused a similar mass out-break of illness among West BankPalestinians in 1983.

That brings us to perhaps the mostdistressing aspect of the WTC out-break. In addition to the trauma expe-rienced at the WTC site, the bestexplanation for these ills is that theyhave been induced by the media andselect scientists who steadily beat the

drum insisting that responders oughtto be sick. The bastion of these scien-tists since 2002 has been—surprise!—Mount Sinai.

Indeed, no other institution is moreassociated with pushing the oddball the-ory of “environmental illness” than thisone. Mount Sinai and the sycophanticmedia are no friends of those brave menand women who rushed to the World

Trade Center on 9/11 or helped in thecleanup; they are their tormenters.

Our heroes deserve our compassionand help for their WTC-related ill-nesses, whether psychogenic or not. Buttrue compassion begins with informingthem that there is no scientific evidenceindicating they should be sicker thananyone else, at least not from environ-mental causes.

Benjamin Radford wrote about conversiondisorders in Hoaxes, Myths, and Manias,co-authored with Robert Bartholomew.

New Report Casts Doubt on Gulf War Syndrome

BENJAMIN RADFORD

Oil fires in Kuwait are claimed to have contributed to Gulf War veterans’disabilities. Photo by Jim Hodson/Greenpeace/ZUMA Press. Copyright1991 by Greenpeace

SI J-F 2007 pgs 11/13/06 11:28 AM


Links that may seem obvious are notalways clear. For example, many lifelongsmokers never get lung cancer, whilemany nonsmokers do. To find outwhich if any of the myriad substancesthe veterans were exposed to caused theillnesses, we would need a controlgroup: two sets of patients in the samecondition, only one of whom wasexposed to a given pathogen.

While some Gulf War veterans claimthat their plight has been ignored,action has been taken to study the syn-drome. In 1996, a panel appointed byPresident Clinton concluded that “sig-nificant evidence supports the likeli-hood of a physiological stress-relatedorigin” for many GWS ailments. Whilethe conclusion is probably true, thepublic should be skeptical of “stress” asan explanation, for though the ability ofthe body to convert psychological symp-toms into physical ones is well docu-mented, citing the cause of a disease asstress is of little profit. Stress is a notori-ously fluid catch-all term that is difficultto both define and quantify. This isespecially true when dealing with non-specific stressors. There’s little doubtthat many things cause concern andstress every day, ranging from trafficjams to infidelity to wartime combat.But stress is highly subjective, and whatstresses one person may not at all affectsomeone else in similar circumstances.(As noted in the November/December2004 SI article “Bacteria, Ulcers, andOstracism? H. Pylori and the Making of a Myth,” for decades stomach ul-cers were wrongly believed by both doctors and the general public to becaused by stress. Many other commonmaladies and symptoms, ranging fromheadaches to violence to sexual dysfunc-tion, are also—rightly or wrongly—attributed to stress.)

In 1996, CIA Executive Director NoraSlatkin addressed the contention that Iraqichemical weapons (such as nerve gas)caused the symptoms, stating that “Onthe basis of a comprehensive review of theintelligence that we have, we continue toconclude that Iraq did not use chemical or

biological weapons during the Gulf War.”Nonetheless, many critics, including Sen.Arlen Specter, continued to insist thatnerve gas was a contributing factor toGWS. The Pentagon was criticized in lateryears for not doing more to track whichAmerican troops were exposed to whichtoxins, as well as administering inadequatepre- and post-deployment health mea-sures. (Some veterans may be sick whenthey leave the military, but without havinga statistical baseline to determine howhealthy they were to begin with, suchnumbers are difficult to interpret.) Despiteclaims of a cover-up, however, investiga-tions have not found any evidence that thePentagon intentionally hid or suppressedinformation about GWS.

In 1998, Congress passed two lawsregarding the illnesses, the Persian GulfWar Veterans Act and the VeteransPrograms Enhancement Act. These mea-sures contracted the National Academy ofSciences to “review and evaluate the thescientific and medical literature regardingassociations between illness and exposureto toxic agents, environmental wartimehazards, and preventive medicines or vac-cines associated with Gulf War service.”The Committee on Gulf War and Healthdid not collect any original data, insteadfocusing on 850 potentially relevant,peer-reviewed epidemiological studies.The committee published its finding in a2006 report, “Gulf War and Health.” Thereport noted that the studies’ conclusionswere clouded by many common limita-tions, including “use of a population thatwas not representative of the entire GulfWar population, reliance on self-reportsrather than objective measures of symp-toms, low participation rates, and a periodof investigation that was too brief todetect health outcomes with long latencysuch as cancer.”

Every study examined found thatGulf War veterans “report higher rates ofnearly all symptoms examined than theirnondeployed counterparts. . . . In manystudies, investigators found a higherprevalence not only of individual symp-toms but also of chronic multisymptomillnesses among Gulf War-deployed vet-

erans than among the nondeployed.”However, the report notes, “there are noclear objective diagnostic criteria thatcan be used to validate the findings, so itis not clear whether the literature sup-ports a true excess of the conditions orwhether the associations are spuriousand result from the increased reportingof symptoms across the board.”

The report states that despite the“enormous effort and resources” devotedto examining GWS, “The informationhas not been sufficient to determine con-clusively the origins, extent, and poten-tial long-term implications of [Gulf Warservice] health problems. . . .The diffi-culty in obtaining meaningful answers. . . is due largely to inadequate prede-ployment and postdeployment screeningand medical examinations, and lack ofmonitoring of possible exposures ofdeployed personnel.” These shortcom-ings were addressed in the committee’srecommendations section.

The study found that there was “nounique syndrome, unique illness, orunique symptom complex in deployedGulf War veterans.” As expected, veter-ans were at increased risk for several psy-chiatric illnesses, such as post-traumaticstress disorder, anxiety, and depression.Among those symptoms that could bemeasured with diagnostic tests, studiesdid not find an increase in cancer, birthdefects, cardiovascular disease, orperipheral neuropathy. Veterans were atgreater risk of respiratory illnesses, andthere was some evidence that veteranshad an increased likelihood of amy-otrophic lateral sclerosis.

Many Gulf War veterans angrilyrejected the latest study’s findings, asthey did previous reports and studiesthat did not support their conclusions.Often this is because they mistakenlybelieve that if the syndrome is notproven “real,” that somehow relegatesthe suffering veterans to liars, hoaxers,or fabulists. Instead, as with mass hyste-ria, those truly suffering from the illnessare not faking or imagining the symp-toms; instead they are simply misat-tributing the cause. �

SI J-F 2007 pgs 11/13/06 11:28 AM


COMMENT AND OPINION

Advocating for science is moreimportant than ever. Fundingfor many scientific endeavors is

being reduced. Much of the publicdoes not believe in evolution. Ad-vances in stem-cell biology and geneticengineering are under attack. Andmany politicians and much of the pub-lic discount warnings about globalwarming.

It is often perplexing that science’scritics appear to be immune to thetremendous amount of data drivingour conclusions and instead seem torely on weak or dubious facts criticiz-ing each subject. Whether the topic isevolution, global warming, stem cells,or abortion, how often have we hadthe experience of trying to persuadesomeone why our view of the world isaccurate, only to have the argumentsdismissed? How can the public ignorethe overwhelming evidence?

George Lakoff is a cognitive psy-chologist and linguist from theUniversity of California, Irvine. His spe-cialty is cognitive constructs. He hastaken this theoretical knowledge andapplied it to politics. His analysis is sim-ple but very cogent. His book Don’tThink of an Elephant: Know YourValues and Frame the Debate (ChelseaGreen Publishing 2004), now availablein paperback, provides an importantnew model for understanding the artof political persuasion.

Lakoff’s basic idea is the powerfulrole cognitive frameworks exert in ourunderstanding of the world. He sum-

marizes research showing that individ-uals develop cognitive frameworks tohelp them organize the information inthe world around them. A simpleexample is the issue of abortion.Conservatives frame the abortiondebate as a debate about protectinglife, which is a powerfully simple argu-ment. They have used the power ofthis moral argument to frame the con-servative agenda. We use such cogni-tive frameworks to interpret the manyfacts confronting us every day. Weattend to facts that integrate easilywith the cognitive framework andtend to dismiss facts that are not con-sistent with our views.

Scientists also use cognitive frame-works for understanding disparatefacts. For example, in my field, Alz-heimer’s disease, many scientists usethe amyloid-cascade hypothesis tounderstand the disease process. Thishypothesis clearly does not explain allaspects of Alzheimer’s disease, but itsutility lies in its tremendous ability tofacilitate interpreting the massiveamount of data streaming throughthe literature daily. Lakoff argues thatappreciating the role of cognitiveframeworks in human behavior isessential in engaging in public de-bates, because it explains how peopletake in information and why peopletend to dismiss facts that conflict withtheir views.

The book’s fundamental message isthat to be persuasive, speakers mustaddress the underlying cognitive

framework first, and they must pro-vide an alternative framework willingto be considered by the listener beforementioning any facts. Unless the lis-tener accepts the new framework, thelistener will dismiss any facts that dis-agree with their existing cognitiveframework and all arguments will fail.Lakoff’s model explains why the vastamounts of facts provided by scientistsand the powerful import of the datathat we obtain frequently appear tobounce off the ears of the audience,such as those who don’t accept evolu-tion, global warming, or stem-cellresearch.

The book begins by noting somewell-known contradictions apparent inthe conservative movement. For in-stance, conservatives are generallypro-capital-punishment but anti-abor-tion. How can they favor death on theone hand but oppose it on the other?Contradictions, though, are notunique to conservatives. The liberalplatform is equally contradictory,because liberals are against capitalpunishment but in favor of abortion.Lakoff resolves this apparent contra-diction with a very simple model.

Lakoff proposes that conservativesoperate using a “strong-father”model. The model begins from thebasic idea that the father rules thefamily and is the authority. This modelplaces immense reliance on the valueof rules and authority. This model pre-supposes that the father has prosperedbecause of his hard work, innate abili-ties, and adherence to the rules. A fur-ther assumption is that all who followthis dogma will be successful. Based onthe strong-father model, the fathershould be rewarded because of his suc-cess, as should everyone else who pros-pers because he or she has followedthe social rules.

In this model, following the socialrules leads to social and economic suc-cess, while those who did not succeedmust have failed because they did notfollow the rules. Thus, the “bad boy”

The Art of Persuasionin Politics

(and Science)BENJAMIN WOLOZIN

Benjamin Wolozin, M.D., is a professorin the Department of Pharmacology atthe Boston University School of Med-icine, Boston, MA 02118-2526. E-mail:[email protected].

SI J-F 2007 pgs 11/13/06 11:28 AM


grows up to be poor. The poor, there-fore, should not be rewarded (withbenefits such as welfare, Medicare,and food stamps). The value of rulesalso guides the punitive code, becausethose who break the law must be pun-ished harshly, such as by use of capitalpunishment. The strong father is thepatriarch, and the wife’s place is subor-dinate to her husband. Many conserv-atives loathe Hillary Clinton. Accordingto Lakoff’s theories, the principal mis-take of Hillary Clinton might bethat she acted as an indepen-dent and coequal entity to herhusband, the elected leader.

The strong-father model alsoprovides an underlying explana-tion for the conservative back-lash against abortion: youngwomen who get pregnant acci-dentally get into that situationbecause they disobey the tradi-tional rules against premaritalsex; such misbehavior must notbe rewarded with an abortion.Economic success and the rightsof the individual patriarch arealso paramount in the strong-father model. Laws that inter-fere with economic success, such asenvironmental laws or tax laws, mustbe removed; taxes are assumed toremove money that was justly earnedby following the social rules.

Lakoff states that liberals, on theother hand, operate using the “nur-turing-parent” model. This modelviews that family as a collection of rel-ative equals (as portrayed in HillaryClinton’s book, It Takes a Village). Inthis model, the goal of the parent is tosupport the rest of the family. Thefamily succeeds as a cooperativeenterprise. Those who don’t succeed,the poor, need to be helped by theenterprise. Criminals are those whosuffer from misfortune and should behelped. Younger women who getpregnant are not bad; they just hadbad fortune and should be helped.Laws are present to help spread thefortune of the family. Environmentallaws protect the community over therights of the individual.

Over the years, public sentimenthas shifted towards the strong-fathermodel. The shift in sentiment empha-

sizes the fluidity of public opinion.Lakoff points out that many individu-als use a strong-father model in onepart of their lives and a nurturing-par-ent model in other parts of their lives.The key to conveying alternate ideas isto provide a new construct that the lis-tener can use to interpret your mes-sage. Lakoff points out that one mustbe careful in selecting the language,because the language frames theissue. Use of the term tax relief by con-

servatives presupposes that there is aproblem that needs relief. Who couldargue against the need for relief,which sounds helpful? Anyone whodoes not address this underlyingassumption will not be able to argueagainst it. An alternative term wouldbe deficit-raising tax cuts. Who couldpossibly be in favor of those?

Lakoff urges us to practice usingterms that frame the issue and cogni-tive constructs that support our pointof view. I have tried this and found itto be remarkably effective. For in-stance, I was on a plane talking aboutthe cuts to the National Institutes ofHealth budget with a conservative.When I simply discussed governmentspending, he showed no willingness tolisten to my comments. Then I remem-bered Lakoff’s words and made ananalogy to businesses (the man was afinancial manager for a shoe com-pany). I presented the idea that busi-nesses that don’t invest don’t growand stagnate. The business model wasa cognitive framework with which heidentified. He embraced that idea and

suddenly became very amenable toconsidering the damage done to theUnited States by the tax cuts and bud-get deficits, ultimately agreeingwholeheartedly that the current polit-ical agenda was damaging the nation’scompetitiveness. Without an alterna-tive cognitive framework, he neverwould have considered my comments.

Some people will never accept analternate model, but even those whomight accept one can’t be expected to

automatically accept a newpoint of view. The key, accord-ing to Lakoff, is to provide a“wedge issue” that confrontsthe listener with a situationthat challenges her or his exist-ing model. Partial-birth abor-tion has been used effectivelyby Republicans; very few ofthese procedures are ever per-formed, but the frequency isirrelevant, because the idea ofkilling a late-term fetus is dis-tressing. Lakoff provides theexample for Democrats of afemale soldier who is raped onthe battlefield. This soldiercannot be provided with a

morning-after pill or an abortion by amilitary hospital, despite the honor weshould pay her for having enlisted andrisking her life for her country.

The book provides a powerfulexplanation of the recent dominationof the political culture by the Repub-licans. After reading the book, I cer-tainly came to respect the audaciousbrilliance of Karl Rove and the conser-vative think tanks.

This book is a must read for anyonewho wants to discuss scientific issues inthe public arena. Unless scientists canprovide simple cognitive frameworksfor understanding scientific advances,scientists are destined to lose debates inthe public sphere. The dangers of risingoceans and climate shifts that could becaused in the future by global warmingare far too abstract for most people toworry about. On the other hand, peo-ple can easily understand that a waterstain in the ceiling of one’s housemeans a problem with the roof ratherthan the ceiling, and that the homeowner must correct the underlyingproblem of the leaky roof or the stain in

Scientists frequently use facts to argue a

point without bothering to address differences

in the underlying cognitive framework.

SI J-F 2007 pgs 11/13/06 11:28 AM


the ceiling will just get worse. Globalwarming is a similar problem: weeks oftemperatures over 110 degrees inPhoenix will only get worse unless wepay attention to the atmosphere.Evolution must also be explained inconcrete terms, relevant to everyone’sdaily experience. The fossil record canbe likened to a crime-scene investiga-tion. If your front door is open and yourtelevision is missing and you see foot-steps on your floor from a shoe largerthan that of anyone in your household,it is reasonable to conclude that anintruder was in the house, even thoughyou never saw the intruder. The fossilrecord is no different.

Science also provides us with a pow-erful arsenal of wedge issues, if usedcorrectly. Many people have a lovedone with an illness that can only becured by advances in health care.Parkinson’s disease, diabetes, orCrohn’s disease provide important

incentives for considering the value ofstem cells and for challenging thenotion that a single stem cell has thesame right to life as a thinking, breath-ing, individual. The application of pro-apoptotic genes discovered in C. ele-gans for the diagnosis and therapy ofcancer in man emphasizes the similarmechanisms used by disparate lifeforms and provides a powerful refer-ence for explaining the evolution ofgenes. Everyone wants a cure for can-cer and might consider the value ofevolutionary theory in that context.

Scientists frequently use facts toargue a point without bothering toaddress differences in the underlyingcognitive framework. Many of ourpoliticians, such as John Kerry, also usethis approach and are singularly un-persuasive. On the other hand, GeorgeBush is very skilled at focusing on theunderlying cognitive framework. Thisbook emphasizes the futility of facts

presented without first providing anacceptable cognitive framework.Lakoff provides a new paradigm fordiscussing contemporary issues. One ofthe greatest problems facing our soci-ety is that many of the cognitiveframeworks provided by many conser-vatives and some liberals run contraryto discoveries made through scientificinvestigation; cognitive frameworksthat deny reality are a long-termthreat to our society.

Scientists must develop simple cog-nitive models that are relevant to peo-ple’s daily lives; frameworks throughwhich the public can hear us. Armedwith these simple models and thewedge issues that are the bread andbutter of our work, we represent apowerful resource that can move thepublic discussion to pragmaticallyaddress the issues of the day anddevelop policies that benefit ratherthan hurt the lives of our children. �

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• Ghosts and Spirits • Vaccines and Autism

• Von Däniken • Skeptical news and information

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SI J-F 2007 pgs 11/13/06 11:29 AM


One of the strangest books everwritten about modern physicswas published in 2002, and

reprinted two years later. Titled Energyfrom the Vacuum (Cheniere Press), thismonstrosity is two inches thick andweighs three pounds. Its title page liststhe author as “Lt. Col. Thomas E.Bearden, PhD (U.S. Army retired).”

“Dr.” Bearden is fond of putting PhDafter his name. An Internet check revealedthat his doctorate was given, in his ownwords, for “life experience and life accom-plishment.” It was purchased from adiploma mill called Trinity College andUniversity—a British institution with nobuilding, campus, faculty, or president,and run from a post office box in SiouxFalls, South Dakota. The institution’sowner, one Albert Wainwright, calls him-self the college “registrant.”

Bearden’s central message is clearand simple. He is persuaded that it ispossible to extract unlimited freeenergy from the vacuum of space-time.Indeed, he believes the world is on thebrink of its greatest technological revo-lution. Forget about nuclear reactors.

Vacuum energy will rescue us fromglobal warming, eliminate poverty, andprovide boundless clean energy forhumanity’s glorious future. All that isneeded now is for the scientific com-munity to abandon its “ostrich posi-tion” and allow adequate funding toBearden and his associates.

To almost all physicists this quest forwhat is called “zero-point energy” (ZPE)is as hopeless as past efforts to build per-petual motion machines. Such skepti-cism drives Bearden up a wall. Onlymonumental ignorance, he writes, couldprompt such criticism.

The nation’s number two drum-beater for ZPE is none other thanHarold Puthoff, who runs a think tankin Austin, Texas, where efforts to tapZPE have been underway for years. InDecember 1997, to its shame, ScientificAmerican ran an article praising Puthofffor his efforts. Nowhere did this articlemention his dreary past.

Puthoff began his career as a dedi-cated Scientologist. He had been de-clared a “clear”—a person free of mali-cious “engrams” recorded on his brainwhile he was an embryo. At StanfordResearch International, Puthoff and histhen-friend Russell Targ claimed to havevalidated “remote viewing” (a new namefor distant clairvoyance), and also thegreat psi powers of Uri Geller. (See mychapter on Puthoff ’s search for ZPE inDid Adam and Eve Have Navels?,Norton 2000.)

Bearden sprinkles his massive volumewith admirable quotations from topphysicists, past and present, occasionallycorrecting mistakes made by Einsteinand others. For example, Bearden be-lieves that the graviton moves muchfaster than the speed of light. He praisesthe work of almost every counterculturephysicist of recent decades. He admiresDavid Bohm’s “quantum potential” andMendel Sach’s unified field theory.Oliver Heaviside and Nikola Tesla aretwo of his heroes.

Bearden devotes several chapters toantigravity machines. Here is a sampleof his views:

In our approach to antigravity, oneway to approach the problem is tohave the mechanical apparatus alsothe source of an intense negativeenergy EM field, producing an intenseflux of Dirac sea holes into and in thelocal surrounding space-time. Theexcess charge removed from the Diracholes can in fact be used in the elec-trical powering of the physical system,as was demonstrated in the SweetVTA antigravity test. Then move-ments of the mechanical parts couldinvolve movement of strong negativeenergy fields, hence strong curves oflocal space-time that are local strongnegative gravity fields. Or, better yet,movement of the charges themselveswill also produce field-induced move-ment of the Dirac sea hole negativeenergy. This appears to be a practicalmethod to manipulate the metricitself, along the lines proposed byPuthoff et al.217

‘Dr.’ Bearden’s Vacuum Energy

NOTES OF A FRINGE WATCHERM A R T I N G A R D N E R

Martin Gardner’s latest book is TheAnnotated Hunting of the Snark: TheDefinitive Edition, published by W.W.Norton in October 2006. This column is anew contribution to his Notes of a FringeWatcher column, which ran in every issueof SKEPTICAL INQUIRER from Summer1993 through January/February 2002.

SI J-F 2007 pgs 11/13/06 11:29 AM


The 217 superscript refers to a foot-note about a 2002 paper by Puthoff andtwo friends on how to use the vacuumfield to power spacecraft. Bearden’s anti-gravity propulsion system is neatly dia-grammed on page 319. “Negativelycharged local space-time,” says the dia-gram, “acts back upon source vehicle pro-ducing anti-gravity and unilateral thrust.”

In the 1950s, numerous distinguishedwriters, artists, and even philosophers(e.g., Paul Goodman, William Steig, andPaul Edwards) sat nude in WilhelmReich’s “orgone accumulators” to absorbthe healing rays of “orgone energy” com-ing from outer space. Bearden suspects(in footnote 78) that orgone energy “isreally the transduction of the time-polar-ized photon energy into normal photonenergy. We are assured by quantum fieldtheory and the great negentropy solutionto the source charge problem that the instantaneous scalar potential in-volves this process.” I doubt if theReichians, who are still around, will findthis illuminating.

To my amazement Bearden has goodthings to say about the notorious “Deandrive”—a rotary motion device designedto propel spaceships by inertia. It waspromoted by John Campbell when heedited Astounding Science Fiction, a mag-azine that unleashed L. Ron Hubbard’sDianetics on a gullible public and madeHubbard a millionaire. Only elementaryphysics is needed to show that no iner-tial drive can move a spaceship in fric-tionless space. On pages 448–453Bearden lists eighty patents for inertialdrives. They have one feature in com-mon: none of them works.

Counterculture scientists tend to bebitter over the “establishment’s” inabilityto recognize their genius. Was notGalileo, they like to repeat, persecutedfor his great discoveries? This bitternessis sometimes accompanied by paranoidfears, not just of conspiracies to silencethem, but also fears of being murdered.Bearden’s pages 406–453 are devoted tojust such delusions.

Several kinds of “shooters” aredescribed that induce fatal heart attacks.He himself, Bearden writes, has been hitby such devices. An associate, Stan Meyer,died after a “possible” hit by a close-range

shooter. Another ZPE researcher waskilled by a bazooka-size shooter. SteveMarikov, still another researcher, wasassaulted by a sophisticated shooter andhis body thrown off a rooftop to make itappear a suicide. When his body wasremoved, the pavement “glowed.”

One day at a Texas airport a personthree feet from Bearden was killed withsymptoms suggesting he was murderedby an ice-dart dipped in curare! “Thatwas apparently just to teach me ‘they’were serious.” The colonel goes on to

explain that “they” refers to a “HighCabal” who were offended by a friend’s“successful transmutation of copper (andother things) into gold. . . . We have hadnumerous other assassination attempts,too numerous to reiterate. . . . Over theyears probably as many as fifty or moreoverunity researchers and inventors havebeen assassinated . . . some have simplydisappeared abruptly and never havebeen heard from since.” Overunity isBearden’s term for machines with energyoutputs that exceed energy inputs.

Any significant researcher should bewary of “meeting with a sudden sui-cide” on the way to the supermarket.Another thing to beware of, is a cali-brated auto accident where your car isrammed from the rear, and you areshaken up considerably. An ambu-lance just happens to be passing bymoments later, and it will take you tothe hospital. If still conscious, theresearcher must not get in the ambu-lance unless accompanied by a watch-ful friend who understands the situa-tion and the danger. Otherwise, hecan easily get a syringe of air into hisveins, which will effectively turn himinto a human vegetable. If he goes tothe hospital safely, he must be

guarded by friends day and night, forthe same reason, else he runs a highrisk of the “air syringe” assassinationduring the night.

Simply trying to do scientificwork, I find it necessary to often carry(legally) a hidden weapon. Both mywife and I have gun permits, and wefrequently and legally carry concealedweapons.

As early as the 1930s, T. HenryMoray—who built a successfulCOP>1.0 power system outputting50kW from a 55 lb power unit—hadto ride in a bulletproof car in Salt

Lake City, Utah. He was repeatedlyfired at by snipers from the buildingsor sidewalk, with the bullets some-times sticking in the glass. He wasalso shot by a would-be assassin in hisown laboratory, but overpowered hisassassin and recovered.

Obviously, I’m not competent towade through Bearden’s almost a thou-sand pages to point out what physiciststell me are howlers. I leave that task toexperts, though I suspect very few willconsider it worth their time even to readthe book. To me, a mere science jour-nalist, the book’s dense, pompous jargonsounds like hilarious technical double-talk. The book’s annotated glossary runsto more than 120 pages. There are 305footnotes, 754 endnotes, and a valuableseventy-three-page index.

The back cover calls the book “thedefinitive energy book of the twenty-first century.” In my opinion it is des-tined to be the greatest work of out-landish science in both this and the pre-vious century. It is much funnier, for instance, than Frank Tipler’s best-seller of a few decades ago, The Physicsof Immortality. �

In the 1950s, numerous distinguished writers,

artists, and even philosophers sat nude in Wilhelm

Reich’s “orgone accumulators” to absorb the healing

rays of “orgone energy” coming from outer space.

SI J-F 2007 pgs 11/13/06 11:29 AM

INVESTIGATIVE FILESJ O E N I C K E L L


INVESTIGATIVE FILESJ O E N I C K E L LINVESTIGATIVE FILESJ O E N I C K E L LINVESTIGATIVE FILESJ O E N I C K E L L

Mankind’s imagination has al-ways been excited by the pos-sibilities of unknown regions.

Thus, a seemingly limitless universeinvites speculation about extraterrestri-als; the world’s largely unexploredoceans and seas, even deep lakes,prompt thoughts of leviathans; simi-larly, vast wilderness areas of the globespark belief in other strange creatures,including various man-beasts; andbelief in the great, imagined “OtherSide” leads to tales of such entities asghosts and spirits.

In mid-2006, I was aboard a Centerfor Inquiry cruise that traveled northfrom Seattle, Washington, along thecoastal reaches of British Columbiaand southern Alaska. As part of ourfloating conference on “PlanetaryEthics”—featuring an address on thatcrucial topic by CFI chairman PaulKurtz—we visited Glacier Bay andwere treated to lectures on globalwarming and the melting of theworld’s glaciers by Mark Bowen,author of Thin Ice (2005). Amongother speakers, Barbara Forrest cri-tiqued recent attacks on the teachingof evolution.

I spoke on “Mysterious Entities ofthe Pacific Northwest,” which I speciallyresearched for the cruise, and—asopportunity presented itself—I was alsoable to do a bit of on-site investigatingrelating to that topic as we occasionallyput into port. Here is an overview ofwhat I found.

Sasquatch

The area our cruise skirted is part of thePacific Northwest, an area loosely en-compassing northern California, Wash-ington state, Oregon, British Columbia,and southern Alaska. It contains some ofthe most extensive forests in NorthAmerica which, some claim, is home tothe fabled Sasquatch (although sightingsexist in other states and countries).

The name “Sasquatch” is often said tobe Native American; actually it wascoined by a Canadian schoolteacher J.W.Burns, in the 1920s. Her Native CoastSalish informants had different namesfor various unknown hairy giants, theBritish Columbian version being knownas sokqueatl or soss-q’tal. Burns wanted toinvent a single term for all of the allegedcreatures (Coleman and Clark 1999,215; Alley 2003, 9). This began a processof homogenization that helped turn var-ious imaginative wild-man concepts intoan increasingly uniform type, as we shallsee. (I have been investigating thisprocess for many years, just as I did forextraterrestrials which culminated in my

pictorial chart, “Alien Timeline” shownin the September/October 1997SKEPTICAL INQUIRER.)

The earliest record of potentialSasquatch footprints is dated 1811when David Thompson, a trader andexplorer, was seeking the mouth of theColumbia River. Crossing the Rockiesat what is today Jasper, Alberta, he cameupon a mysterious track in the snow. Itmeasured fourteen inches long by eightinches wide and was characterized byfour toes with short claw marks, adeeply impressed ball of the foot, and anindistinct heel imprint (Green 1978,35–37; Hunter 1993, 16–17). Somemodern Sasquatch enthusiasts have sug-gested it was the legendary man-beast,but primate expert John Napier of theSmithsonian Institution was not so sure.

Napier observed (1973, 74) thatThompson’s description was “an inade-quate basis for any far-reaching conclu-sions.” He argued that the print couldwell have been that of a bear (whosesmall inner toe may not have left amark); Thompson himself thought itlikely “the track of a large old grizzledbear” (qtd. in Hunter 1993, 17).

Contrastingly, in 1847, a very differ-ent type of wild man was reported.Artist Paul Kane was in Washington, insight of Mount St. Helens volcano,which, the Indians asserted, was “inhab-ited by a race of beings of a differentspecies, who are cannibals, and whom

Mysterious Entities of the Pacific Northwest, Part I

Joe Nickell is a former private detectiveand author of numerous investigativebooks, including Crime Science and Real-Life X-Files. His Web site is at www.joenickell.com.

SI J-F 2007 pgs 11/13/06 11:50 AM


they hold in great dread.” Called“skoocooms” or “evil genii,” however,they appear to have been seen as super-natural rather than natural beings. Inany case, Kane did not refer to them asape-like (Hunter 1993, 17–18).

The supposed capture of Sasquatchwas reported in the Victoria, BritishColumbia, Daily Colonist on July 4, 1884.Railway men had allegedly captured ahairy “half-man, half beast,” only four-feet-seven-inches tall and weighing 127pounds. Dubbed “Jacko,” it was allegedlybeing kept in an area jail, but was to betaken to London to be exhibited.

Although some have suggested Jackocould have been an escapee from a tour-ing circus menagerie, it seems morelikely he never existed. He was neverheard from again, except that a laternewspaper article—in the July 9, 1884,Mainland Guardian—indicated thestory had been a hoax, apparently per-petrated by a reporter for the DailyColonist (Stein 1993, 246–247).

Certainly, hoaxes characterized manySasquatch reports throughout the nextcentury. A case from 1924 may be oneof them. A man named Fred Beck andseveral fellow prospectors claimed tohave shot at several “mountain gorillas”in a canyon near Kelso, Washington.They insisted that that night the crea-tures bombarded their cabin with rocksand beat upon the door and roof. Atdaybreak the attack had ceased andgiant footprints were found around thecabin (Bord and Bord 1982, 41–42).However, rumors have since persistedthat pranksters living in the vicinity hadplanted the footprints and thrown therocks (Daegling 2004, 59–70).

Another case took place in 1930,near Mount St. Helens. Some peoplewho had been picking berries returnedto their cars to discover huge, manliketracks circling the area. Excitedly, theyreported the tracks to nearby forestrangers, but for more than half a centurythe tracks remained a mystery. Then in1982 Rant Mullens, a retired logger whohad been working for the Forest Serviceat the time of the tracks appeared, con-fessed that he had been involved in fak-ing the giant footprints. As a prank, hehad carved from a piece of wood a pair

of nine-by-seventeen-inch feet. A friendof Mullens, Bill Lambert, had thenstrapped them onto his own feet andtromped about the area where the berrypickers’ cars were parked (Dennett1982). Since then, more realistic foot-prints have appeared, curiously follow-ing extensive published descriptions ofwhat genuine Sasquatch/Bigfoot shouldbe like. So has other evidence.

The 1950s were a watershed inSasquatch’s history. In 1951 the foot-print of a yeti or “abominable snowman”from the Himalayas was photographedby explorer Eric Shipton and receivedconsiderable media attention—in Cali-fornia and elsewhere across the UnitedStates and even the world.

In 1955, one William Roe claimed tohave observed a female Sasquatch for afew minutes at close range. Two yearslater Albert Ostman swore that, somethirty-three years earlier, in 1924, hehad been prospecting alone near theToba Inlet, British Columbia, when hewas abducted—carried off in his sleep-ing bag—by a male Sasquatch. Ostmanclaimed he was held captive by a familyof the creatures, whom he described indetail, but escaped after almost a week.However, analysis of his story demon-strated that it was more likely the resultof imagination than of recollection(Daegling 2004, 31–32, 67–69).

In 1958, Sasquatch was rechristenedafter making several visits to a road-con-struction site at Bluff Creek in remotenorthern California. The tracks werediscovered by Gerald Crew, a photo ofwhom, holding up a cast of a giant foot-print, was picked up by a wire serviceand circulated across the country. As aresult, “Bigfoot” (whose name firstappeared with the Crew photo in theHumboldt Times on October 5, 1958)began to proliferate. Decades later, afterthe death of the Bluff Creek road con-tractor, Ray Wallace, Wallace’s familytold the press that he had faked the1958 tracks, and they even producedpairs of carved feet that matched theBluff Creek tracks (Daegling 2004, 29,73; Coleman and Clark 1999, 39).

Another watershed came in October1967 with “one of the most momentousevents in the annals of Bigfoot hunting”

(Bord and Bord 1982, 80). RogerPatterson, a longtime Bigfoot enthusiastwho had frequently “discovered” thecreature’s tracks, encountered a man-beast as he and a sidekick rode at BluffCreek. It spooked the men’s horses butas his mount fell, Patterson claimed, hejumped clear, grabbed a movie camerafrom his saddlebag, and filmed the crea-ture as it strode away with a seeminglyexaggerated stride, “as if,” wrote DanielCohen (1982, 17), “a bad actor weretrying to simulate a monster’s walk.”

Patterson’s creature had hairy, pendu-lous breasts, a detail many thought soconvincing that it argued against thefilm being a hoax. Actually, Pattersonhad previously made a drawing of justsuch a supposed female creature whichappeared in his book, published the yearbefore (Patterson 1966, 111).

Although early in the next millen-nium a Patterson acquaintance, BobHeironimus, confessed he had been theman in the ape suit (Long 2004), someskeptics as well as die-hard monsterenthusiasts refused to believe him.

Meanwhile, hoaxes and questionablereports aside, the fact remains that nocredible capture of Sasquatch/Bigfoot hasever been recorded, nor has anyone everrecovered a carcass or even partial skele-ton in the Pacific Northwest or else-where. Insists Cohen (1982, 9), “Surelythe creatures die.” Ah, well, but the leg-end still seems impervious to destruction.

Cadborosaurus

That there are—if not actual “sea ser-pents”—great denizens of the deep, noone can dispute. Among them are thegiant manta ray (frequently twenty feetacross), the whale shark (sixty or morefeet long), and still other great crea-tures—including the giant squid andthe blue whale (Welfare and Fairley1980, 68, 71–72).

While there are numerous earlyaccounts of great “sea serpents,” oftendescribed as having multiple humps, it isusually difficult to theorize about whatwas actually seen. In one instance it mayhave been quite ordinary creatures viewedat a distance, or in another simply theproduct of an overworked imagination oreven a deliberate tall tale. The lack of

SI J-F 2007 pgs 11/13/06 11:30 AM


photographs is one problem, the absenceof a single authenticated remnant another.

There are apparently such remains,such as the carcass of one that washedashore in Scotland in 1808 (known as theStronsa Beast) and another caught in aJapanese fishing net on April 25, 1977(Welfare and Fairley 1980, 81; Shuker1996, 210–211). Both of those turnedout to be the rotting carcasses of baskingsharks. According to Arthur C. Clarke’sMysterious World: “The dead baskingshark decays in the most deceiving man-ner. First the jaws, which are attached byonly a small piece of flesh, drop off leav-ing what looks like a small skull and thinserpentlike neck. Then as only the upperhalf of the tail fin carries the spine, thelower half rots away leaving the lower finswhich look like legs.” As this source con-cludes, “Time after time this monsterlikerelic has been the cause of a sea serpent‘flap’” (Welfare and Fairley 1980, 81).

Indeed, in the case of the creaturehauled up by Japanese fishermen (offthe coast of New Zealand), tissue analy-ses were conducted by Tokyo Universitybiochemist Dr. Shigeru Kimora. Theserevealed the presence of the protein elas-todin, found only in sharks (Shuker1996, 210). Other such “globsters” (asdecomposed sea monsters are dubbed)turn out to be whales, oarfish, or otherscientifically known creatures (seeRadford 2006).

Despite such a bleak state of affairs,an alleged sea serpent is said to appearfrom time to time in Cadboro Bay, onthe southeast coast of British Columbia’sVictoria Island. It was first reported onOctober 8, 1933, by a barrister, MajorW.H. Langley. He was sailing in hissloop Dorothy about 1:30 P.M., where-upon he spied a creature “nearly eightyfeet long and as wide as the averageautomobile.” Langley said it was green-ish brown and had a serrated body,“every bit as big as a whale but entirelydifferent from a whale in manyrespects.” His sighting was reported inthe Victoria Times by reporter ArchieWillis, and a newspaperman from therival Victoria Daily Colonist, Richard L.Pocock, dubbed it “Cadborosaurus”(after its habitat, Cadboro Bay, and theLatin word for “lizard,” saurus).

Other sightings soon followed, oneon November 29, all made newsworthyby interest in reports and photos of thenewly “discovered” Loch Ness Monster.Just as “Nessie” made frequent appear-ances in her northern Scotland home,“Caddy” became a claimed resident ofthe bay, and by 1950 some five hundredwitnesses claimed to have sighted thecreature (Colombo 1988, 379–380).

I can attest that Cadboro Bay is pic-turesque, even at night, but I suspect thereis no Cadborosaurus. The many reportsand accounts, I learned, “differed indetails” (Colombo 1988, 380)—an indi-cation that there may have been variouscreatures swimming in the waters offVictoria. As I learned in investigating lakemonsters (Radford and Nickell 2006,117–118), multiple creatures—such asotters swimming in a line—can easily bemistaken for a single one appearing tohave multiple coils or humps.

Indeed, that may explain one suchCaddy sighting, at Roberts Creek, a com-munity overlooking the Strait of Georgia(between Vancouver Island and theBritish Columbia mainland). It wasmade in 1932 by local novelist HubertEvans (1892–1986) who saw “a series ofbumps breaking the water, all in dark sil-houette, and circled with ripples.” Hetold a friend: “Sea lions. They run in aline like that sometimes.” But as theywatched, the profile of a head emergedwhich the two men estimated wasextended some six feet out of the water(Colombo 1988, 369–370). However,the creature or creatures were apparentlysome distance away and could have beenmisperceived. The story was half a cen-tury old when told and related by a ratherobvious romantic who gushed, “It justput the hair up on the back of your neck”(Colombo 1988, 370).

Another reported Caddy sighting(so-called, although actually occurringin the San Juan Islands chain) illustratesa similar viewing problem. Terry Graff(2006, 3) reported seeing, in 1997,“what looked like three seals in a rownot thirty feet offshore,” but then “real-ized there was only a head on the firstone and the second and third wereundulating humps moving up anddown.” I would add, “or so it seemed.”

Whereas one fellow eyewitness thoughtit a whale or seal, Graff thought itresembled Ogopogo—actually a pur-ported Pacific Northwest lake monster(Nickell 2006)—stating, “The feelingwhen you see one is incredible; yourmind goes into overdrive trying to clas-sify what your eyes see and the momentyou realize that it isn’t classifiable is awe-some!” All we can really conclude fromGraff ’s account is that viewers wereunsure of what they saw.

I got a good idea of just how difficultit can be to know exactly what you areseeing, when on board our cruise ship inGlacier Bay’s Tarr Inlet, I had a creaturesighting and soon thereafter spoke to aU.S. Park Service ranger about it. Shetold me it was probably just what I sus-pected—a sea otter—having actuallyseen otters at that place and time herself(Cahill 2006).

Two days later, while we weredocked at Sitka, Alaska, I went out on athree-hour search—called Sea Otter &Wildlife Quest—aboard the double-decked excursion boat, St. Eugene. Inaddition to “Whale Rock”—a forma-tion located just under water withwaves breaking on it that is often mis-taken for a whale—I saw a variety ofcreatures that under the right condi-tions could simulate a sea serpent. Theyincluded a humpback whale, a group ofplayful sea otters, and harbor seals bask-ing on a little island. These mammalsand others, including sea lions, repre-sent much more likely candidates forCaddy than some imagined, hithertounknown, leviathan.

(Part II will discuss aliens and ghosts.)

AcknowledgmentsIn addition to individuals mentioned inthe text, I appreciate the assistance of thosewho helped make the Alaskan cruise a suc-cess, notably Toni Van Pelt and PatBeauchamp. I am also grateful to SusanFitzgerald and Jeff Brown of KTOO-FM,Juneau. Also, CFI Libraries DirectorTimothy Binga once again provided valu-able research assistance.

MYSTERIOUS ENTITIES OF THEPACIFIC NORTHWEST, PART I

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THINKING ABOUT SCIENCEM A S S I M O P I G L I U C C I


THINKING ABOUT SCIENCEM A S S I M O P I G L I U C C ITHINKING ABOUT SCIENCEM A S S I M O P I G L I U C C ITHINKING ABOUT SCIENCEM A S S I M O P I G L I U C C ITHINKING ABOUT SCIENCEM A S S I M O P I G L I U C C I

Philosopher Ludwig Wittgensteinfamously wrote (in the Tractatus)that “Darwin’s theory has no

more to do with philosophy than anyother hypothesis in natural science.”Apparently, Darwin begged to differ,since already in 1838, in his NotebookM, he wrote: “Plato . . . says in hisPhaedo that our ‘necessary ideas’ arisefrom the preexistence of the soul, arenot derived from experience—readmonkeys for preexistence.”

The contrast between these eminentthinkers sets the stage for a fascinatingtreatment of so-called “evolutionaryepistemology” by Gerhard Vollmer (inDarwinism & Philosophy, edited by V.Hosel and C. Illies for the University ofNotre Dame Press, 2005). The basic ideais that evolutionary theory can account,at least in principle, for the very fact thatwe are capable of (imperfectly) knowingthe real world—something that has oth-erwise baffled epistemologists sincePlato. With a simple move, as Vollmerpoints out, Darwin substitutes a scien-tific concept (common descent) for ametaphysical one (preexistence), thus

ushering in a whole new way of lookingat human knowledge.

Evolutionary epistemology aims toexplain not only why we can know aboutthe world, but—perhaps more cru-cially—why our epistemic access to theworld is so limited. After all, natural selec-tion adapted our sensory and cognitiveabilities to the so-called “mesoworld,” thatis that portion of reality above the micro-scopic and quantum levels but below themacroscopic levels of interplanetary tointergalactic phenomena. This means thatone should expect our intuitions and rea-soning abilities to be pretty good whenthey address the mesoworld, but toincreasingly fail or mislead us when wemove away from it. As Vollmer puts it,nobody can visualize the quantum realm,and—ironically enough—many peoplestill have trouble accepting the idea ofevolution itself because they cannot wraptheir minds around the concept of cumu-lative change over periods of hundreds ofmillions of years.

Indeed, even within the meso-realm,we can still be taken in by optical illu-sions, or draw false inferences, a fact forwhich classical epistemology has noexplanation other than the imperfectionof being human (which is simply rela-beling the problem, unless one providesan account for such imperfection).According to evolutionary epistemolo-gists, on the other hand, partial cogni-tive success at the meso-level is the resultof the fact that natural selection is noto-

riously a “satisficying,” not an optimiz-ing, process. Selection does not work forthe good of the species, nor for theachievement of solutions that are opti-mal from an engineering perspective. Allit does is favor organisms that are evenslightly better adapted to the environ-ment than others. Our limited andfaulty cognitive and sensorial abilitiesare good enough for the task of survivaland reproduction, and that’s all we canexpect natural selection to achieve.

Of course, all of this immediatelyraises the obvious objection: how do weknow that evolutionary epistemology is agood account of the range of humanity’sepistemic access to the world? Clearlythis is a philosophical, not a scientific,problem, so one cannot simply devise aset of controlled experiments to settle thematter. However, there are some goodarguments to counter the major objec-tions raised against evolutionary episte-mology. Vollmer goes into some details,but essentially the objections boil downto three points. First, evolutionary epis-temology assumes what is commonlyreferred to as a “correspondence theory”of truth, the idea that we get closer to thetruth the more our models of the worldcorrespond to how the world really is.Ah, but—unless we are gods—how dowe know how the world really is? We

Evolutionary Epistemology,Anyone?

Massimo Pigliucci is a professor of evolu-tionary biology and philosophy at StonyBrook University on Long Island, a fellow ofthe American Association for the Advance-ment of Science, and author of DenyingEvolution: Creationism, Scientism andthe Nature of Science. His essays can befound at www.rationallyspeaking.org.

EVOLUTIONARY EPISTEMOLOGY,ANYONE?

Continued on page 27

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NOTES ON A STRANGE WORLDM A S S I M O P O L I D O R ONOTES ON A STRANGE WORLDM A S S I M O P O L I D O R ONOTES ON A STRANGE WORLDM A S S I M O P O L I D O R ONOTES ON A STRANGE WORLDM A S S I M O P O L I D O R ONOTES ON A STRANGE WORLDM A S S I M O P O L I D O R ONOTES ON A STRANGE WORLDM A S S I M O P O L I D O R O

Harry Houdini, discussing frauddetection, once wrote in hisbook A Magician Among the

Spirits that, “It is manifestly impossibleto detect and duplicate all the featsattributed to fraudulent mediums whodo not scruple at outraging proprietyand even decency to gain their ends. . . .Again, many of the effects produced bythem are impulsive, spasmodic, done onthe spur of the moment, inspired or pro-moted by attending circumstances, andcould not be duplicated by themselves.”

In my previous article, I detailed myinitiation, through James Randi, to theart of creating irreproducible feats by“impulsive, spasmodic” and “on thespur of the moment” techniques.

The first time I put to practice whatI had learned came very soon after thatepisode. I had been invited on a latenight talk show to discuss psychic phe-nomena and paranormal claims. Thehost of the show, Italian political com-mentator Giuliano Ferrara, asked me if Icould do something to show how it ispossible to obtain seemingly paranormalphenomena through trickery.

“However,” he specified, “I am notgoing to be a stooge or help you withany trick. If you say you are able todemonstrate something that is indistin-guishable from a psychic demonstration,then you should do it without my help.”

I said that was fair enough, and sug-gested he make a drawing on a piece ofpaper and then I would try to duplicateit live on the show.

“Great!” he said. I was ready. Or so I thought.

Taking the Chance

I had learned through various bookson magic and mentalism many waysof duplicating a drawing done bysomeone who is hiding it. You canlook at the movement of the pencilabove the paper and guess the shapehe is creating. In some cases, you caneven guess a shape just by listening tothe sound of the pen on the paper.Or you can look at the impressionleft by the tip of the pen on the pieceof paper below the one being drawn.Or you could try to take a peekbetween your fingers while you pre-tend to cover your eyes. Or you couldhave an accomplice strolling aroundand taking a look at the drawing onyour behalf. Or, as Randi did inRome, you can switch an envelope. . . and so on.

Ferrara, however, took a single sheetof paper, asked me to turn my back tohim and made his drawing very quickly,leaving me no chance to use some of theruses I was ready to put in practice.

When I turned around, he hadalready folded his sheet of paper andplaced it inside his jacket pocket. Heused no envelopes.

“Good” I said, while I was actuallythinking: “Bad. Really bad!” I had not beenable to stay in charge of the situation and

had let him take charge and make the rules. A fatal mistake.“Well, I will see you later on the

show” he added, in fact, waving megoodbye.

“Oh no!” I thought. “This can’t hap-pen! He can’t leave: I have no idea whathe drew!”

And this is where Randi’s lesson onimprovising suddenly struck me. Anidea popped into my mind.

“Right . . . ehm, Mr. Ferrara, I justthought something. . . .”

“What is it?”“Well, did you make your drawing

with a pen or a pencil?”“With a pencil, why?”“Ah! You see, I think that if you hold

up a white sheet of paper to the camerawith a drawing done in pencil, it will bevery hard for the viewers to see whatyou drew. . . .”

He thought about it for a few sec-onds, and then agreed. “You are right!Here . . .” he said taking another pieceof paper. This time, he used a felt tipmarker and did another drawing.

When he was done, he put the newdrawing in his pocket and took the otherdrawing, crumpled it up and threw it in awaste paper basket!

And then he left.Well, I thought. Now, this is very

interesting. . . . For some inexplicable reason, the

papers I was holding suddenly fell on thefloor and I had to kneel down in order tocollect them. When I stood up I had acrumpled up piece of paper hiddenbetween my documents.

The Devious Art of Improvising,Lesson Two

Massimo Polidoro is an investigator of theparanormal, author, lecturer, and co-founder and head of CICAP, the Italianskeptics group. His Web site is www.massimopolidoro.com.

SI J-F 2007 pgs 11/13/06 11:31 AM


I immediately went to my dressingroom and opened up the paper. There wasa real risk in all this: Ferrara may have welldecided to do a different drawing the sec-ond time. However, when I saw what hedrew I knew for sure that he had notchanged his mind, for he had drawn ahammer and sickle. Since Ferrara had beena left-wing supporter for years but had justrecently adopted a conservative position, Ithought that by drawing the symbol of theCommunist party he was planning tomake a joke of some kind while on air.

And, in fact, this is exactly what hap-pened. During the show, after some deepconcentration, I drew a hammer and asickle and he showed to the audiencethat it was exactly what he had drawn.

It is true that luck played an impor-tant part in all this, but as the sayinggoes, fortune helps the daring.

But this is not always the case, andthis is exactly what happened to Randiin a memorable television appearancesome years ago.

The Belly Writer

Randi told me he had been invited byBarbara Walters to appear on her televi-sion show Not for Women Only. She hadalready had Uri Geller as a guest a fewmonths earlier and he had worked won-ders on her: she had become a believer.

When the time came for an episodeof the show devoted to “Magic andMagicians,” Walters invited three veryprominent magicians of the time:Doug Henning, then star ofBroadway’s “The Magic Show,” MarkWilson, one of the first TV magicians,and Randi himself.

During the show, the discussionturned to Uri Geller and to an incredibletelepathy test he had done for her. Hehad divined what drawing Barbara haddrawn and had hidden inside threeenvelopes and then kept inside a book.She wanted to see if Randi was up to hisclaim that he could reproduce everythingthat Geller did, so she said: “Just beforethe program, I did a drawing. I put it inthree envelopes in this book. We havenot had this envelope out of our sight.Randi has in no way been close to it. Theclosest you’ve been to it, to my knowl-edge, is right now. Reproduce it.”

“Now,” Randi explained to me, “herwords were totally true. I never ever hada chance to get close to the drawing, ashard as I tried. I doubt they used thesame strict conditions on Geller, but thefact remains that that was the very firsttime I saw the envelope.”

So, without blinking, Randi acted asif everything was going perfectly. “Pleaseput it back in the book. I want to besure it’s under control.”

She obeyed and then Randi turnedto his fellow magicians. “Now watchthis, it may surprise you.”

Both Henning and Wilson were star-ing, quite curious to see how Randi wouldescape from such an impossible situation.

Randi took out a pen and started todraw something on a piece of paper,without showing it to anyone. When hewas done he put the drawing, face down,on the table. Put the cap back on the penand put the pen on the table. “Now let’ssee your drawing” he asked Walters.

She was already seeing her illusionsgo down the drain, because Randi’s con-fidence was so powerful that it couldmean only one thing: somehow he hadreproduced the drawing correctly.

“Oh no, I can’t believe it” she saideven before she had seen Randi’s guess.

Walters took the envelope out of thebook. She opened one envelope, openedthe second, and when she was ready toopen the third, Randi stopped her to askif her drawing could be seen through it.She checked, but it could not be seen.

The final envelope was opened andthe drawing shown: it was a house witha little girl standing outside, a chimney,smoke coming therefrom, and a door-way. Randi turned his drawing to thecamera. It was a bit crude in style, but itshowed exactly the same thing, thehouse, the smoke and the little girl

(standing inside, rather than outside).Both the magicians and Walters

agreed that Randi truly was amazing.Now, how did he do it? Randi had

described this demonstration in hisbook The Truth About Uri Geller but hadnever revealed it in print. So, when heshowed me the tape a few years ago, Iimmediately asked him about it.

“During the show, while Barbara wastalking or we were watching somefootage on Geller, I surreptitiouslyopened the pen and took out the car-tridge from it. Then, I closed the pen

again and put it on the table. I theninserted the cartridge in my belt, withthe writing side upward. Now it was justa question of acting. I mimed the actionof drawing, with the non-writing pen,and put the blank paper face down.When she started to open the envelopes,I could see through the last one a bit ofthe drawing, I saw a house and a stylizedgirl. So I took the paper again with bothhands, and asked her to check if theenvelope was transparent. It was just anexcuse to gain some time for me to draw,as best as I could given the situation, areplica of her drawing. I simply placedthe paper against the tip of the cartridgeand started to slowly move my belly inorder to make the drawing. Yes, the finalproduct was not perfect, but the result Igot from her reaction was fantastic, andthat is all that matters. To the viewers,and to my fellow magicians, I was ableto reproduce exactly what Geller haddone, even though the conditions hadbeen quite bad for me!”

If I thought that Randi had toppedhimself with this ingenious system hehad invented on the spur of themoment, just out of desperation as headmitted to me, I was wrong. Nexttime, we will see why. . . . �

Both Henning and Wilson were staring,

quite curious to see how Randi would escape

from such an impossible situation.

SI J-F 2007 pgs 11/13/06 11:31 AM

PSYCHIC VIBRATIONSR O B E R T S H E A F F E R


PSYCHIC VIBRATIONSR O B E R T S H E A F F E RPSYCHIC VIBRATIONSR O B E R T S H E A F F E RPSYCHIC VIBRATIONSR O B E R T S H E A F F E RPSYCHIC VIBRATIONSR O B E R T S H E A F F E R

Now that crashed saucers seemto have replaced alien abduc-tions as the “gold standard” of

UFOlogical excitement, there is some-thing of a “gold rush” to promote addi-tional crash sites. Already well-estab-lished are the legendary Roswell, NewMexico, crash of 1947, and the Kecks-burg, Pennsylvania, crash of 1965 (actu-ally the Great Lakes Fireball of Decem-ber 9, 1965—see this column, May/June, 2004).

One up-and-coming entrant in theUFO Crash Derby is the tiny town ofAztec in northwest New Mexico, not farfrom Four Corners. The Aztec crashyarn began with entertainment colum-nist Frank Scully’s 1950 book Behindthe Flying Saucers. Among its manydubious claims was that a saucer 99.99feet in diameter (the saucers allegedlyfollowed “the rule of Nines,” when mea-sured in multiples of a long-dead Britishmonarch’s foot) crashed in Hart Can-yon, containing the bodies of sixteen lit-tle men, dressed in the clothing styles of1890. Scully’s book generated a lot ofpublicity and interest, which abruptlyfaded when his chief informant, SilasNewton, was convicted as a swindler.

But sunken UFO stories, like rubberduckies, have an amazing propensity forpopping up to the surface again and

again. Recently Stanton Friedman, the“flying saucer physicist,” wrote, “Yearsago I was indeed dubious about theAztec case, thanks to Bill Steinman, SilasNewton, etc., etc. However, once I didmy homework, visited the site, andspent time with Scott Ramsey and oth-ers who have been doing theirs, Ibecame convinced that indeed a saucercrashed at Hart Canyon near Aztec inMarch, 1948, and its retrieval wasindeed, as one might expect, covered upby the U.S. Government. Scott hasreally dug into the documentation, andfound witnesses, etc. I would probablystill rank Roswell the number one crash”(Saucer Smear, May 1, 2006). An annualUFO symposium has been held in Aztecsince 1998 (the Web site claims “of thesixteen recovered “crashed disks,” twelvewere recovered in New Mexico alone”—see www.aztecufo.com). Given thatthere is little other reason for anyone tovisit the tiny town, its semi-famousUFO crash site has obviously becomeone of Aztec’s greatest assets.

Perhaps sensing a profitable venture,some folks are working hard to rehabili-tate the once-infamous (and now virtu-ally forgotten) alleged UFO crash atCarbondale, Pennsylvania. On the nightof November 9, 1974, three teenageboys reportedly heard a noise in the sky,then looked up to see a red ball of lightcoming at them from over a nearbymountain. They claimed it plunged intoa small pond, from whose depths a light

could be seen glowing faintly. Theauthorities were notified, and thusbegan a two-day vigil next at the water’sedge. Finally, after Geiger counter read-ings showed that the pond was notradioactive, a determined diver namedMark Stamey braved the depths andsoon returned with an amazing find: abattery-powered railroad lantern. It wasnever determined who had thrown itinto the pond.

Aah, but more than thirty years later,“the truth” is coming out: According toBUFO, the Burlington UFO InternetRadio, “the ‘lantern story’ was a coverupfor something much bigger—somethingthat our government did not want us toknow about.” Diver Stamey is nowclaiming that the lantern incident was“staged,” and a UFO remained in thewater’s depths. If you want to get thelowdown on the great Carbondale UFOCrash, see www.burlingtonnews.net/carbondale.html. BUFO claims to bethe highest-ranked Internet radio sitefor UFOs and paranormal subjects.

However, repetitive UFO fatigueseems to be settling in to even the mostwell-established UFOlogical activities.Attendance at this year’s annual RoswellUFO Festival was “pathetically low”according to UFOlogist DennisBalthaser; no official numbers werereleased. The organizers blamed thedecline in attendance on the high priceof gasoline. Nonetheless, the city ofRoswell is taking over sponsorship for

The Flashlight of the Gods

Robert Sheaffer’s World Wide Web page forUFOs and other skeptical subjects is atwww.debunker.com.

SI J-F 2007 pgs 11/13/06 11:52 AM


next year’s festival. The National UFOConference, originally scheduled to takeplace in Hollywood during the LaborDay weekend, was unexpectedly can-celled; as of this writing the organizers,battling the calendar, hope to hold alast-minute UFO conference in Decem-ber in San Diego.

However, what we are witnessingdoes not appear to be the demise ofbelief in UFOs and related claptrap.Instead, it is gradually transformingitself from a participatory activity to aspectator sport, in keeping with largersocial trends that are turning many peo-ple into couch potatoes. The ScienceFiction Channel has announced a newweekly series, Sci Fi Investigates, promis-ing to look into such worthwhile sub-jects as life after death, Mothman,voodoo, Roswell, paranormal hotspotsand Bigfoot. The era of the individualUFO sighting, membership in UFOclubs, and attending paranormal confer-ences is fading away. Even UFO maga-zines and most books on the subject arenow irrelevant. Taking their place is

what seems to be practically the all-para-normal, all-the-time programming oncertain cable TV channels, where excit-ing state-of-the-art visual effects giveundeserved credibility to the same oldtired and unsubstantiated claims. Just asthe cable news channels talk endlesslyabout news developments on whichthey have little or no real information,the History and Science FictionChannels (among others) now endlesslyre-hash and re-re-hash featherweightUFO claims to titillate the masses.UFOs are alive and well, except they’renot seen in the skies any more. You’llfind them zooming in on digital cable toyour new plasma flat-screen HDTV.

* * *

Some “mysteries” aren’t all that hard tosolve; indeed, they make you wonderhow they ever qualified as a “mystery” inthe first place. The mystery-mongeringlate night talk show Coast to Coast AMfeatured on its Web site an account called“The Message on a Microwave Clock.”Listener Scott F. writes, “On a weekend

in March of this year something strangehappened again with our microwave as ithad about three months prior. Mybrother was heating his meal in themicrowave and moved toward it when itwas finished. He then noticed that thedigital clock on the microwave spelt theword child. This had happened one timelate in 2005 with exactly the same wordon the same microwave. That time, wewere so creeped out by it that we imme-diately pressed the button to clear; itrequired several attempts before the wordwas removed and the time was displayedagain as usual . . . there have not been anyother strange occurrences here. Addi-tionally, there are not any children in myfamily or neighborhood that have passedon within my lifetime.” But theWebmaster added the following “update”at the bottom of the page: “Many listen-ers have pointed out that this messageindicates the microwave’s ‘Child Lock’feature is enabled.” Of course, this doesn’tmean that the next strange message dis-played on a microwave clock won’t be supernatural. . . . �

don’t, at least not directly. Then again, itwould be pretty astonishing if our theo-ries made very precise predictions aboutthe behavior of the world (consider, forexample, quantum mechanics) and stillturned out to be completely wrong. Asphilosopher Hilary Putnam (cited inVollmer) once quipped, “The typicalrealist argument against Idealism [amajor philosophical foe of evolutionaryepistemology] is that it makes the successof science a miracle.”

A second major objection to evolu-tionary epistemology is based on the ideathat it isn’t actually possible to show thatour cognitive structures are fit to theirenvironment without entering into avicious circle (after all, we would have touse precisely those cognitive structures tocheck the fit . . .). Science gets us out ofthe quandary here. While it is true thatultimately all our knowledge has toderive from our senses and reasoning

abilities, it is also true that science hasaugmented our tools to explore theworld, and has objectified our ability todo so. Consider particle accelerators,whose data are gathered by machines,not humans, and are analyzed by com-puters, not neuronal circuits. While theresults of subatomic physics (or anyother science) are obviously not entirelyindependent of human faculties, they arepartially detached from them, whichmakes a test of the reliability of humanfaculties possible (consider the simpler,but related, issue of how we establish ifsomeone is seeing a mirage rather than areal object).

A final objection to evolutionaryepistemology, according to Vollmer,asks how our cognitive structures canbe adapted to an environment thatwasn’t known to the organisms inquestion (i.e., us). This betrays a fun-damental misunderstanding of the the-ory of evolution: the process of adapta-tion by natural selection is best under-stood as a continuous feedbackbetween the genetic makeup of an

organism and the environments inwhich the organism lives. No predic-tion of the future is required becauseselection constantly adjusts the fit ofthe organism to whatever environmen-tal changes happen to take place. Inmuch the same way, we don’t need athermostat to predict changes in tem-perature in order to maintain a com-fortable environment in our houses.(Interestingly, a thermostat doesinevitably cause a delay in such adjust-ment, precisely because of the lack ofpredictive power; an analogous partiallack of fit between organisms and envi-ronments has also been demonstratedby evolutionary biologists.)

Evolutionary epistemology may nothave all the answers, of course, but it isan excellent example of how science caninform philosophy, contrary toWittgenstein’s smug comment in theTractatus. It seems that just as there canbe no science without philosophicalassumptions, there can hardly be philos-ophy without accounting for the find-ings of science. �

EVOLUTIONARY EPISTEMOLOGY,ANYONE?

Continued from page 23

SI J-F 2007 pgs 11/13/06 11:31 AM

SKEPTICAL INQUIREEB E N J A M I N R A D F O R D


Q: Have you heard about theclaim that a person’s soul can beweighed? A friend told me that this isbased on a scientific experiment, but I’mnot sure.

M. Bennett

A: People have searched for evi-dence of life after death for centuries, ifnot millennia. Spiritualists, psychicmediums, and most religions teach thatdeath is not an end but instead amoment of transformation when a per-son’s soul or spirit is cleaved from itsdecaying corpus and freed to go on to ahigher or better place.

It is an appealing idea and a beautifulmetaphor. But is it true? Does a spirithave material weight? Does a soul havemass? Has science found the soul?

Yes—so the story goes—such exper-iments have taken place; doctors andresearchers determined that the soulweighs twenty-one grams. This ofcourse brings up all sorts of interestingquestions. Do devout people haveheavier souls? Since death is not neces-sarily a discrete point but part of a con-tinuum, does a person weigh less andless the closer to death he or she is? Dochildren have more soul than theelderly? If the soul has mass then itmust be material; what’s it made of?Pungent ether? Minty, mystic mist? Is ita small, squishy ball that resembles rab-bit droppings, or a clear purple oozethat smells like bubble gum? Whatexactly is it?

People often look to the empiricalworld to bolster their religious or spiri-tual beliefs, searching for corroboratingphysical evidence that their beliefs arebased on fact. (I once won a bet from afundamentalist Christian coworker whoinsisted that men have one fewer ribthan women, evidence that God usedone of Adam’s ribs to create Eve.) Theidea that a soul can be measured isappealing on many levels, especiallysince it provides empirical evidence ofthe soul’s mass.

Welcome to the oft-visited (in para-normal circles, anyway) realm of irrepro-ducible results. In 1907 a Massachusettsdoctor named Duncan MacDougall ofHaverhill, Massachusetts, devised a seriesof experiments that he expected wouldmeasure the soul. Using six terminally illpatients on a specially constructed scalebed, he measured their weight before,during, and after death. His results weremixed, but he concluded that there wasindeed a very slight loss of weight, onaverage twenty-one grams. When herepeated this test on (presumably soul-less) animals, he found no such weightreduction. After eliminating the possiblesources of error for this startling finding(such as the loss of air from the lungs),MacDougall concluded that he hadfinally quantified the weight of the soul.

MacDougall’s efforts are a good exam-ple of pseudoscience. On the face of it,the experiments seem fairly straightfor-ward (either a body weighs less just afterdeath or it doesn’t), but a closer lookreveals varied and profound flaws in hismethodology. For one thing, Mac-Dougall used a very small sample size,and his results were inconsistent; somebodies lost more than an ounce, othersfar less. As myth debunker BarbaraMikkelson concluded, “out of six tests,two had to be discarded, one showed an

immediate drop in weight (and nothingmore), two showed an immediate drop inweight which increased with the passageof time, and one showed an immediatedrop in weight which reversed itself butlater recurred.” Furthermore, the precisemoment of death is not always clear eventoday, and in 1907 medical measurementmethods were even cruder. (Readersinterested in the process of dying shouldseek out Alan King’s brilliant and moving2003 documentary Dying at Grace.)

With tighter protocols and betterdiagnostic tools, if the soul does indeedexist, and does indeed have a measurableweight, then science should be able toverify it. MacDougall died in 1920, andin the century since his first experi-ments, no one has reproduced hisresults. Just as MacDougall’s name hasbeen stripped from his findings, so havethe fatal design errors in his work. Allthat remains is the easily remembered“fact” that the soul weighs twenty-onegrams. And like the oft-debunked fac-toid that people only use ten percent oftheir brains, the belief that the soul hasweight will likely live on.

ReferencesMacDougall, Duncan. 1907. The Soul:

Hypothesis concerning soul substancetogether with experimental evidence of theexistence of such substance. AmericanMedicine, April.

Mikkelson, Barbara and David. 2005. Soul Man.Available online at www.snopes.com/reli-gion/soulweight.asp.

Roach, Mary. 2003. Stiff: The Curious Lives ofHuman Cadavers. New York: W.W. Norton. �

Soul Scales

Benjamin Radford is managing editor ofthe SKEPTICAL INQUIRER; his latest book,co-authored with Joe Nickell, is LakeMonster Mysteries: Investigating theWorld’s Most Elusive Creatures.

Submissions can be sent to: The

Skeptical Inquiree, Skeptical

Inquirer, P.O. Box 703, Amherst

NY 14226 (or bradford@center

forinquiry.net).

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Carl Sagan was the world’s best-known scientist inthe late twentieth century, serving as our guide tothe planets during the golden age of solar system

exploration. He was both a visionary and a committeddefender of rational scientific thinking. Sagan died onDecember 20, 1996, while only 62, and he has been greatlymissed in the decade since. In addition to my own knowl-edge and insights about his scientific and skeptical contri-butions, I have made extensive use of the two excellent nar-rative biographies by William Poundstone (1999) and KeayDavidson (1999). Poundstone is stronger on Sagan’s sci-ence, Davidson on his personal history. Neither, however,emphasizes his role as a skeptic.

Man for the Cosmos:Carl Sagan’s Life and Legacy as Scientist, Teacher, and Skeptic

In this new remembrance of Carl Sagan, who died ten years ago, a noted planetary scientist and colleague (and former student of Sagan) recalls Sagan’s immense contributions to planetary

research, the public understanding of science, and the skeptical movement.

DAVID MORRISON


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Sagan was propelled on his academic and public careers byenormous talent, good luck, and an intensely focused drive tosucceed. His lifelong quest was to understand the universe,especially our planetary system, and to communicate the thrillof scientific discovery to others. A natural teacher, he loved toexplain things and never made a questioner feel stupid for ask-ing. Although Sagan had broad intellectual interests, his pursuitof his career left little time for other activities: he did not playgolf or follow sports, take up cooking or photography, sing orplay a musical instrument, or join a church or synagogue. His

first two wives complained that he devoted insufficient time tohis marriages or his children (Davidson 1999). He focused onhis career goals, and the world was enriched thereby.

Many scientists would like to be able to communicate withthe public about their discoveries. However, few become adeptat explaining technical subjects in terms that are readily under-stood by the lay public. Even fewer are willing to take the timeto answer journalists’ questions patiently, to sit still for appli-cation of makeup for television appearances, or to returnreporters’ calls promptly even when they interrupt a meal or alab experiment. They might like to be great communicators,but they lack the skills and the commitment. They also recog-nize that academic rewards generally come to the bestresearchers, with limited honor associated with excellence inteaching and even less for public outreach. Sagan was differ-ent. He recognized his talents as a teacher and popularizer anddecided to make such outreach a major aspect of his career.

Born in 1934, Sagan grew up in a working-class Jewishneighborhood of New York and attended urban public schoolsin New York and New Jersey. The University of Chicago pro-vided him scholarship support when he entered in 1951, andhe continued there for graduate work, receiving his doctorate inastronomy in 1960. After two years as a postdoctoral fellow in

biology at Berkeley and Stanford, he joined the HarvardCollege astronomy faculty as Assistant Professor. Denied tenureat Harvard, Sagan moved to Cornell University in 1968, serv-ing as David Duncan Professor of Astronomy and Director ofthe Laboratory for Planetary studies until his death in 1996.

Research

Although best known to the public as a popularizer, Saganfirst distinguished himself as a research scientist. His accom-plishments in research made it much easier for his academic

peers to accept him as a spokesperson forscience. Sagan loved the research process,especially when it was combined with theexploration of new worlds. As he oftennoted, only one generation was privilegedto grow up when the planets and theirmoons were little more than dim points oflight in the night sky, and to see thememerge as unique worlds with their owngeological and perhaps even biological his-tory. Sagan helped define two new disci-plines: planetary science and exobiology.As a leading consultant to NASA, he alsohelped chart the exploration of the solarsystem by spacecraft.

With training in both astronomy andbiology, Sagan brought a unique breadth to the emerging newfields of planetary science and exobiology. At the time hereceived his doctorate, his thesis advisor Gerard Kuiper rec-ognized that “Some persons work best in specializing on amajor program in the laboratory; others are best in liaisonbetween sciences. Dr. Sagan belongs in the latter group” (inDavidson 1999).

Sagan was an “idea person” and a master of intuitive phys-ical arguments and “back of the envelope” calculations. Heusually left the details to others, and most of his publishedpapers were collaborations. Much of this work was done withstudents, many of whom went on to become leaders them-selves in planetary science. On much of his later work, includ-ing the famous TTAPS paper on nuclear winter (more on thislater), his name appears last among the listed authors.Throughout the 1970s and into the 1980s, he also edited theforemost professional journal in planetary science, Icarus.

Sagan’s most important early research dealt with the atmos-phere of Venus. Discoveries in radio astronomy made when hewas in graduate school first suggested that this planet had avery hot surface, in contrast to previous speculation that theclimate of Venus was more Earth-like. Part of Sagan’s thesisconsisted of the first computed greenhouse model for theatmosphere, in which the high infrared opacity of carbondioxide and water vapor produced a surface temperature hun-dreds of degrees higher than that of an airless planet. Over thedecade of the 1960s he improved these models, working pri-marily with his former student James Pollack, to develop andrefine what remains to this day our basic understanding of theatmosphere of Venus.

As Sagan often noted, only one generation was

privileged to grow up when the planets and

their moons were little more than dim points of

light in the night sky, and to see them emerge

as unique worlds with their own geological

and perhaps even biological history.

Astrobiologist David Morrison (NASA Astrobiology Institute), aFellow of CSI, was one of Sagan’s first doctoral students. He wrotea scientific update for the reprinting of Sagan’s The CosmicConnection, and he was recently awarded the Carl Sagan Medalof the American Astronomical Society for his contributions to thepublic understanding of science.

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Mars was another planet that interested Sagan, and withPollack he modeled the atmosphere and developed the idea,later verified by the Mariner 9 and Viking spacecraft, thatquasi-seasonal changes observed on the surface were the resultof wind-blown dust. He also wrote a series of papers onJupiter, focused on atmospheric organic chemistry.

From childhood, Sagan had been inspired by the mysteryof the origin and distribution of life. This passion led him tostudy biology and develop collaborations with leading biolo-gists such as Stanley Miller, and Nobel laureates JoshuaLederberg and George Muller. Early in his career, he receivedmore encouragement from these biologists than fromastronomers, many of whom considered planetary studies tolie on the fringes of respectable science, and exobiology to bebeyond the pale. A number of his early publications were inexobiology, and at various times he speculated about life notonly on Mars, but also on Venus, Jupiter, and even the Moon.In spite of his increasing role as a scientific skeptic, he permit-ted himself to indulge in this broad speculation, so long as hisideas remained within the realm of possibility. Sagan was alsoone of the founders of international interest in SETI, themicrowave search for extraterrestrial intelligence, although hehimself did not conduct any searches.

NASA valued Sagan’s contributions to the spacecraft explo-ration of the planets during its “Golden Age” (roughly1960–1990). He was a member of science teams selected forthe Mariner 2, Mariner 9, Viking, Voyager, and Galileo mis-sions, among others. With his quick mind and breadth ofvision, he was always a welcome contributor to planning ses-sions and the “quick look” interpretation that followed the firstreceipt of spacecraft data. His former student Clark Chapmanwrote in 1977: “A man of vivid imagination, he keeps alive awide variety of conceptions of planetary environments. By sug-gesting often outlandish alternatives and challenging tradition-alists to disprove them, he has inspired doubts about manyaccepted theories. Sagan’s role is essential for healthy sciencebecause a bandwagon effect frequently leads to premature con-sensus among scientists before equally plausible alternativeshave even been thought of, let alone rationally rejected.”

Sagan’s own excitement with the process of scientific dis-covery is captured in the following quote (Sagan 1973): “Eventoday, there are moments when what I do seems to me like animprobable, if unusually pleasant dream: to be involved in theexploration of Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn; to try toduplicate the steps that led to the origin of life on an Earthvery different from the one we know; to land instruments onMars to search there for life; and perhaps to be engaged in aserious effort to communicate with other intelligent beings, ifsuch there be, out there in the dark of the night sky.”

Popularizer and Skeptic

At the same time he was building up an enviable bibliography(which grew to 250 pages by the end of his life) and a recordof successful students, Sagan also established a growing repu-tation as a popularizer of science. His boyish good looks, reso-nant voice, and ability to explain scientific concepts in ways

that lay persons and students could understand made him apopular teacher and public lecturer. He won teaching awardsat Harvard and Cornell, and even in the busiest times of hislife he tried to keep his hand in undergraduate teaching.

In 1966 he first achieved some modest national attentionwith his book (with the Russian astronomer I. S. Shklovskii)Intelligent Life in the Universe. The following year, Sagan wrotean upbeat article on the potential of life on the planets forNational Geographic, and he made a few brief TV appearances.Already it was apparent to some that Sagan sought a broaderrole than that of academic researcher, a concern that probablycontributed to denial of tenure by Harvard University in1967. Students loved him, but some colleagues bristled atwhat they perceived as self-aggrandizement and pandering tothe public. Unlike Harvard, Cornell University was lookingfor faculty with a potential for stardom, and they providedSagan an endowed chair and the solid academic springboardhe needed for his future rise to fame and fortune.

Throughout his career, Sagan devoted himself to the questto improve public understanding of the nature of science. Hewanted every citizen to have a “baloney detector” as defenseagainst sham in commerce and politics as well as science. Hefelt that it was the duty of scientists to face these issuessquarely and publicly. The Cosmic Connection (1973), whichincludes extensive discussions of extraterrestrial life as well asmore conventional astronomy and planetary science, evenexplores the UFO phenomenon and the writings of pseudo-cosmologist Immanuel Velikovsky. However, Sagan opposedtactics that demeaned pseudoscientific beliefs or attacked reli-gion, refusing (for example) to sign a statement against astrol-ogy because of its authoritative tone.

His interest in popular misconceptions about science ledhim to organize two public symposia on fringe-science topicsat meetings of the American Association for the Advancementof Science (AAAS). Both arguably concerned real scientificissues, not cases of fraud or religious extremism.

The first AAAS symposium, in 1969, dealt with the realityof UFOs. Like many scientists of his generation, in highschool Sagan had been attracted to the idea that UFOs might

Carl Sagan with Immanuel Velikovsky at the 1974 AAAS debate. All photosby David Morrison.

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be visiting spacecraft. At the AAAS, J. Allen Hynek and JamesMcDonald defended UFO studies while Sagan, DonaldMenzel, and Lester Grinspoon attacked this position. The pro-ponents on both sides of the issue were scientists, althoughthey took very different approaches to the interpretation of theanecdotal reports of UFO sightings. (The subject of alienabductions or direct contact with extraterrestrials, which hassince become so common, was not an issue at that time; theAAAS symposium focused on the interpretation of movinglights in the sky and anomalous radar signals.)

UFO proponents argued that even though there was noindividual sighting in which one could make a compelling casefor extraterrestrial spacecraft, the sheer volume of reports jus-tified continuing examination and study. In contrast, Saganemphasized the unreliability of witnesses, the absence of phys-ical evidence of UFOs, and alternative explanations includinghallucination and self-delusion. He noted that “there are nocases that are simultaneously very reliable (reported indepen-dently by a large number of witnesses) and very exotic (notexplicable in terms of reasonably postulated phenomena),”and he applied a skeptical standard that is often associatedwith his name: that extraordinary claims require extraordinarylevels of evidence or proof.

The 1974 AAAS symposium, on the work of Velikovsky,was riskier, since Velikovsky himself was invited to speak underAAAS sponsorship, something he claimed as a vindication.While Sagan promoted the symposium, it was actually orga-nized by historian Owen Gingerich and astronomers IvanKing and Donald Goldsmith. Velikovsky’s thesis of global cat-astrophes caused by numerous planetary encounters withinhistorical times was scientifically indefensible but hadattracted a wide popular following. Unlike the UFO sympo-sium, there were no scientists to defend these ideas, publishedin his 1950 book Worlds in Collision (dismissed by Sagan[1973] as a “speculative romance”). Rather, the 77-year-oldVelikovsky confronted his debunkers personally.

Keay Davidson (1999) describes the symposium as partapology to Velikovsky for previous slights from astronomers,and part an effort to reassure the public of science’s basic fair-

mindedness. The confrontation of the patriarchal Velikovskyand his young, brash critic was a clash of egos on both sides.Sagan aimed his remarks, published in extended form inScientists Confront Velikovsky (Goldsmith 1977), primarily atthe public and science journalists. By most accounts he was thehands-down winner. Many people credit this debate as thebeginning of the end for the Velikovsky cult, which is todayreduced to a handful of obscure cranks.

However, Sagan’s role earned him the bitter enmity ofVelikovsky supporters. His greatest sin was his lack of respect forthe old man, who steadfastly refused to accept any modificationof his then quarter-century-old views. Sagan’s critique of Worldsin Collision was also castigated by Velikovsky followers for its fail-ure to address all of his claims, and for some slipshod calculationsthat were never corrected in Sagan’s published remarks. Thissymposium has been extensively analyzed (e.g., Bauer 1984), andit still raises unanswered questions about the most effective waysto counter pseudoscientists. Similar scenarios are replayed todayby scientists who debate creationists and defenders of intelligentdesign. I sometimes ask myself if Sagan would have ventured intothis lion’s den, and if so how a debate between him and, say, cre-ationist Duane Gish, would have played out.

Both AAAS symposia were widely covered by the media andcontributed to a growing public recognition. A further boostcame in 1973 with the publication of The Cosmic Connection,described in Science (Hartmann 1974) as “thirty-nine genuine,vintage Sagan dinner conversations.” This description wasmore accurate than the reviewer may have realized. This book,like all of Sagan’s, was dictated. Creating his books and popu-lar articles this way, Sagan simultaneously developed his uniquespeaking and writing styles. At his lectures, listeners wereimpressed by his carefully crafted sentences, and by the way histalks (delivered without notes) seemed to be so well organized.Dictation turned out to be the perfect way for Sagan to orga-nize his thoughts and develop his prose style simultaneously. Itallowed him to “write” while traveling or walking on the beach,and it never necessitated his learning to type. It also allowedhim to derive multiple value from the same material, typicallydelivering his message in various lectures, writing it for a mag-azine article (for such outlets as Parade), and using it as the basisfor a chapter in one of his books.

The Cosmic Connection helped open the door to a mediumthat Sagan seemed destined for: television. In November 1973,he was invited to appear on the popular Tonight Show withJohnny Carson (himself a skeptic). Handsome, articulate,informal in manner, yet enthusiastically discussing real science(and often bringing the latest photos from NASA missions likeViking and Voyager), he captivated both the audience and thehost. Over the following thirteen years, Sagan appeared onThe Tonight Show twenty-six times. No matter how pressinghis other business, he was always willing to take a break and flyto Hollywood for Carson. He considered it “the biggest class-room in history.”

In January 1974, Time did a cover story on life in the uni-verse, in which it called Sagan “the prime advocate and peren-nial gadfly for planetary exploration.” A few weeks later Sagan

Sagan with colleague Toby Owen at JPL in 1976, examining recent Vikingorbiter photos of Mars. Sagan and Owen played key roles in deciding onthe landing sites for the Viking spacecraft.

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published an article in TV Guide, the largest circulation mag-azine in the United States. Sagan was suddenly hot, receivingmedia attention normally reserved for a select few Nobel Prizewinners. In August 1976, Newsweek put his smiling face on itscover, a rare accolade for any scientist. Their thumbnail sketchstated: “At 42, Carl Sagan has become the leading spokesmanand salesman for the new science of exobiology, the search forextraterrestrial life. Lobbying in Washington, appearing ontelevision talk shows, and teaching at Cornell, he is buildingfresh support for the space program and fulfilling his own fan-tasies of finding life out there.” Two years later, he received theultimate tribute for a science writer, winning the 1978 PulitzerPrize for general nonfiction for his book about the humanbrain, The Dragons of Eden.

Sagan was a founding member of the Committee forScientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal. CSICOPoriginated in 1976 in part to direct attention to egregiousmedia exploitation of supposed paranormal wonders. (He wasalways supportive of CSICOP and the SKEPTICAL INQUIRER,and served as keynote speaker at two well-attended CSICOPconferences, Pasadena in 1987, Seattle in 1994, each of whichled to a major article in SI: “The Burden of Skepticism,” Fall1987, and “Wonder and Skepticism,” January/February1995.) Sagan’s own contributions focused less on critiques ofthe media and more on creating news, skillfully using themedia to inform and entertain about science. He preferred thepositive approach, talking about what was correct rather thanexposing errors in others.

Showman of Science

In the later 1970s, between the Viking mission to Mars andthe anticipated Voyager encounters with Jupiter, Sagandecided to test the capacity of television to bring science to amass audience. In partnership with engineer and entrepreneurGentry Lee, a Viking colleague, he formed Carl SaganEnterprises and began marketing a television series modeledon Jacob Bronowski’s Ascent of Man. They developed a script,raised several million dollars in support, and hired Bronowski’sdirector, Adrian Malone. At the same time Sagan fell raptur-ously in love with Ann Druyan, with whom he worked closelyfor the rest of his life. He and Annie moved to Los Angeles,and production at KCET Public Television started in 1977 onthe 13-hour series called Cosmos.

His commitment to Cosmos finally eclipsed Sagan’s acade-mic roles. His classes were canceled, and several graduate stu-dents who had come to Cornell to work with him chose otheradvisors instead. Colleagues complained, and there was aneffort to force his laboratory out of the Cornell Space ScienceBuilding. In Los Angeles, clashes of will between Sagan andMalone almost derailed the entire Cosmos effort. Cosmos airedin September 1980, accompanied by a promotional effort thatexceeded anything seen before in public television. Mostreviews were enthusiastic, and suddenly Sagan became acelebrity. The series won the Peabody Award, and eventuallymore than 400 million people saw Cosmos in dozens of coun-tries around the world. The accompanying book, also called

Cosmos, was on the New York Times best seller list for seventyweeks and made him wealthy as well as famous.

In October 1980, Sagan appeared on the cover of Time,shown wading in the “cosmic ocean.” Time described him asthe “Showman of Science” and the “prince of popularizers.”They wrote: “Sagan sends out an exuberant message: science isnot only vital for humanity’s future well being, but it is rous-ing good fun as well. Watching with wonder—and no doubt alittle envy—the whirling star named Sagan, some of his col-leagues feel that he has stepped beyond the bounds of science.They complain that he is driven by ego. They also say that hetends to overstate his case, often fails to give proper credit toother scientists for their work, and blurs the line between factand speculation. But they probably represent a minority view.Most scientists, increasingly sensitive to the need for publicsupport and understanding of science, appreciate what Saganhas become: America’s most effective salesman of science.”

Sagan moved back to Cornell after Cosmos, but he couldnot return to the anonymity of the campus. People stoppedhim on the street and interrupted his meals in restaurants totell him how much they liked Cosmos or to ask for his auto-graph. He mused to me at the time how strangers felt com-fortable approaching him, since after all he had been in theirliving rooms (on TV). He also received crank calls and deaththreats, requiring police patrols of his home and promptingthe university to remove his name from his office door andfrom the Space Science Building directory.

Fame also had its rewards. He bought a spectacular homemodeled on an Egyptian temple, perched on the edge of oneof Ithaca’s wooded gorges, and hired a personal staff. Hereceived an unprecedented advance from Simon & Shuster of$2 million for a science fiction novel to be called Contact,before he had written a word. Contact was published in 1985,and later made into a successful film starring Jodie Foster.

Sagan’s popularity did me a service at about this time.Driving across West Texas, I was stopped for speeding. As thepolice officer started to write a ticket, he asked what I did for aliving. When I mentioned that I had been Carl Sagan’s student,he put away his citation book and launched into enthusiasticpraise for Carl and, by implication, for his friends and students.

Sagan with Ann Druyan in 1980 during the filming of Cosmos.

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Journalist Joel Achenbach, in Captured by Aliens (1999),noted that once Sagan achieved superstardom with Cosmos, hebecame the public lightning rod for both the science and thepseudoscience of extraterrestrial life. As the “keeper of thegates” who effectively defined the border between science andpseudoscience, he was actively courted by many fringe figureswho sought in his blessing a legitimization of their interests orbeliefs. As an example, Achenbach reported this interview withRichard Hoagland, the popularizer of the “Face on Mars.”Hoagland explained that in a public meeting in 1985, Sagancommented that those planning NASA missions to Marsshould be open to discovering the unexpected. According toHoagland, when Sagan made these remarks, he briefly madedirect eye-contact with Hoagland, who was in the audience. Inthe weird world of pseudoscience, Sagan’s innocent commentwas interpreted as a coded message encouraging Hoagland topursue his advocacy of an artificial origin for the Face—whichhe continues to this day, in spite of all the evidence to the con-trary. (See some of Sagan’s thoughts on the Hoagland/MarsFace matter in “Carl Sagan Takes Questions: More from his‘Wonder and Skepticism’ CSICOP 1994 Keynote,” SKEPTICAL

INQUIRER, July/August 2005.)Sagan’s role is especially interesting because he himself was

accused of straying beyond the limits of proper science in hispursuit of evidence for life on other planets and his defense ofSETI. As Achenbach argues, it was precisely because of hisapparent open-minded attitude toward fringe topics thatmany on the fringe became so bitter when Sagan turnedagainst them.

Making a Better World

Sagan’s rise to celebrity occurred simultaneously with RonaldReagan’s escalation of arms spending and cold war rhetoric. Hetold colleagues that he intended to return to the life of a pro-fessor, but he also felt he should use his new wealth and powerto accomplish objectives of more global scope. As an earlyopponent of Reagan’s Space Defense Initiative (SDI) or “StarWars,” he was able to rally vocal objections from the academiccommunity that questioned both the technical basis for SDIand its potential destabilizing effect on the nuclear balance.

In 1982, an even more compelling opportunity presenteditself, thanks to research involving two of his former students,Jim Pollack and Brian Toon (both at NASA Ames ResearchCenter). With colleagues Rich Turco and Tom Ackerman, theywere studying the influence of dust and atmospheric aerosolson global climate, working to understand the effects of mart-ian dust storms and of the dust cloud that enveloped Earth fol-lowing the asteroid impact that caused the extinction of thedinosaurs. In 1982, they had realized that smoke, especiallyfrom petrochemical fires, would have a much greater effect onglobal climate than naturally occurring dust. In fact, itappeared that the smoke from as few as 100 burning cities,when lofted into the stratosphere, could lead to severe globalcooling (nuclear winter).

Turco and Toon flew to Ithaca in late 1982 to enlist Sagan’said, for both the technical aspects of the research and as ameans to overcome NASA objections based on the politicalimplications of this work. This collaboration generated theTTAPS paper (named for the first initials of the authors, butwith obvious symbolism) on nuclear winter published inScience in late 1983. The TTAPS authors concluded that evena less-than-full-scale nuclear exchange, especially if it weredirected against cities, could cause global cooling and collapseof agriculture. The massive loss of life would hit victor, van-quished, or non-combatant nations alike.

Sagan used his prestige to argue that these new findingsrendered nuclear war obsolete and undermined the concept ofmassive nuclear retaliation. The debate was international,including within the USSR, where it stimulated a rethinkingof nuclear war-fighting strategies. But the pro-nuclear forces inthe United States counterattacked vigorously, vilifying Saganpersonally in the process. The National Review called nuclearwinter “a fraud” and titled one cover story “Flat-Earth SaganFalls off the End of the World.”

Edward Teller, who at seventy-three was probably the sec-ond best known scientist in America, debated Sagan onnuclear winter before a special convocation of Congress. Saganalso led a delegation to meet with Pope John Paul II, who sub-sequently issued a papal statement against the build-up ofnuclear arsenals. Many people credit this theory, and its advo-cacy by Sagan, as influential in the move toward nuclear disar-mament and the end of the cold war.

Sagan oscillated between roles as scientist and politicaladvocate. In this period, while attending a meeting of theimaging science team for the Galileo spacecraft, Sagan apolo-gized to his teammates for his inability to commit more timeto this mission, saying he was “putting most of my energy intosaving the world from nuclear holocaust.” Most team mem-bers agreed that this effort should indeed have a higher prior-ity for Sagan than planning imaging sequences for the moonsof Jupiter.

In parallel with its escalation of the arms race, the Reaganadministration cut back drastically on NASA’s program of plan-etary exploration. In 1981 they threatened to close down thehighly successful Voyager 2 spacecraft before its Uranus andNeptune encounters and to turn the Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Sagan at Cornell in 1974 with three former students (L to R): DavidMorrison, Joseph Veverka, and James Pollack.

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into a defense contractor lab. After the space shuttle Challengeraccident in 1986, the momentum seemed to have left NASA,just when Sagan was advocating an accelerated exploration pro-gram in his books and lectures. At the same time the USSR,under the influence of Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms, seemedmore open to international collaboration.

Sagan saw an opportunity to achieve two goals of nobledimension. By working together on missions to Mars, the USand the USSR could build confidence and gain experiencethat would ultimately defuse the cold war and permit cooper-ation in other areas. By pooling their resources, these twospace-faring nations could accomplish together what neithercould afford alone—extending human presence into the solarsystem—and simultaneously ensure peace on Earth.

Sagan formed a close working relationship with RoaldSagdeev, the director of the Space Research Institute inMoscow, and together they opened up the Soviet planetaryexploration program, with unprecedented live reporting of theSoviet flybys of Comet Halley in 1986. In Russia, he associ-ated with Soviet cosmonauts and government officials as wellas scientists. For a few years, under his leadership, anythingseemed possible. Then the USSR disintegrated, and many ofits space scientists found themselves unemployed. With thefailure of Russia’s last three planetary missions (all destined forMars), both the motivation and the capability of Russia topartner in exploration of the solar system evaporated.

Disappointments

By the time of the final Voyager encounter with Neptune in1989, it was apparent that Sagan’s campaign to promotehuman expansion to Mars was doomed. His Russian friendSagdeev was emigrating to the United States and marrying (ofall people) Dwight Eisenhower’s granddaughter. And after adecade of budget cuts, NASA seemed unable to summon theresources even to maintain a modest program of robotic spaceexploration. The high hopes of the Viking and Voyager erawere gone. In a 1989 lecture at JPL, Sagan could not concealhis frustration and disappointment—the first time I had seenhim unable to summon an optimistic perspective. However,worse personal blows were about to fall.

In the autumn of 1990, Sagan made his most serious sci-entific blunder. Threatened with military opposition to itsinvasion of Kuwait, Iraq threatened to set fire to the nation’soil wells. Sagan became concerned that the quantity of petro-chemical smoke generated by these oil-field fires could gener-ate a small-scale nuclear winter, endangering crops across Asiaand threatening world food production. Of his four TTAPSco-authors, only Turco supported this hypothesis; Pollack,Toon, and Ackerman could not see how sufficient smokecould get into the stratosphere. However, Sagan went publicwith dire predictions. While he kept his predictions condi-tional, saying only that we could not show that massive oil-field fires would not have major climatological consequences (a“double negative” logic that he used frequently), his doomsdaywarning was widely reported. The oil fields were torched inJanuary 1991, blackening the sky over most of Kuwait and

disrupting the coastal ecosystem, but there were no climaticeffects, even on a local scale. Sagan was widely criticized, andthe episode had the further effect of undermining the credi-bility of the entire nuclear winter scenario.

The next year Sagan was nominated for membership in theNational Academy of Sciences. Academy membership requiresdistinguished research scholarship, but that is rarely sufficientto ensure membership. Considerable weight is also given topublic service, as well as more political factors such as where anominee works and whom he or she knows. Most colleaguesagreed that Sagan’s research record was more than adequate(Shermer 1999), and that his additional journal editorship,government service, and contributions to public understand-ing of science should have ensured his election. But Sagan wasblackballed in the first voting round, requiring a full debateand vote by the Academy membership. In the final vote hebarely received 50 percent yes votes, far short of the two-thirdsmajority required for election to membership.

Two years later, the National Academy awarded Sagan itsprestigious Public Welfare Medal, perhaps in partial compensa-tion for his earlier rejection. The damage was done, however:not only a stinging personal blow, but also an attack on his cred-ibility as a spokesperson for science. For all his accomplish-ments—or perhaps because of some of them—influential mem-bers of the academic “old boys” network never accepted him.

Other problems multiplied. In 1993 the NASA SETI pro-gram, which he had defended on critical occasions in the past,was abruptly terminated by Congress. His book on nuclearwinter, written with Turco, sold only a few thousand copies;no one cared much any more about issues of nuclear war.Perhaps worst of all, a book that he and Annie put a great dealof themselves into, Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, did notreceive the enthusiastic welcome they expected. Althoughsome reviewers consider it one of Sagan’s best works, it was nota best seller. No longer a media star, Sagan was slipping frompublic consciousness.

A Candle in the Dark

Sagan’s most important contributions in his final years were inthe struggle against pseudoscience. Throughout the last decade

Sagan with the author at a planetary science meeting in 1983.

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of the millennium, this scourge of public irrationality grew, asastrology, alien abductions, alternative medicine, and anynumber of other New Age and “millennial” fads and cultsgained in popularity. Sagan fought back, and after the death ofhis friend Isaac Asimov, his was the voice most often heard indefense of scientific reason in the United States.

His most influential platform was provided by the weeklynewspaper-supplement magazine Parade, one of the two mostwidely read publications in America. His column appeared thereregularly for more than a decade, providing a unique opportu-nity for outreach and education. He discussed the latest discov-eries in science, debunked the purveyors of flimflam, and alsodelved into sensitive topics of public concern such as abortionand animal rights. His articles in Parade provided the basis formany chapters in his final three books, Pale Blue Dot, TheDemon-Haunted World, and Billions and Billions.

The Demon-Haunted World, subtitled Science as a Candle inthe Dark, was a passionate defense of science against pseudo-science and irrationality, as illustrated in the following quotes.“It is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to per-sist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring [that maybe]. . . . Superstition and pseudoscience keep getting in the way[of understanding nature], providing easy answers, dodgingskeptical scrutiny, casually pressing our awe buttons and cheap-ening the experience, making us routine and comfortable prac-titioners as well as victims of credulity. . . . [Pseudoscience] rip-ples with gullibility. . . . The tenants of skepticism do notrequire an advanced degree to master, as most successful usedcar buyers demonstrate. The whole idea of democratic applica-tion of skepticism is that everyone should have the essentialtools to effectively and constructively evaluate claims to knowl-edge. . . . But the tools of skepticism are generally unavailableto the citizens of our society. . . .Those who have something tosell, those who wish to influence public opinion, those inpower, a skeptic might suggest, have a vested interest in dis-couraging skepticism” (Sagan 1995).

While vigorously advocating the concepts of scientificskepticism, Sagan also raised questions about strategy. Hewrote that “The chief difficulty I see in the skeptical move-ment is in its polarization: Us vs. Them—the sense that we[skeptics] have a monopoly on the truth; that those other peo-ple who believe all these stupid doctrines are morons.” He wasespecially troubled by anti-religious attitudes. While not abeliever himself, Sagan had constructive interactions with reli-gious leaders, including the Pope and the Dalai Lama. Hewrote “There is no necessary conflict between science and reli-gion. On one level, they share similar and consonant goals,and each needs the other.”

Although more demanding and hence less popular than hisbooks about astronomy and planetary exploration, TheDemon-Haunted World is arguably his most mature and valu-able publication. Expressing his concerns about the irrational-ism that pervades modern society, he wrote: “I know that theconsequences of scientific illiteracy are far more dangerous inour time than in any time that has come before. It’s perilousand foolhardy for the average citizen to remain ignorant about

global warming, say, or ozone depletion, air pollution, toxicand radioactive wastes, topsoil erosion, tropical deforestation,exponential population growth. . . . How can we affectnational policy—or even make intelligent decisions in ourown lives—if we don’t grasp the underlying issues? . . . Plainlythere is no way back. Like it or not, we are stuck with science.We had better make the best of it. When we finally come toterms with it and fully recognize its beauty and power, we willfind, in spiritual as well as in practical matters, that we havemade a bargain strongly in our favor.”

Sagan’s example has contributed to increasing efforts by sci-entists to reach out to the press and the public. For the firsttime in the 1980s, such professional organizations as theAmerican Astronomical Society and the American GeophysicalUnion appointed full-time press officers and began sponsoringpress conferences at their annual meetings. NASA missions alsoundertook to identify and encourage project scientists to speakwith the press, both informally and as official NASA spokesper-sons. In the late 1990s this extended to welcoming commercialHDTV crews into high-level NASA meetings and spacecraftencounters. Breaking with tradition, the space agency was nowanxious to show the human side of scientific exploration. In the1960s, Sagan was almost alone in his work with the press, butsuch activity had become relatively common among space sci-entists two decades later. None, however, has approachedSagan’s level of charisma or public name recognition.

Cornell’s President Frank Rhodes, speaking at Sagan’s sixti-eth birthday celebration, summarized his impact: “I want tosalute Carl Sagan . . . as the embodiment of everything that isbest in academic life . . . in scholarship, teaching, and ser-vice. . . . Carl is an inspiring example of the engaged, global cit-izen . . . . [He is] a master of synthesis, and he has used that skillto engage us as a society in some of the biggest issues of ourtime. . . . With the conscience of a humanist and the consum-mate skill of the scientist, he addresses the needs of the societyin which we live, and we are the richer for it” (Terzian andBilson 1997).

ReferencesAchenbach, Joel. 1999. Captured by Aliens: The Search for Life and Truth in a

Very Large Universe. New York: Simon and Shuster.Bauer, Henry. 1984. Beyond Velikovsky: The History of a Public Controversy.

Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press.Chapman, Clark. 1977. The Inner Planets. New York: Scribner.Davidson, Keay. 1999. Carl Sagan: A Life. New York: Wiley.Hartmann, William. 1974. Review of The Cosmic Connection. Science 184:

663–664.Morrison, David. 1999. Sagan and skepticism: Review of two Sagan biogra-

phies. Skeptic 17, (4): 29–31.Poundstone, William. 1999. Carl Sagan: A Life in the Cosmos. New York:

Henry Holt.Sagan, Carl. 1973. The Cosmic Connection: An Extraterrestrial Perspective. New

York: Doubleday. (Reissued 2000 as Carl Sagan’s Cosmic Connection: AnExtraterrestrial Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.)

———. 1987. The burden of skepticism. SKEPTICAL INQUIRER 12(1): 38–46.———. 1995. Wonder and skepticism. SKEPTICAL INQUIRER 19(1): 24–30.———. 1995. The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark.

New York: Random House.Shermer, Michael. 1999. The measure of a life: Carl Sagan and the science of

biography. Skeptic 17(4): 32–39.Terzian, Yervant, and Elizabeth Bilson, eds. 1997. Carl Sagan’s Universe,

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. �

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Direct Network Flow Problem.Probabilistic Graph Theory.Soap Bubble Theory.Isospectral Geometry.Social Network Analysis.Gaussian Plume Dispersion Model.Linear Discriminant Analysis.

What television series would you guess discussedand demonstrated these mathematical conceptsthis past year? Nova? Scientific American

Frontiers? A documentary on the Discovery Channel? No, these mathematical techniques were integral to the

prime-time dramatic television series Numb3rs, which beganits third season September 22 on CBS.

Do They Have Your Numb3r?

CBS’s popular Friday night drama uses—surprise!—mathematics, reason, and rationality to help the FBI solve major crime mysteries.

This is network television?

KENDRICK FRAZIER


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Just as the trio of CSI dramatic programs has brought theimportance of forensic science to the masses in the U.S. andabroad (SI May/June 2005; CBS says CSI: Miami is now themost watched television show in the world), Numb3rs is nowdemonstrating to millions of viewers each Friday night thatmathematics can also have surprising relevance to everydayproblems. And all the while providing quality entertainment.

Mathematics is not just a sideshow in the popular televisionmystery series, which stars David Krumholtz as brilliant youngmathematician Charlie Epps, who helps his FBI agent brotherDon (Rob Morrow) tackle particularly puzzling cases. Moreoften than not, it is Charlie, seeking mathematical patternsand applying novel mathematical concepts, who plays a cen-tral role solving the cases. Judd Hirsch plays Charlie’s andDon’s widowed father, a semi-retired city planner. The quirkyPeter MacNicol also stars as Dr. Larry Fleinhardt, Charlie’sphysicist mentor and sounding board for new ideas andbroader scientific thinking. Navi Rawat plays a former gradu-ate student of Charlie’s from CalSci (a close stand-in forCaltech) and as a bright and attractive woman provides somecontinuing love interest.

Science, reason, and rational thinking play such a promi-nent role in the stories that the American Association for theAdvancement of Science hosted an entire afternoon sympo-sium at its 2006 annual meeting on the program’s role inchanging the public’s perception of mathematics. Nobel laure-ate David Baltimore, the president of CalTech, took part, andI counted two other Nobel laureates in the audience.

And this past spring, Numb3r’s co-creators and executiveproducers, Cheryl Heuton and Nicolas Falacci, a husband-and-wife team, were honored with the Carl Sagan Award forthe Public Understanding of Science. The award was pre-sented by the Council of Scientific Society Presidents, honor-ing those who have become concurrently accomplished asresearchers, educators, and magnifiers of the public’s under-standing of science.

“What I especially appreciate about Numb3rs,” CSICOPFellow and Temple University math professor John AllenPaulos told the SKEPTICAL INQUIRER, “is that more often thannot the math is somewhat integral to the show, and isn’t justdecorative. Also there’s little irrelevant and intimidating dia-logue like, ‘Ah yes, that’s a locally compact Hausdorf space wehave here.’” Paulos is author of Innumeracy and other bookschampioning better understanding of mathematics and arecipient of the 2003 AAAS Award for Public Understandingof Science and Technology.

How did a show incorporating mathematics as a key com-ponent ever get sold to hard-nosed, cynical Hollywood pro-ducers?

First of all, points out Heuton, “CBS is not in the businessof teaching math. CBS is in the business of reaching viewers.”She acknowledges that the wild success of the three CSI (crimescene investigations) series produced for CBS by JerryBruckheimer helped pave the way for the idea. “We were inter-

ested in a show featuring mathematics,” she says, “and weknew we would have to put it into a format that would appealto the execs—a crime show.”

“We were sure it was going to be a very hard sell,” she says.A twenty-minute “pitch” meeting was set up. Five minutesinto the pitch the answer came: “Let’s go ahead” (with a pilot).“That each step went so well remains to Nick and me com-pletely shocking,” she says.

From the beginning, mathematics was to be featured, notdownplayed. Episodes begin with a spoken tribute about theimportance of mathematics: “We all use math everywhere. Totell time, to predict the weather, to handle money. . . . Math ismore than formulas and equations. Math is more than num-bers. It is logic. It is rationality. It is using your mind to solvethe biggest mysteries we know.”

When was the last time you heard characters in a prime-time television series tout mathematics and rationality? Letalone really using the mind?

Heuton says in an early test, twelve women who watchedthe show were asked why. “They said, ‘We love the math.’ Thehead of Paramount TV turned to me and said, ‘I’m flabber-gasted.’”

Some previous movies and shows have included mathemat-ics, notes Tony F. Chan, as of October 1 the assistant directorfor mathematics and physical sciences at the National ScienceFoundation. (At the time of the AAAS symposium, which hemoderated, Chan was dean of the Division of PhysicalSciences and former chairman of the Mathematics Depart-ment at the University of California at Los Angeles.) He men-tions Beautiful Mind, Good Will Hunting, and Straw Dogs. But,he says, “Numb3rs is mathematics.”

When Numb3rs premiered January 25, 2005, it had25,000,000 viewers. It is still one of the two most watchedshows on Friday nights. Although it had somewhat higher rat-ings earlier, its 2006–2007 season opener drew 11,400,000viewers, good enough for a ranking of 32nd among all shows ontelevision.

Gary Lorden, chairman of the department of mathematicsat Caltech, serves as the program’s math consultant. The showrecruited him in 2004. “I come up with math ideas, tech-niques,” he says. He produces pages of papers. The equationsthat fill the blackboard (or, more often, transparent plastic formore dramatic display) when Charlie extemporizes are real.“All that stuff on the blackboard is real mathematics,” he says.

Lorden says Charlie’s character is loosely based on RichardFeynman. “He’s really smart, creative. Give him a problem andlet him go.” And he notes, sometimes Charlie’s wrong. “Just asin math.”

David Krumholtz, the actor who plays Charlie, is certainlyone of the key reasons for the show’s appeal. With long hair,dark, expressive eyes, and an ability to convey simultaneouslyan intense passion for mathematics and a kind of endearingvulnerability, he’s an attractive character. He is self-deprecatingabout his character’s combination of awkward intelligence andgood looks. “Charlie’s a ‘geek/sheik, a smart/throb,’” he laughs.And although he is definitely not a mathematician (“I flunkedKendrick Frazier is editor of the SKEPTICAL INQUIRER.

SI J-F 2007 pgs 11/13/06 11:34 AM


algebra I twice”), Krumholtz says he hasquickly become a fan not only of the valueof math “but of reason and rationality.”

“Once you understand the Fibonaccisequence,” which played a central role inone episode, “you can’t get past that with-out becoming a different person,” he says.“I’ve become a deductive reasoner. I try toembody the character as best I can. I spenda lot of time at Caltech, wandering around,going into some of the classes. I listened tosome [recordings of ] Feynman lectures.”

He says he passionately believes in themessage Charlie speaks in one episode:“Math is the real world. It’s everywhere.Math is nature’s language. It is nature’s wayof communicating with us. . . . Applyingthis stuff to real-life applications is verypowerful.”

Every show features a turning point where Charlie explainsa mathematical idea, and here the show’s visual effects depart-ment stepped up from the beginning. The graphics are visuallystunning, and often very creative in simply explaining a diffi-cult concept.

“We visualize the math,” Krumholtz says. “When we cutaway to these visuals, it’s not vacuum. I do it in real time. Itgives it spontaneity.”

“The visuals are indeed key,” says co-creator Nick Falacci.“First the episodes have to be written. Then we look for visualmetaphors. Then we have a team of special effects people tryto make it as simple and direct as possible. I knew that peoplewouldn’t try to solve the equations, but I knew that if peoplecould understand the basic concepts behind the math, it reallycould be very exciting.”

CBS was pleased with the first visual sequence but sug-gested it could be recycled for each episode. Says Falacci: “Wehad to tell CBS, just as every math concept is different, soevery metaphor is different.”

Even though the show is a drama, Caltech’s Lorden says hethinks it serves as a model for how “educational TV” couldhave been, or perhaps still might be.

Heuton, a television pro and a realist, cautions, however:“Numb3rs was designed to be a prime-time network show.Numb3rs was not designed to be an educational show.” Andshe’s right. It is, it should be remembered, a crime drama. Assuch it has numerous side plots involving human interactionsof its many characters (I especially like the family interactionsamong Charlie, Don, and their father) and its fair share ofintense moments, chases, violence, shootings, explosions, andother expected fare of the genre. Nevertheless, the repeatedemphasis and use of mathematical thinking as a core plot ele-ment is, well, unique.

Is the university in Numb3rs really Caltech? Very close. “Iwas a supporter of its being Caltech, not CalSci,” says Caltechpresident David Baltimore, a Nobel laureate in medicine. ButCaltech’s lawyers felt otherwise. “We [Caltech] are very strong

supporters of this show. We are proud of Gary’s involvement,and we have opened the campus to the show. Anything thatsays math and science is important is worth supporting.”

Television science popularizer and CSI Fellow Bill Nye(“Bill Nye the Science Guy”) is also a supporter. He evenappeared in one episode last season, as a combustionresearcher. “What’s impressive to me,” he said at the AAAS ses-sion, “is how passionate these people are. It’s been fun to hangaround with these guys.”

Krumholtz says he feels fortunate to be involved inNumb3rs. “I am the major receptacle of gratitude for the showbecause I’m its public face,” he says. “It is really inspiring to bethe beacon for that. I’m glad that they have allowed me to dothis show. I want him [Charlie] to be as believable as possible.”

The show has changed him, he says. “In general I am a morelogical thinker. My friends hate this. . . . I love it. I used to hatemath. I felt stupid, inept. Now I feel I’m more whole. If there’sone kid out there that Numb3rs helps to feel not stupid, inept,then that’s a wonderful thing to do. My dream is that thirty toforty years down the line I might meet someone who says, ‘Iwon the Nobel Prize because I watched you in Numb3rs.’” �

Numb3rs co-creator Nick Falacci, NSF/UCLA mathematician Tony Chan, Numb3rs star DavidKrumholtz, co-creator Cheryl Heuton, Caltech math chairman Gary Lorden, and Bill Nye (“TheScience Guy”) at AAAS session devoted to Numb3rs’ contribution to improving the public’s per-ception of mathematics. Photo by Kendrick Frazier

Numb3rs Math EducationProgram on Web

Numb3rs also hosts a Web-based educational outreachprogram for teachers and students, providing activitiesrelating to each episode’s mathematics. Texas Instrumentssponsors this “We All Use Math Every Day” Web site(www.cbs.com/prime-time/numb3rs/ti/) in partnershipwith CBS and in association with the National Council ofTeachers of Mathematics. Each activity has been derivedfrom the math used in the TV show and created by prac-ticing classroom teachers and mathematicians especiallyfor grades 7–12.

Numb3rs stars David Krumholtz and Navi Rawat havehelped promote the education initiative at annual meet-ings of NCTM and other professional organizations.

SI J-F 2007 pgs 11/13/06 11:35 AM


In a post on his Uncommon Descent (UD) blog on May 6, 2005, intelligent-design (ID) creationist WilliamDembski was talking tough. He offered a lesson for

“Darwinists” drawn from the then-ongoing hearings heldbefore the Kansas Board of Education on May 5–7 to discussthe Kansas science standards. The creationist-dominatedboard had hoped that pro-evolution scientists and ID cre-ationists would debate revisions proposed by the creationistminority on the board’s Science Curriculum WritingCommittee. These revisions included redefining science toallow the supernatural as a scientific explanation. Refusingto lend legitimacy to this “Kansas kangaroo court,” scientistsboycotted the hearings. The only pro-evolution participant,

The ‘Vise Strategy’ UndoneKitzmiller et al. v.

Dover Area School District

Here’s an inside look at the first legal case testing intelligent design, Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover AreaSchool District, by one of the expert witnesses for the pro-evolution side. The “Darwinists”

won the landmark case, establishing the first legal precedent restricting the teaching of intelligent design in public-school science classes.

BARBARA FORREST

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representing pro-science groups, was attorney PedroIrigonegaray, who cross-examined many of the twenty-three cre-ationists who were brought in at taxpayer expense to testify.These twenty-three are supporters of Dembski and his associates,who have promoted ID for a decade from the Center for Scienceand Culture (CSC), the creationist arm of the DiscoveryInstitute (DI), a conservative Seattle think tank.

Grousing that “only the evolution critics are being interro-gated,” Dembski was “waiting for the day when the hearingsare not voluntary but involve subpoenas in which evolutionistsare deposed at length.” When “that happy day” comes,Dembski predicted, the Darwinists “won’t come off lookingwell.” On May 11, Dembski portrayed “evolutionists” as toochicken to participate: “. . . evolutionists escaped criticalscrutiny by not having to undergo cross-examination . . . byboycotting the hearings.” He proposed a “vise strategy” for“interrogating the Darwinists to, as it were, squeeze the truthout of them,” childishly illustrated with a photograph of aDarwin doll with its head compressed in a bench vise. On May16, he outlined his strategy: “interrogating Darwinists” about“five terms: science, nature, creation, design, and evolution.”Under subpoena, they would be compelled to answer, hencethe “vise” metaphor.

Dembski already knew that such a day of legal reckoningwas approaching. Exactly one month later, on June 6, he satacross from me when I was deposed as an expert witness forthe plaintiffs in the first ID legal case, Kitzmiller et al. v. DoverArea School District. He attended my deposition as the adviserto the lead defense attorney, Richard Thompson of theThomas More Law Center, and was scheduled to be deposedhimself on June 13 as a defense witness. Besides being onopposite sides, there was another big difference between us: Ishowed up for my deposition. Dembski “escaped critical

scrutiny by not having to undergo cross-examination” when hewithdrew from the case on June 10.

Not only did I show up for my deposition, but I also testifiedat the trial despite being delayed by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.Moreover, I had the distinction of being the only witness whomthe defense tried to exclude from the case. When they failed, theDiscovery Institute tried to discredit me with ridicule.

A Brief History of the Kitzmiller Case

In October 2004, the Dover [Pennsylvania] Area SchoolDistrict Board of Directors decided that “Students will be madeaware of gaps/problems in Darwin’s theory and of other theo-ries of evolution including, but not limited to, intelligentdesign.” In November, they announced that Dover HighSchool’s ninth-grade biology teachers would read a statementinforming students that “Darwin’s Theory . . . is not a fact” andthat “intelligent design is an explanation of the origin of lifethat differs from Darwin’s view.” The statement referred stu-dents to the creationist textbook, Of Pandas and People, to learn“what intelligent design actually involves.” On December 14,eleven parents filed suit in the Middle District of Pennsylvania,represented by attorneys from the ACLU, Americans Unitedfor Separation of Church and State, and Pepper Hamilton, aPhiladelphia law firm. The Thomas More Law Center(TMLC), a Michigan Religious Right legal organization, repre-

Barbara Forrest is a coauthor, with Paul R. Gross, ofCreationism’s Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design(Oxford University Press, 2004; forthcoming in paperback inearly 2007); see www.creationismstrojanhorse.com. She is a pro-fessor of philosophy in the Department of History and PoliticalScience at Southeastern Louisiana University. E-mail:[email protected].

Dover Area High School

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sented the board. United States District Judge John E. Jones IIIwas assigned to hear the case.

Dover’s problems actually started in 2002. Bertha Spahr, chairof Dover High School’s science department, began to encounteranimosity from Dover residents toward the teaching of evolu-tion. In January 2002, board member Alan Bonsell began press-ing for the teaching of creationism. In August, a mural depictinghuman evolution, painted by a 1998 graduating senior anddonated to the science department, disappeared from a scienceclassroom. The four-by-sixteen-foot painting had been proppedon a chalkboard tray because custo-dians refused to mount it on thewall. Spahr learned that the build-ing and grounds supervisor hadordered it burned. In June 2004,board member William Buck-ingham, Bonsell’s co-instigator ofthe ID policy, told Spahr that he“gleefully watched it burn” becausehe disliked its portrayal of evolu-tion. He also blocked purchase of anew science textbook that includedevolution, forcing teachers toaccept Pandas as a reference bookin exchange for new textbooks. InJanuary 2005, science teachersrefused to read the ID statement;administrators read it themselves.The situation worsened. When thenext school year began inSeptember 2005, the board’s policyand ID itself were on trial inHarrisburg, Pennsylvania.

Trouble behind the Scenes

Besides myself, the other expert witnesses for the plaintiffs werescientists Kevin Padian and Kenneth Miller, theologian JohnHaught, science-education expert Brian Alters, and philosopherof science Robert Pennock. Our combined work addressed allrelevant aspects of ID creationism. The National Center forScience Education (NCSE) staff were consultants for the plain-tiffs’ team. Everyone on the plaintiffs’ team, including the attor-neys, served pro bono. (None of the defense’s expert witnesses par-ticipated pro bono. All listed their fees—typically $100 per hour,but $200 per hour in Dembski’s case—in their expert witnessreports.) Our pretrial preparations went smoothly, but thingsweren’t going as well for the defense.

Dembski’s CSC associates, Stephen C. Meyer, John AngusCampbell, Scott Minnich, and Michael Behe, were also to bewitnesses for the defense, along with ID supporters WarrenNord, Steve William Fuller, and Dick M. Carpenter II. WhenTMLC rejected Meyer, Dembski, and Campbell’s demand forlegal representation independent of TMLC, the three with-drew from the case by refusing to continue without their ownattorneys.1 In the case of Campbell, Pepper Hamilton attorneyThomas Schmidt had flown to Memphis with a legal assistant

and had hired a court reporter to take Campbell’s long-sched-uled deposition. Everything was proceeding on schedule untilonly minutes before the deposition was to begin, when defenseattorney Patrick Gillen announced that TMLC would “nolonger retain” Campbell as a witness because Campbell had“retained counsel through Discovery Institute” and had “dis-cussed matters [with DI] to which I am not privy.” Gillenlearned of “these developments” only the night before. Beheand Minnich, already deposed, remained as witnesses alongwith Nord, Fuller, and Carpenter.

Why would three of the mostimportant ID experts withdraw?They had already submitted expert-witness reports and scheduleddepositions. Moreover, DI hadhoped for years to precipitate a testcase and had even prepared legalarguments. The problem, however,was that DI did not want this case,because the Dover board, urged onby TMLC, had explicitly crafted itspolicy to promote “intelligentdesign.” Having come to view thatterm as a legal liability after encoun-tering opposition in Ohio, Kansas,and elsewhere, DI tried unsuccess-fully to persuade the board to eitherrestate the ID policy in sanitizedlanguage or withdraw it. (DI nowstrategically sanitizes its terminol-ogy, using euphemisms and codewords in appeals for the teaching ofID.) They were scared to death of acase they had not initiated andcould not control.

The exodus of Dembski, Meyer, and Campbell is explainedby their fear of cross-examination. The public shredding thatIrigonegaray had given ID creationists in Kansas one month ear-lier was still fresh. As Pat Hayes stated it in a report on his blog,dated May 9: “The knockout punch came when . . . PedroIrigonegaray compelled the intelligent design witnesses to con-fess, during a series of withering cross-examinations, that theyhadn’t bothered to read the science standards draft . . . beforecoming to Kansas at taxpayer expense.” Moreover, Dembski,Meyer, and Campbell knew what the plaintiffs’ expert witnesseswould say in court, because they had our reports. DI must haveknown that our case would be devastating to the defense—andthus to ID—if it was argued before a judge who respected thetruth and the Constitution.

My Role in the Kitzmiller Trial

I was called as a witness because of my coauthorship, with PaulR. Gross, of Creationism’s Trojan Horse: The Wedge of IntelligentDesign (Oxford University Press, 2004) and other publicationsabout ID. In our book, we analyze a document titled “TheWedge Strategy,” CSC’s tactical plan, showing how CSC

Barbara Forrest

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creationists are executing every phase except producing scientificdata to support ID. We show that ID is creationism, thus a reli-gious belief, using the best evidence available: the words of IDleaders such as Phillip E. Johnson, William Dembski, and theirID colleagues. We also show ID’s continuity with earlier cre-ationism. My job was to present this evidence to the judge.

It probably wasn’t difficult for DI and TMLC to figure outthat, armed with my work and that of the other witnesses forthe plaintiffs, halfway decent attorneys would make legalmincemeat of them. And the plaintiffs’ attorneys were morethan decent—they were superb. Pepper Hamilton’s EricRothschild, one of the lead attorneys, prepared me well.2

Dembski had seen a preview of my testimony at my deposition.DI also knew I was inspecting documents related to Of Pandasand People that our attorneys had subpoenaed from theFoundation for Thought and Ethics (FTE), which holds thePandas copyright. Consequently, although DI and TMLC weresquabbling behind the scenes, they shared a common goal: toeither forestall or discredit my testimony.

On September 6, 2005, the defense filed a motion requestingmy exclusion from the case. DI and TMLC had apparently over-come their differences long enough to collaborate on the accom-panying brief, because it contained clear evidence of DI’s input.Although I was not called as a scientific expert, the defenseargued that I should be excluded because I had no scientificexpertise and because I am, in their words, “little more than aconspiracy theorist and a web-surfing, ‘cyber-stalker’ of theDiscovery Institute . . . and its supporters and allies.” Five yearsearlier, Dembski had accused two of his critics, Wesley Elsberryand Richard Wein, of being “Internet stalkers who seem to mon-itor my every move.” DI had responded to Creationism’s TrojanHorse by labeling me as a conspiracy theorist.3 Judge Jones deniedthe motion on September 22.

Scheduled to testify the following week but delayed byHurricane Rita, I used the extra time to prepare for my testimonyand to stay current on ID activities by visiting DI’s Web site. OnSeptember 29, I noticed that DI had posted a transcript of aninterview I had done—except that I hadn’t done it. The tran-script was fake. Apparently meant (though not marked) as a par-ody, the organization whose self-described goal is “to supporthigh quality scholarship . . . relevant to the question of evidencefor intelligent design in nature” ridiculed me by, among otherthings, having fictitious radio host “Marvin Waldburger” refer tome as “Dr. Barking Forrest Ph.D.” If DI thought this wouldunsettle me, they were ignoring the fact that I had just beenthrough two killer hurricanes. I could only shake my head attheir doing something so jaw-droppingly stupid. If they werehoping Judge Jones would see and be influenced by this silliness,it was just another sign of the disrespect for his intelligence andintegrity that began before the trial and continues today (moreon this shortly).

On the Witness Stand

When I was sworn in on October 5, the defense spent the entiremorning presenting arguments as to why I should not be quali-fied as an expert witness. Judge Jones again denied the motion,

meaning that he—and the whole world—would hear what bothDI and TMLC had hoped they could bar from the record: thetruth about ID.

I had two tasks: to demonstrate to Judge Jones (1) that ID iscreationism, thus a religious belief, and (2) that Of Pandas andPeople is a creationist textbook. As part of the evidence for myfirst task, I included the words of two leading ID proponents,Phillip E. Johnson and William Dembski. Under direct exami-nation by Eric Rothschild, I related Johnson’s definition of ID as“theistic realism” or “mere creation,” by which he means that “weaffirm that God is objectively real as Creator, and that the realityof God is tangibly recorded in evidence accessible to science, par-ticularly in biology.” To that, I added Dembski’s definition:“Intelligent design is just the Logos theology of John’s Gospelrestated in the idiom of information theory.” If the judge hadheard nothing except these two quotes, he would have had all theevidence he needed that ID’s own leaders regard it as not onlycreationism but also as a sectarian Christian belief. But I hadmuch more, such as CSC fellow Mark Hartwig’s 1995 MoodyMagazine article, in which he referred to a 1992 ID conferenceat Southern Methodist University as a meeting of “creationistsand evolutionists,” calling Dembski and Stephen Meyer “evan-gelical scholars.” During those early years, when they neededmoney and supporters, ID proponents openly advertised boththeir religiosity and their creationism.

However, none of the evidence for ID’s religious, creationistidentity was more important than “The Wedge Strategy,” prob-ably written in 1996, when the CSC was established, but revisedin 1998. Known informally as the “Wedge Document,” it wasleaked from a Seattle office and posted on the Internet in early1999. DI did not acknowledge ownership of it until 2002, afterI independently authenticated it and wrote about it in 2001. Thetechnical team hired by Pepper Hamilton to create computer“demonstratives” projected the Wedge Document onto a screenin court, and I walked Judge Jones through it, explaining themost important parts. My first slide made its significance clear:“. . . could I have the first slide, please? This is the first page ofthe Wedge Strategy, and this is the opening paragraph of it.Quote, ‘The proposition that human beings are created in theimage of God is one of the bedrock principles on which westerncivilization was built.’ This . . . states very well the foundationalbelief behind the intelligent design movement and the reasonthat they have rejected the theory of evolution.” As I continued,the judge heard the strategy’s explicitly Christian goals: “Designtheory promises to reverse the stifling dominance of the materi-alistic worldview and to replace it with a science consonant withChristian and theistic convictions.” The folks at DI probablynever imagined that an “obscure philosopher in Louisiana,” asthey once called me, would be using their strategy document ina trial—or that it would be so effective in their legal undoing.(Though actually, they probably did suspect its legal significance, which explains their taking three years to acknowl-edge it.)

To counter the defense’s predictable denials that ID is cre-ationism, I also explained, using an account by ID proponentand CSC fellow Paul Nelson, how Phillip Johnson had master-

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minded creationism’s transformation into “intelligent design”after the United States Supreme Court outlawed creationism inpublic schools in its 1987 Edwards v. Aguillard ruling. Accordingto Nelson, creationists believed that Edwards meant the death ofthe “two-model approach to origins,” in which creationists rec-ognize only two alternatives, either evolution or creation, hopingto win by default after undermining evolution. But Nelsonexplained that “a revolution from an unexpected quarter . . . wasabout to occur.” The revolutionary was Johnson, who decidedthat, for creationism to survive Edwards, creationists had to rede-fine science: “Definitions of science, [Johnson] argued, could becontrived to exclude any conclusion we dislike or to include anywe favor.” Not only was Johnson’s deliberate but nominal trans-formation of creationism into ID important for demonstratingID’s true identity, but it also provided important support for mytestimony about Pandas: to survive after Edwards, Pandas wouldrequire a similar transformation. (When the book was first pub-lished in 1989, Johnson was already allied with chemist CharlesThaxton, author of the creationist book The Mystery of Life’sOrigin and “academic editor” of Pandas.) The subpoenaed FTEdocuments, which contained several earlier Pandas drafts,revealed that precisely such a transformation had been effected.

A Pandas coauthor, CSC fellow Dean H. Kenyon, had beena creationist witness in the Edwards case and had submitted asworn affidavit testifying that “creation-science is as scientificas evolution.” I discovered a letter Kenyon wrote to FTE pres-ident Jon Buell, showing that he was working on the 1986draft of Pandas, then called Biology and Creation, while alsoassisting in the Edwards case! All pre-Edwards drafts of Pandas(there were at least five) were written using creationist termi-nology. The earliest drafts had overtly creationist titles. In1987, the title was changed to Of Pandas and People, and therewere two drafts in that year. One was written in creationistlanguage; in the other, creationist terminology had beenreplaced by “intelligent design” and other design-related terms,suggesting that the Edwards decision prompted this change.The clincher was a new footnote in the latter draft explicitlyreferencing Edwards, indicating that this draft was producedafter the June 19, 1987, decision in an effort to evade the rul-ing. I also found a letter from Buell to a prospective publisherin which Buell made profit projections for Pandas contingentupon the Court’s decision: “The enclosed projection showingrevenues of over 6.5 million in five years are based upon mod-est expectations for the market, provided the U.S. SupremeCourt does not uphold the Louisiana Balanced Treatment Act.If by chance it should uphold it, then you can throw out theseprojections. The nationwide market would be explosive.”

These excerpts reflect the general content of the evidence Iproduced during my day and a half of testimony. WhenRichard Thompson cross-examined me, he did what we antic-ipated: avoiding the substance of my testimony and my pub-lished work, he attacked my credibility. He apparently hopedthe judge would consider my association with civil-liberties andhumanist organizations unsavory enough to discredit me, ask-ing questions such as, “When did you become a card-carryingmember of the ACLU?”

The Defense

The combined testimony of the plaintiffs’ expert witnesses pre-sented a formidable obstacle for the defense—as did the testi-mony of defense witnesses themselves. Nord and Carpenter werewithdrawn without testifying, leaving only Behe, Fuller, andMinnich.4 Behe and TMLC attorney Robert Muise escorted thejudge through a long explanation of irreducible complexity usingBehe’s stock example, the bacterial flagellum. DuringRothschild’s cross-examination, however, Behe admitted thatunder his own definition of a scientific theory (which he has con-veniently loosened in order to classify ID as science), astrologyalso qualifies. Most unhelpfully, Fuller had affirmed in his depo-sition—under oath—that ID is creationism. Presented by ACLUattorney Vic Walczak with the relevant statements, he had nochoice but to admit this:

Walczak: “And then your answer beginning on Line 24, ‘It [ID]is a kind of creationism, it is a kind of creationism.’ I didn’t read the same passage twice. It’s actually twice on there.Did I read that accurately?”

Fuller: “Well, it looks like that is what the sentences say.”

Fuller also described his role in the trial as that of an advocate for“disadvantaged theories” needing an “affirmative action strategy.”By the time Minnich, the last witness, was asked to offer stillmore testimony about bacterial flagella, he understood fully theposition in which he found himself: “I kind of feel like Zsa Zsa’sfifth husband, you know? . . . I know what to do but I just can’tmake it exciting. I’ll try.”

The Verdict on IDOn December 20, 2005, Judge Jones delivered a powerful opin-ion—a marvel of clarity and forthrightness—giving no quarterto either the school board or ID. He was not fooled by ID pro-ponents’ denials that they are creationists: “ID cannot uncoupleitself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents.” Hewas especially displeased that board members Buckingham andBonsell had lied under oath during their depositions: “. . . theinescapable truth is that both Bonsell and Buckingham lied attheir January 3, 2005 depositions about their knowledge of thesource of the donation for Pandas. . . . This mendacity was a clearand deliberate attempt to hide the source of the donations . . . tofurther ensure that Dover students received a creationist alterna-tive to Darwin’s theory of evolution.” Presented with the truthabout the board’s policy and the ID creationism it promoted,Jones ruled accordingly: “A declaratory judgment is hereby issuedin favor of Plaintiffs . . . such that Defendants’ ID Policy violatesthe Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of theConstitution of the United States and . . . the Constitution of theCommonwealth of Pennsylvania.” [The SKEPTICAL INQUIRER

reported on the decision and published two pages of excerptsfrom Judge Jones’s ruling in the March/April 2006 issue.]

Judging the Judge

Reflecting the ID movement’s status as an integral part of theReligious Right, their mean-spirited attacks on Judge Jones haveamplified right-wing screeching about federal judges, revealingtheir contempt for the judicial system they have long wished to

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exploit on their own behalf. As Kevin Padian and Nick Matzkewrote in a commentary for NCSE, “DI immediately tried to‘swift-boat’ the judge.” (ID sympathizers were similarly enraged:harsh e-mails sent to Jones’s office led federal marshals to placehim and his family under guard for a short period.) Given thewarmed-over creationism that was the only thing Dembski,Meyer, and Campbell could have offered in court, they wouldhave needed either a political partisan or a fool on the bench.Antics such as the “Barking Forrest” interview suggest that DIregarded Judge Jones as the latter. One of Dembski’s regularUncommon Descent bloggers apparently regarded him as both.

Dembski declined to comment on his blog when the opinionwas filed: “I have little to add to what I wrote in September, soI’ll just leave it there.” On September 30, he had calculated prob-abilities for various outcomes: (1) 20 percent that Jones woulduphold the ID policy; (2) 70 percent that he would overturn itbut leave the “scientific status of ID” unchallenged; and (3) lessthan 10 percent that he would both overturn the policy and ruleID unscientific. He hedged his bets by appealing for intelligentassistance: “I trust that Providence will bring about the outcomethat will best foster ID’s ultimate success.” Blogger “DaveScot”urged optimism: “Have more faith, Bill! This is all about JudgeJones. If it were about the merits of the case we know we’d win.It’s about politics. . . . Judge John E. Jones . . . is a good old boybrought up through the conservative ranks . . . appointed byGW hisself. . . . Unless Judge Jones wants to cut his career off atthe knees he isn’t going to rule against the wishes of his politicalallies.” Post-verdict, however, Scot shifted from cocksure confi-dence in the “good old boy” to insults. When Time magazinenamed Judge Jones one of 100 “people who shape our world,”Scot offered some unflattering comparisons: “The magazine whomade these men ‘Man of the Year’—1938–Adolf Hitler;1939–Joseph Stalin; 1942–Joseph Stalin; 1957–NikitaKrushchev; [and] 1979–Ayatullah Khomeini—now brings youJudge John Jones as a 2006 Honorable (pun intended)Mention.” Dembski responded appreciatively: “Thanks, Dave,for contextualizing this milestone in our proper appreciation ofimportant personages. . . . What a crock.” (Of course, Time’sPerson of the Year designation is not an honorific title but anassessment of the designee’s influence on the year’s events.)

In a December 20, 2005, post on DI’s Evolution News &Views blog, CSC associate director John West sniped, “JudgeJones . . . wants his place in history as the judge who issued adefinitive decision about intelligent design. This is an activistjudge who has delusions of grandeur.” DI then hastily self-pub-lished a book, Traipsing into Evolution: Intelligent Design and theKitzmiller vs. Dover Decision, charging that Jones “repeatedly mis-represented both the facts and the law in his opinion, sometimesegregiously.” The nastiness of DI’s attacks on the judge can beseen as directly proportional to his opinion’s power and accuracy.

The Aftermath

Probably anticipating a future legal case, for which Jones’s opin-ion would serve as a strong precedent and for which I might becalled as an expert witness, ID creationists continue their effortsto discredit both Judge Jones and me. They employ their usual

tactics: lacking scientific evidence for ID, they make things up orslander their opposition. DI’s attacks on Judge Jones stem partlyfrom his reliance on my testimony and pre-trial reports, as heindicated in his opinion: “Dr. Barbara Forrest . . . has thoroughlyand exhaustively chronicled the history of ID in her book andother writings for her testimony in this case. Her testimony, andthe exhibits . . . admitted with it, provide a wealth of statementsby ID leaders that reveal ID’s religious, philosophical, and cul-tural content.” Consequently, CSC fellow Jonathan Witt hasinterwoven attacks on the judge with attacks on me: “Severalnewspapers . . . are highlighting Judge John Jones’s spuriousdetermination that intelligent design is creationism in disguise.They’re accurately reporting the judge’s opinion here, for hisdecision reads like a condensation of atheist-activist BarbaraForrest’s mythological history of intelligent design. . . . In follow-ing Barbara Forrest’s fallacious reasoning and mythological his-tory of intelligent design, Judge Jones has erred badly.”

On April 12, 2006, presenting long-discredited pro-ID argu-ments at the University of Montana School of Law, CSC fellowand law professor David DeWolf complained that Jones“thought it was his job to declare what was orthodox in science. . . [and] to decide theological questions.” Asserting that Jones’sopinion “effectively targeted” DI as “the author of this WedgeDocument,” DeWolf lobbed a double ad hominem: “JudgeJones’s reliance on the Barbara Forrest testimony in the trialmakes the John Birch Society look rational.” He also told theaudience—falsely—that “there is a letter from Barbara Forrest,one of the witnesses in the Dover trial, a letter to an editor of ajournal saying basically don’t publish things from people who areadvocates of intelligent design.” At a May 5, 2006, luncheon weboth attended at the Massachusetts School of Law (MSL), Iasked him publicly whether he had seen this letter. He admit-ted—before an audience of his legal peers—that he had not.(The luncheon was held prior to a taping of MSL’s television pro-gram, Educational Forum, and was attended by law-school fac-ulty and administrators.) This time he was telling the truth: Inever wrote such a letter. However, DeWolf continues to pro-mote ID using the same debunked arguments that he and his IDassociates used before the trial. In an article with former DI attor-ney Seth Cooper, he complains that Jones’s ruling was “basedupon evidence and characterizations of intelligent design thathave been sharply contested by leading proponents of intelligentdesign.” Yet, like Dembski, Meyer, and Campbell, neitherDeWolf nor Cooper was anywhere in sight when they had achance to defend ID in court.

The legal defeat of ID is forcing Wedge strategists to seek newmarkets for their creationism and to work their conservativeChristian market more thoroughly. They are peddling IDabroad: DI has added international signatories to “A ScientificDissent from Darwinism.” Even during the trial, they held an IDconference in Prague. Domestically, Dembski has been reducedto riding the coattails of conservative pundit Ann Coulter, whodevoted four chapters of her latest book, Godless, to attackingevolution. These chapters contain the standard creationistcanards, but with Coulter’s recognizable stylistic stamp: “Imaginea giant raccoon passed gas and perhaps the resulting gas might

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have created the vast variety of life we see on Earth. And if youdon’t accept the giant raccoon flatulence theory for the origin of life, you must be a fundamentalist Christian nut whobelieves the Earth is flat. That’s basically how the argument forevolution goes.” Coulter credits her ability to write these chaptersto “the generous tutoring of Michael Behe, David Berlinski, andWilliam Dembski, all of whom are fabulous at translating com-plex ideas.” Dembski acknowledges his assistance: “I’m happy toreport that I was in constant correspondence with Ann regardingher chapters on Darwinism—indeed, I take all responsibility forany errors in those chapters.” He has dubbed Coulter “the Wedgefor the masses.”

These tactics by DeWolf and Dembski highlight the bank-ruptcy of ID and the blustering cowardice of its leaders, whomust capture support with brazen deceit and sarcastic pun-ditry. The trial was Dembski’s moment to shine, to explain onthe legal record why ID is a “full scale scientific revolution,” ashe wrote in The Design Revolution (InterVarsity Press, 2004, p.19). Instead, plaintiffs’ witness Robert Pennock read to JudgeJones Dembski’s statement regarding ID’s revolutionary sta-tus—and then dismantled it. Ironically, Dembski had his arch-critics right where he wanted us—on the witness stand andunder oath. He could have been there, implementing his strat-egy, helping to “squeeze the truth” out of us, “as it were.” InNovember 2005, after the trial ended, Dembski posted on his“Design Inference” Web site a combined version of his May 11and 16, 2005, “vise strategy” blog pages, labeled as a“Document prepared to assist the Thomas More Law Centerin interrogating the ACLU’s expert witnesses in the Dovercase.” He appended a list of “Suggested Questions,” which, hewrote, “will constitute a steel trap that leave the Darwinists noroom to escape.” (It is worth noting that after his last question,Dembski conveniently noted that “with these questions, wedon’t need to get into the positive ID program—i.e., what IDis doing specifically to advance ou[r] understanding of biology.That will come out under cross-examination of our side.”) Butwhen he had an opportunity to witness firsthand how his trapwould operate, he was nowhere to be found. He “escaped crit-ical scrutiny” by quitting rather than face cross-examination.He is apparently $20,000 richer for it, however, marking yetanother difference between us: whereas I served pro bono,Dembski charged $200 per hour and threatened to sue TMLCfor payment for one hundred hours of work he claims to havedone prior to quitting. In late June 2005, he told Canadian IDsupporter Denyse O’Leary that TMLC had agreed to pay him.

After ID’s dramatic, unequivocal defeat in Kitzmiller,Dembski’s priorities remained remarkably consistent: “This gal-vanizes the Christian community. . . . People I’m talking to saywe’re going to be raising a whole lot more funds now.” If failureis that lucrative, one can only imagine how well-remunerated heand his ID colleagues would be if they could tell the truth andback up their claims about “intelligent design theory.”

AcknowledgementI would like to thank Glenn Branch and Nick Matzke of the NationalCenter for Science Education for their comments and suggestions.

Notes1. According to Richard Thompson, TMLC had agreed to allow Stephen

Meyer, as “an officer of the Discovery Institute,” to have his attorney present butwould not allow Dembski and Campbell “to have attorneys, that they were goingto consult with . . . and not with us.” DI corroborates Thompson’s statementabout the offer to Meyer but says that Meyer “declined the offer because the pre-vious actions of Thomas More had undermined his confidence in their legal judg-ment.”

2. In addition to Rothschild, the primary attorneys were Stephen Harvey,Thomas Schmidt, and Alfred Wilcox of Pepper Hamilton; Witold “Vic” Walczakof the Pennsylvania ACLU; and Richard Katskee of Americans United forSeparation of Church and State. Other attorneys who were not in court helpedwith pre-trial preparations.

3. A document is available on the Discovery Institute Web site, “The ‘WedgeDocument’: ‘So What?’” which the DI falsely claims was “originally published in2003.” But it was written in response to my book, which was published inJanuary 2004. The document’s properties show that CSC associate director JohnWest created it on January 8, 2004, and the Internet Archive shows no such doc-ument on the DI Web site at the end of 2003. It does show a page with a linktitled “What Is the Wedge Document?” that’s dated February 10, 2004, indicat-ing that the document was on the site at that time.

4. Despite the fact that Carpenter played no real role in the trial, he wrote anarticle for the February 2006 American School Board Journal, titled“Deconstructing Dover: An Expert Witness for the District Shares Lessons from‘Scopes 2005.’” In this article, he implements DI’s deceptive strategy of trying todisconnect teaching ID from “teaching the controversy about evolutionary the-ory” (code talk for teaching ID) and offers “lessons” for school boards: “Forschool board members interested in ‘teaching the controversy’ about evolutionarytheory, the lessons here are clear: Conduct the public’s business in and with thepublic. Make sure your policies are justified with a clear and secular purpose.Neither officially advocate nor prohibit intelligent design. Seek out and pay atten-tion to expert advice” (pp. 21–22). School boards would be well advised to ignoreCarpenter’s article and steer clear of teaching this nonexistent controversy in anyform. As an “Education Correspondent” for Focus on the Family (FoF),Carpenter also wrote what appear to be variants of the ASBJ article for FoF’sCitizen magazine.

Selected BibliographyDavis, Percival, and Dean H. Kenyon. 1993. Of Pandas and People: The Central

Question of Biological Origins, 2nd ed. Dallas, Texas: Haughton PublishingCompany.

Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School District, Memorandum Opinion. December20, 2005. Available at www.pamd.uscourts.gov/opinions/jones/04v2688a.pdf.

Forrest, Barbara, and Paul R. Gross. 2004. Creationism’s Trojan Horse: The Wedgeof Intelligent Design. New York: Oxford University Press.

Dembski, William A. 2005. The Vise Strategy: Squeezing the truth out ofDarwinists. Uncommon Descent (May 11, 2005). Available at www.uncommondescent.com/index.php/archives/59.

———. 2005. The Vise Strategy II: Essence of the strategy. Uncommon Descent(May 16, 2005). Available at www.uncommondescent.com/index.php/archives/72.

National Center for Science Education. Legal issues, lawsuits, documents, trialmaterials, and updates. Evolution Education and the Law. Available atwww2.ncseweb.org/wp/?page_id=5. �

Note about ReferencesFor space reasons, most of the author’s seventy endnotes,totaling the equivalent of 2,750 words, have been omittedfrom this printed version, with her approval. Instead, fourof the notes and a short selected bibliography she preparedappear at the end. An electronic version of the article withall of the author’s endnotes, most with hyperlinks foropening full texts, is on CSI’s Web site at www.csicop.org.—EDITOR

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For centuries, strange visions have been taken as evi-dence of paranormal phenomena. The stimuli thatmay be their sources have typically been sought and

located in the external visual world. Illusions of perspective,for example, may sometimes make a downhill slope look likean uphill one, so that water seems magically to flow in thewrong direction. In the false recognition of random pat-terns, a recognizable face may be seen on a piece of toast orin a reflection from a tarnished window.

A less obvious source of strange visions is when somethingunusual occurs within the eye itself. When I experiencedsuch an event, I had the good fortune to be well-prepared to

Strange VisionsHaloes, Dust Storms, and Blood on the Walls

Unusual events within the eye such as the tearing of retinal capillaries or the detachment of intraocular structures may cause visual phenomena

that have sometimes been attributed to supernatural sources.

A. CHARLES CATANIA

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interpret what was happening. I now work in areas related tolearning and language and behavior, but in my days as a grad-uate student in experimental psychology in the late 1950s myresearch included sensory systems and vision.

I knew, for example, that when light enters the eye, passingthrough the lens on its way to the retina, any opacity along theway will block the light, creating a retinal shadow. The closerthe opacity is to your retina, the sharper the shadow willappear to you, and the shadow will be visible only in the eye

that contains the opacity. If you seesuch a shadow, you can figure outwhich eye it is in by closing one eyeand then the other.

The retina is the photosensitivelining at the back of the eyeball. Itincludes not only the light-sensitivevisual receptors, rods and cones, butalso blood supply and other struc-tures. In fact, light entering the eyehas to pass through some of thesestructures to reach the rods and cones.(This arrangement is often cited torebut the claim that the eye was intel-ligently designed.) The cones are con-centrated in the central part of theretina, in and around the fovea; theyserve color vision and the sharp acuityof the central part of the visual field.The rods are distributed in theperiphery; they are much more lightsensitive than the cones, but they pro-vide poorer detail and color vision.

Light is no longer involved ifsomething happens at the level of therods and cones or past them in theoptic nerve or a visual area of thebrain. Under such circumstances,you cannot figure out whether theproblem is specific to a given eye byclosing one eye or the other.

Blood on the Walls

On January 23, 2001, my wife and Itraveled from our home inColumbia, Maryland, to her mother’sretirement apartment near Lancaster,Pennsylvania. We arrived at about11:30 A.M. I carried a moderatelyheavy bag with a shoulder strap, and

as we entered the apartment, I heaved the bag from my shoul-der to set it on the floor. Straightening up, I saw a stream ofblood beginning to run up the far wall. As soon as I moved myhead the blood moved with it. I covered my left eye and thenmy right eye and saw the blood only with my right eye uncov-ered, so I quickly concluded that something was happeninginside that eye.

The blood was in sharp focus, so it must have been veryclose to my retina. Furthermore, images on the retina areinverted: light from above falls on the lower retina and lightfrom below falls on the upper. The blood was running up thewall, so it must have been moving downward inside my eye. Itfollowed that the blood was denser than the fluid within whichit was moving. That puzzled me at the time, because the vitre-ous humor that fills the eyeball is thicker and more gelatinousthan the aqueous humor between the cornea and the lens. I

Charles Catania is a professor in the Department of Psychology atthe University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), wherehe teaches courses in learning, cognition, and verbal behavior. Hehas served as editor of the Journal of the Experimental Analysisof Behavior and currently serves as associate editor of Behavioraland Brain Sciences. E-mail: [email protected].

The lower image, a detail from the cross section of eye anatomy, shows floaters within the intraocularfluid. Floater A is farther away from the retina than floater B, and so will produce a blurrier shadow; itis also farther away from the fovea, where visual receptors are more tightly packed, and will look blur-rier for that reason as well.

Vitreous Capsule

Retina

Lens

Iris

PupilFovea

Optic Disk

Optic Nerve

Retina

Fovea

Rear Wall of Eye

Floater A

Intraocular Fluid

Cornea

Light

Floater B

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learned later, however, that the thinner fluids within the eyeare not confined to the space in front of the lens.

Some years earlier, I had received laser treatment for a thin-ning of the peripheral retina in my left eye. I was thereforeaware of the possible importance of seeing “floaters,” darkspots or masses that are the shadows on theretina created by material drifting in theintraocular fluid that surrounds the vitre-ous capsule. Visual phenomena such asthese or flashes of light may sometimes beprecursors of retinal detachment or otherproblems that must be dealt with promptly.

I told my wife and my mother-in-lawwhat seemed to be going on and sat downto telephone our medical center. While Iwaited to be connected to the ophthalmol-ogy department, I watched the blood inmy eye darken and break into web-like fil-aments and go out of focus as it dispersed.Once I was connected, I explained my sit-uation, and we discussed whether I shouldgo to a local hospital or return toMaryland. The bleeding had stopped, andwe agreed that it would probably be usefulto be where my ophthalmological historywas known. The earliest available appointment was in lateafternoon. Even though the drive back would take about twohours, it would get us there in plenty of time, and I mighthave had to wait that long in a local emergency room anyway.

Since it wouldn’t affect how soon I’d be seen, my wife andI decided to have lunch with her mother before we set out onour return trip. It was an impromptu arrangement, and mychair leg got caught on a rug as I pulled my chair up to thetable. The chair jerked sharply as I freed it and the bleedingbegan again. It seemed as if a small hole had opened in midairnear the far end of the room. The blood this time was a singlenarrower stream as it rose upward, and the hole from which itemerged gradually closed down and cut off the flow as Iwatched.

That vision changed the standards by which I judge thosescience-fiction special effects in which something abruptlymaterializes out of another time or space. In any case, thisepisode was much shorter-lived than the first one. It also sug-gested that I should avoid sudden, jarring movements.

Dust Storms

My wife drove, so I was able to take in the rural scenery ofsouthern Pennsylvania and northern Maryland. It was a brightwinter day with a clear sky and snow on the ground, and whenwe came to relatively open stretches of road, I could see cloudsof dark particles in the sky. I covered one eye and then theother, discovering that the particles were visible only to myright eye. Furthermore, their swirling movement became moreagitated when we went over rough portions of road andbecame fairly calm when the road was smooth. The most likelyexplanation seemed to be that I was seeing the individual

blood cells of my intraocular hemorrhage, stirred up by thevibrations created as our tires met the road. But if I hadn’tknown better, I’d have thought it was a dust storm.

The ophthalmologist I saw that day examined the debristhat had caused my visual events and said that the bleeding

was probably from a torn retinal capillary in or near the mac-ula or the foveal area of my retina, the central area of sharpestacuity. The bleeding had loomed large for me, but its capillarysource in my eye was tiny. The bleeding had stopped longbefore, so he was unable to find it.

Intraocular bleeding occurs under various circumstances.For example, in women, the rise in blood pressure during thecontractions of childbirth may produce it. Those who experi-ence it typically see a golden or yellowish coloration in theperiphery of the visual field. It rarely occurs so close to the cen-tral foveal area that it clearly appears as a flow of blood.

The gelatinous vitreous capsule that fills the inside of theeyeball between the lens and the retina usually shrinks some-what with age, and sometimes the capsule and the retina, nor-mally separated by only a thin layer of intraocular fluid, adhereto each other in places. As the shrinkage separates the capsulefrom the retina, the chance increases that such an adhesionmight cause a small retinal tear (see, for example, Eagle 1999).No treatment was necessary, but observation and follow-upswith my regular ophthalmologist were recommended. I was todiscover that the visual phenomena had not run their course.

Haloes

Within a few days of my initial symptoms, I began to see adark annulus or ring around my central area of vision. It toowas in my right eye, so I assumed that something about theconfiguration of the area had led the debris to collect there inthat way. Its most striking aspect was that when I looked atsomeone who was in front of a bright background, such as thesky or a light-colored wall, that person seemed to wear a halo.As the person moved and my gaze followed, the halo moved

When I looked at someone who was in front of a

bright background, such as the sky or a light-

colored wall, that person seemed to wear a halo.

As the person moved and my gaze followed,

the halo moved accordingly, so I had to

deliberately look elsewhere to separate

the halo from the person.

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accordingly, so I had to deliberately look elsewhere to separatethe halo from the person.

Gradually, the halo effect waned. Over a few weeks, thering shrank and blurred and became irregular as it moved tothe right and slightly above midline. For about a week, itsirregularity included two smaller rings on the top and upperright of the main ring and a very small ring at the lower left. Itlooked disconcertingly like a spectral Mickey Mouse, and ofcourse whenever I tried to get a closer look it moved awayfrom my gaze, maintaining its fixed position in my visual field.It continued to dissolve and blur and change its shape oversubsequent weeks. Though now quite faint, it remains visibleas I write this, roughly five years later.

When I was examined by my opthalmologist in my subse-quent visits, he remarked that it was unlikely that the annuluscould have been made up of debris from my hemorrhage. Ishould not have been surprised. After all, I had seen the bloodmoving upward, and so I had concluded that it was movingtoward the bottom of my eyeball. Why should it have movedback up again?

The doctor instead suspected another unusual event: a poste-rior vitreous detachment, sometimes called a Weiss ring (Espaillatet al. 1999). Near the back of the eyeball, somewhat removedfrom the fovea in the direction of the nose, is the optic disk, theplace where the neural processes from the rods and cones of theretina come together to leave the eyeball as the beginning of theoptic nerve. The rods and cones themselves are absent at thislocation, so the optic disk is a blind spot. You can locate it inyour visual field by closing one eye while looking straight aheadand moving your fingertip around along the horizontal edge ofyour visual field on the side of your open eye until you find aplace where it disappears. Once that happens, you can get anidea of the size of your blind spot by watching your fingertipreappear and disappear as you move it slightly up and downand back and forth.

The optic disk differs from the retinal areas that surround it,and a ring of the vitreous capsule typically becomes differenti-ated along the boundary between the optic disk and the rest ofthe retina. Sometimes this ring breaks away and drifts aroundin the ocular media between the vitreous capsule and the innerwalls of the eyeball. It is of roughly the same density as theintraocular fluid, so there is no reason for it to drift in any par-ticular direction. In this instance, it seems to have drifted hori-zontally and come to rest neatly around my fovea. The fovealarea, or macula, is in a slight concavity or pit at the rear of theretina, and perhaps that topography kept the ring in a stableposition for a while. In any case, as the ring dissolved, it grad-ually lost its shape and moved away from the fovea.

Flashes and Crystals

My two unusual visual events do not exhaust the possibilities.Adhesions between the vitreous capsule and the retina can tugat the retina even if they do not tear it, and sometimes that tugis strong enough to excite the visual receptors directly, so thatyou see small flashes of light. You are most likely to notice suchflashes when in dim lighting or when your eyes are closed, and

you cannot tell which eye they are in. I had seen such flashesfrom time to time, especially around the time of the lasersurgery for my left retina.

Another phenomenon, called visual migraine, occurs whenconstrictions of blood vessels or other events in the brain stim-ulate activity in the visual cortex. The most common manifes-tation of visual migraine is a crescent-shaped flashing patternaround the center of vision. It has a crystalline look andincludes scintillating white facets speckled with bright colors.After its initial onset, it usually fades slowly over a period of afew minutes. I saw it for the first time about a decade ago andhave seen it only a few times since then.

Rare Events Need Not Be Interpreted as Messages

My symptoms were improbable, especially in combination.According to my doctor, they are sufficiently few and farbetween that on average, an ophthalmologist might encountera case like mine every few years. I had seen blood on the walls,dust storms, and people with haloes. Their precursors yearsbefore had been flashes and crystals, but these are more com-mon than my more recent visual events. I did not at any pointfeel that I was chosen to receive these visions. But what if I hadnot known enough about vision to interpret them and hadlived in a time or place in which there were no knowledgeableexperts to consult?

The human eye has not changed very much over the past fewmillennia. Though rare, these sorts of visions must haveappeared to many individuals throughout human history. Whatstories about their visions some of them must have told! It is agood bet that some features of those stories have come down tous in one form or another, even if we cannot say whether anyparticular report of blood or dust storms or haloes originatedwith intraocular phenomena instead of other sources, such asillusions or dreams or real events. Based on the things I’ve seenand what I know about their sources, however, I’d be prettyskeptical about any claims that such visions should be taken assigns of the paranormal.

AcknowledgmentsI thank Dr. David B. Glasser for several very helpful discussions ofmy visual experiences and my colleague, Dr. Victor G. Laties of theUniversity of Rochester Medical Center, for some guidance in explor-ing the literature on Weiss rings. I do not have the name of the oph-thalmologist who first saw me after the capillary hemorrhage, butperhaps that is just as well. To both my surprise and Dr. Glasser’s, hehad not believed that the particles of my “dust storm” could havebeen individual blood cells. Yet the sizes of blood cells and of visualreceptor cells are of a similar order of magnitude, so that the formercan in fact cast visible shadows on the latter. Finally, I thank my wife,Constance Britt Catania, and not just for driving me home.

ReferencesEagle, R. C., Jr. 1999. Eye Pathology: An Atlas and Basic Text. Philadelphia:

Saunders.Espaillat, A., L.P. Aiello, R.M. Calderon, J.D. Cavellerano, R.W. Cavicchi,

and G. Cordahl. 1999. Preservation of vision through Weiss ring afterdense vitreous hemorrhage. American Journal of Ophthalmology 128(3):376–378. �

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“Having energy” is a desirable attribute. It meanshealth and happiness. Energy is about vitality,about how we feel. Unfortunately, energy is

often very poetic and abstract. Essayist Susan Sontag wroteabout “bleeding energies” (Andrews 1998), and Prometheusused “aethereal energy” when he made the earth (Ovid1965). Dictionaries offer synonyms like vigor or bounce.Those are about how we feel, about getting things done. “Ihave no energy” means “I feel lousy.” Energy we don’t haveis about our mood (Dinges 2001).

Some see energy in the mind-body connection (Weiss–Miller 1998). They look for “subtle energies” that affect ourhealth and well-being (Krizhanovsky and Lim 2004).

Pep TalkHow to Get Rid of the Energy

You Don’t Need

Had a hard time getting up this morning? Haven’t got much energy lately? Maybe you need anenergy bar or perhaps a little pep talk? On the other hand, chances are you have too much energy

and you need to get rid of some. That could be difficult; energy is so confusing.

WILLIAM H. BAARSCHERS

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Others pursue vitalism, the mysterious force that all livingthings are said to possess, a “vital principle” that cannot bemeasured with instruments (Humber and Almeder 1998).

However, it is in the things we eat that “vital force” becomes“energy.” This energy has to do with physics and biology, andit can be measured. This energy represents the “capacity fordoing work” (Parker 1989), and we find it in many things,including our food. Energy that represents the capacity to “dowork” belongs in the world of biochemistry. The “how-do-you-feel” energy belongs in the mind, where it is difficult to mea-sure. It fits better in the world of poetry and spirituality.

There is nothing wrong with using the same word for two dif-ferent concepts. There are plenty examples in the English lan-guage, and the meaning is usually clear from the context. But

health-book writers often mix these different kinds of energy intothe same recipe, causing no end of trouble. That is why there areso many “energy foods” and “energy beverages” in the supermar-ket, to help us “get our energy levels [up]” (Childs 2001).

How Many “Energies?”

Since “being energetic” is obviously a good thing, “eatingenergy” must be good for you. However, don’t “eat calories,”because calories make you fat. So we have a dilemma: eatingenergy is said to be good for you, but when the same thing iscalled “eating calories,” it is not. Explaining makes it worseand leads to confusing language like “burning calories” and“caloric energy,” which aims at explaining this mysterious rela-tionship between energy and calories. Health writers don’texplain what happens to these calories when they burn.

In poetry and religion, metaphor and symbolism evokefeelings or arouse passion or commitment. In science, preci-sion with words is essential. Philosopher Paul Kurtz (1991)called it “linguistic and logical clarity,” which demands that wedo not confuse the meanings of words in different usages.

The energy from the physics textbook is usually associatedwith motion: the kinetic energy of a moving body, and the elec-trical energy of electrons moving in a metal wire. We observeenergy changes with the tools of physics and describe them inthe language of mathematics. We measure electrical energy inwatts or kilowatts and the thermal energy equivalent of fuels,like wood or porridge, in calories or kilocalories.

Energy is an abstract, mathematical concept that we canuse for describing complex events. Energy is not a substance;it is a property of a substance or an object (Davies and Brown1989). We cannot touch it or see it, yet it is so common in ourlanguage that we perceive it as a concrete entity, something wecan “have.” For describing conversions of energy from oneform into another, we need words like thermodynamics,

entropy, and quantum mechanics. Entropyand quantum are words that health writersespecially like to toss into their recipes.They are fine ingredients for adding thatspecial flavor of scientific respectability.

The energy density of food is the energyequivalent in kilocalories per gram.Carbohydrates and proteins represent fourkilocalories per gram. Oils and fats aremore energy-dense, at nine kilocalories pergram. Plants don’t need to carry theirenergy resources around; their chemicalenergy is mostly in the form of carbohy-

drates. We must carry our stored energy with us, so the mostefficient way for us to store that energy is as fat, which, as wasstated previously, is more energy-dense. A surplus of thatstored energy gets in the way, literally, of converting it intomechanical energy. Too much energy stored around our waistis the very opposite of vitality and vigor.

Energy density also relates to food processing. Starchycrops, from which most plant “waste” has been processedaway, yield much more chemical energy per mouthful than thewhole plant. Removing leaves and husks concentrates thechemical energy in food. With a few exceptions, most dietbooks do not explain this problem clearly (e.g., Pritikin 1998).

There is one unfortunate wrinkle. When nutritionists talkabout nutrients, they don’t mean macronutrients, like fats, pro-teins, and carbohydrates, they mean micronutrients, like min-erals, vitamins, and other phytochemicals. The concept ofnutrient density, the amount of a specific nutrient in a givenfood, relative to the energy provided by that food, supposedlyhelps us to look at the nutrient-to-calorie ratio rather than justlooking at calories. However, figuring out the nutrient densityof one food relative to a dozen nutrients requires a calculatorand very carefully reading the label on the jar (Zelman andKennedy 2005).

Counts and Balances

Discussions at the blurry end of the energy-food relationshipoften emphasize the importance of “balance” and “harmony.”One health writer sees wellness as “the graceful dance of energyin balance” (Taub 1999). However, “balance” requires two

We cannot touch or see energy, yet it is so

common in our language that we perceive it

as a concrete entity, something we can “have.”

William H. Baarschers is a professor emeritus of chemistry atLakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada. Hisresearch interests include the chemistry of medicinal plants, syn-thetic chemistry, environmental science, and industrial toxicology.He is currently the advisor to the university’s Resource Center forOccupational Health and Safety. He is the author of Eco-Facts &Eco-Fiction: Understanding the Environmental Debate(Routledge, 1996). E-mail: [email protected].

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things—you can’t play on the seesaw by yourself, so somethingmust be in balance with something else. “Harmony,” as a syn-onym, does not help. The question becomes: what is in har-mony with what? In the language of science, we know that“balance” does indeed involve two entities. In physics, biology,or chemistry, nothing is in balance by itself. It can only be inbalance with something else.

Fortunately, behind the fuzzy words, we find clear labels forthe events that take place in our bodies. Breaking down largermolecules into smaller ones is called catabolism. The reverse,building larger molecules, is anabolism. Together, these chem-ical changes are our metabolism in action.

Balance, in nutrition language, is the important equilib-rium of the amount of energy taken in asfood with the amount converted into otherenergy forms, like mechanical energy, orwith the amount used for fueling the chem-ical changes involved in our metabolism.Balance occurs when our energy intake isequal to our energy expenditure. Whenintake and output are unbalanced, one oftwo things happens: we either starve or weget fat (Simopoulos 1990).

Energy balance is all-important for suc-cessful weight control, which cannot be achieved without a rea-sonable level of physical activity. Exercise capacity is a reliablepredictor for cardiac health (Balady 2002). If your favorite dietbook does not pay attention to this crucial part of your energybalance, throw it out.

Human bodies are energy converters. Plants convert solarenergy into the chemical energy, mainly associated with carbo-hydrates. We eat the plants and convert this chemical energyinto other forms: electrical energy for transmitting nerve signals,heat energy for keeping us at an operating temperature of about37° Celsius. Food energy is also used for building the chemicalsthat make up our bodies and breaking down chemicals we nolonger need; it is also converted into mechanical energy for mus-cle movement, which in turn gets converted into waste heat.

We cannot “excrete” excess energy, like excess water or salt.The “burning” of fat is a metaphor for the oxidation of fat,somewhat like burning wood, although it happens at bodytemperature. It means that the energy associated with the fat isconverted into another form, but that other form has to gosomewhere. If it is used to move muscles, and generate heat,the energy from the fat is dissipated outside the body. So, fat“burns” only if there is a demand for another form of thereleased energy. Food energy that we don’t convert intoanother form is surplus, and it has to be stored. Eating “spe-cial” foods or herbs does not help to “burn” fat if there is nodemand for energy.

As long as we keep energy beliefs and food biochemistryeach in their own domains, we have no problems. The believeraccepts the first, and the skeptic measures the second. Whenwe mix the two, we get, for example, the pseudoscience of theuse of specific foods, or supplements, for improving ourenergy levels. Medical laboratories have no procedures for

measuring “energy levels.” We have no way of knowingwhether they are high or low. Are these energy levels aboutthermodynamics or about us having a good day?

The “Quality” of Energy

Chemical energy, unlocked from carbohydrates and fats, isoften needed quickly. Muscle cells use energy that is instanta-neously available from other high-energy molecules. To drivesuch fast chemical changes, we need the highly efficient cata-lysts called enzymes. Some writers ascribe near-magical prop-erties to them; they are said to be “alive,” and we are not sup-posed to cook our food, so that we don’t “kill” the enzymes(e.g., Cichoke 1999). However, most enzymes are quite spe-

cific. Enzymes that help an apple to ripen were made accord-ing to instructions in the apple’s DNA to serve the chemistryof the apple. These enzymes don’t give us a healthy blush, justa minute amount of digestible protein.

Food that is “alive” is also the subject of another diet book,which suggests that all cultures, except “Western medicine,” seeenergy as the vital force that flows through everything living inthe universe (Taub 1999, 82). This leads to the confusing con-clusion that fresh fruit, which supposedly is “alive,” but consistsof 80–90 percent water, somehow contains more energy thancandy, which is nearly all sugar and gram for gram containsvastly more energy than fruit.

If you truly suffer from a lack of energy, in the nutritionalsense, the advice to eat less protein, fat, and high-glycemic car-bohydrates makes no sense at all (Weil 2000). Why reduce yourenergy intake if you suffer from a lack of energy? However, ifyou carry excess energy around your waist and you have little“get up and go,” the advice is well worth remembering.

Beyond Physics

Health-related energy ideas readily move from thermodynam-ics into pseudoscience, and sometimes right into the paranor-mal. That is where disease, or a “lack of wellness,” has to dowith the “energy field” that surrounds our bodies. Disease issaid to be a disturbance, an “imbalance” of that energy field,and adept healers can detect these “energy imbalances” byplacing their hands above afflicted parts of the patient’s body.An “energy transfer” from healer to patient constitutes theTherapeutic Touch by which “human energies can bedirected” to heal (Krieger 1993).

Such energy fields are not in the physics textbooks, so anine-year-old student decided to investigate. She showed that

Health-related energy ideas readily move from

thermodynamics into pseudoscience, and

sometimes right into the paranormal.

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two dozen Therapeutic Touch practitioners, who agreed toparticipate in a simple test, could not detect the presence ofthe “energy field” around her hand near theirs. Her report waspublished in The Journal of the American Medical Associationand promptly criticized by many believers (Rosa et al., 1998).Criticisms varied from flawed methodology to the assertionthat “it doesn’t matter as long as it benefits the patient.” Butthe experiment did not address these issues. It was not evenabout whether or not such energy fields exist. The questionwas whether such energy fields can be detected by practition-ers who say they can. And the answer was no. The author’srebuttal to the criticisms mentioned the challenge to show,under testable conditions and with a one million-dollar award,that such energy fields actually exist (Randi 2006). At the timeof this writing, this award remained unclaimed.

Things become even stranger in the field of “bioelectro-magnetic” therapies. This story starts with the well-knownphenomenon of north-south polarity in magnets. Somehow,this magnetic polarity gets morphed into positive and negativeenergy, and we are led to believe that the Chinese concept ofpositive and negative qi follows naturally from Physics 101.What could negative energy be? Would it be analogous to neg-ative weight? Would negative energy levitate us straight intoscience fiction? Clearly, “negative energy,” whether called qi orsomething else, is a matter of belief. It does not belong in thescience of health and nutrition.

These attempts to press a scientific stamp of approval onEastern philosophic thought can be expanded endlessly.Energy conversions are a part of physics known as thermody-namics, which is governed by the laws of thermodynamics.The first law, about the conservation of energy, readily leads to“balance” and “constant energy levels,” and we get the impres-sion that the story is about elementary physics, while in actualfact, it is about a belief system or about a metaphoric meaningof the word energy. It is important to understand that ideasabout “balancing energy” and about “blocked” or “stagnant”energy flow come from philosophical and spiritual approachesthat are common in so-called vernacular health-belief systems,where “energy imbalance” is seen as the cause of many healthproblems (O’Connor 1995).

Nevertheless, energy concepts that are clearly outside the worldof physics cannot be summarily dismissed. For example, an herbal-ist, who calls energy an “ambiguous” or “intangible” element oflife, and discusses the herbs to improve it, is obviously addressingthe issue of mood, of “feeling energetic” (Foster 1996). Dried herbscontain very little chemical energy such as starch or fat: their calo-rie equivalent is virtually zero. Using herbs to increase chemicalenergy intake is undoubtedly an exercise in futility.

But the effects of some of these low-energy herbs on ourperception of well-being is well known. Their effects may haveto do with energy supply to the brain in the form of glucose(Fernstrom 2001), or with facilitating other metabolic conver-sions. But when the label on these stimulants claims that they“promote long-lasting energy” and “support healthy levels ofenergy,” remember that such claims, although allowed by theFDA, do not involve counting calories.

The frequent use of this terminology in modern diet booksis clearly an example of what David Morrison (2005) recentlycalled “framing the issue.” It is therefore important that we seewhere the science ends and the belief systems begin.

Clearly, the ambiguous or intangible thing that we callenergy is a rich source of inspiration for authors who like todress their stories about calories in more romantic language. Atworst, such language leads to pseudoscience. At best, fuzzywords obscure the simple rule that the only way to get rid ofour surplus chemical energy is to convert it to thermal andmechanical energy (Laird, Birmingham, and Jones 2002). Inother words, we don’t need poetic language or “subtle energies”for turning fat into sweat. We just have to go down to the gymand do it . . . although that may require a little pep talk.

ReferencesAndrews, R. 1998. The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations. New York:

Columbia University Press.Balady, G.J. 2002. Survival of the fittest, more evidence. New England Journal

of Medicine 346(11): 852–854.O’Connor, B. 1995. Healing Traditions, Alternative Medicine and the Health

Professions. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press: 30.Childs, N.M. 2001. Consumer perceptions of energy. Nutrition Reviews

59(1): S2–S4.Cichoke, A.J. 1999. The Complete Book of Enzyme Therapy. New York: Avery

Publishing.Davies, P.C.W., and J. Brown. 1989. The Ghost in the Atom. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press: 26.Dinges, D.F. 2001. Stress, fatigue, and behavioral energy. Nutrition Reviews

59(1, part 2): S30–S32.Fernstrom, J.D. 2001. Diet, neurochemicals, and mental energy. Nutrition

Reviews 59(1): S22–S24.Foster, S. 1996. Tapping into the powerful energy of herbs. Better Nutrition.

54(9): 70.Humber, J.M., and R.F. Almeder, eds. 1998. Alternative Medicine and Ethics.

Totowa, New Jersey: Humana Press: 6.Krieger, D. 1993. Accepting Your Power to Heal: The Personal Practice of

Therapeutic Touch. Santa Fe, New Mexico: Bear.Krizhanovsky, E., and Lim Kwong Choong. 2004. Influence of subtle ener-

getic change in water on the human energy state. Subtle Energy &Medicine 15(3). (Abstract accessible at www.issseem.org).

Kurtz, P. 1991. The Transcendental Temptation: A Critique of Religion and theParanormal. Amherst, New York: Prometheus: 51.

Laird Birmingham, C., and P.J. Jones. 2002. Clinical nutrition: How muchshould Canadians eat? Canadian Medical Association Journal. 166(6):767–770.

Morrison, D. 2005. Only a theory? Framing the evolution/creation issue.SKEPTICAL INQUIRER, 29(6): 37–41.

Ovid. 1965. Metamorphoses, Book 1, The Creation of the World. (English trans-lation by A. Golding). New York: Macmillan.

Parker, S., ed. 1989. McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific and Technical Terms,4th Ed. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Pritikin, R. 1998. The Pritikin Weight Loss Breakthrough: 5 Easy Steps toOutsmart Your Fat Instinct. New York: Penguin.

Randi, J. 2006. James Randi Educational Foundation. Available at www.randi.org/research/index.html; accessed January 2006.

Rosa, L., et al. 1998. “A close look at Therapeutic Touch,” The Journal of theAmerican Medical Association (JAMA) 279(13): 1005–1010. Comments:1998. JAMA. 280(22): 1905–1908.

Simopoulos, A.P. 1990. Energy imbalance and cancer of the breast, colon, andprostate. Medical Oncology and Tumor Pharmacotherapy 7(2–3): 109–20.

Taub, E.A. 1999. Balance Your Body, Balance Your Life: Dr. Taub’s 28-DayPermanent Weight Loss Plan. New York: Kensington Books.

Weil, A. 2000. Eating Well for Optimum Health: A Comprehensive Guide toFood, Diet, and Nutrition. New York: Random House, p. 274.

Weiss–Miller, D. 1998. More on information, energy, and mind-body medi-cine. Advances in Mind–Body Medicine, 14(4): 287–293.

Zelman. K., and E. Kennedy. 2005. Naturally nutrient rich: Putting morepower on Americans’ plates. Nutrition Today. 40(2): 60–68. �

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What’s in a name? That which we call a roseBy any other name would smell as sweet. . . .

—William Shakespeare

In the twenty-first century, there is a new bogeyman lurk-ing in the same shadowy underworld that was once thedomain of ghosts and goblins: mass hysteria. Phantom

odors, mystery illnesses, and terrorism scares are undermin-ing science and costing businesses and workers millions ofdollars in lost productivity and wages. Known by the moreformal (and politically correct) term mass psychogenic illness,mass hysteria refers to the rapid spread of illness signs andsymptoms without any biological basis.

Mass Hysteria at Starpoint High

Though mass hysteria is alive and well in the twenty-first century, it remains an unpopular diagnosis.In the face of compelling evidence to the contrary, it is often denied on emotional grounds

as a phenomenon that happens only to others.

ROBERT E. BARTHOLOMEW and BENJAMIN RADFORD

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Mass hysteria is a serious, unrecognized problem that cre-ates a financial burden on responding emergency services, gov-ernment agencies, and the affected school or work site (whichmay be closed for days or weeks). Taxpayers must often shoul-der the burden while public-health and environmental officersinvestigate. Fear and uncertainty may also lead to other anxi-ety disorders and stress-related health problems. There aremany recent examples.

• In mid-December 2005, in the war-ravaged Republic ofChechnya, dozens of schoolchildren were stricken withbreathing difficulties, headaches, and numbness amid rumorsthat they had been deliberately exposed to nerve gas as retri-bution for the school massacre in Belsan that killed over 300in 2004. As a result, schools were closed, political tensionsrose, and medical specialists from Russia were mobilized. AChechen government commission concluded that the symp-toms were psychosomatic, resulting from “intense psycholog-ical pressure caused by lengthy hostilities in the republic”(Mosnews.com 2005).

• Throughout 2005, a mysterious odor at the West CedarElementary School in Waverly, Iowa, was blamed for fatigue,headaches, itchy eyes, and dry throats in about 10 percent ofthe student body. After the school district spent $170,000trying to find the cause, experts from the EnvironmentalProtection Agency and Iowa Department of Public Healthreported that they could find nothing out of the ordinary.EPA spokesman Craig Crable said that every test “availableto science” was negative. Despite this, a survey of 131 par-ents found that 41 percent still wanted their children relo-cated (Spannagel 2005).

• On December 5, 2005, twenty-nine students were sent homefrom Ridge Meadows Elementary School in Wildwood,Missouri, after mysterious red blotches appeared on the upperbodies of students and several faculty members. The school wasclosed the next day, and a disinfectant team sanitized the build-ing; but when classes resumed two days later, two new caseswere reported. The cause was never found (Shapiro 2005).

Incidents similar to those at Ridge Meadows often prove tobe mass psychogenic illness. One incident investigated by sci-entists took place on February 22, 1982, when two fourthgraders at a West Virginia school complained of itching andrashes. By noon, thirty-two students were affected, and thenumber later jumped to fifty-seven. Medical exams and testsof the air, water, and food were negative, as was an examina-tion of the school grounds. Based on interviews with the vic-tims, doctors found that after the first two high-profile cases,

symptoms spread by suggestion. A student would first hear ofan existing case, then develop an itch—only then did the rashappear, and only on parts of the body that were easily accessi-ble to the hands (forearms, abdomen, neck, shoulders, andmiddle and lower back). Investigating physicians noted thatduring exams, “children were actively scratching. . . . Severalchildren who were surreptitiously observed a half hour afterthe interview exhibited no scratching, and their rash disap-peared.” The rash also disappeared when students left theschool or during recess, and returned once they reentered thebuilding. The school’s small size and high pupil-interactionrate in the halls appear to have contributed to the outbreak(Robinson et al. 1984).

A similar outbreak of itching and rash occurred in SouthAfrica in February 2000, affecting more than 1,400 studentsin thirteen schools. Students reported itching upon enteringthe school grounds; only a tiny fraction said that the itchingcontinued when they returned home. The incident occurredamid stories that the itching was caused either by Satanists orby itching powder that had been placed in the bathrooms.Interviews and questionnaires determined that the spread ofsymptoms occurred by line of sight after observing othersscratching (Rataemane et al. 2002).

Schools aren’t the only area where mass hysteria has recentlytaken a toll. In February 2005, a chemical leak was blamed fornausea, heart palpitations, and dizziness that struck downfifty-seven workers near the Virgin Blue terminal at Australia’sMelbourne Airport. The victims quickly recovered, and noleak or toxic agent was ever found, but the shutdown costVirgin an estimated $3 million and disrupted air traffic acrossthe continent. An investigation concluded that the cause wasmass hysteria (Bartholomew 2005).

Writing in The New England Journal of Medicine, TimothyJones says that he has heard similar “war stories” from col-leagues, suggesting that hysteria is underreported (Jones et al.2000). In fact, the case that Jones and his colleagues investi-gated—the sudden illness at Warren County High School inTennessee in 1998—is typical. Eighty students and nineteenstaff members were taken for treatment after a teacher detecteda “gasoline-like” odor in her classroom. At first, only a few stu-dents reported smelling the odor and feeling ill, but then thefire alarm sounded as scores of police and rescue personnelfrom three counties converged on the school. In full view ofthe evacuees, the first teacher who was stricken and severalpupils were loaded into ambulances and rushed to hospital.Soon more students reported headaches, dizziness, nausea,drowsiness, tightness in the chest, and difficulty breathing.

Several days later, a second, similar outbreak took place. Inall, 170 students and teachers were affected. A questionnairefound that symptoms were associated with being female, “seeinganother ill person, knowing that a classmate was ill, and report-ing an unusual odor at the school” (p. 96). The odor in theschool—and the massive, rapid response to the scene by emer-gency personnel—appear to have further heightened anxieties.

An army of personnel from government health agenciesconducted an array of tests on the building and the students.

Robert Bartholomew is the author of Hoaxes, Myths, andManias: Why We Need Critical Thinking, 2003, withBenjamin Radford. E-mail: [email protected] Radford is the managing editor of the SKEPTICAL

INQUIRER and author of three books. His Web site is www.radfordbooks.com. E-mail: [email protected].

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Blood and urine samples were taken, as were 220 air samples,five water samples, eight wipe specimens from a variety of sur-faces, and soil tests. All of them came back negative. The esti-mated cost of emergency care alone was $100,000, and theschool was closed for two weeks (Alligood 2000). After the“mass hysteria” diagnosis was published, many locals wereupset, and devised elaborate alternative theories (Paine 2000).Part of the problem is that no one wants to be labeled hyster-ical. When Dr. Joel Nitzkin accurately diagnosed mass hyste-ria at a Florida elementary school in 1974, he became the sub-ject of community wrath and even death threats (Nitzkin1976). More recently, with the publication of ElaineShowalter’s book Hystories (on the prevalence of modern-dayhysteria, everything from Gulf War Syndrome to child sex-abuse panics fostered by unwittingly encouraged false memo-ries), the author received threats. Even noted psychologist (andCSICOP fellow) Elizabeth Loftus received hate mail afterarguing there was an American epidemic of false child sex-abuse reports. She didn’t hire a bodyguard, though she boughta gun and took up target practice (Abramsky 2004).

But what is hysteria? Simply put, it is the conversion of psy-chological stress into symptoms that mimic illness. In 1994,the American Psychiatric Association renamed the phenome-non, opting for the more politically correct conversion disor-der—a term devised by Sigmund Freud to describe the trans-formation of emotional conflict into physical symptoms.Weighed down by heavy political baggage from widespreadmisuse of the term over the past two centuries (especially tostigmatize women), it was deemed that a name change was inorder. Yet hysteria remains as popular as ever, as evidenced byits continuing widespread use in medical and psychiatric jour-nals. The public often misuses the term to describe overreac-tions to everything from environmental gloom and doom(“green hysteria”) to drug use in baseball (“steroid hysteria”),and share-market crashes (“Wall Street hysteria”). Further,when a person, especially a female, is emotionally distraught,she is sometimes described as hysterical. Of course, rarely areany of these people suffering from actual, clinical hysteria—hence the widespread confusion and upset over the word.

Tense Times at Starpoint High

In 2004, Starpoint High School, in Niagara County, not farfrom Buffalo, New York, gained a reputation for being a“tainted” school after a series of health scares. In February, aSpanish classroom was closed for over a week after parent com-plaints that one of the students was made ill by a substancethat smelled like rotten eggs. Some theorized that it was moldcontamination, though no cause was found. In September, amath classroom was shut down after students and teachersreported smelling an ammonia-like odor. Again, nothingharmful was found (Nemeth 2004d), though rumors began toabound that there was “something in the school.”

Within this backdrop of fear and uncertainty, by mid-December, events began to escalate. On Tuesday morning,December 14, fifty-two chorus members were rehearsingChristmas carols in the auditorium, preparing for a big

holiday concert that evening. At 9:20 A.M., a student felt ill.Before long, more and more chorus members began to feelunwell. Within an hour, thirty-one were complaining of dizzi-ness, headaches, nausea, and feelings of flushness and lethargy;at least one student vomited. Some students noted a strangeodor. Amid concerns of a possible bioterrorism attack, an armyof response teams converged on the school: state police, FBIagents, officials from the State Department of EnvironmentalConservation, firefighters, ambulance personnel, and otherfirst responders. Hazardous materials specialists wearing “spacesuits” and breathing apparatus were also dispatched. The stu-dents were rushed to local hospitals and the rest of the schoolwas locked down and eventually evacuated. Those affectedquickly recovered and were released within hours. Environ-mental tests at Starpoint were conducted by a private firm, anda separate team of experts on hazardous materials fromNiagara County. All tests were negative. When the schoolreopened on Friday, December 17, the matter remained unex-plained and no cause for the illnesses had been pinpointed. Asa result, there were 308 student absences (Nemeth 2004a).

On January 10, press reports cited local fears that Starpointwas wedged between two former toxic dumps that may havebeen responsible for the “mystery illnesses” (Nemeth 2005b,2005c). (It is notable that the notorious Love Canal is locatedin the region, likely adding to the perception that unexplainedillnesses may be the result of toxic waste.) Three days later, therewas yet another health scare, as an ammonia-like odor wasdetected in three classrooms. More tests were ordered. Then, onFriday, January 28, school-bus diesel fumes were blamed for arash of nausea and headaches among students. SuperintendentC. Douglas Whelan theorized that the fumes didn’t dissipate inthe near-zero temperatures and were sucked back into thebuilding through the air-vent system (Lindsay, 2005). Butsurely on cold mornings, hundreds of schools in northern statesand throughout Canada let their buses idle so they don’t stall—and yet none report mass illness. Why Starpoint?

When pressed for an explanation, Starpoint school officialsinitially speculated that the chorus members “were overcomeby the heat of the lights in the auditorium.” This is possible,but doesn’t answer the question: why Starpoint? Why the cho-rus? Thousands of chorus rehearsals are held across NorthAmerica each year, during which students practice for their

Starpoint High School, near Buffalo, New York. Photo by Jennifer M. Griffith.

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upcoming concerts under hot lights and they don’t fall ill indroves. When the “hot-lights” theory proved untenable inlight of other incidents at the school, the “stale-air” hypothesiswas evoked. On January 7, results from the initial tests on theschool’s auditorium and its air filter were released. The reportstated: “No unexpected particles were identified in significantquantities” (Chopra 2005, 7). An analysis of clothing worn bystudents during the episode turned up nothing unusual. Thereport concluded that “there is no air quality factor that hasbeen identified by the testing . . . that can explain or point toa cause for the incident that occurred at the Starpoint HighSchool Auditorium” (Chopra 2005, 8).

Ever-increasing Circles

A week after the Starpoint choral incident, twenty-six pupilsand four teachers at the nearby North Park Middle School inLockport suddenly fell ill with similar symptoms, only toquickly recover. Under pressure to explain what happened,school officials suggested that low levels of carbon monoxidewere given off by the boiler and the weather conditions werejust right (or wrong) to allow the gas to be sucked back intothe ventilation system. This is such an unlikely scenario thatexhaust from a flying saucer may seem more plausible.Thousands of schools operate under similar conditions eachday in North America during winter without apparent out-breaks of sudden illness. Every one of the thirty people treatedat area hospitals after the incident had carbon-monoxide levelswithin the normal range. Superintendent Bruce Fraser seizedon the claim that some carbon-monoxide levels were slightlyelevated but “well below the level of a smoker” (Westmoore2005). Yet people are exposed to slightly elevated carbon-monoxide levels all the time and nothing happens—whencrossing the road in traffic, walking in an underground carpark, even standing next to idling school buses. The carbon-monoxide theory is wishful thinking. Fraser is quoted as say-ing that the flu situation may have worsened the students’reaction to the carbon monoxide. But what school doesn’t havesome illness going around, especially during the winter season?

Fraser conceded that some of the affected students “mayhave had their own situations aggravated when they saw otherkids get sick” (Westmoore 2005). Given the negative testresults, it may have been entirely anxiety—fed by rumors.

The Power of the Mind

An explanation of hysteria for the events at Starpoint andLockport schools does not mean that their students are crazyor prone to overactive imaginations. Nor does it mean that itwas “all in their heads”—the reactions were real, but they werealso generated by anxiety.

The incidents at these schools are tantamount to a collectivepanic attack. Indeed, many panic-attack sufferers doubt theirdiagnoses and think they have heart problems or other maladiesthat the doctors somehow missed. They often seek secondopinions—and third and fourth opinions. They may refuse tosee psychologists or psychiatrists. By the same token, whenenvironmental tests are negative, it is not uncommon for more

and more tests to be ordered, or different consultants hired.Negative or inconclusive results aren’t seen as evidence that thethreat is not there, but instead that the tests are faulty or thesample isn’t large enough. While those investigating should notgive up after a few tests do not reveal a cause (false negatives dooccur), the possibility of mass hysteria should be considered.

Under the right circumstances, any school can be the epi-center of an outbreak. Starpoint had developed a reputationfor being a “sick” school. The earlier outbreaks of mysteriousillness at Starpoint served as proof that there was something inthe school making kids sick and kept the issue alive. TheLockport incident occurred just a week after the Starpoint“mystery illness,” and the prominent newspaper and televisioncoverage which ensued.

It is important to trust the scientific evidence and not com-pound the problem with exotic, implausible theories that arenot supported by scientific investigations. Perhaps labelingoutbreaks as group anxiety or collective panic attacks wouldreduce the stigma and controversy that often accompaniesepisodes. Often, the illness and symptoms are real enough, butthe diagnosis is very wrong.

ReferencesAbramsky, Sasha. 2004. Memory and manipulation: The trials of Elizabeth

Loftus, defender of the wrongly accused. LA Weekly (August 20–26). Alligood, Leon. 2000. Anxiety caused illness at school, study finds. The

Tennessean (January 13). Available at www.tennessean.com/sii/00/01/13/hysteria13.shtml.

Bartholomew, Robert E. 2005. “Mystery illness” at Melbourne Airport: Toxicpoisoning or mass hysteria? Medical Journal of Australia 183(11/12):564–566.

Chopra, Paul S. 2005. Chopra-Lee test report NY412046. Issued December23, 2005.

Jones, T.F., A.S. Craig, D. Hoy, E.W. Gunter, D.L. Ashley, D.B. Barr, J.W.Brock, and W. Schaffner. 2000. Mass psychogenic illness attributed totoxic exposure at a high school. The New England Journal of Medicine342(2): 96–100.

Lindsay, Mark. 2005. A familiar situation at Starpoint. Lockport Journal(January 29).

Mosnews.com. 2005. War stress blamed for mystery ailment afflictingChechen children. December 30, 2005. Available at www.mosnews.com/news/2005/12/30/diagnos.shtml; accessed February 4, 2006.

Nemeth, Sarah. 2004a. Starpoint reopens, but with 308 absentees. LockportJournal (December 18).

Nemeth, Sarah. 2005b. Starpoint takes paper to task over story. LockportJournal (January 11).

Nemeth, Sarah. 2005c. A chemical link? Lockport Journal (January 10). Nemeth, Sarah. 2004d. Starpoint students complain about ammonia-like

smell. Lockport Journal (January 14).Nitzkin, Joel L. 1976. Epidemic transient situational disturbance in an ele-

mentary school. Journal of the Florida Medical Association 63: 357–359.Paine, Anne. 2000. Hysteria article angers Warren County residents. The

Tennessean (February 7): 1B.Rataemane, S.T., L.U.Z. Rataemane, and J. Mohlahle. 2002. “Mass hysteria

among learners at Mangaung schools in Bloemfontein, South Africa.International Journal of Psychosocial Rehabilitation 6: 61–67.

Robinson, P., M. Szewczyk, L. Haddy, P. Jones, and W. Harvey. 1984.Outbreak of itching and rash. Archives of Internal Medicine 144:1959–1962.

Shapiro, Mary. 2005. Rash causes Ridge Meadows to cancel classes.Chesterfield (Missouri) Journal (December 14): A1.

Showalter, Elaine. 1998. Hystories: Hysterical Epidemics and Modern Media.New York: Columbia University Press.

Spannagel, Brian. 2005. Smelly Waverly school given clean bill of health. TheWaterloo Cedar-Falls Courier (December 13).

Westmoore, Paul. 2005. Unusual weather conditions apparently led to ill-nesses. The Buffalo News (January 1). �

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B O O K R E V I E W S


Smart Scientists on IntelligentThought (If Not Design)

MATT YOUNG

Intelligent Thought: Science versus the Intelligent Design Movement. Edited by John Brockman. Vintage Books, New York, 2006. ISBN 0-30727-722-4. pp. Paperback, $14.

B O O K R E V I E W

Intelligent Thought is a collection ofsixteen essays by contributors to theonline magazine The Edge, and is

edited by the literary agent and authorJohn Brockman. Many of the chapterauthors are household names, at least inmy household: Richard Dawkins,Daniel Dennett, Tim White, StevenPinker. The topic is timely, and thebook is well written and well edited; theonly infelicity I can recall is an incorrectuse of the phrase, “begs the question.”

Why, then, can I muster only twocheers? In part, because the book is notwell organized and not entirely aboutintelligent design (ID) creationism; it isa collection of mostly unrelated essayspresented as unnumbered chapterswhose only connection is that they arebound in the same volume (and thatBrockman, wearing his literary agent’shat, represents some or all of theauthors). In addition, in a most seriousomission, the book has no index andmost chapters have no references—criti-cal parts of any nonfiction book.

The opening essay by Jerry Coyne isright on task: Coyne shows why ID cre-ationism is not scientific and distin-guishes between the “strong” and“weak” forms, that is, between what IDcreationists say to each other and whatthey say on the witness stand. Severalchapters later, Daniel Dennett explainshow the hoax (his word) of ID creation-ism is perpetrated, in part, by conflatingdesign with purpose. Coyne’s andDennett’s chapters are among the onlychapters in the book with literature cita-tions, though I thought each could havebeen beefed up considerably.

Richard Dawkins asks what we canlearn from the search for extraterrestrial

intelligence, or SETI. The chapter ram-bles a bit, but Dawkins makes the essen-tial point that an ETI would haveevolved by natural selection, whereas adeity (presumably) would not have;thus, ID creationism solves nothing,because it does not specify any of itsdesigner’s properties. Consequently,when we are looking for an ETI, we aretacitly looking for an entity withroughly human intelligence; when weare looking for the intelligent designer,we have no idea what we are looking for.

Although I have read a bit aboutDarwin and his famous voyage, histo-rian Frank Sulloway’s essay reallybrought home the fact that Darwin wasa creationist when he set out.Observations are theory-laden, andDarwin made serious errors, such as fail-ing to note on which island he had col-lected various specimens. The nonscien-tists on the ship made no such mistake.

Anthropologist Scott Atran’s essay,“Unintelligent Design,” notes sometruly unintelligent designs in nature andthen goes on to discuss religion. He didnot convince me that religion is notadaptive behavior simply by providingsome examples of rituals that are proba-bly not adaptive; religion, as such, maywell be adaptive, even if not all its ritu-als are. Like Atran, physicist Leonard

Matt Young is Senior Lecturer in Physicsat the Colorado School of Mines and, mostrecently, coeditor of Why IntelligentDesign Fails: A Scientific Critique of theNew Creationism. Copyright ©2007 byMatt Young.

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B O O K R E V I E W

Susskind ascribes religious belief in largepart to fear of death but, unlike Atran,argues briefly that it may be selected for.Susskind’s is one of the weakest essays inthe book, in part, because he documentsalmost nothing he claims. Susskind con-cludes, however, with the wise advice towrite off the “benighted zealots whowould prefer that intellectual historyhad ended in the fifteenth century” andtry to convince the majority.

Steven Pinker’s essay complementsAtran’s in a way, by showing that reli-gion need not hijack morality, and fur-ther, that morality is not inconsistentwith evolution and may well have a bio-logical origin.

Paleontologist Scott Sampson’s essay,“Evoliteracy,” gratuitously blamesreductionism for some of the ailments ofeducation and recommends that westructure the science curriculum aroundecology and evolution. PsychologistMarc Hauser decries blurring theboundaries between science and reli-gion, and argues for adding new coursesor new material on the history of a spe-cific science and on the relation betweenthat science and society. Both essaysoffer good recommendations that areunlikely to be implemented.

Tim White’s essay on human evolu-tion and Neil Shubin’s essay on the tran-sition from water to land suffered fromfar too much personal narrative. Biolo-gist Shubin makes the interesting pointthat existing fish have many adaptationsthat might enable their descendants tolive on land; tetrapods are interestingonly because they succeeded. Presum-ably, if they had not, another formwould have.

Lee Smolin, in “Darwinism All theWay Down,” to some extent plays intothe hands of the creationists by askingwhy the universe is improbably friendlyto life. Who says it is? His answer to thequestion depends on his plausible butunproven multiverse theory and theapplication of natural selection to theindividual universes in the multiverse.And quantum engineer Seth Lloyd’sarticle on the universe as a computer

also left me kind of cold. What mattersis not how many “computations” theuniverse is making but, in Mark Perakh’sterms, whether it can produce a mean-ingful message. Lloyd’s chapter never-theless had a nice section on WilliamDembski’s misuse of the no-free-lunchtheorems.

Theoretical physicist Lisa Randalltakes a very conventional look at evolu-tion but discusses problems with termi-nology, for example, the use of the wordtheory by scientists as opposed to layper-sons. Stuart Kauffman discussespreadaptations (exaptations) and theimpossibility of predicting the path ofevolution to argue unconvincinglyagainst both reductionism and ID cre-ationism; he further states incorrectlythat ID creationism predicts that in nocase will an intermediate form be found.The rest of the essay pleads for a mar-riage between natural selection and self-organization, Kauffman’s specialty, butdoes not clearly relate to ID creationism.Finally, in an especially weak chapter,Nicholas Humphrey writes about theevolution of consciousness, noting thatconsciousness seems otherworldly andasking why ID creationists have notseized on consciousness with a Paley-likeanalogy. I thought that his chapter inparticular suffered from a lack of docu-mentation and did not find it convinc-ing, possibly because neither Humphreynor I have the foggiest idea what con-sciousness is.

The book concludes with an excerptfrom Judge John Jones’s decision in theKitzmiller case. If I wanted to be unkind,I might deduce that the book’s majorpurpose was to appear while the buzzfrom Kitzmiller was still audible. Thebook is both good and original, but a lotof it is not devoted to ID creationismnor even to evolutionary biology ordescent with modification. It is a hodge-podge with no real structure and no realpoint: a good beginning in Coyne’schapter but then no coherent body andno conclusion. Read it, but do notexpect it to be a serious blow against IDcreationism. �

ReferencesAlley, J. Robert. 2003. Raincoast Sasquatch. Surry,

B.C.: Hancock House.Bord, Janet, and Colin Bord. 1982. The Bigfoot

Casebook. Harrisburg, Penn.: Stackpole Books.Cahill, Adrianna. 2006. Interview by Joe Nickell,

May 30.Cohen, Daniel. 1982. The Encyclopedia of

Monsters. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co.Coleman, Loren, and Jerome Clark. 1999.

Cryptozoology A to Z. New York: Fireside.Colombo, John Robert. 1988. Mysterious

Canada. Toronto: Doubleday CanadaLimited.

Daegling, David J. 2004. Bigfoot Exposed: AnAnthropologist Examines America’s EnduringLegend. Walnut Creek, California: AltaMiraPress.

Dennett, Michael. 1982. Bigfoot jokester revealspunchline—finally. SKEPTICAL INQUIRER 13:3(Spring), 266–267.

Graff, Terry. 2006. Quoted in “Eyewitness comesforward with possible Caddy report,”BCSCC Quarterly No. 60 (publ. of BritishColumbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club,winter, 3).

Green, John. 1978. Sasquatch: The Apes Among Us.Saanichton, B.C.: Hancock House.

Hunter, Don, with René Dahinden. 1993.Sasquatch/Bigfoot: The Search for NorthAmerica’s Incredible Creature. Toronto:McClelland & Stewart.

Kane, Paul. 1847. Journal entry for March 26,quoted in Hunter 1993, 17–18.

Long, Greg. 2004. The Making of Bigfoot. Buffalo,N.Y.: Prometheus Books.

Napier, John. 1973. Bigfoot: The Yeti andSasquatch—Myth and Reality. New York: E.P.Dutton & Co.

Nickell, Joe. 1997. Extraterrestrial iconography.SKEPTICAL INQUIRER 21:5 (September/October), 18–19.

———. 2006. The Ogopogo expedition. InRadford and Nickell 2006, 111–120.

Patterson, Roger. 1966. Do Abominable Snowmenof America Really Exist? Yakima, Washington:Franklin Press.

Radford, Benjamin, and Joe Nickell. 2006. LakeMonster Mysteries: Investigating the World’sMost Elusive Creatures. Lexington, Kentucky:University Press of Kentucky.

Radford, Benjamin. 2006. Please pass the globster.SKEPTICAL INQUIRER 30:4 (July/Aug.), 25.

Shuker, Karl P.N. 1996. The Unexplained: AnIllustrated Guide to the World’s Natural andParanormal Mysteries. North Dighton, Mass.:JG Press.

Stein, Gordon, ed. 1993. Encyclopedia of Hoaxes.Detroit: Gale Research.

Thompson, David. 1811. Daily journal, quoted inHunter 1993, 16–17.

Welfare, Simon, and John Fairley. 1980. Arthur C.Clarke’s Mysterious World. New York: A & WVisual Library. �

MYSTERIOUS ENTITIES OF THEPACIFIC NORTHWEST, PART I

Continued from page 22

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N E W B O O K S

Listing does not preclude future review.

CHALLENGING NATURE: TheClash of Science and Spirit-uality at the New Frontiersof Life. Lee M. Silver.HarperCollins, New York.2006. 444 pp. Hardcover,$26.95. A provocative look atthe collision of science, reli-gion, pseudoscience, andpolitics surrounding biotech-nology. Molecular biologist

Lee Silver (Princeton University), a hands-on scientistwho has actually manipulated genes, here leaves thecloistered laboratory to explore a world of humanitywhose worldview is dominated by soul and spirits. Howdoes science proceed within that cultural context? Silveris a thoughtful advocate of biotechnology, pointing outthat it is not a new process but is the best hope for pre-serving and protecting wilderness and wildlife—whilefeeding humankind. Our best hope, he says, comes notfrom banning biotechnology but from embracing it andguiding it.

DARE TO QUESTION: AnAnalysis of Christianity’sParadoxes and Enigmas.Jack Perrine. Inner CirclePublishing. 2004. 436 pp.Softcover, $21.95. An exami-nation of the many conceptsof Christianity that defycommon sense or lead toparadoxical conclusions.Perrine scrutinizes more

than a hundred myths and miraculous claims based onassertions of divine inspiration whose sources havegone through numerous translations, transcriptions,and interpretations. Written to identify problemsinvolving classical interpretations and to offer alterna-tive points of view, the book’s objective is to encourageobjective thinking.

DNA: How the BiotechRevolution Is Changing theWay We Fight Disease.Frank H. Stephenson.Foreword by Herbert Boyer.Prometheus Books, Am-herst, N.Y. 2006. 300 pp.Hardcover, $26. From heartdisease to AIDS, cancer, anddiabetes, biochemist and labresearcher Frank Stephen-

son tells the story of how the tools of biotechnology(e.g. monoclonal antibodies, antisense, RNA interfer-ence, gene therapy, cloning, nuclear transfer, and stemcells) are being used to combat our most commonafflictions. A primer on the biotechnology revolutionfor the layperson.

THE EVOLVING BRAIN: The Known and the Unknown.R. Grant Steen. Prometheus Books, Amherst, N.Y. 2006.394 pp. Hardcover, $28. With 100 billion neurons, eachof which makes perhaps 10,000 synapses, the humanbrain is arguably the most complex object known.What do scientists know about how this amazingly

complex organ functions? Adistinguished neurophysiol-ogist (University of NorthCarolina School of Medicine)here provides a crash courseon how the brain works.Topics include consciousness,unconsciousness, and braindeath; learning, memory,and the role of genes; moti-vation, aggression, and emo-

tions; and the plasticity of the growing brain. Steenalso delves into such questions as: Where does creativ-ity come from? What is personality? Can we distinguishbetween brain and soul?

FOLLIES OF SCIENCE:Twentieth Century Vi-sions of Our FantasticFuture. Eric Dregni andJonathan Dregni. SpeckPress, Denver, Colorado.2006. 128 pp. Softcover,$19. We didn’t get jet-

packs and personal-servant robots, but we did get someof the early twentieth century’s futuristic utopian plansfor your home and lifestyle. A visual delight, this bookreproduces in glossy color dozens of imaginative andspeculative cover and inside illustrations from science-fiction magazines and publications such as PopularMechanics and its predecessors that tried, not alwayssuccessfully, to envision the future we now live in.

PROMETHEAN LOVE: PaulKurtz and the HumanistPerspective on Love. Editedby Timothy J. Madigan.Cambridge Scholars Press,Newcastle-upon-Tyne, NE52JA, U.K. 372 pp. Hardcover,U.S. $69.99; U.K. £34.99. Acollection of essays by num-erous scholars, growing outof a conference on “the phi-

losophy of love.” Special emphasis is given to the workand writings of philosopher Paul Kurtz, described asthe foremost contemporary defender of humanism as aworldview.

SASQUATCH: LegendMeets Science. JeffMeldrum. Forge/TomDoherty Associates,New York. 2006. 297pp. Hardcover, $27.95.Meldrum was part of ateam assembled for aDiscovery Channel doc-

umentary on the Sasquatch question. An associate pro-fessor of anatomy and anthropology at Idaho StateUniversity, he examines evidence involving soundrecordings, films, photos, skin-ridge impressions, andplaster casts. Don’t expect debunking here. The tone isserious and respectful of Bigfoot claims, while claimingto be “the definitive summation” of the subject.

WARPED PASSAGES: Unraveling the Mysteries of theUniverse’s Hidden Dimensions. Lisa Randall. Harper

Perennial, New York. 2006.500 pp. Softcover, $15.95. Adistinguished young profes-sor of physics and leadingexpert on particle physics,string theory, and cosmology(her research of the past fiveyears is the most cited of anyphysicist in the world) herepresents a readable inquiryinto the idea that there may

be an extra dimension, in fact another universe, just afew inches away. She explores a raft of new conceptsincluding parallel universes, warped geometry, andthree-dimensional sink-holes. This is in part her ownstory of how she found herself immersed in these multi-dimensional topics and in part a story of particle physicsand string theory, including the kinds of problems thatextra dimensions might solve and the questions that areleft wide open.

WORLDS OF THEIR OWN:Insights into Pseudosciencefrom Creationism to the EndTimes. Robert Schadewald.SangFroid Press, Excelsior,Minnesota (www.sangfroid-press.com). 2006. 240 pp.Hardcover, $22.95. An an-thology of essays and articlespresents a writer-investiga-tor’s lifetime of research into

what we might call crank science: why some peopleextend their view of reality beyond factual evidence ordeny common reality and create their own. Some of thetopics: creationist propaganda methods, flat-Earthbeliefs today, the end of the world, ImmanuelVelikovsky’s final interview, religious dogma versus sci-ence, science versus pseudoscience, how to see a per-petual-motion hoax, and a skeptical view of alternativeenergy. The writings bear Schadewald’s unique stamp,combining skepticism, broad knowledge, interests inthe idiosyncratic (e.g., hollow-Earth claims), wit andhumor, and, as CSICOP Fellow John W. Patterson pointsout in the introduction, “a uniquely personal, oftenempathetic manner….”

—Kendrick Frazier

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NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2006 (vol. 30, no. 6): Specialissue: Science + Art: The humanities and human nature,Pinker / Why we read fiction, Zunshine / View masters,Livingstone and Conway / Nature is nowhere rectangu-lar, Tufte / String theory, Pickover / Sound: Not as sim-ple as it sounds—An interview with Joshua Fineberg,Dacey / Creativity versus skepticism, Ramachandran /Special Report: Shame on shamus sham, Nickell / Siegeof “little green men”: The 1955 Kelly, Kentucky, inci-dent, Nickell.

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2006 (vol. 30, no. 5): Science andthe public: Summing up thirty years of the SKEPTICAL

INQUIRER, Kurtz / Predator panic: A closerlook, Radford / The bloodless fish ofBouvet Island: DNA and evolution inaction, Carroll / The neural substratesof moral, religious, and paranormalbeliefs, Spinella and Wain / Scienceain’t an exact science: Public perceptionof science in the wake of the stem-cellfraud, Koepsell / Can Jim Berkland pre-dict earthquakes?, Hunter / Name drop-ping, Plait / Ghost hunters, Nickell.

JULY/AUGUST 2006 (vol. 30, no. 4):Magnet therapy: A billion-dollar boon-doggle, Flamm / The philosophy behindpseudoscience, Bunge / Why quantummechanics is not so weird after all,Quincey / Science is for sale (and it’s notonly for the money), Levi / Why great thinkers some-times fail to think critically, Bensley / Riddle of the crys-tal skulls, Nickell.

MAY/JUNE 2006 (vol. 30, no. 3): Special feature: FromSETI to Astrobiology: Reassessment and Update—FourViews: SETI requires a skeptical reappraisal, Schenkel /The cosmic haystack is large, Tarter / Astrobiology is thenew modern framework encompassing SETI . . . and somuch else, Morrison / The new approach to SETI is fromthe bottom up, rather than the top down, Darling /Teaching pigs to sing, Hall / The real sword in the stone,Garlaschelli / Why scientists shouldn’t be surprised bythe popularity of intelligent design, Lilienfeld /“Curing” ADHD, Bowd / The PEAR proposition: Fact orfallacy?, Jeffers / The “new” idolatry, Nickell.

MARCH/APRIL 2006 (vol. 30, no. 2): Hoaxers, hackers, andpolicy makers, Meinel / Critical thinking: What is it goodfor? (In fact, what is it?), Gabennesch / The big bird, thebig lie, God, and science, Neimark / The memory wars,parts 2 and 3, Gardner / Research review: Commentary onJohn P.A. Ioannidis’s “Why most published research find-ings are false,” Hyman / Argentina Mysteries, Nickell.

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2006 (vol. 30, no. 1): The memorywars, Part 1, Gardner / Why did they bury Darwin inWestminster Abbey, Weyant / Paranormal beliefs: Ananalysis of college students, Farha and Steward /Ogopogo the Chameleon, Radford / The ethics of inves-tigation, Koepsell / What “they” don’t want you toknow: An analysis of Kevin Trudeau’s Natural Curesinfomercial, Barrett / Conference report: The First Ibero-American Conference on Critical Thinking, Radford /Ogopogo: The Lake Okanagan monster, Nickell.

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2005 (vol. 29, no. 6): Specialissue: Evolution and the ID Wars: Does irreducible com-plexity imply Intelligent Design? Perakh / Only a the-ory?, Morrison / The Intelligent Designer, Rothchild /Why scientists get so angry when dealing with ID pro-ponents, Rosenhouse / The pope and I, Krauss / Endlessforms most beautiful, Carroll / Obfuscating biologicalevolution, Shneour / Harris Poll explores beliefs aboutevolution, creationism, and Intelligent Design / Specialreport: Skeptics and TV news expose ‘Magnetic waterconditioner,’ Thomas / Conference report: Developingperspectives on anomalous experiences, Santomauro /Legends of castles and keeps, Nickell.

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2004 (vol. 29, no. 5): Special fea-ture: Einstein and the World Year of Physics: We canstill learn lessons from Einstein’s watershed year,Bennett / The twin paradox, Thomas / Special Relativityafter 100 years, Geohegan / Obesity: Epidemic ormyth?, Johnson / The elixir of life, Baarschers / The godof Eth, Law / Palm readers, stargazers, and scientists,Miller and Balcetis / Beware of quacks at the WHO,Renckens, Schoepen, and Betz / Mystical Experiences,Nickell / Italy’s ‘miracle’ relics, Nickell.

JULY/AUGUST 2005 (vol. 29, no. 4): Carl Sagan takesquestions / The great turning away, Druyan / How doyou solve a problem like a (Fritjof) Capra?, Guttman /Fakers and innocents, Randi / What should we do withskepticism?, Borgo / Special report: Voodoo science andvoodoo politics in Florida, Martinez / The case of the‘psychic detectives,’ Nickell.

MAY/JUNE 2005 (vol. 29, no. 3): Special feature: Testing“The girl with x-ray eyes”: Testing Natasha, Hyman;Natasha Demkina: The girl with normal eyes, Skolnick /Psychic swindlers, Davis / Getting the monkey off

Darwin's back, Sullivan and Smith / ThePsychologist, the Philosopher, and theLibrarian, Matthies / Invited commen-tary: Brains, biology, science, and skepti-cism, Tavris / Special report: JohnnyCarson Remembered, Randi / Specialreport: Claims of invalid “shroud” radio-carbon date cut from whole cloth,Nickell / Special report: Rebuttal to JoeNickell, Rogers / Second sight: The phe-nomenon of eyeless vision, Nickell.

MARCH/APRIL 2005 (vol. 29, no. 2): Onelongsome argument, Trumble / Moonshine:Why the peppered moth remains an icon ofevolution, Young and Musgrave / Hyperbolein media reports on asteroids and impacts,Morrison / Ringing false alarms: Skepticism

and media scares, Radford / The glaring garret ghost, Durm/ Scientists and the election, Estling / Comforting thoughtsabout death that have nothing to do with God, Christina /Intuition: The case of the unknown daughter, Nickell.

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2005 (vol. 29, no. 1): Critical thinkingabout energy: The case for decentralized generation of elec-tricity, Casten and Downes / Exploring controversies in the artand science of polygraph testing, Ruscio / A Nobel laureateconfronts pseudoscience: Demagogues against scientificexpertise & Brave thoughts are still not the truth, Ginzburg /Natural medicine: Will that be a pill or a needle?, Baarschers/ Mystery painting: The shadow of the cross, Nickell.

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2004 (vol. 28, no. 6): Bacteria,ulcers, and ostracism? H. Pylori and the making of a myth,Atwood / Science and the public, Dacey / Why SETI is sci-ence and UFOlogy is not, Moldwin / Blind spots, brainmaps, and backaches, Hall / Stupid dino tricks, Martinez /Explaining the plagues of Egypt, Lee / Special Report:Senate Intelligence Committee highlights need for skepti-cal inquiry, Radford / Rorschach icons,Nickell.

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2004 (vol. 28, no. 5):Can the sciences help us to make wise ethi-cal judgments?, Kurtz / The ColumbiaUniversity ‘miracle’ study: Flawed and fraud,Flamm / ‘Teach the controversy,’ Camp / TheCampeche, Mexico ‘infrared UFO’ video,Sheaffer / The anthropic principle and theBig Bang: Natural or supernatural?, Perakh /Alternative medicine and the biologydepartments of New York’s community col-leges, Reiser / Labyrinths: Mazes and myths,Radford / Ships of the dead, Nickell.

JULY/AUGUST 2004 (vol. 28, no. 4): Capitalpunishment and homicide, Goertzel /Defending science—within reason, Haack /Exposing Roger Patterson’s 1967 Bigfoot film hoax, Korffand Kocis / Pranks, frauds, and hoaxes from around theworld, Carroll / Seeing the world through rose-coloredglasses, Bowd and O’Sullivan / Special report: PBS ‘Secretsof the Dead’ buries the truth about the Shroud of Turin,Nickell / Mythical Mexico, Nickell.

MAY/JUNE 2004 (vol. 28, no. 3): Darkness, tunnels andlight, Woerlee / Nurturing suspicion, Mole / The Cold War’sclassified Skyhook program, Gildenberg / The strangeodyssey of Brenda Dunne, Stokes / Bridging the chasmbetween two cultures, McLaren / I am Freud’s brain, Garryand Loftus / ‘Visions’ behind The Passion, Nickell / Belgiumskeptics commit mass suicide, Bonneux / Psychic sleuthwithout a clue, Nickell.

MARCH/APRIL 2004 (vol. 28, no. 2): Special Issue: Science andReligion 2004: Turmoil and Tensions. Why is religion nat-ural? Boyer / Skeptical inquiry and religion, Kurtz / Exorcisingall the ghosts, Edis / The roles of religion, spirituality, and

genetics in paranormal beliefs, Kennedy / Development ofbeliefs in paranormal and supernatural phenomena,Whittle / Religious beliefs and their consequences, Layng /Secularization: Europe yes, United States no, Zuckerman /Not too ‘bright,’ Mooney / Point of honor: On science andreligion, Haack / Benjamin Franklin’s Enlightenment deism,Isaacson / In praise of Ray Hyman, Alcock / Hoaxes, myths,and manias (report on the Albuquerque conference),Frazier / The stigmata of Lilian Bernas, Nickell.

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2004 (vol. 28., no. 1): Anti-vaccina-tion fever, Hoyt / Skepticism of caricatures, Gaynor /Fallacies and frustrations, Mole / Judging authority, Lipps /A geologist’s adventures with Bimini beachrock andAtlantis true believers, Shinn / The real method of scientificdiscovery, Guttman / Oxygen is good—even when it’s notthere, Hall / Contemporary challenges to William James’swhite crow, Spitz / UFOs over Buffalo!, Nickell.

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2003 (vol. 27, no. 6): AnnDruyan talks about science, religion, wonder, awe, andCarl Sagan, Druyan / Less about appearances: Art andscience, Nowlin / King of the paranormal, Mooney /Sylvia Browne, Farha / Neither intelligent nor designed,Martin / Fellowship of the rings: UFO rings vs. fairyrings, Nieves-Rivera / The curse of Bodie, Nickell.

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2003 (vol. 27, no. 5): The ongoingproblem with the National Center for Complementaryand Alternative Medicine, Atwood / What does educa-tion really do?, Losh, Tavani, Njoroge, Wilke, andMcAuley / Nostradamus’s clever ‘clairvoyance’, Yafeh andHeath / They see dead people—Or do they?, Underdown/ Energy, homeopathy, and hypnosis in Santa Fe, Seavey /Faking UFO photos for the twenty-first century, Callen /Haunted plantation, Nickell.

JULY/AUGUST 2003 (vol. 27, no. 4): Special Report:Chasing Champ: Legend of the Lake Champlain mon-ster, Nickell / The measure of a monster, Radford / TheRorschach inkblot test, fortune tellers, and cold read-ing, Wood, Nezworski, Lilienfeld, and Garb / Can mindsleave bodies?, Bensley / Memory recovery techniques inpsychotherapy, Lynn, Loftus, Lilienfeld, and Lock.

MAY/JUNE 2003 (vol. 27, no. 3): The Luck Factor, Wise-man / More hazards: Hypnosis, airplanes, and stronglyheld beliefs, Pankratz / ‘Premenstrual dysphoric disorder’and ‘premenstrual syndrome’ myths, Flora and Sellers / Apatently false patent myth—still!, Sass / Wired to thekitchen sink, Hall / Mediumship claim responses,Schwartz and Hyman / Dowsing mysterious sites, Nickell.

MARCH/APRIL 2003 (vol. 27, no. 2): The Blank Slate,Pinker / Omission neglect: The importance of missinginformation, Kardes and Sanbonmatsu / Acupuncture,magic, and make-believe, Ulett / Walt Whitman, Sloan/ The James Ossuary, Nickell.

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2003 (vol. 27, no. 1): How not totest mediums, Hyman / Beliefs on trial, and the legality ofreasonableness, Fisher / Placebos, nocebos, and chiro-practic adjustments, Homola / Pliny the Elder: Credulist,skeptic, or both?, Parejko / Unfazed: Mark Twain

debunks the mesmerizer, Englebretsen /Amityville Horror, Nickell.

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2002 (vol. 26, no.6): Politicizing the Virgin Mary, Eve /Hypothesis testing and the nature ofskeptical investigations, Pigliucci /Intelligent design: Dembski’s presentationwithout arguments, Perakh / HugoGernsback, skeptical crusader, Miller /Alternative medicine and pseudoscience,Mornstein / Are skeptics cynical?, Mole /Psychic pets and pet psychics, Nickell.

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2002 (vol. 26, no. 5):Special Report: Circular Reasoning: The‘mystery’ of crop circles and their ‘orbs’ oflight, Nickell, Fourth World Skeptics

Conference Report / A skeptical look at September 11th,Chapman and Harris / Sheldrake’s Crystals, van Genderen,Koene and Nienhuys / Teaching skepticism via the CRITICacronym, Bartz / Skepticism under the big sky, Schwinden,Engbrecht, Mercer and Patterson / Why was The X-Files soappealing?, Goode / Winchester mystery house, Nickell.

JULY/AUGUST 2002 (vol. 26, no. 4): Special Report: Al-ternative medicine and the White House commission,Gorski, London / Special Section: Science and pseudo-science in Russia, Kurtz, Efremov, Kruglyakov / Whoabused Jane Doe? Part 2, Loftus and Guyer / The highcost of skepticism, Tavris / Graham Hancock’s shifting cat-aclysm, Brass / The Mad Gasser of Mattoon, Ladendorfand Bartholomew / Moscow mysteries, Nickell.

For a complete listing of our back issues, call 800-634-1610,or see http://www.csicop.org/si/back-issues.html.

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SI J-F 2007 pgs 11/13/06 11:42 AM

F O R U M


Bigfoot, Pluto, and ?CHRIS VOLKAY

First, Bigfoot disappeared. Thefamily of the gentleman who per-petrated a major hoax came for-

ward after his death. No Bigfoot, just aguy stomping around in the woods withfake feet.

Then, recently, scientists took a voteand decided that poor, enfeebled, littlePluto, which always had trouble takingcare of itself in the schoolyard, wasgoing to be victimized once again anddemoted to the status of non-planet.Sort of like a nonperson.

It gets one to thinking. Don’t thesethings seem to always come in threes,like celebrity deaths? First one, then twocelebrities die, and then the death watchgoes up all across the nation, waiting forthe trifecta to be completed. Who will itbe? Tune in to Extra!

As we wait for the third shoe to dropin the Bigfoot, Pluto evisceration lin-eage, I’m offering one up now. Gee,there are so many to choose from . . .believe me, it was one of the hardestchoices I’ve ever had to make.

Why don’t we pick the biggest one?Sure, some people believed in Bigfootand most that Pluto was a planet, butwhich is the most universal, the mostpowerful, the most consequential, andconversely, the most patently false?

Now hear me out, please, just hearme out before you ignite the torches andsharpen the pitchforks. I was going tosay werewolves, because really, likeBigfoot, there isn’t much evidence for

their existence either. But you knowwhat? Werewolves don’t pass the test ofbeing consequential enough. Hmm,what could complete the trio?

How about the gods? Not ours, but

those of the other guys. We all know thattheir gods are false. Just made-up fan-tasies and delusions about this and that.Rivers of this and virgins of that—oh,please, come on! And look at all thedamage they do. Those who believe inan afterlife and its rewards can and willdo anything. And the Hindus andBuddhists with their reincarnation.Again, oh, come on.

While I’m sporting this most modestof all proposals, just think of the ramifi-cations. Think of the incalculable liveswe would save. If we could eliminate the

religious insanity, what person would flya plane into a building, or blow himselfup in a pizza parlor? We could eliminateso much hatred, so much division, somuch rage. Instead of turning people

into soldiers, we could make them intocitizens, human beings.

They would have to give up theirnotions of reincarnation and the like,but think of the benefits. People actuallyliving here and now, in this life. Thinkhow much stronger they would be.Instead of simply existing until deathmercifully whisks them away from thisveil of crocodile tears, they would beforced to actually seize the reins of their

Chris Volkay contemplates the demise ofthe gods from Glendale, California.

If we could eliminate religious

insanity, what person would fly

a plane into a building, or blow himself

up in a pizza parlor?

SI J-F 2007 pgs 11/13/06 11:43 AM


F O R U M

lives and make the best they could ofthem right here and now.

Revolutionary? Yes, yes, I like this ideabetter than the werewolves. Besides, thereis so much more evidence for the exis-

tence of werewolves than for that of theseimagined gods of the other guys. I meancome on, aren’t their gods just their ownfantasy creations to help them weatherthe storms of a short, nasty, and brutal

life? All thinking people know it’s true.Oh, but wait, wait a sec. There’s

another test, a measuring stick, thatneeds to be brought to bear here. Damn.

We’ve got to include diversity, fair-ness, and equality, if we are to call our-selves truly fair, American. Gee . . . tothat end, we’re going to have to put ourown god on the pyre along with theothers. I mean, we can’t possibly askthem to abandon their phony godsunless we are ready to relegate our owngod to the round file as well. Painful asit is, it is something that simply must bedone. After all, they would immediatelypoint out that our god is just as, well,how does one put this tactfully, aswhimsical as theirs.

There you have it. Bigfoot, darlinglittle Pluto, and god—all gods. If this ishow the current spate of debunkingplays out, it would be a consummationdevoutly to be wished for, as humanity,for the first time in its history, wouldfinally be on the path to maturity. �

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This undated image taken by the Hubble telescope shows Pluto and its moons: Charon, Nix, andHydra. The International Astronomical Union announced on August 24, 2006, that it no longer con-siders Pluto a planet, a status it has held since its discovery in 1930. The announcement reduces thesolar system from nine planets to eight.

SI J-F 2007 pgs 11/13/06 11:43 AM


L E T T E R S T O T H E E D I T O R

The SKEPTICAL INQUIRER’sThirty Pioneering Years

Paul Kurtz’s review of the pioneering years ofthe SKEPTICAL INQUIRER (September/October2006) reminds us all of the positive impactCSICOP has had in establishing an effectiveantidote to runaway irrationalism and non-sense in our society and, indeed, the world.

Before 1976, I had to search long and hardfor books by reliable yet readable authors whocould explain why various theories were erro-neous. Aside from Klass, Menzel, and Saganon UFO claims, I found books by JosephJastrow and Martin Gardner helpful forclaims in the soft sciences. But that’s about allthat existed for the general reader. Then, inthe Spring/Summer 1977 issue of The Zetetic,I found Ray Hyman’s “‘Cold Reading’: Howto Convince Strangers You Know All aboutThem,” after which the pace of my liberationfrom gullibility increased, knowing that simi-lar articles exposing many other types of bunkthe establishment avoided confronting weresure to appear.

Aside from offering reliable knowledgeon fringe subjects, CSICOP and SI havepromoted the values of responsibility andleadership, much like parents should,because the use of science and scientific rea-soning are fundamental in explaining whyideas may be useful or useless. True, discus-sion of Santa Claus-like beliefs is more likelyto attract an audience, but developing com-mon sense and healthy skepticism is far morepractical for us all in the long run, even if itmay be less enjoyable at first.

Moreover, the involvement of like-minded scientists and investigators world-wide ought to increase the chances of long-

range survival of what CSICOP pioneershave established these past thirty years.

Effective public education in science andscientific reasoning requires consistent lead-ership across the ages. And as U.S. PresidentHarry S. Truman once stated, “Leadership isthe art of persuading people to do what theyshould have done in the first place.”

E.A. KralWilber, Nebraska

As a subscriber to the SKEPTICAL INQUIRER

and Free Inquiry over the years, and as a fanof CSICOP, I have been vaguely aware of theimpact you have had in propagating anddefending skeptical humanism.

However, in reading Paul Kurtz’s recentessay, “Science and the Public: Summing UpThirty Years of the SKEPTICAL INQUIRER,” itdawned on me what a truly amazing job youand your fellow humanists/skeptics haveaccomplished during the past generation.

We are now living in an age in which reli-gion is not only growing in political influenceworldwide but threatens to usher in anotherepoch of “holy wars.” That our current pres-ident believes he decries on the horizon athird “great awakening” of his own faith,while urging Americans to fight “Islamo-fascists” worldwide, does not bode well.

I suppose these dire developments mighttempt one to question the influence of theskeptical-humanist movement. But I thinkthat there are many skeptics, as well as mod-erate believers, who take heart from thecalm, rational, and humanistic voice of theskeptics led by people like you.

As a retired college professor in a statebristling with religious zealots, but which alsocontains a strong countervailing movementamong both believers and nonbelievers, I amhopeful that the spirit of the Enlightenmentwill hold the fanatics in check. And I amhopeful in part because of the influence ofyour organization. My wife and I havedecided to change our will to include theNew Future Fund as a beneficiary.

Keep up the good fight!

Chandler DavidsonRadoslav Tsanoff Professor of

Public Policy EmeritusRice UniversityHouston, Texas

This letter is inspired by every article pub-lished in the SKEPTICAL INQUIRER. SI is agod-send (sic) in this age of bunkum, super-stition, and wishful thinking. Its rational

message needs to be spread. Let us eachinduce our local libraries to subscribe to thisjournal. My personal score to date is twolibraries: one in Virginia and one in Florida.

Shipmates, spread the word.

Leo Shatin(Professor of Clinical

Psychiatry, retired, MountSinai School of Medicine)

Boca Raton, Florida

Professor Kurtz submitted that theSKEPTICAL INQUIRER and CSICOP shouldinvestigate other kinds of intellectually chal-lenging and controversial claims, includingbiogenetic engineering, religion, economics,ethics, and politics. While the topics of inter-est to readers will naturally change over time,I hope that SI does not broaden so much asto lose its core.

I have read SI for over four years now, andI subscribed (and still do) chiefly for the sci-entific investigations, news and discussions onfringe/pseudoscience claims and the so-calledparanormal, and the science-religion debate. Isee this core as what makes SI a distinct mag-azine worth subscribing overseas for. If I wantto read an intelligent scrutinizing of bio-genetic engineering, religion, economics,ethics, or politics, I can buy New Scientist, TheHumanist, The Economist, The Philosopher’sMagazine, or Prospect, respectively. I am surereaders can think of other magazines, newspa-pers, journals, etc. that cover those topics aswell. However, from the ones I can think of,they hardly cover any of what I regard as thecore SI content, and certainly not to the samedepth and quality of analysis. Where elsecould you read anything like Joe Nickell’s bril-liant “Investigative Files”?

Keep up the good work.

Glyn BradleyCheshireUnited Kingdom

I want to assure Mr. Bradley and other readersthat SI’s gradual “broadening,” which has beengoing on for years, will not be at the expense ofour “core” topics, where we have—and intend tomaintain—a unique niche.—K. Frazier, Editor

Three comments on Paul Kurtz’s summingup of thirty years of CSICOP battling astrol-ogy. (1) The Mars effect is said to be mostlikely due to “biased data selection by theGauquelins.” But as pointed out in myreanalysis in the May/June 2002 SKEPTICAL

INQUIRER, the Mars effect may be a social

SI J-F 2007 pgs 11/13/06 11:43 AM



effect with no need of appeals to data selec-tion. I concluded that “data selection andfraud can be rejected because Gauquelincould hardly be selective or fraudulent aboutsocial effects he was unaware of.” (2) CSI-COP is said to have “encouraged” my tests ofastrology, implying that without CSICOP,little would have happened. True, my articleshave always received unfailing courtesy andconsideration from SI’s editors, but much ofmy more important work was finished wellbefore CSICOP began. The real encourage-ment has come from associates on both sidesof the skeptical divide who are still support-ive and wonderfully argumentative afternearly thirty years of joint endeavor. (3) Myresults were “invariably negative” only in thesense that no useful effect sizes were found.

Also, the claimed truth of astrology isreadily explained by the same cognitivebiases that underlie proven invalid ap-proaches such as phrenology. Unfortunately,this obscures the genuine role that astrologycan play as an aid to counseling withoutitself needing to be true. You can find moreon this at www.astrology-and-science.com.

Geoffrey DeanCSICOP FellowPerth, Western AustraliaAustralia

Cheers for Predator Panic

The article, “Predator Panic: A CloserLook,” by Benjamin Radford in theSeptember/October 2007 SKEPTICAL IN-QUIRER was excellent, thought-provoking,and long overdue. It seems that a certaingroup of people is getting a great deal ofmileage out of this overblown fear of “sexoffenders” or “sexual predators” . . . and inmy opinion, that group is none other thanlaw enforcement.

With no real criteria of what separates thereal sexual predators, those who commit vio-lent offenses against children, such as murder,kidnapping, rape, sodomy, etc., from thosewho may be have committed mild misde-meanors such as “flashing,” or “touching”(just an accidental brushing of the handagainst the wrong “private part” can do thesedays), more so-called “sex offenders” will con-tinue to be arrested, tried by biased courts,convicted, and sentenced to long prison termsmeant only for the serious violent offenders.How locking up such innocent parties is “pro-tecting the children” is a mystery.

While locking up more people for ques-tionable “offenses” may make police detec-

tives, prosecutors, and “tough-on-crime”judges happy—not to mention prison con-tractors and employees—it hardly serves theinterests of society at large. Nor, as the arti-cle correctly points out, does such fear mon-gering by the media and law enforcementofficials serve its original purpose, which isprotecting the children.

I hope the SKEPTICAL INQUIRER will do afollow-up article on the “Predator Panic”soon, one which addresses the importance ofdistinguishing between serious sex offensesand lesser offenses, which cause no physicalinjury to a child and where no physicalinjury was even intended. Obviously, ourlaw-enforcement officials need a reminder.

In the current environment of fear, manyparents, grandparents, uncles, and familyfriends are nervous and even afraid to showphysical affection to children in public oreven in private, for fear it will be misinter-preted by someone. Things parents, grand-parents, uncles, and family friends once usedto do all the time with kids, such as rough-housing, tickling, swinging them around forrides, or giving them piggyback rides, are fastbecoming less common. Not too many wantto risk getting the accusing finger pointed atthem simply because a child’s or adult’s handmay accidentally touch the wrong “privatepart” by mistake. How denying physicalaffection to children is supposed to “protect”them is also unclear.

Many thanks again to the SKEPTICAL

INQUIRER for having the courage and theintelligence to publish this article and toRadford for writing it. As far as I’m con-cerned, “Predator Panic” should be read byevery “lawmaker” across the nation, and byevery citizen of this country who may oneday serve as a juror. Jurors who make deci-sions based on intelligent reasoning ratherthan fear and ignorance may be far morelikely to think twice before convicting aninnocent person on nonexistent “facts” andflimsy excuses for “evidence.” At least, onecan hope so.

Susan S. LevineDale City, Virginia

Thank you so much for your article on sex-offender hysteria. I would like to point outyet another way that this threat is exagger-ated and the panic is amplified. In manyU.S. states, “sex-offender” crime statisticsinclude people who have committed consen-sual sex crimes, such as prostitutes and theircustomers. (It’s not just conservative “red”states, either—California is one of them.)

People may disapprove of these activities.They may even believe the activities shouldbe illegal. But they are almost certainly notwhat people have in mind when they picturea predatory sex offender that their loved oneshave to be protected from.

And many laws that govern sex are sobroad that they criminalize behavior thatmost of us would consider fairly innocent.For example, “statutory rape” makes manypeople think of a forty-year-old man molest-ing a twelve-year old, but it can also cover aneighteen-year-old girl and her seventeen-year-old boyfriend. And while “public inde-cency” often creates an image of an invasive,raincoat-clad flasher, it can also include col-lege kids who get busted for skinny dippingat the local pond. As long as laws againstconsensual sexual activity are still on thebooks, statistics on sex criminals will con-tinue to paint an absurdly inaccurate pictureof how much of a threat we actually face.

Greta ChristinaSan Francisco, California

Evolution Education:Science Revels in Unknowns

In his Editor’s Note in the September/October 2006 issue, Kendrick Frazier rumi-nated over a letter from a reader who was fedup with scientists who fail to address “unan-swered” questions about evolution. Frazierlamented the writer’s ignorance of evolutionand applauded the writings of Sean Carroll,one of the new, effective voices bringing evo-lutionary thinking to the public. I am in fullagreement with him here and welcomeCarroll to the fray.

However, it strikes me that more isneeded than educating the public about evo-lution and the mechanisms of evolutionarybiology. There is a deeper difficulty that hasgone largely unaddressed. The average layper-son, unschooled in science, is seeminglyunaware that the very foundations of amature science are the unknowns, the ques-tions to which we do not have answers.Frazier’s letter writer was following a standardgambit of creationists, paranormalists, andother defenders of the fringe: pose “unan-swered” questions as though they reveal thatthe standard model is somehow flawed.

Frazier did the usual thing. He sighedand then responded by pointing out that, infact, the “problems” identified had alreadybeen worked out and posed no particulardifficulties. I suspect that the recipient of thisriposte was not particularly impressed. Most

SI J-F 2007 pgs 11/13/06 11:43 AM



likely, he was delighted that he managed totweak a respected defender of evolutionaryscience and headed back to some creationistWeb site to find another “problem that evo-lutionists haven’t solved.”

In addition to carrying the evolutionaryscience message outward, we also need toimpress upon the lay public that scientists arenot only not bothered by the existence ofproblems that haven’t been solved, we revel inthem. If there weren’t such, the whole enter-prise would collapse. The gentleman whowrote to Frazier might have been jolted awakeif he’d realized that it is the evolutionary biol-ogists who keep coming up with “problemsthat evolutionists haven’t solved,” not the cre-ationists. The enigma is the engine of discov-ery; having all the answers is a death notice.

For many years, I taught a course titled“Parapsychology: A Critical Examination”and ended up being invited to engage in vari-ous debates with creationists, paranormalists,and other “fringers.” The “how-can-science-explain-X?” gambit was a ploy I often encoun-tered. I learned never to answer. Instead, Iwould redirect the discussion to how scienceis actually “done,” to the importance of hav-ing an endless supply of currently unansweredquestions nagging at us, forcing us to rethinkmatters, stimulating new studies, and encour-aging innovative theory. I found that refocus-ing the argument in this manner was far moreeffective than simply answering the challengewith a sigh and a lament.

Yes, we need to educate folks in science,but it may be even more critical to educatethem about how science is done.

Arthur S. ReberBroeklundian Professor of

Psychology EmeritusBrooklyn College and the

Graduate Center of CityUniversity of New York

New York City, New York

Language of Evolution

I applaud Susan Bury’s article on the lan-guage used to describe evolution (“Tell ItLike It Was,” September/October 2006).Like her, I have often worried that the com-mon usage (“something evolved to do some-thing else”) plays straight into the hands ofthose looking to discredit evolutionary the-ory. After all, as it is not true when statedthat way, it is easy enough to shoot down.

More important, I find this usage makes itimpossible to grasp evolutionary conceptswithout complex mental gymnastics. This is

particularly the case with intuitively more dif-ficult concepts such as kin selection. To give aslightly different example, the idea that youlook after your sister because her children carrya quarter of your genes is not easy to relate toone’s day-to-day experience of family life.

We are presenting these concepts in anenvironment often deeply hostile to the the-ory of evolution, and to people who for goodevolutionary reasons, as Geoffrey Millerpoints out in The Mating Mind, ironicallyfavor dramatic and entertaining stories overbiological accuracy. We need to make surethat our descriptions of evolution are basedon clear and accurate explanations that makeimmediate sense of people’s experience, evenif the common shorthand is appealing.

David CoxOvingham, South AustraliaAustralia

Quincey on QuantumMechanics

I enjoyed Paul Quincey’s recent article onquantum mechanics (July/August 2006), inwhich he took elements from Richard P.Feynman’s view (expressed, for example, inhis book, QED) and carried them even far-ther. I’m a professional physicist, so I foundit interesting and challenging to takeQuincey’s insights and try to understandthem in the terms to which I’m accustomed.I have to admit that I found myself notentirely agreeing with his conclusions on apoint or two (mainly the uncertainty princi-ple), but I consider that a minor quibble; onthe whole, particularly in his discussion ofhow systems change over time, I thought hedid quite a good job tackling a notoriouslydifficult subject, and he handled it well.

I think this article is a good companionto QED and Brian Greene’s Elegant Universe,as well as the more adventuresome Feyn-man’s original article on path integrals (“ThePrinciple of Least Action in QuantumMechanics,” Reviews of Modern Physics 20:367–387, 1948) and the graduate textbook,Quantum Mechanics and Path Integrals, byFeynman and Hibbs. Explaining difficultscientific concepts to lay audiences is animportant public service, and I appreciateQuincey taking it on. I also hope SI willpublish more articles like this, because sci-ence is like most other things: it’s easier tospot counterfeits if you know the real thing.

Eric ChisolmLos Alamos, New Mexico

Is Deception inInvestigations Ethical?

I was dismayed to read in the September/October 2006 issue’s News and Commentsection (“Carla Baron, Psychic Detective?Not Quite”) about the IndependentInvestigations Group (IIG) use of lying todiscredit Carla Baron. The IIG audienceplants made up stories about themselves andthen used the fact that Ms. Baron failed todetect their fabrications as evidence that sheis not, as she claims, psychic. There arealways ways to test claims of the paranormalthat do not involve dishonesty and deceit.Skeptics’ use of lying and deceit only puts usin a bad light and gives ammunition to thosewho would discredit us. How can we expectpeople to trust us if we admit that we arewilling to use deceit to achieve our ends?Perhaps we need a code of ethics for the con-duct of investigations of claims of the para-normal and SI should refuse to publish theresults of any investigation that does notconform to that code.

John P. WendellKailua, Hawaii

Editor’s note: We asked our Senior ResearchFellow and SI Investigative Files columnist JoeNickell for his views on the concerns expressedin the above letter. We share his thoughtfulresponse with readers:

Regarding the letter about IIG’s tactics withregard to “psychic” Carla Baron, I haverepeatedly stressed ethical conduct in investi-gations; however, I agree with DavidKoepsell (SI, January/February 2006) that“where the intent of the investigation is touncover an attempt at defrauding innocentpeople, a little trickery may be justifiable.”Indeed, Koepsell was referring to some of myundercover work aimed at checking psychicand spiritualist claims.

I often saw proof of the old maxim thatone must “set a thief to catch a thief” when Iwas an undercover operative for a famous pri-vate-detective agency. I watched from theinside of effective theft operations while thosewho naively thought they could avoid the“dishonesty” of undercover work advocatedmethods of security that were ineffective.

Long before Houdini, skeptics decep-tively set traps for psychical claimants—aswhen one secretly smeared printer’s ink onthe neck of a violin that spirits were expectedto play in the dark of a Davenport Brothers’séance of the 1850s; afterward, one of theDavenports had his shoulder besmeared with

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ink, helping prove that the duo was slippingout of their confining rope ties to producebogus spirit phenomena.

The great magician and psychical investi-gator Harry Houdini used false names andwhiskers to enable him to enter séances andbooby trap mediums’ fake phenomena.Similarly, magician Milbourne Christopheradopted a false identity to test famed LadyWonder the Psychic Horse and, by implica-tion, her trainer, Mrs. Claudia Fonda. WhenLady spelled the false name Banks ratherthan Christopher, the phony psychic trickerywas exposed.

More recently, James Randi’s mid-1980sinvestigation of faith healers had him andothers adopting false personas to test thepowers of the Rev. Peter Popoff and others.As homely “Bernice Manicoff,” Californiaskeptic Don Henvick was “healed” of six dif-ferent diseases, including uterine cancer. “Bythese means,” writes Randi, “he provedbeyond any doubt that many faith-healers—Popoff among them—were obtaining infor-mation by subterfuge and then feeding itback as if it came from God.”

Many paranormal claimants refuse to betested under meaningful conditions, yet gar-ner tremendous publicity with claims thatare doubtful to say the least. I believe theyinvite surreptitious tests which—if they aregenuine—they should have no reason to fear.

Joe NickellAmherst, New York

Reconciling Reductionismand Holism

I was pleased to see Massimo Pigliucci’s discus-sion of reductionism and holism in yourSeptember/October issue. However, I do notbelieve it is satisfactory to set these two thingsso much against each other. Some years ago, Ioffered an alternative account of reductionismand holism that allows their reconciliation(“Reductionism and Holism Are Compatible,”in Against Biological Determinism, Steven Rose,ed., London: Allison & Busby, 1982). I believethe argument given there, framed in terms ofsystems theory, still has some merit.

Briefly summarizing: in a multilevel analy-sis of any complex part of reality, it is desirablefrom the outset to regard a system as a triad(subsystem, system, super-system); thisreminds us always to comprehend the thingwe’re studying in a dual manner: internally, byrecognizing its component subsystems; exter-nally, by locating it within the super-system ofwhich it is a part. Reductionism is an account

of a system in terms of its interior, holism anaccount from an exterior standpoint—theview from below and the view from above,respectively. These two views are unavoidableand inextricably linked: one could not evenbegin to make a reductionist explanation of asystem without knowing what it is one iscalled upon to explain—what the system doeswithin its context.

The old adage, “the whole is more thanthe sum of the parts,” can nicely illustratehow the internal, reductionist perspectiveand the external, holistic perspective comple-ment each other. To describe an organizedsystem in the former case requires moreinformation than just a description of theparts, since the informational structure bywhich those parts are assembled must also bedescribed; in that sense, the reductionistdescription of a house, say, is more complexthan a description of the bricks from whichit is built. In contrast, to say that a totality isan organized totality is to say that there is ahigher-level, external description of its func-tion which is simpler than that of the parts.

For example, is a modern radio simplerthan an early radio? Yes, in the sense that theuser (external view) can tune it more easily;no, in the sense that, to effect that ease of use,the internal design must be more elaborate.Oft-recurring arguments about whether evo-lution makes organisms more or less complexneed to be framed within a similar dualdescription, the two-part account of the evo-lutionary process—genetic variation andenvironmental selection—being an exem-plary case of the internal/external dichotomy.

Allan MuirFron DegLlanfynyddWrexhamUnited Kingdom

The distinction between methodologicalreductionism and ontological reductionismwas not discovered by Robert Brandon.Drawing distinctions between various typesof reductionism is older than his book and isbecoming increasing well recognized. In mybook, Reductionism: Analysis and the Fullnessof Reality (Bucknell University Press, 2000),I differentiated five types: ontological (thenumber of substances making up the world),methodological, conceptual, theoretical, andstructural (related to the number of forces atworld in the world). Others before me have,of course, also presented various typologies(e.g., Arthur Peacocke). Distinguishing dif-ferent types of reductionism helps to clarify

the discussions and brings out an importantpoint: no antireductionist rejects the analysisof parts as a necessary step for understandinga whole completely; issues only arise whenreductionists go further than analysis andreduce the reality of the whole or our under-standing of it in one or more ways.

Richard H. [email protected]

Man in the Iron Mask

Massimo Polidoro’s article on the identity ofthe Man in the Iron Mask (“Behind theMask,” September/October 2006) does notoffer any explanation which fits all theknown facts of this mysterious prisoner’sidentity, namely:

1) His face, if revealed, could have beenrecognized by any Frenchman.

2) Louis XIV respected the prisoner suf-ficiently to afford him every comfort excepthis liberty.

Several years ago, I visited Monte Pinerolin Italy. The locals were intrigued to learnthat I am a journalist, and several of themboasted to me that Monte Pinerol was thebirthplace of the Man in the Iron Mask.Further, they cheerfully told me the story ofhis identity, which had been an open secretin Monte Pinerol for centuries. In separateconversations, four different residents ofMonte Pinerol each told me almost verbatimthe same account, although this proves onlythat the locals have had time to get theirstory straight. I have managed to verify somepoints of it as true. Here it is, minus a fewdetails which I choose to hold in reserve:

Louis XIV’s father, Louis XIII, wasknown to prefer the company of handsomeyoung men to his wife, Anne of Austria.After fulfilling his regal duty and fatheringan heir (the future Louis XIV), the kingshowed no further interest in his wife. Shedid, however, produce another child:Philippe I, Duke of Orleans. As Philippegrew older, it was noted that he resembledneither his mother nor the king. Philippehad Italianate features that were strikinglysimilar to the countenance of a certainItalian-born courtier in the French court: ayoung man who had been very kind andaffectionate to the queen while her husbandneglected her.

When Louis XIV ascended the throne in1643, his mother, the dowager queen, wasstill alive and capable of suffering embarrass-ment. As Prince Philippe matured, and hisportrait circulated through the kingdom, it

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became obvious to a widening circle of citi-zens that the prince greatly resembled hismother’s Italian courtier.

Louis XIV recognized that this man hadgiven his mother many kindnesses, and hewas accordingly grateful. But he could nolonger permit the world to view the counte-nance of a man who, by his strong facialresemblance to Prince Philippe, revealed theshameful secret of the dowager queen’s infi-delity. Therefore, by royal whim, the courtierwas imprisoned for life . . . but he was givenevery comfort, except the right to display hisface: the Man in the Iron Mask.

F. Gwynplaine MacIntyreGlasgowScotland

Massimo Polidoro replies:

This is an interesting theory for the MIM but notbetter than others. I have been to Pinerolo severaltimes, but this is the first time I’ve heard such astory. I think that the foremost experts on this sub-ject, Jean-Christian Petit-Fils and John Noone,whom I quote in my article, are on the right track.

Flags of Iwo Jima:Correction and Apology

In my column in the November/December2004 issue, “My Wife—and the Dialecticsof External Historicity,” I wrote thatAssociated Press photographer Joe Rosen-thal had asked Marines on Iwo Jima to raisethe American flag over Mount Suribachi asecond time so that he could photographthem in what I said was a posed shot.Several people wrote in to challenge myclaim and to say that my accusation wasunwarranted. I have since read further onthe matter and now conclude that my chal-lengers are right and I was wrong. My apolo-gies to all readers, and to the memory of JoeRosenthal, who died August 20, 2006.

Ralph EstlingIlminsterSomersetUnited Kingdom

For details on the origins of the misunderstandingsabout the Iwo Jima flag-raising photo, see Chapter11, “The Flags,” and Chapter 12, “Myths,” inJames Bradley’s excellent, well-researched book,Flags of Our Fathers: Heroes of Iwo Jima. Thebook is the basis for the Clint Eastwood filmreleased in October. Bradley’s father was one of themen in the famous photo.—Editor

Erin Brockovich

Perhaps a footnote to the commentary byElizabeth M. Whelan (May/June 2006) andthe subsequent correspondence (September/October 2006) would be of interest andenlightening.

In the movie about Brockovich, there wasa scene where she was involved in a seriousautomobile accident. This was false. Therewas an accident in Reno in 1991, but thespeed was at most two miles per hour andlikely less. Brockovich was at fault, but for anunknown reason, the defense insurance car-rier settled the case during trial. A defenseverdict appeared near certain. I served as anengineering witness for the defense.

A medical doctor had stopped his van todrop off his children at elementary school,where the speed limit was fifteen mph.Brockovich was also stopped for the samereason and was talking to an adult friendthrough her open driver’s-side window. Thevan was in front of her at ninety degrees toher path, nose to her right. She started for-ward without sufficient care, moved a fewfeet, and put a small dent in the extreme-right rear corner of the van fender with theright corner of her front bumper. Absence ofscratches proved that the van was not mov-ing and I testified to that in court.

Was this movie crash just a Hollywoodembellishment? Would I permit a story ofmy life to be so distorted? Never, but engi-neers have a strict code of ethics! It may beinteresting to note that her attorney, thesame one she worked for in the environmen-tal case, later contacted me to work onanother case for him, but it was not in myfield. Much is unanswered in this attractiveyoung lady’s life.

Lindley ManningReno, Nevada

Natural-childbirthControversy

I am writing regarding your SkepticalInquiree article (“‘Natural’ Childbirth,”March/April 2006) and the letters to the edi-tor published in a subsequent issue (July/August 2006).

In response to the thoughtful letters sentin reply to his article, Benjamin Radfordwrote that he agreed that treating birth as apathology was a problem. And yet, he him-self does this very thing early in his originalarticle. He compares natural childbirth to a

diabetic dying from lack of insulin. Birth isa normal physiologic function; diabetes is adisease. A healthy laboring woman choos-ing to avoid the risks and complications ofpain medication is not antiscience andshould not be compared to someone suffer-ing from a disease process. If Radford hadfocused on the decades of scientific litera-ture outlining the risks of using pain med-ication and other elective procedures versussupporting normal, nonpathological birth,he might have actually answered the ques-tion posed by L. Capps when he asked whatwas behind the current move toward thenatural-birth process.

Talitha ShermanNatural Childbirth Educator,

Labor DoulaGardena, California

Benjamin Radford responds:

Sherman misread my piece. Nowhere in mycolumn did I compare natural childbirth to adiabetic dying from lack of insulin. I was quot-ing Robert Carroll’s definition of natural.

The letters column is aforum for views on mattersraised in previous issues.Letters should be no morethan 225 words. Due to thevolume of letters not all canbe published. Address let-ters to Letters to the Editor,SKEPTICAL INQUIRER. Send by e-mail text (not as an attach-ment) to [email protected](include your name andaddress). Or mail to 944Deer Drive NE, Albuquerque,NM 87122, or fax to 505-828-2080.

�

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AUSTRALIA. Australian Skeptics Inc. New South Wales.Barry Williams (Executive Officer; Editor, TheSkeptic). Tel: 61 (02) 9417 2071; fax: 61 (02) 94177930. [email protected]. PO Box 268Roseville NSW 2069 Australia. www.skeptics.com.au. Hunter Skeptics. Hunter Region(Newcastle/Hunter Valley). Dr. David Brookman(President). Tel: 61 (02) 4957 8666; fax: 61 (02) 49526442. PO Box 166 Waratah NSW 2298 Australia.Australian Skeptics (Vic) Inc. Victoria. ChristopherShort (President). Tel: 61 1 800 666 996. [email protected]. GPO Box 5166AA Melbourne VIC 3001Australia. Borderline Skeptics. Victoria. RussellKelly (President). Tel: 61 (02) 6072 3632. [email protected]. PO Box 17 Mitta MittaVIC 3701 Australia. ACT Canberra Skeptics.Canberra. Dr. Pete Griffith (President). Tel: 61 (02)6231 5406 or 61 (02) 6296 4555. [email protected]. PO Box 555 Civic Square ACT 2608 Australia.Queensland Skeptics Assn. Inc. Queensland. BobBruce (President). Tel: 61 (07) 3255 0499. [email protected]. PO Box 6454 Fairfield GardensQLD 4103 Australia. Qskeptics eGroup: to subscribesend a blank message to: [email protected]). Gold Coast Skeptics. Queensland.Lilian Derrick (Secretary). Tel: 61 (07) 5593 1882;fax: 61 (07) 5593 2776. [email protected] Box 8348 GCMC Bundall QLD 9726 Australia.South Australia Skeptics. South Australia. Mr.Laurie Eddie (Secretary). Tel: 61 (08) 8272 5881. [email protected]. PO Box 377 Rundle MallSA 5000 Australia. Western Australia Skeptics.Western Australia. Dr. John Happs (President). Tel:61 (08) 9448 8458. [email protected]. PO Box 431Scarborough WA 6922 Australia. AustralianSkeptics in Tasmania. Tasmania. Fred Thornett(Secretary). Tel: 61 (03) 6234 4731. [email protected]. PO Box 582 North Hobart TAS 7002Australia.

ARGENTINA. Alejandro J. Borgo. Revista Pensar. E-mail:[email protected]; Enrique Márquez, e-mail: [email protected]; Juan de Gennaro, e-mail:[email protected].

BELGIUM. Comité Belge Pour L’Investigation Scien-tifique des Phénomènes Réputés PananormauxComité Para, Belgium. J. Dommanget, President ofthe Committee. E-mail: [email protected]. Obser-vatoire Royal Belgique 3, ave. Circulaire B-1180,Brussels, Belgium. www.comitepara.be. Studiekringvoor Kritische Evaluatie van Pseudowetenschap enParanormale beweringen (SKEPP) Belgium. Prof. Dr.W. Betz. Tel.: 32-2-477-43-11; e-mail: [email protected] Laarbeeklaan. 103 B-1090 Brussels, Belgium.www.skepp.be.

BRAZIL. Opçao Racional, Brazil. Luis Fernando Gutman.Tel.: 55-21-25392442 x4401; e-mail: [email protected]. Rua Professor ÁlvaroRodrigues 255 apt 401 Botafogo. CEP: 22280-040,Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. www.opcaoracional.com.br.

BULGARIA. Bulgarian Skeptics, Bulgaria. Dr. VladimirDaskalov. E-mail: [email protected]. Krakra 22 BG-1504 Sofia, Bulgaria.

CANADA. British Columbia Skeptics, BC and Alberta. LeeMoller. Tel. 604-929-6299; e-mail:[email protected]. 1188 Beaufort Road, N.Vancouver, BC V7G 1R7 Canada. Ontario Skeptics,Ontario, Canada. Eric McMillan, Chair. Tel.: 416-425-2451; e-mail: [email protected]. P.O. Box 554Station “P” Toronto, ON M5S 2T1 Canada.www.astro.yorku.ca/~mmdr/oskeptics.html. TorontoSkeptical Inquirers (TSI) Toronto. Henry Gordon,President. Tel.: 905-771-1615; e-mail: [email protected]. 343 Clark Ave., W., Suite 1009,Thornhill, ON L4J 7K5 Canada. Ottawa Skeptics,Ottawa, Ontario. Greg Singer. E-mail: [email protected]. PO Box 1237, Station B, Ottawa,Ontario K1P 5R3 Canada.www.admissions.carleton.ca/~addalby/cats/skeptic.html. Sceptiquesdu Quebec, Quebec. Alan Bonnier. Tel.: 514-990-8099. C.P. 202, Succ. Beaubien Montreal, QuebecH2G 3C9 Canada. www.sceptiques.qc.ca. SkepticsQuinte, Bill Broderick. 2262 Shannon Rd. R.R. 1,Shannonville, ON K0K 3A0; e-mail: [email protected].

CHINA. China Association for Science and Technology,China. Shen Zhenyu Research Center, P.O. Box 8113,

Beijing China. Hong Kong Skeptics, Hong Kong.Kevin Ward, P.O. Box 1010, Shatin Central Post Office,Shatin NT China.

COSTA RICA. Iniciativa para la Promoción delPensamiento Crítico (IPPEC) San Jose. AdolfoSolano; e-mail: [email protected]. Postaladdress: Adolfo Solano (IPPEC-CR), A.P. 478-7050,Cartago, Costa Rica.

CZECH REPUBLIC. Sisyfos-Czech Skeptics Club. CzechRepublic. Ms. Ing. Olga Kracikova, Secretary. Tel.:420-2-24826691; e-mail: [email protected] 27 Praha 1 110 00 Czech Republic.www.fi.muni.cz/sisyfos/ (in Czech).

DENMARK. Skeptica: Association of IndependentDanish Skeptics, Denmark. Willy Wegner. Tel.: 45-75-64-84-02; e-mail: [email protected]. Vibevej7 A DK 8700 Horsens, Denmark. www.skeptica.dk.

ECUADOR. Prociencia, Gabriel Trueba, Quito, Ecuador.Tel.: 2-894-320; e-mail: [email protected].

ESTONIA Horisont. Indrek Rohtmets. EE 0102 Tallinn,Narva mnt. 5.

FINLAND. SKEPSIS, Finland. Jukka Hakkinen. PO Box483, Helsinki 00101 Finland.

FRANCE. AFIS, AFIS (Association Française pourI’Information Scientifique) France. Jean Bricmont,President. 14 rue de I’Ecole Polytechnique F-75005Paris, France. Le Cercle Zététique, France. Paul-EricBlanrue. 12 rue; David Deitz. F-57000 Metz, France.Laboratoire de Zététique (laboratory). ProfesseurHenri Broch. Tel.: 33-0492076312; e-mail:[email protected]. Université de Nice-Sophia Antipolis Facultédes Sciences F-06108 Nice Cedex 2 France.www.unice.fr/zetetique/.

GERMANY. Gesellschaft zur wissenschaftlich-en Unterrsuchung von Parawissenschaften (GWUP)Germany. Amardeo Sarma, Chairman. Tel.: 49-6154-695023. E-mail: [email protected]. Arheilger Weg 11D-64380 Rossdorf, Germany. www.gwup.org.European Council of Skeptical Organizations(ECSO) Europe. Dr. Martin Mahner. Tel.: 49-6154-695023; e-mail: [email protected]. Arheilger Weg 1164380 Rossdorf, Germany. www.ecso.org/.

HUNGARY. Tényeket Tisztelk Társasága TTT Hungary.Prof. Gyula Bencze. Tel.: 36-1-392-2728; e-mail:[email protected]. c/o Természet Világa, PO Box246 H-1444 Budapest 8 Hungary.

INDIA. Atheist Centre, Dr. Vijayam, Executive Director.Benz Circle, Vijayawada 520 010, Andhra Pradesh,India. Tel.: 91 866 472330; Fax: 91 866 473433. E-mail: [email protected]. Maharashtra AndhashraddhaNirmoolan Samiti (MANS) states of Maharashtra &Goa. Dr. Narendra Dabholkar, Executive President.Tel.: 91-2162-32333; e-mail: [email protected]. 155, Sadashiv Peth Satara 415001 India.www.antisuperstition.com. Indian RationalistAssociation, India. Sanal Edamaruku. E-mail:[email protected] or IRA@rationalist interna-tional.net. 779, Pocket 5, Mayur Vihar 1, New Delhi110 091 India. Dravidar Kazhagam, southern India.K. Veeramani, Secretary General. Tel.: 9144-5386555; e-mail: [email protected]. Periyar Thidal,50, E.F.K. Sampath Road Vepery, Chennai TamilNadu 600 007 India. www.Periyar.org. Indian CSI-COP, India, B. Premanand, Convenor. Tel.: 091-0422-872423; e-mail: [email protected]/7 Chettipalayam Road Podanur Tamilnadu 641023 India.

ITALY. Comitato Italiano per il Controllo delleAffermazioni sul Paranormale (CICAP) Italy.Massimo Polidoro, Executive Director. Tel.: 39-049-686870; e-mail: [email protected]. P.O. Box 111735100 Padova, Italy. www.cicap.org.

IRELAND. The Irish Skeptics Society c/o PaulO’Donoghue, 11 Woodleigh Elm, Highfield Rd.,Rathgar, Dublin 6. Ireland; www.irishskeptics.net E-mail:[email protected].

JAPAN. Japan Anti-Pseudoscience Activities Network(JAPAN) Japan. Ryutarou Minakami, chairperson. c/oRakkousha, Inc., Tsuruoka Bld. 2F, 2-19-6, Kamezawa,Sumida-ki,Tokyo. [email protected]. Japan Skeptics,Japan. Dr. Jun Jugaku. E-mail: [email protected] Skeptics, Business Center for Academic Societies,Japan 5-16-9 Honkomagome, Bunkyo-ku Tokyo 113-8622 Japan.

KAZAKHSTAN. Kazakhstan Commission for theInvestigation of the Anomalous Phenomena

(KCIAP) Kazakhstan. Dr. Sergey Efimov, ScientificSecretary. Astrophysical Institute, KamenskoyePlato, Alma-Ata, 050020, Kazakhstan. E-mail:[email protected].

KOREA. Korea PseudoScience Awareness (KOPSA)Korea. Dr. Gun-II Kang, Director. Tel.: 82-2-393-2734; e-mail: [email protected]. 187-11 Buk-ahyun-dong, Sudaemun-ku, Seoul 120-190 Koreawww.kopsa.or.kr.

MALTA. Society for Investigating the Credibility ofExtraordinary Claims (SICEC) Malta. Vanni Pule,Chairman. Tel.: 356-381994; e-mail: [email protected]. Address: c/o 67, Trig il-Pruna, Attard,BZN04, Malta.

MEXICO. Mexican Association for Skeptical Research(SOMIE) Mexico. Mario Mendez-Acosta, ApartadoPostal 19-546 D.F. 03900 Mexico.

NETHERLANDS. Stichting Skepsis, Netherlands. JanWillem Nienhuys, Secretary. e-mail: [email protected]. Dommelseweg 1A, 5581 VA Waalre,Netherlands.

NEW ZEALAND. New Zealand Skeptics, New Zealand,Vicki Hyde, Chair. Tel.: 64-3-384-5136; e-mail:[email protected]. PO Box 29-492, Christchurch, NewZealand. www.skeptics.org.nz.

NIGERIA. Nigerian Skeptics Society, Nigeria. Leo Igwe,Convenor. E-mail: [email protected]. PO Box25269, Mapo Ibadan Oyo State, Nigeria.

NORWAY. SKEPSIS.Norway St. Olavsgt. 27 N-0166 Oslo, Norway.PERU. Comite de Investigaciones de lo Paranormal lo

Seudocientifico y lo Irracional CIPSI-PERU, Lima,Peru. Manuel Abraham Paz-y-Mino. Tel.: +51-1-99215741; e-mail: [email protected]. ElCorregidor 318 Rímac, Lima 25 Peru. www.geoci-ties.com/cipsiperu.

POLAND. Polish Skeptics, Adam Pietrasiewicz. E-mail:[email protected]. www.biuletynsceptyczny.z.pl.

PORTUGAL. Associaçao Cépticos de Portugal (CEPO)Portugal. Ludwig Krippahl. E-mail: [email protected]. Apartado 334 2676-901 Odivelas,Portugal. http://cepo.interacesso.pt.

RUSSIA. Dr. Valerii A. Kuvakin. Tel.: 95-718-2178; e-mail: [email protected]. Vorob’evy Gory,Moscow State University, Phil. Dept. Moscow 119899Russia. http://log.philos.msu.ru/rhs/index/htm.

SINGAPORE. Singapore Skeptics. Contact: Ronald Ng. E-mail: [email protected].

SLOVAK REPUBLIC (SACT). Slovak Republic. IgorKapisinsky Pavla Horova, 10 Bratislava 841 07Slovak Republic.

SOUTH AFRICA. Marian Laserson. P.O. Box 46212,Orange Grove 2119 South Africa. SOCRATES. SouthAfrica. Cape Skeptics, Cape Town. Dr. Leon Retief.Tel.: 27-21-9131434. E-mail: [email protected]. 5NAgapanthus Avenue, Welgedacht Bellville 7530South Africa.

SPAIN. Círculo Escéptico. Fernando L. Frías, chairman.Apartado de Correos 3078, 48080 Bilbao, Spain. E-mail: [email protected]. Web site:www.circuloesceptico.org. ARP-Sociedad para elAvance del Pensamiento Crítico ARP-SAPC Spain.Félix Ares de Blas. Tel.: 34-933-010220; E-mail:[email protected]. Apartado de Correos, 310 E-08860 Castelldefels, Spain. www.arp-sapc.org.

SRI LANKA. Sri Lanka Rationalist Assoc. Contact:Dushyantha Samaiasinghe, Promethean Home,192/D Dawatagahawatta Rd., Kesbewa, Piliyan-dala, Sri Lanka.

SWEDEN. Swedish Skeptics, Sweden. Jesper Jerkert,chairperson. Vetenskap och Folkbildning c/oSigbladh Administration Box 10022 S-181 10Lidingö Sweden. E-mail: [email protected]; Web site:www.vof.se/.

TAIWAN. Taiwan Skeptics, Taiwan. Michael Turton, Director.AFL Dept., Chaoyang University. 168 G-IFeng E. Rd.,Wufeng, Taichung 413.

UNITED KINGDOM. The Skeptic Magazine, United Kingdom.Mike Hutchinson. E-mail: [email protected]. P.O. Box475 Manchester M60 2TH United Kingdom.

VENEZUELA. Asociación Racional Escéptica de Venezuela(AREV), Sami Rozenbaum, president. Address:Rozenbaum, Apdo. 50314, Caracas 1050-A, Vene-zuela. Web site: www.geocities.com/escepticosvenezuela. E-mail: [email protected].

THE COMMITTEE FOR SKEPTICAL INQUIRYAT THE CENTER FOR INQUIRY/TRANSNATIONAL (ADJACENT TO THE UNIVERSITY AT BUFFALO)

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Network of Affiliated OrganizationsInternational

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SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL CONSULTANTSGary Bauslaugh, educational consultant, Center for

Curriculum, Transfer and Technology, Victoria, B.C., CanadaRichard E. Berendzen, astronomer, Washington, D.C.Martin Bridgstock, Senior Lecturer, School of Science,

Griffith University, Brisbane, AustraliaRichard Busch, magician/mentalist, Pittsburgh, Penn.Shawn Carlson, Society for Amateur Scientists, East

Greenwich, RIRoger B. Culver, professor of astronomy, Colorado State Univ.Felix Ares de Blas, professor of computer science,

University of Basque, San Sebastian, SpainMichael R. Dennett, writer, investigator, Federal Way,

WashingtonSid Deutsch, consultant, Sarasota, Fla.J. Dommanget, astronomer, Royale Observatory, Brussels,

BelgiumNahum J. Duker, assistant professor of pathology, Temple

UniversityBarbara Eisenstadt, psychologist, educator, clinician, East

Greenbush, N.Y.William Evans, professor of communication, Center for

Creative MediaBryan Farha, professor of behavioral studies in education,

Oklahoma City Univ.John F. Fischer, forensic analyst, Orlando, Fla.Eileen Gambrill, professor of social welfare, University of

California at BerkeleyLuis Alfonso Gámez, science journalist, Bilbao, SpainSylvio Garattini, director, Mario Negri Pharmacology

Institute, Milan, Italy

Laurie Godfrey, anthropologist, University of MassachusettsGerald Goldin, mathematician, Rutgers University, New JerseyDonald Goldsmith, astronomer; president, Interstellar MediaAlan Hale, astronomer, Southwest Institute for Space

Research, Alamogordo, New MexicoClyde F. Herreid, professor of biology, SUNY, BuffaloTerence M. Hines, professor of psychology, Pace University,

Pleasantville, N.Y.Michael Hutchinson, author; SKEPTICAL INQUIRERrepresentative, EuropePhilip A. Ianna, assoc. professor of astronomy, Univ. of VirginiaWilliam Jarvis, professor of health promotion and public

health, Loma Linda University, School of Public HealthI. W. Kelly, professor of psychology, University of

SaskatchewanRichard H. Lange, M.D., Mohawk Valley Physician Health

Plan, Schenectady, N.Y.Gerald A. Larue, professor of biblical history and archaeol-

ogy, University of So. CaliforniaWilliam M. London, Touro University, InternationalRebecca Long, nuclear engineer, president of Georgia

Council Against Health Fraud, Atlanta, Ga.Thomas R. McDonough, lecturer in engineering, Caltech, and

SETI Coordinator of the Planetary SocietyJames E. McGaha, Major, USAF; pilotJoel A. Moskowitz, director of medical psychiatry,

Calabasas Mental Health Services, Los Angeles Jan Willem Nienhuys, mathematician, Univ. of Eindhoven,

the NetherlandsJohn W. Patterson, professor of materials science and

engineering, Iowa State University

Massimo Pigliucci, professor in Ecology & Evolution atSUNY-Stony Brook, NY

James Pomerantz, Provost, and professor of cognitive andlinguistic sciences, Brown Univ.

Gary P. Posner, M.D., Tampa, Fla.Daisie Radner, professor of philosophy, SUNY, BuffaloRobert H. Romer, professor of physics, Amherst CollegeKarl Sabbagh, journalist, Richmond, Surrey, EnglandRobert J. Samp, assistant professor of education and

medicine, University of Wisconsin-MadisonSteven D. Schafersman, asst. professor of geology, Miami

Univ., OhioBéla Scheiber, systems analyst, Boulder, Colo.Chris Scott, statistician, London, EnglandStuart D. Scott, Jr., associate professor of anthropology,

SUNY, BuffaloErwin M. Segal, professor of psychology, SUNY, BuffaloCarla Selby, anthropologist /archaeologistSteven N. Shore, professor and chair, Dept. of Physics

and Astronomy, Indiana Univ. South BendWaclaw Szybalski, professor, McArdle Laboratory,

University of Wisconsin-MadisonSarah G. Thomason, professor of linguistics, University

of PittsburghTim Trachet, journalist and science writer, honorary

chairman of SKEPP, BelgiumDavid Willey, physics instructor, University of Pittsburgh*Member, CSICOP Executive Council

CENTERS FOR INQUIRYwww.centerforinquiry.net

TRANSNATIONALP.O. Box 703, Amherst, NY 14226Tel.: (716) 636-1425

WASHINGTON, D.C.621 Pennsylvania Ave. SE, Washington, D.C.20003, Tel.: (202) 546-2331

WEST4773 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90027 Tel.: (323) 666-9797

METRO NEW YORKOne Rockefeller Plaza, #2700, New York, NY 10020 Tel: (212) 265-2877

POLANDLokal Biurowy No. 8, 8 Sapiezynska St., 00-215Warsaw, Poland

FLORIDA5201 West Kennedy Blvd., Ste. 124, Tampa, FL33609, Tel: (813) 849-7571

EGYPT44 Gol Gamal St., Agouza, Giza, Egypt

FRANCEProf. Henri Broch,Universite of Nice, Faculté desSciences,Parc Valrose, 06108, Nice cedex 2.France www.unice.fr/zetetics/

NEPALHumanist Association of Nepal, P.O. Box 5284,Kathmandu, Nepal Tel: +977 125 7610

PERUD. Casanova 430, Lima 14, Peru

INDIAInnaiah Narisetti A-60, Journalist Colony, Jubilee Hills,Hyderabad-500 033 India, Tel.: 91-040-23544067http://innaiahn.tripod.com

EUROPEDr. Martin MahnerArheilger Weg 11, D-64380 Rossdorf, GermanyTel.: +49 6154 695023

MOSCOWProfessor Valerií A. Kuvakin119899 Russia, Moscow, Vorobevy Gory,Moscow State University, Philosophy Dept.

NIGERIAP.O. Box 25269, Mapo, Ibadan, Oyo State,Nigeria Tel: +234-2-2313699

United StatesALABAMA. Alabama Skeptics, Alabama. Emory

Kimbrough. Tel.: 205-759-2624. 3550 WatermelonRoad, Apt. 28A, Northport, AL 35476 US.

ARIZONA. Tucson Skeptics Inc. Tucson, AZ. JamesMcGaha. E-mail: [email protected]. 5100N. Sabino Foothills Dr., Tucson, AZ 85715 US. PhoenixSkeptics, Phoenix, AZ. Michael Stackpole, P.O. Box60333, Phoenix, AZ 85082 US.

CALIFORNIA. Sacramento Organization for RationalThinking (SORT) Sacramento, CA. Ray Spangen-burg, co-founder. Tel.: 916-978-0321; e-mail: [email protected] Box 2215, Carmichael, CA 95609-2215 US.www.quiknet.com/~kitray/index1.html. Bay AreaSkeptics (BAS) San Francisco—Bay Area. Tully McCarroll,Chair. Tel.: 415 927-1548; e-mail: [email protected] Box 2443 Castro Valley, CA 94546-0443 US.www.BASkeptics.org. Independent InvestigationsGroup (IIG), Center for Inquiry–West, 4773 HollywoodBlvd, Los Angeles, CA 90027 Tel.; 323-666-9797 ext. 159;Web site:www.iigwest.com. Sacramento SkepticsSociety, Sacramento. Terry Sandbek, President. 4300Auburn Blvd. Suite 206, Sacramento CA 95841. Tel.:916 489-1774. E-mail: [email protected]. SanDiego Association for Rational Inquiry (SDARI)President: Richard Urich. Tel.: 858-292-5635.Program general information 619-421-5844. Website:www.sdari.org. Snail mail address: PO Box 623,La Jolla, CA 92038-0623.

COLORADO. Rocky Mountain Skeptics (RMS; akaColorado Skeptics) Béla Scheiber, President. Tel.: 303-444-7537; e-mail: [email protected]. PO Box 4482,Boulder, CO 80306 US. Web site: http://bcn.boulder.co.us/community/rms.

CONNECTICUT. New England Skeptical Society (NESS)New England. Steven Novella M.D., President. Tel.:203-281-6277; e-mail: [email protected]. 64Cobblestone Dr., Hamden, CT 06518 US.www.theness.com.

D.C./MARYLAND. National Capital Area Skeptics NCAS,Maryland, D.C., Virginia. D.W. “Chip” Denman. Tel.:301-587-3827. e-mail: [email protected]. PO Box 8428,Silver Spring, MD 20907-8428 US. http://www.ncas.org.

FLORIDA. Tampa Bay Skeptics (TBS) Tampa Bay, Florida.Gary Posner, Executive Director. Tel.: 813-849-7571; e-mail: [email protected]; 5201 W. Kennedy Blvd.,Suite 124, Tampa, FL 33609 US. www.tampabayskeptics.org. The James Randi Educational Foundation.James Randi, Director. Tel: (954)467-1112; [email protected]. 201 S.E. 12th St. (E. Davie Blvd.), FortLauderdale, FL 33316-1815. Web site: www.randi.org.

GEORGIA. Georgia Skeptics (GS) Georgia. Rebecca Long,President. Tel.: 770-493-6857; e-mail: [email protected].

2277 Winding Woods Dr., Tucker, GA 30084 US.IOWA. Central Iowa Skeptics (CIS) Central Iowa, Rob

Beeston. Tel.: 515-285-0622; e-mail: [email protected]. 5602 SW 2nd St. Des Moines, IA 50315US. www.skepticweb.com.

ILLINOIS. Rational Examination Association of LincolnLand (REALL) Illinois. Bob Ladendorf, Chairman.Tel.: 217-546-3475; e-mail: [email protected]. POBox 20302, Springfield, IL 62708 US. www.reall.org.

KENTUCKY. Kentucky Assn. of Science Educators andSkeptics (KASES) Kentucky. 880 Albany Road,Lexington, KY 40502. Contact Fred Bach at e-mail:[email protected]; Web site www.kases.org; or(859) 276-3343.

LOUISIANA. Baton Rouge Proponents of Rational Inquiryand Scientific Methods (BR-PRISM) Louisiana. MargeSchroth. Tel.: 225-766-4747. 425 Carriage Way, BatonRouge, LA 70808 US.

MICHIGAN. Great Lakes Skeptics (GLS) SE Michigan.Lorna J. Simmons, Contact person. Tel.: 734-525-5731; e-mail: [email protected]. 31710 CowanRoad, Apt. 103, Westland, MI 48185-2366 US. Tri-Cities Skeptics, Michigan. Gary Barker. Tel.: 517-799-4502; e-mail: [email protected]. 3596 Butternut St.,Saginaw, MI 48604 US.

MINNESOTA. St. Kloud Extraordinary Claim PsychicTeaching Investigating Community (SKEPTIC) St.Cloud, Minnesota. Jerry Mertens. Tel.: 320-255-2138; e-mail: [email protected]. JerryMertens, Psychology Department, 720 4th Ave. S,St. Cloud State University, St. Cloud, MN 56301 US.

MISSOURI. Kansas City Committee for Skeptical Inquiry,Missouri. Verle Muhrer, United Labor Bldg., 6301Rockhill Road, Suite 412 Kansas City, MO 64131 US.

NEBRASKA. REASON (Rationalists, Empiracists andSkeptics of Nebraska), Chris Peters, PO Box 24358,Omaha, NE 68134; e-mail: [email protected];Web page: www.reason.ws.

NEVADA. Skeptics of Las Vegas, (SOLV) PO Box 531323,Henderson, NV 89053-1323. E-mail: [email protected]. Web site: www.skepticslv.org./.

NEW MEXICO. New Mexicans for Science and Reason(NMSR) New Mexico. David E. Thomas, President.Tel.: 505-869-9250; e-mail: [email protected]. POBox 1017, Peralta, NM 87042 US. www.nmsr.org.

NEW YORK. New York Area Skeptics (NYASk) metropolitanNY area. Jeff Corey, President. 18 Woodland Street,Huntington, NY 11743, Tel: (631) 427-7262 e-mail:[email protected], Web site: www.nyask.com. InquiringSkeptics of Upper New York (ISUNY) Upper New York.Michael Sofka, 8 Providence St., Albany, NY 12203 US.Central New York Skeptics (CNY Skeptics) Syracuse. LisaGoodlin, President. Tel: (315) 446-3068; e-mail:[email protected], Web site: cnyskeptics.org 201Milnor Ave., Syracuse, NY 13224 US.

NORTH CAROLINA. Carolina Skeptics North Carolina.Eric Carlson, President. Tel.: 336-758-4994; e-mail:[email protected]. Physics Department, WakeForest University, Winston-Salem, NC 27109 US.www.carolinaskeptics.org.

OHIO. Central Ohioans for Rational Inquiry (CORI)Central Ohio. Charlie Hazlett, President. Tel.: 614-878-2742; e-mail: [email protected]. PO Box282069, Columbus OH 43228 US. South ShoreSkeptics (SSS) Cleveland and counties. Jim Kutz.Tel.: 440 942-5543; e-mail: [email protected] Box 5083, Cleveland, OH 44101 US. www.southshoreskeptics.org/. Association for RationalThought (ART) Cincinnati. Roy Auerbach, president.Tel: 513-731-2774, e-mail: [email protected]. PO Box12896, Cincinnati, OH 45212 US. www.cincinnatiskeptics.org.

OREGON. Oregonians for Rationality (O4R) Oregon.George Slusher, President. Tel.: (541) 689-9598; e-mail:[email protected]. 3003 West 11th Ave PMB 176,Eugene, OR 97402 US. Web site: www.o4r.com.

PENNSYLVANIA. Paranormal Investigating Committeeof Pittsburgh (PICP) Pittsburgh PA. Richard Busch,Chairman. Tel.: 412-366-1000; e-mail: [email protected]. 8209 Thompson Run Rd., Pittsburgh,PA 15237 US. Philadelphia Association for CriticalThinking (PhACT), much of Pennsylvania. EricKrieg, President. Tel.: 215-885-2089; e-mail:[email protected]. By mail C/O Ray Haupt 639 W. ElletSt., Philadelphia PA 19119.

TENNESSEE. Rationalists of East Tennessee, EastTennessee. Carl Ledenbecker. Tel.: 865-982-8687; e-mail: [email protected]. 2123 Stonybrook Rd.,Louisville, TN 37777 US.

TEXAS. North Texas Skeptics NTS Dallas/Ft Worth area,John Blanton, Secretary. Tel.: 972-306-3187; e-mail:[email protected]. PO Box 111794, Carrollton,TX 75011-1794 US. www.ntskeptics.org.

VIRGINIA. Science & Reason, Hampton Rds., Virginia.Lawrence Weinstein, Old Dominion Univ.-PhysicsDept., Norfolk, VA 23529 US.

WASHINGTON. Society for Sensible Explanations, WesternWashington. Tad Cook, Secretary. E-mail: [email protected]. PO Box 45792, Seattle, WA 98145-0792 US.http://seattleskeptics.org.

PUERTO RICO. Sociedad De Escépticos de Puerto Rico, LuisR. Ramos, President. 2505 Parque Terra Linda, TrujilloAlto, Puerto Rico 00976. Tel: 787-396-2395; e-mail:[email protected]; Web site www.escepti-cor.com.

The organizations listed above have aims similar tothose of CSI but are independent and autonomous.Representatives of these organizations cannot speakon behalf of CSI. Please send updates to Barry Karr, P.O.Box 703 Amherst NY 14226-0703.

SI J-F 2007 pgs 11/13/06 11:45 AM

Do They Have Your Numb3r? Strange Visions - Skeptical ...

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