The skeptics are a movement that addresses the wide-ranging areas of science, fring-science, and paranormal and miraculous claims-- usually with an eye towards debunking false claims and exposing bad or faulty science. I've been involved with the skeptics on-and-off over the past fifteen years or so, and while there are times when I've had large disagreements with some of them, it's a movement that's done some very important work.
The modern skeptics movement really got its start with three individuals; Martin Gardner, James "The Amazing" Randi, and Prof. Paul Kurtz of the University of Buffalo.
In the mid-1950s, Martin Gardner began two projects that made him a major figure in modern science education. The first was his regular column in Scientific America, "Mathematical Games," which introduced thousands of readers to things like high-level cryptography, Rubik's Cube, hexaflagons, topology, Conway's "Game of Life," the "Prisoner's Dilemma," and just about anything that makes logic and mathematics so compelling. It'd be difficult to underestimate the impact Gardner's mathematics journalism has had, in that most mathematicians alive today have probably been influenced (or enticed) by Gardner's columns.
In 1957, Gardner published Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science, a survey of then-recent and contemporary fads. Some of Gardner's targets have washed into time's more obscure dustbins, such as Alfred Lawson's "Lawsonomy." Others had a resurgence during the "New Age" movement of the1980s, like Dr. Bates' "eye exercises." And others remain powerful today-- specifically, L. Ron Hubbard's Dianetics, now incarnated as the Church of Scientology. The book remains an indispensable part of the basic Skeptical Library.
The great Harry Houdini spent his life developing the art of stage magic, and he was disgusted that mediums were using cheap tricks to fake contact with the dead, in order to scam money from the credulous and faithful. He put his hard-won skills to use exposing these frauds (publishing a wonderful account of his investigations, A Magician Among the Spirits). The sad result was that his good friend Arthur Conan Doyle, by then wholly committed to spiritualism, refused to believe in Houdini's explanations. The happy news is that Houdini was very effective in fighting these con games among others... and he serves as an inspiration to one of the century's other great magicians, James "The Amazing" Randi.
I don't know exactly when Randi began his crusade against irrationality and mystical con games, but apparently he's been sniping at the Hydra since he was a teenager. He's also been at magic since an equally early age, and alongside of one of the most spectacular careers as a stage magician and escape artist, Randi's also been gunning for all kinds of phonies-- psychics, faith healers, astrologers, weeping statues of the Virgin Mary, poltergeist claims, and nearly anything else that tries to separate people from their happiness by appealing to their mystical instincts. He's mentored Penn and Teller, and Christopher Hitchens once told me that Randi should be on television every day, fighting flummery and falsehood.
In 1974, Prof. Paul Kurtz a philosophy professor at the University of Buffalo, was concerned about the growth of irrational belief in America culture. At the time, the big claims in circulation involved Erich von Daniken's "ancient astronauts," a wave of UFO interest (which hadn't shifted away from simple sightings, and into the realms of coverup-conspiracies and abduction fantasies), and a spoon-bending alleged psychic named Uri Geller. Kurtz was then one of the main figures of the American Humanist Society, and the editor of The Humanist magazine (where, many years later, I contributed the "Skeptical Eye" column), so he had the resources to organize a committee devoted to debunking the nonsense. The Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP) included Gardner and Randi among its founding members, along with UFO-debunker Philip Klass. Their journal, the Skeptical Inquirer, began publication that year (as The Zetetic).
For many years, the Skeptical Inquirer remained somewhat obscure; it was a digest modelled after scientific journals, so most people tended to encounter it in libraries or through the mails-- and not in bookstore magazine racks. But a lot of things changed in the early 1990s. A lot of bookstores began setting up lrge, comprehensive magazine racks that stocked more than the usual Cycle World and hair-care magazines, so the Skeptical Inquirer was now more available than ever. Randi won a MacArthur "Genius" award-- and just when Randi attained this serious financial backing, Uri Geller filed a lawsuit against him and CSICOP that, while pretty much without merit, created a rift between the Randi and the organization. (CSICOP's insurance company refused to extend its coverage to Randi, despite the flimsy nature of Geller's lawsuit.)
The reason I didn't include Michael Shermer among Randi, Gardner and Kurtz is that he wasn't around at the beginning. But he did come along at the right time to begin publishing a second skeptical journal, Skeptic magazine, which gave Randi a new home and a different approach to the field. Skeptic was more likely to address social and political claims, such Holocaust Revisionism, and Shermer tolerated a wider range in writing styles as well. (It was also a much more intersting magazine to look at, thanks to Pat Linse's graphic design.) Shermer is, energetic, ambitious, and aggressive in the best senses of those words-- which is why he's made Skeptic a substantial voice in the culture. And he is utterly sincere in his fascination for "weird things" and why people believe in them. That's why he's become as good a spokesman for the skeptics' viewpoint as Randi is, and his marvelous books-- Why People Believe in Weird Things, Why We Believe, Denying History, and The Borderlands of Science: Where Sense Meets Nonsense are free of the snideness and smugness that weighs down a lot of the CSICOP stuff.
I suffer from writer's block far too often, which keeps me from pitching ideas to Shermer as often as I should. (Okay, I'm also lazy.) He's fun to write for-- for a time, I thought I was one of the best stylists in his magazine, but that was just a flash of egomania. And he's let me write some really long pieces, and he's put up with my bitching about punctuation and phrasing pretty well. The fact is that I wish I had his energy, and didn't have my usual degree of self-doubt. (And when the magazine runs something I really disagree with-- say, a defense of IQ-and-genetics claims, which ranks with astrology as far as I'm concerned-- I tell myself that I oughta work harder to keep the balance.) But I'm prouder of the work I've done for Skeptic than most of my other articles, mainly because, with an audience like that, I've got to make sure I've got my facts nailed down tight.
Copyright 2000-6 Brian Siano
(unless otherwise noted)