Science / Medicine : What’s Beyond Belief? : Magazine Puts Startling Claims, Tabloid Hype Under Close Scrutiny

ALBUQUERQUE —  Big Foot Talks. Gentle beast is like a 5-yr.-old child!!

--Weekly World News

Savage space aliens are stalking the skies and methodically picking off America’s top entertainers--one by one--as they take to the air

--National Examiner

Tormented ghost of doomed pilot haunts airport hotel

--National Enquirer

For a nation that prides itself on its scientific prowess, the pseudoscientific world of supermarket tabloids casts a surprisingly intoxicating spell. According to a recent Gallup Mirror of America poll, one in four Americans believes in ghosts, one in four claims to have communicated with another person telepathically and one in seven says he has personally seen a UFO. One in 10 Americans claims to have talked to the devil in the flesh.

Perhaps you don’t buy in to the theory that aliens are impregnating Earth women at an alarming rate. Still, you wonder if there could be something to ESP, handwriting analysis, the Bermuda Triangle, polygraphs or out-of-body experiences.

Where do you turn for the scientific side of the story? Inquiring minds who want to know read the Skeptical Inquirer.

Now celebrating its 15th anniversary, this quarterly magazine distills the plausible from hype, hoax and hogwash. Published by the Buffalo, N.Y.-based Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), the Skeptical Inquirer evaluates a Pandora’s box of National Enquirer-type claims: everything from the Loch Ness Monster to levitation, from psychic surgery to psychokinesis (mind over matter), from creationism to clairvoyance--any paranormal phenomenon purported to be rooted in science. (Religious matters are the focus of a sister publication called Free Inquiry.)

The Skeptical Inquirer was one of the first voices to call for the publishing of disclaimers to accompany astrology columns. There are currently about 40 daily newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times, that include disclaimers to the effect that such columns should be read for entertainment only.

“We try to fill the gap that most scientific journals have left open--for good reason--because they ignore pseudoscientific, paranormal matters,” said Skeptical Inquirer Editor Kendrick Frazier.

CSICOP and the Skeptical Inquirer were founded by Paul Kurtz, a philosopher at the State University of New York in Buffalo, who in 1975 enlisted 186 prominent scientists to sign a statement indicting astrology as bogus and scientifically unfounded. An ensuing eruption of publicity convinced Kurtz of the need for a layman-oriented magazine that would not only present scientific evaluations of the fringe, but would teach its readers how to critique and reason.

“The best therapy for nonsense is a little critical thinking,” said Kurtz, now CSICOP’s chairman. “That’s what we’re trying to cultivate, a whiff of skepticism. As you would treat your used car dealer, so treat paranormal claims.”

The Skeptical Inquirer has amassed a modest but fiercely devoted following of 36,000 readers in 62 countries and has inspired the founding of 70 independent local skeptics groups worldwide, including the Southern California Skeptics. A constellation of scientific luminaries including Carl Sagan, Douglas Hofstadter, Stephen Jay Gould, Marvin Gardner and Murray Gell-Mann has rallied to the cause, often contributing articles to the magazine. Many magicians, such as the irreverent Penn and Teller, are also big fans.

“There are a million places in the world you can read all about crap and the Skeptical Inquirer is one of the few places where you can read about things that are sensible,” said CSICOP fellow and science fiction author Isaac Asimov.

Cornell astronomer Sagan agrees. “We are a society immersed in credulity,” he said. “If we don’t learn to be skeptical then we are at the mercy of the next con man who comes along. . . . Because we desperately need new solutions to the problems that face us, (critical) thinking ought to be much more widely understood and cherished.”

Not surprisingly, CSICOP and the Skeptical Inquirer attract critics and controversy. CSICOP has been unsuccessfully sued for libel twice and another two libel suits are pending, including one instigated by spoon-bender Uri Geller.

“The key problem is that the journal is far more interested in discrediting and debunking than it is in inquiring,” said former Skeptical Inquirer editor and sociologist Marcello Truzzi at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti. “It tries to appear to be the voice of objectivity and rationality and fair play, but really it’s very much an advocacy journal for the Establishment. The Skeptical Inquirer is preaching to the already converted and it’s often strident.”

Richard Broughton, director of research at the Institute for Parapsychology in Durham, N.C., agrees. “CSICOP and certainly its journal long ago crossed the boundary between being objectively critical and being on a crusade,” he said. “That’s not science. It’s a kind of religion, a scientific fundamentalism.”

CSICOP members acknowledge that good science must balance rigorous skepticism with openness to new ideas. If there are any excesses on the skepticism side, said Sagan, it’s “small potatoes” compared to the epidemic of bogus claims that simply do not weather careful scrutiny. Take UFO and alien sightings. “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence,” said Sagan. “And the evidence is absolutely crummy: No page from a captain’s log, no photograph taken inside (a space ship), no wildly exotic alloy that can’t be made on Earth, no machine of enormous power. Nothing. Just anecdotes. The fact that there are so many (unsubstantiated) reports . . . suggests to me that this is more in the realm of misapprehension, hoax and psychological aberration than extraterrestrial visits.”

Like the ghosts they sometimes promote, fringe fads fade in and out of favor. A hundred years ago, spiritualism and seances were the rage. When the first issue of Skeptical Inquirer was released in the fall of 1976, Dianetics, biorhythms and alleged pictures of spacemen carved in Mayan ruins were hot topics.

According to Frazier, interest in astrology, psychics and hauntings has held steady over the last decade, while UFO mania comes in waves every few years. New Age channeling and crystals are now on the wane, he reports, only to be supplanted by psychic healing and rumors of rising satanic cults that kidnap, sexually abuse and even devour young children.

“A lot of people believe the satanic cult claims are real,” Frazier said. “Newspapers are still reporting on this fairly uncritically.”

In response, the Skeptical Inquirer is publishing a series of four articles debunking these claims and exploring why they have become so prominent of late.

Recent issues also include a critique of devices that purportedly improve stereo fidelity, evaluations of psychic forecasts and earthquake predictions and a neurological explanation for why people having near-death experiences often feel as if they are moving through a tunnel toward a mushrooming white light.

Why are people drawn to the paranormal? Why do they find clairvoyance more compelling than quarks?

“It’s not because they’re stupid,” said University of Oregon psychologist and CSICOP fellow Ray Hyman. “It’s because they don’t have access to good information and that’s the fault of the press as well as the educational system.” Even when people know that sources like the National Enquirer or fictional movies are unreliable, he said, research has shown that merely being exposed to wild claims causes people to find them more plausible.

One reason astrology, psychic readings and other paranormal phenomena can feel so powerful and real is that the human brain has evolved into one of the greatest pattern recognition systems in the world. “When there’s meaning to be found, we find it,” Hyman said.

And people are particularly prone to search for meaning to questions that science is not able to completely address. “There are no answers other than the mystical or paranormal to the finality of death, to the loss of loved ones, those things we absolutely can’t control in our lives,” noted Frazier. “People are always going to look for some comforting answer to help them get through those. You’re never going to eliminate paranormal beliefs. . . . But maybe you can prevent (most people) from totally adapting irrational theories and viewpoints.”

Still, even many of the staunchest skeptics harbor a nugget of hope that some paranormal phenomenon will be proved someday. “It would take a lot to convince me,” said CSICOP Executive Director Barry Karr. “But you can never say never. I’d like to be around if something really amazing does happen. If a UFO landed in the White House yard, I’d like to attend the press conference.”

The Magazine: Skeptical Inquirer.

The Purpose: To present scientific evaluations of paranormal phenomena and show readers how to critique and reason.

The Claims: The 15-year-old publication reviews items ranging from the Loch Ness Monster to levitation and clairvoyance.

The Frequency: Four times a year.

The Publishers: The Buffalo, N.Y.-based Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal.

The Readers: 36,000 in 62 countries.

The Contributors: Include Carl Sagan, Douglas Hofstadter and Stephen Jay Gould.

A Sampling of Claims Put to Challenge

Here is a look at some of the paranormal claims that have been challenged by the Skeptical Inquirer:

CLAIM: The rise of Satanic cults. Satanic crime experts hold seminars around the country alleging that as many as 50,000 people a year are ritualistically sacrificed by Satanists who also routinely kidnap and abuse children.

SI: This claim is not based on tangible evidence, but is rooted in rumors and in the misinterpretation of sensationalized newspaper accounts. Arguments for this claim are often rife with errors and ignorance. As for the assertion that there are 50,000 satanic killings a year in the United States, crime statistics show that there are only about half that many total homicides a year.

CLAIM: MJ-12 papers. These documents, including a 1947 letter from President Harry S. Truman, describe the activities of an alleged ultra-secret government agency that examined crashed flying saucers and bodies of aliens. The MJ-12 papers were the focus of many press stories, books and a special TV show called “UFO-Coverup?--Live.”

SI: The papers are counterfeit. Truman’s alleged letter had a typeface that did not exist until 1963 and his signature was directly lifted from another authentic letter.

CLAIM: The hundredth-monkey phenomenon. This theory, popularized by New Ager Lyall Watson in a 1979 book, holds that once a certain number of people or animals have learned a particular idea, that idea is spontaneously transmitted to other minds in the group via a kind of collective consciousness. Watson alleged that Japanese primatologists discovered island-dwelling monkeys who suddenly learned a new behavior--washing their food of sand--after a critical number of monkeys had learned it.

SI: An examination of the original Japanese data shows there was in fact no sudden change in behavior among large numbers of monkeys. Instead, food washing was transmitted from one monkey to the next by conventional imitation.

CLAIM: Fire walking. Some believe that a mental process enables people to walk on hot wood coals without getting burned.

SI: A physicist and psychologist showed instead that fire-walking ability has more to do with matter than with mind: Hot coals are poor heat conductors--they transmit heat slowly--so as long as you don’t linger on the coals you won’t get burned.