In early December 2011, “Operation Nutcracker” was born.

Meryl Dorey, the president of the Australian Vaccination Network (AVN), was booked for a talk on December 29, 2011, at the Woodford Folk Festival—an annual festival located between the Brisbane Valley and Queensland’s Sunshine Coast in the North-East of the country.

Don’t be fooled by the name of the group: The Australian Vaccination Network is an anti-vaccination lobby group, registered in New South Wales, dedicated to promoting the view that community health can be promoted without the use of vaccines. Upon hearing of Dorey’s appearance, the Stop the Anti-Vaccination Network (Stop the AVN)—a loose affiliation of concerned citizens and skeptical activists—moved rapidly to protest this appearance; through Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and email-writing campaigns, they rallied for her presentation to be cancelled for the good of public health.

By the December 13, an article appeared in MamaMia, a pop-culture opinion site, questioning Dorey’s appearance at the festival. The article called for some accountability and responsibility, but the overall response by the organizer Bill Hauritz was unapologetic. The media picked up the story, with Australian Medical Association of Queensland’s President Kidd and Queensland’s Health Minister Geoff Wilson both expressing their disapproval—the latter even calling the AVN a “fringe group.”

Then, at nearly the twelfth hour, an interesting compromise emerged. The talk had been changed to a “forum,” with Dorey joined by Andreas Suhrbier, head of the immunovirology laboratory at the Queensland Institute of Medical Research and moderated by John Parker, a veteran of Doctors without Borders.

Despite the concessions, the Stop the AVN was determined to make a public statement at the festival about Dorey’s appearance. Thirty-four donors contributed to a tow-banner on a plane, which would appear for half an hour on either side of the vaccination forum’s scheduled run time. The banner simply read: VACCINATION SAVES LIVES.

The media release, written by Queenslander Chrys Stevenson, was forwarded to concerned parties and flyers were handed out at the event itself. The release captured the media’s attention and was considered a win by the Stop the AVN for its innovative activism.

I spoke to four members of the Stop the AVN for the Token Skeptic podcast on the evening of the event itself.

*****

Kylie Sturgess:  So what inspired a plane?

Robin Hilliard:  It really was just an idea that struck me when I was sitting there watching what was happening on Twitter. My actual action, although I’ve been much heralded for it, was really just to say, “I wonder what it would cost to hire a plane?” and to look up skywriting in Google. I fired off an email saying, “Hey, what would it cost to put this kind of message over Woodford on this date?”

They got back to me the next day and I direct-messaged Jason [Brown], and just said, “People are interested in this.” That apparently was my ticket of entry into the Illuminati.

Kylie Sturgess:  That’s all it takes?

Daniel Raffaele:  Oh God, don’t mention the Illuminati!

Kylie Sturgess:  Nobody suspects the Illuminati!

Robin Hilliard:  Can I go on to my lizard sun bath now?

Jason Brown:  But it was just the kind of money that if we clubbed together, and we cared enough, we could do. It was also exactly one percent of the AVN’s revenue for 2010, which was quite amazing.

Robin Hilliard:  That’s what I love. Instantly, the moment we thought of a plane, we knew what the reactions would be: “Oh, Meryl will say something about chemtrails. Or that Big Pharma sponsored it”—but that’s so the opposite of what actually happened.

We got the quote for the plane and it was $2,800. You can look up “skywriting” in the phone book or do the same with a Google search. I was really stunned by how fantastic the response was when I suggested it; we had students who were putting in $15 because they just wanted to be a part of the plan.

We had, I think in the end, thirty-four people, with individuals chipping in amounts from $15 up to a few hundred bucks to pay for it. The amazing thing was at the end of collecting all that money from people, and putting it all together, we were less than one percent of the AVN’s declared audited annual income for last year.

The funny thing was, Meryl was actually the first person to report online about the plane over the festival. She said, “How can I possibly afford that kind of advertising? I couldn’t even afford this advertising.” I said, “Of course you could, Meryl. This is less than one percent of what you get every year from all your income.”

Dave the Happy Singer:  If you think that we’re indulgent by buying a plane to fly “Vaccination Saves Lives” above Woodford, just remember Meryl Dorey could do it a hundred times over.

Robin Hilliard:  This is something we can all do. There’s no hurt in throwing out a big idea. I particularly thank [founding Australian Skeptic] Dick Smith for his stunts back in the ’70s and ’80s when I was a kid, he used to do all of these sorts of things. And I just thought, “Let’s just find out. Throw out a big idea and see if we can do it. If we can do it, let’s go and do it.”

Kylie Sturgess:  It’s such a classic thing to have a banner up in the sky. I was so surprised when I saw the promo email that went around saying, “OK, everyone be prepared,” and there was a little airplane logo at the bottom of the email—I had no idea there was going to be a real plane! There were also people in the audience on the day handing out fliers. How did the audience respond from what you’ve heard?

Daniel Raffaele:  I actually found out that the plane had arrived from Meryl Dorey because we were all timed to release the news at 1:45 PM Queensland time—we were all going to start blogging and tweeting en masse. Then we were all sitting around for those first couple of minutes, saying “Has the plane got there? Has the plane got there? Has the plane got there?!”

Jason Brown:  We were freaking out big time!

Daniel Raffaele:  Yes! Then I see this post from Meryl Dorey saying, “You won’t believe this … but there’s a plane flying overhead with ‘Vaccines Saves Lives’ on it…” That was when I knew. But the response from the public has been pretty positive. I was on Twitter the whole afternoon, and seeing people going, “There’s a plane overhead with a banner!” We were getting extra followers on Twitter for Stop the AVN.

Dave the Happy Singer:  I suppose the other thing we should mention is that Meryl Dorey had her nose put out of joint, because as a result of our campaigning, Meryl was no longer giving her solo talk, which was titled, “Autism Emergency: One in Thirty-Eight.” That was scrapped; she was no longer giving her unchallenged solo speech. It was replaced with a forum where there were a couple of experts, chaired by a real doctor and just Meryl on the fringes. It was still too much for us to be happy. She had no business being there in the first place.

Daniel Raffaele:  That’s precisely the point of the campaign: she’s harping on about freedom of speech. But freedom of speech is fine, but it doesn’t mean that you get to sit up on stage with a microphone.

Dave the Happy Singer:  Yeah. You don’t have a right to speak at Woodford with your freedom of speech. If not, I would be up there speaking about my future marriage to Keira Knightley, but that invitation has not come through again…

Kylie Sturgess:  I would fly a plane in protest about that quite frankly, Dave, I’m sorry.

Dave The Happy Singer:  So would the world, Kylie, I think!

Kylie Sturgess:  There’s only so much we can stomach! How did the crowd respond to the protest overall?

Dave the Happy Singer:  From what I’ve heard it was about a 50/50 split. But that’s not really that surprising given that the Sunshine Coast isn’t really that much of a drive from Meryl Dorey’s heartland. She would have had people following her up there. The Sunshine Coast in Queensland does have a bit of a “rainbow region”/New Age leaning. Not as bad as the Northern Rivers in New South Wales, but still pretty intense. So it’s not surprising that there was a split. But the split I guess was more in our favor than we would have thought.

Robin Hilliard:  I think the split that was reported during the talk … was 50/50. But then [Stop AVN member] Phil Kent was handing out flyers there, with a little spitfire cap and a “Vaccination Saves Lives” T-shirt! He was saying that he got a very positive response as he was handing flyers out. So I don’t know if that just meant he was talking to fifty percent of the room, or if it meant that people who had been undecided were talking to him as well.

Dave the Happy Singer:  It’s entirely possible that people had gone into that undecided, genuinely seeking information, and got to see Meryl Dorey completely shot down.

Jason Brown:  Suddenly from the social media monitoring we were doing at the time, we knew it was all ours. There’s hardly an anti‑vaccination voice on the Woodford Twitter hashtag or on the “Stop the AVN” hashtag. Everybody seemed to be excited; people we didn’t know, people unrelated to “Stop the AVN,” were interested to see that there was a plane out there challenging Dorey, and that Phil was there handing out fliers. There were people posting on Facebook that heckled Dorey, and the audience had cheered them.

These weren’t people we’d know. These weren’t people that we put up there. But general members of the public are getting the message that these anti‑vaccination views are full of crap, and I think that’s positive. With all the sad news that’s been happening with the vaccine preventable diseases, there is good news there. I think the message is getting through.

Daniel Raffaele:  I think we do it better than anyone in the world really. We’ve really taken the AVN to task. But we’d love to be proved wrong.

Jason Brown:  Absolutely!

Dave the Happy Singer:  Yeah, come on America! I think the other interesting thing is that we’ve come under fire with “Stop the AVN.” We are by definition quite a negative campaign because we’re focused on the AVN. But this has been an entirely positive action. The message is, “Vaccination Saves Lives.”

As Meryl would have it, we’re trying to put the other side. We’re trying to help people get a free and informed choice. But a free and informed choice depends on that word informed. If you’re badly informed then you’re going to make bad choices. But I’m quite happy that we’re doing a positive campaign with a positive message. We could have put up a banner saying, “Meryl Dorey is full of ...” But that wouldn’t have won us any friends.

Kylie Sturgess:  What could people do to help or what do you suggest they emulate? For example, I know that over in the U.S. it’s just been announced that apparently there’s going to be more advertising in Time Square in New York, by the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC). Is there any advice that you have for other activists out there?

Dave the Happy Singer:  I think that the best thing that Australians can do is to go to the Stop the AVN Facebook group and join up with us. Basically take it from there. We do things like this from time to time. But this is, I think, with the possible exception of the Western Australian advertising blitz for her talks earlier in 2011, the biggest thing that we’ve done. It’s certainly the biggest thing that we’ve done on any single day.

I think the best thing that you can do is join us on Facebook and basically take it from there. As for what’s happening in America—perhaps they’ll be inspired by just how easy it is to rally the troops, or maybe we make it look easy?

The official Stop the AVN site is at http://www.stopavn.com.

An Interview with Andy Lewis of Quackometer

Kylie Sturgess:  Who is Stanislaw Burzynski?

Andy Lewis:  Well, that’s a very good question. As far as I can understand, he’s a doctor based in Texas who a number of years ago came up with an idea that certain sorts of chemicals were missing from cancer patients, and if you could inject those chemicals back into the cancer patient then you might cure all sorts of cancers. He found these chemicals in the patients’ urine, so he started off extracting these compounds. If this had worked, it would have been fantastic. This was an idea.

The problem was this was thirty years ago. Since then no real evidence has emerged that I have seen which shows this is anything but an idea.

Kylie:  In fact, the Burzynski Clinic is in the United States? So it’s not even an English thing, all the attempts to silence criticism.

Andy:  Absolutely. Most people in England, a vast majority of them, never heard of this chap. But ten days ago in a Sunday paper an article was published that highlighted this clinic. It was a heartbreaking story, really, about a young girl with a brain cancer that was just highly inoperable. And her parents were trying to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars to send her over to Texas for what might be the last months of her life, which sounded tragic. And when you look into this clinic, it looked like this was not in her best interest, I would say.

Kylie:  So how did the Observer get ahold of this story in the first place? There are plenty of people who, at a very desperate time in their lives, are trying to find a cure for cancer. How did this group step in?

Andy:  I understand that the little girl was the niece of an editor at the paper. So it was his story, really. You understand the problem here. It probably never went through a science desk or a health desk or anything like that at the paper. So it never really was checked. It was a feature article. This happens a lot in papers, where health claims sort of slip by the normal editorial process. But this time it was quite an important, serious one: people were being lured into this idea that our National Health Service is not offering this lifesaving treatment and these parents are having to raise hundreds of thousands of pounds through charitable concerts and so on to send her to the United States, which is the only place willing to treat this poor girl.

It played into a lot of these myths, I think, that the U.K. press like, about how our National Health Service is failing people and how the United States is so great with its free market approach and so on. It really is a collection of myths. And unfortunately because of that, I fear other people will be sucked down that route.

Kylie:  In order to be accepted into the trial, according to the article, the family needed £200,000—it’s an incredibly compelling story, isn’t it?

Andy:  Yeah. I think the sheer expense of it added to the allure, really. Who would charge that much for treatment that didn’t work? It’s even more disturbing because Burzynski is not allowed to offer this treatment on its own. He’s only allowed to treat people within a trial. So what he seems to be doing is setting dozens of trials—and he’s been doing this for decades now—and then asking the patients to pay money to join the trial. Even if this was a working treatment, I’d find it ethically very problematic. Because obviously you’re asking parents of terminally ill children to essentially mortgage their homes and raise huge amounts of money for one last chance for their child’s life.

This doesn’t happen elsewhere in medicine, really. This seems to be a pretty unique case, where the doctor is charging people to join trials. That raises lots of red flags all over and I think that’s a question that this clinic really needs to respond to.

Kylie:  The thing that really got me about your article, which is on Quackometer.net (“The False Hope of the Burzynski Clinic”), is the part where you mention that this isn’t the first time this has happened.

Andy:  I think lots of people were going back through the archives and so on and searching the internet for it. This seems to be cropping up fairly regularly, where young children have cancers and are obviously in a very poorly state and the parents are raising money. This is the sort of heartwarming story that tends to crop up in local papers quite regularly, but I think this is one of the first times it’s appeared in a national newspaper. So this would be a fairly common occurrence in how this clinic appears to operate: by asking patients to rely on the goodwill of friends, family, and other people to stump up huge amounts of money for this treatment, which appears... well, there’s no good evidence that I’ve seen that it’s effective.

Kylie:  There’s even a film that’s been produced by the Burzynski Clinic in order to promote its claims?

Andy:  This is where it gets really disturbing: Burzynski appears to be up against the Texas Medical Board, next April I believe, where he’s been charged with various things—using off‑label medications inappropriately and engaging in practices that might not be in the best interests of his patients. It’s online now, the sort of [questions] he’s got to answer to this committee. But it looks like there’s a chance that he could lose his license. If he is doing things that aren’t above‑board I think it would be a very good thing indeed.

You mentioned this film. This film is supposedly being made by an independent filmmaker. It’s ninety minutes long, showing what a wonderful doctor Burzynski is. It’s essentially a conspiracy‑theory film about how the medical profession is trying to stop this wonderful new cure from being given to poorly children. It doesn’t hold up to much scrutiny, really. He has a number of case histories in there that are not conclusive at all by the look of things. And the rest of the film is just a conspiracy theory. It may be that this clinic is whipping up support. He seems to get a lot of very, very emotional support from people who believe he’s doing wonderful things, particularly in the alternative medicine world, where the story plays into their worldview very nicely: that there is such a thing as the “cancer industry” that keeps people sick and pumps them full of poisons and makes huge amounts of money from dying people. It seems to me the exact opposite is true here.

Kylie:  Why attack bloggers? How come you have suddenly appeared on their radar as someone worthy of getting threatening letters?

Andy:  Well, I mean, I think one of the most amazing things about today is that bloggers can automatically appear quite high up in Google searches and so on. People have readerships and they talk to each other and reference each other. So people can easily find out if there are dissenting voices out there these days. That’s quite difficult for all businesses, really, legitimate ones as well as illegitimate ones. How do you manage PR around that? And obviously there are firms out there and people out there who specialize in trying to shut people up if they don’t like what you’re saying. And obviously you can be quite aggressive about that if you want to, particularly in the United Kingdom, which has some libel laws that are quite friendly to such approaches.

So I think it’s an easy route, really; rather than address the concerns raised by lots of people about this clinic, it’s much easier to try and make them disappear. It looks like for a number of months now a chap called Marc Stephens has been writing to bloggers worldwide and threatening all sorts of horrible things against them unless they remove their posts. Some people have; other people haven’t. And I think it just hit the perfect storm in the past week or two by threatening one too many people.

Kylie:  Looking at your site, it appeared to have started with you, in fact. There’s a blog post called “The Burzynski Clinic Threatens My Family.” What’s the experience been like?

Andy:  Oh, good grief!

Kylie:  Sorry, but it has to be asked! It looks like it must have been dreadful.

Andy:  It was within a week of my little baby girl being born as well. To be honest, it’s the second most important thing that’s happened to me this week. But it’s still quite amazing, and a large number of people have been talking about this on Twitter and writing posts. One of the most amazing things was that I think on Friday evening I got a frantic phone call from my web host saying, “What on Earth is going on with the servers?” I’m going to give them a plug now: Positive Internet. They’re wonderful. They wanted to make sure that their servers were Stephen Fry–proof! They wanted to make sure if Stephen Fry tweeted about it they could cope. So they spent an hour or two hardening up the servers and making sure everything was cached properly, which was exciting and fun.

And sure enough, Stephen Fry tweeted on Sunday, I believe, about all of this. And suddenly there were 100,000 hits on the server. And it stayed up, which was fantastic. From a technical point of view it’s been quite interesting. From an emotional point of view, my wife doesn’t know what’s been going on this week. And I didn’t want to worry her with trivialities like this, really. So, we keep our voices down while we are talking, OK?

Kylie:  Well, one good thing is that the Internet is certainly shouting loudly about it. It is starting to become what is known as the “Streisand effect,” isn’t it?

Andy:  Yes. I’m not quite sure. I think Barbra Streisand—I hope I’m right here, because I don’t want to libel her—a number of years ago tried to suppress someone saying something bad about her. I don’t know the details at all.

Kylie:  I think it was photographs of her house. She didn’t want them out in the public eye. Someone said, “Well, it’s a house. Deal with it.”

Andy:  Right. She was perfectly right to try and do that. The problem with the Internet is that things can get out of hand very quickly. This happened a few years ago when the Society of Homeopaths tried a very similar thing. They threatened me with all sorts of things for saying that their Code of Ethics was worth nothing, because they didn’t stop their members from trying to treat HIV and AIDS, which was likely to kill them. They didn’t like that. So they tried to threaten me there. Within a few days, my post had been replicated to about 100 sites.

So, far from shutting up criticism, the effect is that a lot more people tend to see it, which is what happened here. My original post, the one you mentioned, I think over the day had about 4,000 or 5,000 readers. Since they tried to threaten me, we have had well over 100,000 readers now. So, in general, I think it’s not a good idea to threaten people. It’s always best to try and talk to them first.

Kylie:  Speaking of threats, it has become even more nefarious now. They started to threaten a seventeen‑year‑old blogger, Rhys Morgan, as well?

Andy:  Yeah, Rhys Morgan. I knew about Morgan. Part of the reason I wrote about it was I knew that Morgan was being threatened. This was taken quite seriously to begin with. Morgan is seventeen. He became quite famous a year or so ago because he suffers from Crohn’s disease. He was looking on various websites, partaking in forums and so on that were saying people with Crohn’s disease ought to take something called Miracle Mineral Supplement, I believe it was called, which is basically bleach. It has been a worldwide thing.

He said this is nonsense. He was attacked by other people with Crohn’s for trying to stop what might be a really good treatment. People who believe in these things really tend to get quite emotional about them, don’t they?

Morgan said, “No. This is nonsense.” He was hounded off the forum. So he tried to do something about it. I think he wrote to Trading Standards. He wrote to the Welsh government as well, and various other people. He got on the BBC. Eventually I think a lot of websites were taken down that were selling [the product].

For his efforts, James Randi gave Morgan an award as Skeptical Activist of the Year or something like that, which is fantastic for having been sixteen years old [at the time]. So he’s got a bit of form. He decided to make a bit of a hobby of this, trying to expose things.

So he wrote about Burzynski six weeks ago now. He then got this horrible letter. What was even more amazing was this Marc Stephens chap, who wrote a very legalistic sounding letter. He also [mailed] a picture of Morgan’s house to him, saying basically, “We know where you live,” which is quite incredible.

What Stephens didn’t know is that he was talking to a schoolboy! Morgan has got a lot of good friends, people like Simon Singh, who was threatened by the chiropractors a few years ago. Singh gave him some very good advice.

So Morgan wrote to Stephens, saying, “I received your email. But I’ve just got to finish school for the day and then I’ll get back to you.” This must have been quite a shock to Stephens. I’m not sure Stephens has that much insight, because he continued to threaten him anyway, threatened to tell his school and all sorts of things.

That’s bad now, because I can generate so much publicity. But someone threatening a seventeen‑year‑old boy is going to get in the newspapers without a shadow of a doubt. So that was a very, very bad tactical mistake on Marc Stephens’s part.

Kylie: Who exactly is Marc Stephens? What part does he have to play in all of this?

Andy:  He wrote to me claiming to represent the Burzynski Clinic and so on. The letter looked like a lawyer’s letter, though it didn’t explicitly say that. But a bit of searching quickly [revealed] that he doesn’t seem to be registered. Also, there is someone called Marc Stephens with the same spelling, M‑A‑R‑C, who works for the Burzynski Patients Forum, or something like this, as a PR person. So it looks like he is associated with this doctor, working in marketing and PR. Quite what the relationship [entails] is still a little bit up in the air. But we know emails have been [exchanged] between the Burzynski Clinic and Stephens. So we know that, well, it appears that the Burzynski Clinic was aware of what Stephens was doing. Whether they sanctioned it or not, I don’t know.

So the Burzynski Clinic [officials have] some questions to answer, really. Did they tell Marc Stephens to do this? Were they condoning? Were they happy with him doing it? What is their relationship with him exactly? Do they want to stand by what he said or did they want to disassociate themselves? I’m quite happy for them to just disassociate themselves from his threats. But that still means the Burzynski Clinic has a huge number of questions that need answering about how they it is treating its customers.

Kylie:   Obviously Simon Singh is stepping in to help.

Andy:  Yes. Well, do our libel laws help? No, they don’t. The laws are that people can be stupid here. Still, if the Burzynski Clinic decided to be really stupid, it could cause a lot of problems for an awful lot of people. So, people are speaking out with some risk, shall we say, that things could get pretty nasty. There is no automatic protection for voicing our concerns. What Simon Singh found, as other people have done, like Ben Goldacre and other people who have been defending malicious suits, is that even if you win it can cost you in time and money.

This is exactly why these people make these threats. They know that once they have made a threat it’s a no‑win situation for you. Something needs to change. Hopefully, in the Queen’s speech this year, the government will commit to making a more robust set of libel laws.

Of course, it has got to be seen from both points of view. We have got to protect people from the newspapers, as well, printing malicious things. So there is a balance to be found here. There is not an easy path through here, but there are a number of obvious improvements that could be made that I think would improve the situation to no end.

So let’s hope the government doesn’t flinch on this one—doesn’t bend to the power of vested interests that want to preserve their right to issue threats—and makes Britain, once again, a place where free speech is valued and protected.

Kylie:  So, what is going to happen next? Obviously the network of bloggers is uniting together in order to raise awareness. Do you think that the media should be stepping up, as well?

Andy:  Well, absolutely. I understand that some things are going to start being published now. It has reached a critical mass. So I understand that tomorrow there will be newspaper articles on this. I don’t know the specifics yet. What I would really like is the original newspaper, the Observer, to tackle this.

They really shouldn’t be trying to ignore this. So we will wait and see. I think worldwide, we are starting to see newspapers in Texas printing things, which is great. It’s the home of the Burzynski Clinic. The British Medical Journal, I understand, is going to be writing something. So this has gone beyond a few people at home at their desks writing blogs now. It’s going to be raising awareness of these issues.

I think entertainers are involved in raising money as well; it would be good for them to start engaging in conversation. I understand why they’re raising money for this poor little girl; I would too. I think now that they have committed to do it, of course that is a very difficult decision to turn back from. But there is a discussion to be had about how this money is spent. I know for the parents it’s going to be impossible, I would imagine, to turn their backs on the hope that this person has raised for them. I can’t imagine what it must be like. I don’t expect them to take part.

But I think there are many things here that need addressing whether you are a celebrity endorsing cancer treatments, whether you are newspaper writing about them, whether you are the clinic itself offering them, whether you are a charity that claims to help cancer patients—but really what you are doing is funneling them towards quacks. I know there are quite a few charities that do that.

There are lots of issues here that I think, hopefully, are going to be discussed and raised. That will help prevent people making terrible decisions in the future.

Kylie:  Where can people go to find out more and keep up to date with the events that are going on?

Andy:  Well, come to my blog, Quackometer.net. There are a number of good websites around. If you search for Josephine Jones’s blog, she is collating a list of sites that are writing about this. It’s getting up near 100 now, I believe.

Go to Rhys Morgan’s website, obviously. I think Googling “Burzynski Clinic” now will ensure you find lots and lots of discussions going on, which is something that I’m sure the Burzynski Clinic is not too happy about!

Kylie:  No! Thank you very much for talking to me, Andy Lewis.

Andy:  Thank you very much indeed.

True to Andy Lewis’ words, on Tuesday, the 29th of November, the Guardian newspaper reported on Rhys Morgan’s posting of the entire correspondence from Marc Stephens on his blog. The Burzynski Clinic has revealed that Stephens was only a web marketing contractor and that “no one approved [Stephens] sending pictures of Morgan’s house to him.” At time of writing, more and more bloggers are continuing to question claims by the Burzynski Clinic.

Since writing the article (and podcast episode) On Codes Of Conduct: A Brief History of Civility, Inclusivity, Sexism and Skepticism, I’ve received a number of emails about the issues raised and I was even approached several times in person at the SkepTrack Dragon*Con about it. The James Randi Educational Foundation’s "Code Of Conduct" at The Amazing Meeting 9 and the history (or “herstory”?) of women within the skeptical movement were of particular interest to many and I’m glad to say that I’ve been encouraged to continue writing and podcasting on this and related topics.

In that article, I mentioned that “the growing popularity of and opportunities to attend conferences and meetings are clearly influenced by online interactions—our conversations and comments appear worldwide rather than in our hometowns, and civility isn’t just about talking to people who aren’t skeptics or atheists.”

When concerns about the number of women contributing to, attending, and feeling comfortable at skeptical conferences leads to a formal announcement by the most popular skeptical conference in the world, it must come as no surprise that “online podiums” for women soon fall under similar scrutiny. As DJ Grothe put it in the special edition of the 2009 Skeptical Inquirer Magazine, there are "promises and problems" with Skepticism 2.0, and we are not alone in recognizing how attitudes towards women play a significant part in this.

My interest in this topic was initially piqued by a study mentioned by feminist writer and blogger Jessica Valenti back in 2007, entitled How The Web Became A Sexist’s Paradise. Valenti writes, “… Even women who don’t put their pictures or real names online are subject to virtual harassment. A recent study showed that when the gender of an online username appears female, [that individual is] 25 times more likely to experience harassment. The study, conducted by the University of Maryland, found that female user-names averaged 163 threatening and/or sexually explicit messages a day.”

It’s the Internet’s best-known secret: talk to any woman who writes online and there’s a good chance that she has a story about insults, abuse, snide asides, and inappropriate comments that derail and even attempt to censor her efforts to communicate. In 2011, the most well-known case of “trolling” of atheists and skeptics via email and social networking resulted in a real-world arrest (‘David Mabus’ Arrested By Montreal Police Over Online Death Threats, Huffington Post). In November 2011, there are articles worldwide, from the Guardian to Time magazine, documenting Twitter trends demanding recognition of sexism online using the hashtag #MenCallMeThings.

In one of those bemusing cases of synchronicity, on the same day that CSICOP originally published "On Codes of Conduct" in my Curiouser and Curiouser column, a similarly themed article was produced by Jennifer Ouellette on the Scientific American blog Cocktail Party Physics.

Jennifer Ouellette is the author of a number of science books for the general public including The Calculus Diaries: How Math Can Help You Lose Weight, Win in Vegas, and Survive a Zombie Outbreak (Penguin, 2010); her work has also appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, New Scientist, and Physics World, among other publications. She is currently working on her fourth book for Penguin, Me, Myself, and Why: Searching for the Science of Self. For two years, Jennifer served as the director of the Science and Entertainment Exchange, a LA–based initiative of the National Academy of Sciences fostering creative collaborations between industry professionals in Hollywood and scientists.

Kylie Sturgess:  In your July article Is It Cold In Here? on the Cocktail Party Physics blog, you’ve written about the chilly climate that women can face in male-dominated environments, with an example of Linda Henneberg, who worked at CERN. How can you tell if there is a “chilly climate”?

Jennifer Ouellette:  Well, she talks a lot about subtle behaviors and sometimes not-so-subtle behaviors that made her feel unwelcome, that made her feel like she was not seen as a true part of the team. I think the line that most struck me was not the fact that some of the physicists were flirting with her and treating her with kind of this fatherly condescension but that the attitude was, “Oh, it’s so cute that you try.”

These are very, very small, subtle things and so I know why it’s hard for some people to understand why we are complaining about them. The point that I try to get across in my blog post is that there is a cumulative effect. These little tiny things add up, like little grains of sand can add up and form an avalanche and actually just wipe you out. Collective behavior, with lots of little things acting together in concert, can actually have a very damaging effect.

But to my mind you can tell immediately there’s a chilly climate when you test what happens when you bring these things up. Do people say, “Gosh, we never thought of that; we’ll try to do better so you feel more welcome,” or do they get defensive? Do they start attacking you and telling you you’re crazy?

I think in light of the things I was talking about in that particular blog post, to me that’s a very clear indication that there’s a chilly climate—when a woman cannot set boundaries, cannot say, “I would appreciate it if some of these behaviors didn’t happen. This is how I feel. Can we do something to change this culture to make people like me feel more welcome?”

If the response to that is an invitation to silence, as we would call it—or a sledgehammer to silence—then I think you have a problem.

Sturgess:  You also talk about (and this is why I thought the article was so incredibly timely) progress in terms of improving workplace environments for women, and you gave some fantastic suggestions. Do you think that we’re going to see a similar change with online environments, since that’s become of great concern to many skeptical and atheist women? Of course, I think it’s of great concern to many women, but do you think we’re going to have a more focused effort [in skepticism], and do we need to?

Ouellette:  Oh, we absolutely need to. I’ve been very heartened by the fact that there seems to be more of a concerted, unified effort by several women. Not just in the skeptic atheist community, not just in the physics community, but all over the Internet: women who are in the public eye, who blog openly, who have been putting up with a level of abuse that I thankfully do not experience except when I write about issues of women and chilly climate! So yes, there has been progress, but it started with women being willing to speak up and show up. When I talked at the end of that blog post about a manifesto for change, it’s not an accident that I said step number one, the absolute first step, is for women to show up, and speak up, and not be silent even though it’s tempting.

I almost didn’t write that blog post because I was angry about the situation. I had just read about Linda Henneberg and her experiences at CERN. I mentioned it to my husband, about how upset I was and how I wanted to write this post. His first reaction was, “Oh God, don’t do that.”

He said, “You’re just going to get so much crap for that. Why do you want to wade into that mess and just invite all that venom and be personally attacked like that?”

I said, “Yes, I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to experience any of that. But I also don’t feel that I can be silent, because now I’m censoring myself. Now I’m deliberately not saying something because I don’t want to be attacked. I am choosing to be silent, choosing to be the good girl and know my place.” I think that’s the issue. You really do have to take that first step and show up.

It makes a difference. I can tell you from personal experience. I’ve been involved in covering physics for twenty years now, and I’ve seen the progress that’s been made because male leadership and female leadership and younger men and women in physics starting speaking out and said, “You know what? We’re going to change something about this.” Yes, some of them got attacked. Yes, there were complaints. You had the usual male privilege and the defensiveness that comes with that. I understand nobody likes to have their privilege and their bias pointed out to them.

I have white privilege, and I am not a horrible racist by any means, but sometimes my privilege shows in very subtle, subconscious ways. When it’s pointed out to me, my first reaction is to get defensive. The key here for the men in the community, now since we’re talking about this particular kind of chilly climate, is to get past that defensiveness. [We need to say,] “I’m sure you’re a nice guy, and just because we’re saying that there’s a lot of nasty people out there does not mean that we are saying that you are like that too. We are asking you to stand with us and speak out against them.”

So I would like to see those two things happen. I think when you see those two things happen more and more—and I think that is happening—you start to see the seeds of change being sown.

Sturgess:  Similar to your experience in physics, I found that I dealt with people who were harassing me or confronting me both online and in person. Talking to friends and learning that I was not alone gave me confidence and made me realize that it wasn’t something completely wrong with me, that these people weren’t targeting me because I was deserving of all of the criticism—that in fact there were bigger issues at hand. That reflection really helped. Do you think that there is a best approach when it comes to online sexism? I mean, I found help by talking it out. Does censoring the very worst help —or does it risk ignoring the existence of opposing or different voices altogether? Is there a middle ground?

Ouellette:  You know, I’m not really an advocate of censorship, but let’s be clear here. There’s lots of places for people to spew their venom on the Internet, and not allowing it on a professional website or on your personal blog post or anything like that is not censorship. This has been debated for a very long time, since the advent of the blogosphere essentially. You actually do not have a right to spew your venom in someone’s face in his or her living room. They do not have [an obligation] to listen to you. They do have the right to hang up on you, or to ask you to leave or do any of those things.

I do think I would like to see a little more deleting of some of those comments, and I think most women do delete the worst of it. But there is also a time, and I think that I’ve seen a number of women now over the last month or so starting to save instead of delete the comments and then occasionally putting them up and saying, “Look, you think that we’re just complaining about the occasional rudeness. Here are some examples. This is not safe for work; here is what we get on a daily basis.”

I think you do need that shock value to get people to realize that we’re not just being silly, that some of these things are extremely vile and unacceptable in any kind of civilized forum.

So, I do think there is a middle ground. I think I would like to see more policing of the Internet comments in general, because some men do in fact get abuse. I don’t think it’s as bad as it is for women, and I believe the male bloggers and the male online people who have taken female identities occasionally and said they got it far worse when they were women. I believe that.

But I think [considering] what’s allowed online, it’s okay to start saying, “There are certain things that as a community we will just not accept.” There’s nothing wrong with that; that’s not censorship. It’s not like they can’t go and speak their mind somewhere else, but you don’t have to allow it to poison your community.

Sturgess:  When is it engaging someone in a substantive argument and when it is becoming abusive? I’ve had this conversation with many people where they’ve said, “No, no. I’m just giving legitimate criticism.” Then you start looking at the length of this so-called criticism and you start hitting the table with your head! When you feel like you’re getting too drawn in with an argument, do you think there’s a good guideline as to when to stop?

Ouellette:  That’s a tough one because we’re talking about matters of degrees. It’s a continuum: things heat up slowly and at what point do you hit that critical threshold where it’s just becoming nasty? Emotions run high when these subjects come up. Look at the comment thread on the Is It Cold In Here? blog post; at some point, I just gave up and stopped responding. It simply wasn’t worth it. Actually I did not delete very many posts either; I went against my own advice and let some of them stand. Given the nature of the post I felt that some of the commenters were in fact proving my point for me. So, eventually, let them hang themselves and leave their comments up there.

I do think that there’s a time to engage and a time not to engage. When you start picking on little tiny points; when you start attacking the character of the person and questioning the person’s motives; when you start doing what are called derailing techniques, [remember that] at some point, [it’s important] to not let it delve into personal attack. Words matter. Make sure that what you’re arguing about is about what’s substantive and not one of these smaller nit-picky things. Sometimes you react strongly to something because your feelings are hurt. Sometimes you’re defensive—nobody likes being called out on something. I certainly don’t! Being mature enough to own up to that is important. Self-knowledge is the key.

I will say that I got a couple of emails from leaders, male leaders, at various skeptic atheist organizations asking for more information about some of the reports that have been done by the National Academy of Sciences on this issue by the American Physical Society.

The skeptic and atheist movements, and I think there’s some question whether they’re the same or different, are getting bigger and more popular. More and more people are joining and more and more women are thinking of joining.

Suddenly they’re experiencing some growing pains; suddenly it’s not just the tight little community. You don’t have the same level. You start getting some of these issues cropping up when you start getting bigger and bigger.

To me, it’s a good sign that some of these conversations are happening, as ugly they can be and as unpleasant they can be. Because as I said, it means that first, the community is growing and secondly, more and more women are willing to speak out about this issue. And that means that those are the seeds of change being sown. So, I do think it’s going to get better as you go.

That is my hope. I’m eternally optimistic.

Sturgess:  I’ve got my fingers un-skeptically crossed myself, I have to admit! Thank you, Jennifer.

The Project Barnum website was launched in September 2011 after accusations by audience members that self-proclaimed UK psychic Sally Morgan was being fed information while on stage. Wiltshire resident Hayley Stevens—cohost of the Righteous Indignation podcast and popular on the skeptic scene for her international lectures on paranormal investigations—decided that something had to be done. Project Barnum exists to educate the public and venue providers about techniques that psychics and mediums often attempt to pass off as supernatural ability.

Kylie Sturgess: So tell me about yourself. Why are you a skeptic?

Hayley Stevens: Oh, that’s a good question. My website is called Hayley is a Ghost and that kind of gives a hint to the fact that I started as a ghost hunter. I used to be a ghost hunter who did believe in ghosts, but now I’m a skeptic.

I believed in all sorts of associated strange things: mediums, psychics, the other side and afterlife. Then at the age of eighteen I started doing on-site investigations into hauntings and supposed ghost sightings. As I got older I started to doubt some things; I witnessed certain things being done by other people that made me think that something wasn’t quite right with what I believed.

I started to do research into it and I realized that I was very wrong, and I became quite skeptical. It sort of spiraled from there; rather than stopping what I was doing, I have carried on with it, but from a different angle.

Sturgess: It must have been terribly disappointing to go through that, and yet it seems to have empowered you to say, “Right, I’m going to correct some of the wrongs or try to make good of it.”

Stevens: Yes, it was quite disappointing. But it wasn’t an instantaneous thing where suddenly one day I was saying, “I no longer believe in ghosts.” It was a drawn-out process. I used to do things like table tipping and séances; it was really crazy. One day I decided I wasn’t going to do that anymore. Then another day I decided, “Oh yeah, actually I don’t believe that these photos contain ghosts.” I gradually lost the belief.

In one way it was quite disenchanting, but in another way it opened my eyes up to something that was more interesting: the way that our brains perceive things. The believing brain is, I think, actually far more fascinating than the idea that a ghost has done things. I find it much more intriguing to enter a case now and try to work out a logical cause for what is being reported, rather than just going in and saying, “Let’s find a ghost. There must be a ghost.”

Sturgess: How did it influence your interactions with other investigators? You were working alongside those who believed and then things slowly developed and changed; you’ve even gone to conferences where you’ve had people question you and see you as the enemy—yet you were once on their side. Does it help you understand their perspective as well?

Stevens: I guess the thing I really took from becoming more skeptical and losing my beliefs was that I learned very quickly that just because you see things one way, other people aren’t instantly going to agree with you. It was probably very naive of me to think that was going happen that way. Because I decided I no longer wanted go into people’s houses and do séances, it also suddenly occurred to me that it was very distasteful and wrong. I didn’t believe it worked anymore, because I had learned more.

But the people [with whom] I investigated—people who had become [my] friends—weren’t necessarily very accommodating to my beliefs. They were very spiritual people and some of them still are to this day. They very much turned their backs on me, which I can understand. I still feel disappointed that they did. But I can understand why people’s beliefs are that way. I think it gives me insight into how easy it is to believe some things and do certain things, and believe that table tipping works, because I’ve been there; I used to believe it. I used to sit there for hours at a table thinking a ghost was moving it.

I was very young, and I look back and think, “Oh my gosh, how unethical.” But you can only learn from past mistakes. Yes, I fell out with a lot of people, and as you mentioned I do sometimes get invited to paranormal conferences to speak about being a skeptic. Every time I speak people do come up and say, “I don’t agree with you” and “I think you’re wrong on this.” There was one occasion where I was in the foyer of the theater [where] the conference was being held and I got cornered by a lady who was a spiritualist. She was pointing her finger in my face, [saying], “You’re so wrong. Spirits are all around. You say they don’t exist but they’re right here. I can see them.” She’d just taken what I said out of context. I thought that was very sad.

I also think it’s very sad that when you label yourself as a skeptic—and I do so quite correctly—and people instantly think that you are the bad guy and that you’re saying they’re idiots and that their belief systems are wrong and that ghosts don’t exist. I don’t believe ghosts exist but I’m open‑minded to the possibility. You have to try and convince people to be open‑minded and that’s one of the biggest problems that I come across.

Sturgess: I have one more question on this. You said that you have been in touch with people who are religious spiritualists. Did you ever notice a conflict between those people who are promoting themselves as commercial psychics and those who see it within a spiritual or religious dimension, part of their world view?

Stevens: On the Righteous Indignation podcast we’ve interviewed lots and lots of psychics who do shows but are also part of the SNU, which is the Spiritualists National Union here in the United Kingdom. We’ve actually interviewed Steven Upton and during our interview he openly criticized the big-name psychics who go around claiming to be psychic mediums … saying that their practices were very un-spiritualist and he didn’t like what these people did.

I think there is some conflict between the two, but I think there’s also a crossover between those who are spiritualists and [those who] do stage shows. If you go into a spiritualist church it’s very much the same sort of thing: people in the audience are there for readings and a medium or a psychic is up on stage doing readings. It’s very much a condensed version of the stage show.

In one episode for the podcast, episode 99, we interviewed a psychic named Litz Butcher and she was very much speaking out against those who use trickery. We interviewed her the day after the Sally Morgan story broke. She said, “I’m so shocked that Sally has potentially done this. I’m disgusted.”

It was something that I’ve heard time and time again with other psychics that we’d interviewed. I said to her, “Why don’t you do something about it?” because she also claimed that she knew numerous psychics who used similar tricks. I said, “Well, Litz, if you think you know, why don’t you speak out about it? I accept that you might be genuine and you think that your ability is genuine, but if you think you know people who are using trickery, why don’t you speak out about it and help to educate people?”

Then Litz said, “Well if I do, that it’s just a can of worms and I don’t really want to deal with that.” So I think sometimes there’s a bit of double standard going on. It’s very complicated to try and understand how these people think.

Sturgess: Do you ever think that skeptics and spiritualists might stand together with protest placards outside a psychic show saying, “This is entertainment only!”?

Stevens: Oh gosh. I don’t think so! I would love to see that happening! Maybe it would. I don’t know. I’m very doubtful because from my experience with spiritualists when you label yourself as a skeptic it means that you’re the enemy in a sense. That’s probably not true of all people who recognize themselves as spiritualists, but it’s certainly true of the ones that I’ve encountered. I mentioned [the lady] before who cornered me with her finger in my face saying, “You’re wrong. You’re wrong.” That was simply because I labeled myself as a skeptic.

I would like to think that Project Barnum is something that those who think that they’re genuine psychics would get behind, with regards to educating people about trickery—that it would be something that those who think they’re genuine or claim to be genuine would also support. But at the same time, I don’t think they’re going to be jumping with joy at the idea of Project Barnum.

Sturgess: What was the original idea behind Project Barnum?

Stevens: I work in the theater industry, and it gave me another kind of perspective on what was happening with psychic stage shows. I had this idea that perhaps the best way was not just challenging the psychics or the audience alone, but targeting the venues that make it possible for psychics to perform there.

I’ve worked in theaters in the past who say they won’t bring in psychic shows because they know what trickery is involved. But then I’ve spoken to people who run venues that do allow psychics and who don’t know the tricks involved, and they use a “For Entertainment Only” disclaimer because of the law. But they don’t really know what some psychics do in regards to cold reading, shot-gunning, and those kinds of techniques. When you explain it to them they’re actually quite shocked. The same goes for people who go along for a reading, because they don’t always know what techniques are being used.

So I had the idea of creating an online resource for information on the techniques of psychic shows that I would then make available to the general public and theater venues, with things that you could print off: posters, tip cards that would have information about cold reading, and so forth.

Sturgess: So who else is involved in the website? I noticed that there’s a Meet the Team link on the Project Barnum website.

Stevens: Lots of different aspects have come together from my mentioning to random people that I’m working on something. For example, Ashley Pryce from Edinburgh Skeptics in the Pub does a brilliant Skeptics in the Pub talk here in the United Kingdom, called How to be a Psychic Conman. I got in touch with him to see if he could provide some information and some resources that people could download. He was the one that came up with the name Project Barnum, after P.T. Barnum.

Also we’ve had support and advice from Michael Marshall, who helps to organize Merseyside Skeptics, the QED Conference, and the 10:23 Homeopathy Overdose campaign. He’s also my cohost on Righteous Indignation. Then we’ve got other people in the United Kingdom: Tannice [Pendegrass] and Keir [Liddle], Simon [Clare], and people who have donated information for the website. My dad and I built the website, and then they just helped me put information on there. Without them it would still be half complete. I’ve said to people, “Does anybody want to help?” and people have just come forward.

Sturgess: Can readers send in recommendations or links and resources?

Stevens: Yes, we need as many resources as we can get for people to download, watch, or listen to that will help them understand how psychics can often mislead people. So if anybody has anything or they have an idea, let us know and we’ll give you credit—we just have to share as much as we can in order to help people.

The Project Barnum website is at www.projectbarnum.co.uk. Hayley Steven’s site is http://hayleyisaghost.co.uk and the Righteous Indignation podcast is found at http://www.parafort.com.

The New Zealand Skeptics convention was held August 26–28th at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, with a program featuring topics familiar and dear to many skeptics. Yet it was also one of the most challenging conventions I’ve ever attended.

Michelle Coffey, Kylie Sturgess, and Siouxsie Wiles

Around 150 conference-goers listened to lectures on investigating paranormal beliefs, presentations about irrational ideas, and discussions of how podcasts can help promote critical thinking—not unusual fare for such a convention. However, out of all the skeptic events I’ve attended (and there have been many), this was the first that discussed the recovery and ramifications of pseudoscience on a city still under siege by earthquakes—a city that was the venue for the conference itself. 

The Thursday before the conference began, I stood on the curb of Oxford Terrace looking into the Red Zone of Christchurch and found myself thinking about my last trip to New York City. That was back in 2008, and I’d gone to the World Trade Center site with tour guide Mark “Gravy” Roberts. This is a man who (according to the Phoenix New Times) is “The Obi-wan Kenobi of debunkers” when it comes to 9/11 “Truthers.” He’d challenged the Loose Change misinformation campaigns for many years, not only on the site itself but also through his Google Pages website “wtc7lies” and numerous media appearances.

When I travel to places like New York, I usually make short documentaries that I put on YouTube, but this time I turned off the camera and quietly held the hand of my best friend as we looked at the rebuilding of the city center. It somehow felt very wrong to record there, even though I was with “Gravy,” who clearly didn’t mind taking us through the World Trade Center area.

Of course, Christchurch in 2011 doesn’t compare to the site of the Twin Towers in 2008. Yet I still felt the same sadness, the same nausea. Although celebrities like Russell Crowe, Prince William, and Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard have all been through the Zone, I was uncomfortable just being outside the fences surrounding the devastation.

If any readers have been to Christchurch’s Twisted Hop pub on Poplar Street in order to attend a skeptical event or tour, I have some sad news. The pub sits, seemingly undamaged, right next to collapsed buildings. Rumbles of machinery and sounds of toppling cement echo throughout the Zone and beyond, with damaged roads and disrupted services extending well out into the suburbs and hills surrounding Christchurch.

I nearly didn’t make a short film about the tour I was being given, but I was greatly comforted by the presence of my friend Gold, who is the chair-entity of the New Zealand Skeptics. He has lived through the earthquakes and lent a hand to rescue and salvage, wading through the liquefied soil—the grey fine-grained mud that still covers the roads and buckles the pavements with massive boils. The footage is featured on the Token Skeptic podcast along with audio from the convention itself.

This was Gold’s first return to the city since the earthquakes of February and June 2011. As we walked along the fences that surrounded the no-go Red Zone streets, he talked about his memories of Christchurch and the importance of continuing to contribute to the city by holding the 2011 New Zealand Skeptics convention there. We also discussed what led him to take on the role of chair-entity for the New Zealand Skeptics.

Gold: I have what seems to be the typical story these days. I discovered the Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe podcast and was surprised and entertained to find there was a name for the way I thought. I began absorbing all the science and skepticism podcasts and blogs I could find. At this point it was early 2000 and I was living in and around Sydney, Australia. It wasn’t until I was back in New Zealand that I actually started doing anything with [the skeptic community], though.

I founded the first New Zealand Skeptics in the Pub in Christchurch in May 2009 and despite having suffered the loss of the Twisted Hop (the regular venue) to the quakes, and [despite] my move to the city of Wellington, I’m pleased to say that the group is still going strong.

I’ve also been the catalyst for four other groups so far: working down the country we have Auckland, Palmerston North, Wellington, Christchurch, and Dunedin. Hamilton, a city in the North Island, is currently in the works. So far I’ve managed to get to the first gathering of each group too and it’s a trend I’m going to do my damnedest to continue.

Kylie Sturgess: Why choose Christchurch as the site for the New Zealand conference? Were there doubts or suggestions to change it due to the earthquakes?

Gold: Well, New Zealand is made up of two main islands; the North Island held the last two conferences and [most] of the committee were living in Christchurch. Dunedin, another major center (by New Zealand standards), has it next year. After the initial September 2010 quake the venue was fine and we didn’t see any reason to change things. After the February 2011 quake things had progressed too far to change plans and at that point the venue was still standing and sound.

While the question of moving the venue was raised, those in the area were reporting that things were okay with the venue (having checked it out and seen the structural reports). I think there may have also been a little defiance towards Ken “Moonman” Ring, our local weather and earthquake “seer.”

Kylie Sturgess: This year there was an interesting mixture of topics. Mark Ottley gave an excellent breakdown of Sam Harris’s book The Moral Landscape and its application to clinical psychology and psychiatry; Mark Quigley discussed scientists’ role in educating the public about earthquakes; and Michael Edmonds talked about the International Year of Chemistry and its application to understanding pseudoscientific claims. What do you think skeptics look for in a conference and does New Zealand’s emphasis differ?

Gold: Skeptics come from all sorts of backgrounds and have all sorts of interests, but I think one thing that could be said is that we all have the same interest in honest and accurate answers to questions regardless of what the question is. I think one of the things that encourages a new person to [attend] a conference is the chance to meet like-minded people and possibly meet online “friends” for the first time. One of the things that makes someone a regular on the scene is that ongoing opportunity to catch up with friends and make new ones. The speakers are also an important part. My experience with conferences of this sort is that the speakers are very approachable and while held in high regard rarely are put on—or wish to be put on—a pedestal.

As for some of the topics at the convention, we’re a country that takes pride in its landscape and (clearly!) we’ve just had a couple of major earthquakes! At the moment there is some controversy over pest control methods and Ken “Moonman” Ring has had too much air time to spout his bizarre hypothesis that the moon has any influence on earthquakes. Apart from that we tend to have the usual gamut of “mainstream” crackpots and we do our best to challenge them where we can.

Kylie Sturgess: Overall, does New Zealand skepticism differ greatly from what you’ve seen in other countries?

Gold: To an extent I think it does differ; while we have our charlatans that do the rounds of personal appearances and television shows (e.g. Sensing Murder—sorry, that’s a New Zealand program of ours!) for the most part we don’t seem to be hit that hard by the purveyors of woo-woo. We have our anti-vaccination groups, but nothing on the scale of Australia’s Meryl Dorey or America’s Jenny McCarthy. We have our psychics, homeopaths, and UFO and New World Order proponents, but while they’re around there aren’t a lot of them and their supporters couldn’t hold their end of an argument if their life depended on it. One thing we seem to be missing is the cryptozoologists, or at least their local subject matter.

Having said this, I live the larger portion of my skeptical life online and compared to other countries we make very little noise down here. I don’t watch broadcast television or listen to the radio so I rarely see local news unless it makes it into my feeds.

Dr. Martin Bridgstock

Kylie Sturgess: Martin Bridgstock and I were fortunate enough to present on the future of skepticism, along with (respectively) research on paranormal belief in Australia and current work in podcasting. How do you view the future of New Zealand skepticism after this conference? What other projects are on the horizon?

Gold: Until a few years ago the average age within the community was quite a bit higher than it currently is. Peter Hyde attributes this to the New Zealand Skeptics in the Pub groups and the number of young people entering the fold. For the foreseeable future I’m seeing outreach as an important part of the society. We’re currently exploring options including prizes at the National Science and Technology Fair and our own paranormal challenge, and I’m hoping to find someone to step up and start a local round of SkeptiCamps (which was something Martin Bridgstock discussed during the convention).

Personally, I want to get a couple of Skeptics in the Pub groups off the ground and I have a sponsored walk planned for early next year. At the end of the year Te Araroa (The Long Pathway) should be completed. It’s a trail that runs from one end of the country to the other. I’m looking at having sponsorship go to one of three options; the Christchurch Earthquake Appeal and the New Zealand Skeptics Society are the first two. The third is yet to be determined. I’m also hoping to get some major sponsors on board that will match the smaller sponsors’ contributions but go towards the Christchurch Earthquake Appeal.

The New Zealand Skeptics site can be found at http://www.skeptics.org.nz, the New Zealand Skeptics in the Pub site is at http://www.skepticsinthepub.net.nz, and more news about Gold’s charity walk can be found at http://intentionallyhomeless.org.

I was fortunate enough to see Richard Wiseman, a popular figure on the skeptical scene, present in Australia as a part of National Science Week during the launch of his book Quirkology: How We Discover the Big Truths in Small Things. Wiseman started his professional life as a magician before graduating in psychology from University College London and obtaining a PhD in psychology from the University of Edinburgh. He recently presented at The Amazing Meeting 9 in Las Vegas.

His latest book, Paranormality, has been published for the United States in rather unusual circumstances, as Wiseman writes on his website:

I am going to self-publish an unashamedly skeptical book in America and see what happens. The book launches on Kindle and my UK publisher will ship physical editions into America (and it will appear as an iBook very soon).

Kylie Sturgess:  Has this book been in the works for quite a while, because it has so much in it?

Richard Wiseman:  It has! I think around about, oh, fifteen years ago, I actually suggested the idea of doing a book about the psychology of the paranormal. I think I got as far as writing a proposal for it. It got kind of passed around a little bit, and we could never get the angle quite right on it. And then, The Luck Factor came along, which was a much bigger book, so the paranormality thing got put onto the back burner. Then, only recently, I thought, “Maybe there’s different ways of doing this rather than a straight debunking book.” So, I have returned to it, but the idea has been around for a very long time.

Kylie:  It’s wonderful. Now, for those who might not be familiar with your career, you’re professor of public understanding of psychology at Hertfordshire University [and] do a great amount of research and writing and present at a variety of science festivals. Do you think that improving the public understanding of psychology promotes a skeptical outlook, and, maybe more importantly, helps reduce uncertainty and unease about paranormal claims?

Richard:  Well, certainly, it’s very difficult to be sort of rational and scientific about the paranormal and not be skeptical to some extent. I mean, lots of the things which we consider to be paranormal have been “debunked.” We now have a normal explanation for them. So yeah, I think it does. And part of my work is going around, as you say, to various festivals. So yeah, I’ll go and pop around the country and occasionally the world talking about all sorts of things, mainly psychology [that] is relevant to people’s lives. So one of the reasons why I was excited about Paranormality is that lots of people have these weird experiences and it’s nice to explore them.

Kylie:  In the book, you discuss questions like, “Why should our sophisticated brains have evolved to detect nonexistent ghostly entities?” and [you] investigate several different theories—which theories do you think are credible?

Richard:  Well, the ghost research has always been quite close to my heart. We carried out investigations at Hampton Court Palace, which is a royal palace not very far from London, and also in the Edinburgh Underground Vaults. And we’re always looking at the psychology of it; in fact the whole theme of Paranormality is not so much, “Are these things true or not?”—in fact, they’re not. Instead, it’s “What does each one tell us about our brains, our behavior, our body and so on?”

If you take ghosts for example, or the notion that you wake up and you see an entity at the foot of your bed, and you can’t move, and you think the entity is pulling you down, it in fact tells us a great deal about sleep. When we’re asleep and dream, we’re paralyzed, so we don’t act out our dreams and hurt ourselves as we drift through into a waking state. Some of the bizarre imagery, and the sense of paralysis that can lead to thinking that you’re having a ghostly experience, is a good example of, I think, what Paranormality is about.

In terms of haunted places, there are some theories that it’s to do with the infrasound, very low frequency sound waves that can be caused by rumbling traffic or wind against an open window, which then vibrates the body. There might be something to that. I have conducted some experiments that have looked at that. I don’t think that’s going to explain a lot of the cases, I think most of it is down to suggestion. There are suggestibility tests in the book and people vary on those.

Or, when you take people that are suggestible and put them into a place that’s allegedly haunted, particularly if they believe in ghosts, they will start to experience this stuff. It’s the psychology of it all that I find fascinating.

Kylie:  Testing claimants and the stories behind many of the cases are absolutely fascinating and I just love reading all the stories that you have. Is there one particular case that you think you’ll always be remembered for, for your involvement [in it]?

Richard:  I think there are several, because they’re always quite colorful. The book opens actually with J.T., the psychic terrier, which is the notion that the dog knew when its owner was returning home. We investigated the dog and couldn’t see any evidence of that, and another parapsychologist called Rupert Sheldrake looked at it and we got into a big argument about it. What’s interesting about the book is that I don’t really talk about mainstream—to the extent that there is a mainstream—parapsychology. If you’re trying to keep an audience on board, as soon as you start to go into methodology and stats, and so on, it gets very dull very quickly.

So, a lot of the time I throw to footnotes and with J.T., for example, I sort of throw toward the work that we’ve done with him and the arguments we’ve had with Rupert that are on the web. But I’m hoping that there [are] different levels for different readers. So some people will go there and look at that additional material.

But I suspect in terms of one case that was the most fun, J.T. would be up there. Although some of the work in India with some of the gurus who claimed to be able to materialize objects at their fingertips, that was fun as well. It’s all been a blast!

Kylie:  I guess that leads on to my next question. What’s the difference between pop psychology and psychology? I mean, it’s not very easy to get across some of the more complex concepts without losing the essence of the scientific findings. How do you strike the balance?

Richard:  It is a difficult balance. I don’t think complexity is the issue. I think it’s where the complexity is inherently interesting. I think the problem with a lot of the paranormal stuff, where you were talking about really fine-grained issues about methodology, I just don’t think it’s interesting except to a handful of people and so that’s why it’s not in the book. However, I think the basic idea of the scientific method, which is that you have at least two groups and you’re comparing them in order to find out how people think and behave differently between the groups and therefore that tells you something about what influences behavior and thought—I think that is interesting to people and there are countless examples in the book where that has revealed something interesting about our brains.

I think an underlying theme of the book is that it’s very easy to trip yourself up. It’s very easy to buy into these kind of psychic illusions unless you have the scientific method at your fingertips. So I think pretty much in every chapter there’s an example of how an experiment or several experiments show us more about out-of-body experiences, or psychic readings or whatever.

Kylie:  As both a psychologist and a paranormal researcher, I’ve got a two-parter here, because parapsychology intrigues me and I wonder sometimes about the attitudes that people might have. What can the science of psychology gain by a fuller understanding of parapsychology and what can the science of parapsychology gain by a fuller understanding of psychology?

Richard:  Well, it depends how you cut the cake there, because if by parapsychology you’re talking about Psi, this notion [of] sort of a small, fairly unreliable signal, that’s when you put the results of lots of people together in an experiment and that’s when that allegedly emerges. That’s one type of parapsychology. Some people use it in a much broader sense to mean, “Oh, no, it’s an out-of-body experience,” going to a psychic, talking to the dead as well, so it depends what you mean by the question. But if it’s the former, which is this small signal, then I think we’re going to be learning a lot about methodology.

When you try and conduct an experiment, you want it as clean as possible. You don’t want artifacts in there. And so if you get evidence for Psi, you need to be certain you’ve got a squeaky clean experiment. I think we are learning a lot just in terms of randomization and controls and stats and multiple analysis and all those things that psychologists get excited about and a few other people do. So I think there will be a sharing of the knowledge there.

In terms of the broader picture, the sort of normalistic experiences and so on, I think we can learn a huge amount. I mean, if you take out-of-body experiences, in the book I talk about how the brain constructs a sense of where it is. Using modern day experiments, you can make people think they’re three or four feet in front of themselves. You can throw that sense of where they are all over the place, once you understand how the brain constructs where you are. That comes directly from studying out-of-body experiences, so it is absolutely fascinating. Not because it might be true—we don’t actually leave our body when we have an OBE—but because it tells you so much about how your brain works.

Kylie:  Would you change the definition or the subject matter of parapsychology?

Richard:  No! I think it’s just weird experiences, whether it’s déjà-vu or whatever. A surprisingly large percentage of people have those experiences. In terms of going to a psychic, for example, in the U.K., around about 12 or 15 percent of the people go to a psychic or a medium. You can’t ignore this; this is a large percentage of the population. We just conducted a survey; 25 percent of people claim to have experienced a ghost—I mean, one in four people. There is something going on—you can’t deny that. The question is, “What?” So I wouldn’t change what parapsychology is about. I’m a fan of it, in that sense.

Kylie:  In the U.K. and in Australia, we’ve become very interested in consumer rights affairs in regards to pseudo-scientific topics, and you might know of the Nightingale Collaboration, who are being very active in regards to challenging some of the advertising claims online about pseudo-scientific claims, particularly ones by homeopaths or chiropractitioners. You’ve also talked about the possibility of there being consumer rights claims in regards to psychics?

Richard:  Absolutely, and I think that’s a really interesting issue. One of the sort of touchstones of the book is this idea that when you go along to a psychic or medium, they tell you all about yourself and advise you for the future. What I find fascinating is how it seems that within the media, there’s a real attempt not to tell people about things like the psychology of the situation, and cold reading, and how some psychics fake it, and so on because they want to put out a program saying this stuff is true.

So there’s a whole chapter in Paranormality that talks about all of those methods. I think it’s the first time they’ve been out there in the public domain in that sense. That’s proving the most controversial part of the book. There are a lot of psychics that really don’t want people to know that stuff. So that’s part of it.

I’m saying to people, “Look, when you go along to a psychic, be an informed consumer.” You wouldn’t go along to buy a second-hand car knowing nothing about cars; that would be mad. You’d either find out, or you take somebody with you. And yet, you’re prepared to do it when it comes to other aspects of your life.

Secondly, as you say, there are a lot of organizations who are going to the Office of Fair Trading in the U.K., that are saying, “Hold on a second. You’re claiming these amazing abilities. Let’s see the evidence that you could do it.” That would be a huge shift if that happened, because obviously they can’t actually do these things. They’re only pretending. And then, the third element is the idea that these people should be sort of legislated the same way that counselors are. There should be some sort of counseling qualification that each of them should be required to have because that is essentially what they are doing.

You know, I’ve been involved in countless programs where the skeptical point of view doesn’t get an airing because—I remember one producer years ago saying to me, “It’s like blowing up a balloon … your audience for the most part don’t buy into the claim. You have to keep on pushing and pushing and blowing and blowing to get your balloon inflated. And then, it only takes one skeptic to come along to act like the needle and burst the whole thing.” And that’s why the skeptics don’t get a fair hearing, because actually their argument is pretty powerful.

A man enthusiastically bounded up to introduce himself with a hug and I immediately took three steps backwards. The time was 2005, the place was The Amazing Meeting 3 in Las Vegas, and I was on my honeymoon. With someone else, just in case you were wondering.

I’m not accustomed to being embraced, certainly not by strangers and especially not by men I don’t know. Yet this was different context—I suddenly realized that I “knew” this man from an online forum board. Within a day I was signing my name to a shirt as if I was some kind of skeptic celebrity, joking about my friend’s choice of career as a stripper and peering flirtatiously through the borrowed eyeglasses of someone who would later become my best friend.

About thirty attendees of TAM3 bonded through online interactions for six months or more before the event—some didn’t even reveal their real names. It didn’t matter in the slightest to us; on the last night we filled four long tables in a restaurant and vowed to return another year.

For many, it never happened. Some of the people from that first Amazing Meeting I attended have gone on to achieve many things in the name of skepticism. However, some of those attendees have disappeared forever from the scene or “lost their way” in disappointment and recrimination. Quite a few of those people were women; some of them no longer call themselves “skeptics.” The year is now 2011 and today I opened an email to read news about a code of conduct for this year’s “Amazing” gathering:

We are all subject to confirmation bias, to taking a position and not budging; we all have more to learn about applying skepticism to our own views. But being unwilling to discuss these topics without recourse to personal attack or threats is counter to our goals as a skeptical movement.

The JREF takes sexual harassment seriously and we take women’s voices seriously, because we know that we are more effective as a movement when half of humanity’s talent, knowledge, and experience is not ignored. That’s why we have worked to make sure that at The Amazing Meeting this year, more than half of our main program talks are by women.

We’ve printed a statement in the front of this year’s conference program that makes it clear that sexual harassment and other forms of harassment are not acceptable at TAM.… We’re discouraged to see the depth of division in our movement that has been brought to the surface by recent statements by various leaders, but we are optimistic that the conversation and debate will generate more light than heat. We believe that an open discussion of sexism and harassment will ultimately strengthen the skeptical movement.

While there have been many women actively involved in skepticism whose names can be easily found, my initial investigation as to whether it’s predominantly a token gesture or genuine acknowledgment of their contributions as equals has produced mixed results. In skepticism, the double-X chromosome is not queen; the broader landscape of gender politics is inescapable and influences how we interact with others and ourselves and how we progress.

In 2008, I was more optimistic about how skepticism had progressed in regards to the treatment of women, having compared a variety of historical documents online. I read of “CSICOP’s Rational Feminist Alliance” of 1997, with about ten women and four men presenting

…talks on disability politics, multiculturalism, creation/evolution politics, and others, which, while important, fascinating, and thoroughly enjoyed by conference participants, were far off from the stated purpose. Anyone looking specifically to discuss gender politics in science may have been, at the very least, a bit confused. However, this did not seem to concern either participants or speakers. In fact, “complaints” were practically nonexistent. [my emphasis]

This review reflects something that Sara Mayhew sees as important in 2011’s Amazing Meeting 9 in terms of contributions now and in the future:

One practical action has already been implemented at this year’s TAM; there seems to have been a conscious effort to invite more women speakers to conferences. One of the biggest and most easily remedied problems—not just at skeptic conferences, but society in general—is simply exposing everyone to more women. As writer, I often speak about the benefits of more depictions of female characters in comics, TV, and movies which demonstrate that women are just people. Think of the wide variety of male characters we’re exposed to and then the very narrow options for female characters. For this reason, I’d like to mention that I don’t want to see more women at skeptic conferences just talking about women’s issues—we need to see more women talking about the same variety of topics that our male counterparts do, just like this year’s TAM lineup offers.

Of course, our experiences may differ for many reasons: Dylan Keenburg of “Woo Fighters” reported from TAM8 that “Harriet Hall noted that she has never had discrimination experiences within the skeptic community,” while “Pamela Gay argued that by working toward integrating gender parity and cultural diversity into the skeptic community, there would be more diverse role models and that would result in skepticism reaching more people in the United States.”

While it’s a contentious topic, civility and social norms have been explicitly addressed at many conferences—from the famous Phil Plait “Don’t Be A Dick” talk at TAM8 to the less attended but still vital “Don’t Be That Guy” panel at Balticon (as reported by the Geologic Podcast). Some of the more heated debates online have revolved around the relative importance of tone and creating conducive atmospheres when discussing skeptical matters; many of these have been documented by Daniel Loxton on Skeptic Blogs in his post “The Science of Honey and Vinegar.”

How social behavior influences the participation level of women has been discussed at least since the 1980s, as shown in “CSICOP and the Skeptics,” originally published in the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research by George P. Hansen:

Coulman wrote another column in the June issue asking the same question, noting that no women had yet replied. Finally, months later, Elissa Pratt-Lowe (1985) responded:

I think another aspect of organized skepticism that may deter women is the aggressive, “macho” attitudes held by some of the (male) participants. It seems to me that some “skeptics” are more interested in ridicule than in exploring and challenging pseudoscientific beliefs. [This was followed by “Very true, I think-MC”] (p. 7)

The Bay Area Skeptics are not the only ones to confront the problem. In response to an article by physicist George Lawrence in Rocky Mountain Skeptic, John Wilder (1988) wrote: “For all of the author’s [Lawrence’s] scientific, academic and intellectual credentials, he displays a level of disrespect for others that, in my opinion, is completely inappropriate.… The author succeeded only in subjecting a group of sincere ... people to outright ridicule.” (p. 8)

The issue of comfort around male skeptics was also raised in a section entitled “Where The Girls Aren’t,” in a 1999 article by Jeanine DeNoma on “Local Skeptical Groups,” which cites Sheila Gibson:

Gibson raises the point that “maybe skeptical women are just different?” She quotes one woman who said, “Women who participate don’t necessarily have a science background and they don’t fit female stereotypes. They seem comfortable in groups of men. Being the only woman doesn’t bother them.”

Just being a skeptic, male or female, probably means one is at least somewhat comfortable being out-of-step with the mainstream. One reward for affiliation with an organized skeptics group is the interaction that occurs among seriously-mindful and thought-challenging skeptics. [Emphasis mine.]

A 1996 article by DeeAnne Wymer on “Why Are There So Few Female Skeptics?” suggested why women may not be so eager to involve themselves in skepticism. It noted, “Family and work demands leave women with little time for any outside activities; sexism among male members creates an unpleasant atmosphere for women; groups seldom focus on topics of interest to women; skeptics are generally recruited from the sciences, fields with fewer women.”

A wonderfully insightful article by Josh Rosenau on the blog Thoughts from Kansas, “A Pedestal is as Much as a Prison” gives advice on what part men can play in encouraging a supportive atmosphere:

I can also, and this is a different topic, think about ways to change my own behavior and that of other guys, to make this less of a problem. If I see a guy acting like a douchecanoe, I can call him out on it. Maybe privately (which is more likely to actually change the guy’s thinking), but maybe in public, so that other guys know that folks are watching, and so that women know they aren’t alone in this.

While speaking out can have a better chance of creating a snowball effect of change, you can also vote with your feet. Since the early days of The Amazing Meetings, there have been ongoing efforts to encourage more women to attend and present on stage, from a number of people both within and outside of JREF. I personally feel that efforts to create skeptical events in cafés and libraries, groups like the UK’s “Ladies Who Do Skepticism,” and skeptical parents (not only blogging and podcasting, but presenting and doing workshops at conferences!) all demonstrate excellent efforts towards rectifying some of these problems.

Suggestions to hold alternative conferences have been eagerly adopted, with “un-conferences” like the previously mentioned SkeptiCamps and long-running events such as Dragon*Con and Balticon featuring fine examples of inclusive skeptical content. Dragon*Con’s Skeptic Track in particular has featured several panels on gender issues over the years featuring both men and women, with a range of topics that are open to both official guests and eager skeptics who apply to present.

The fight to acknowledge women’s equality and challenge sexism isn’t new and isn’t unusual in society and certainly not in skepticism. There have been plenty of men as well as women, writing, speaking and presenting online and at conferences about the need for gender equality, for quite some time. Certainly, these voices have been heard and recognized as valid, some more than others. The growing popularity of and opportunities to attend conferences and meetings are clearly influenced by online interactions—our conversations and comments appear worldwide rather than in our hometowns, and civility isn’t just about talking to people who aren’t skeptics or atheists.

While I may never have again the same sense of collegiality and support I once felt when I thought I was with skeptically-minded friends, I will not dismiss how feeling the same way might contribute to the progress of other men and women of skepticism in the future.

Book Review: The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry by Jon Ronson

Having collected Jon Ronson’s works for some time (starting with Them: Adventures with Extremists and continuing with The Men Who Stared at Goats and What I Do: More True Tales of Everyday Craziness), I am not surprised in the slightest at his choice of subject matter for his most recent book, The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry.

Ronson often investigates, usually with a gleeful sense of adrenalin-addiction, topics involving the fringes of mainstream society that spook him out. However, some of the findings he makes during his investigation into the term psychopath and Robert D. Hare’s Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) kept me intrigued throughout Psychopath Test beyond the usual bemusing accounts of his passionate obsession with whatever topic he’s reporting upon at the time of writing.

As I suspect might be true of most people, much of my previous knowledge of psychopaths comes from horror novels, films, documentaries about serial killers, and news reports. The word is even used in the opening voiceover of the popular television show Castle: “There are two kinds of folks who sit around thinking about how to kill people: psychopaths and mystery writers. I’m the kind that pays better.”

On the basis of such pop-culture accounts, I developed the opinion that psychopaths are essentially potential or actual murderers. They have no interest in other human beings apart from what use they can be in fulfilling entirely selfish goals (the character Valerie in the House episode “Remorse” seduces and poisons her coworker); they might have had early childhood experiences that led them to be psychopaths (from Harris’s Hannibal Lecter to Stuart MacBride’s Halfhead). The term could even be applied to companies who “kill off” the competition and stifle progress in exchange for profit (Achbar and Abbott’s 2003 documentary The Corporation). In addition, it seems people can blithely throw around the term psycho to assuage their own prejudices against someone for acting in a way they don’t like; a popular insult to easily label another’s opinion as crazy.

Ronson essentially kills off some of these misconceptions via what begins as a rather mad-seeming prank by a very creative fan of the work of Douglas Hofstater: “Suddenly, madness was everywhere and I was determined to learn about the impact it has on the way society evolves. I’ve always believed society to be a fundamentally rational thing, but what if it isn’t? What if it is built on insanity?—and in addition, who makes such a judgement and how?”

The book’s back cover blurb informs potential readers that “The Psychopath Test is a deeply honest book” —which to me distinguishes it in no way from every other book or article Ronson has written. Whether he’s pondering the onset of gout by attempting to reconstruct James Bond’s Aston Martin-driven gastronomic journey in Goldfinger or dithering merrily among the specially designed boxes of Stanley Kubrick, Ronson never holds back when it comes to being frank about his emotional states.

This is probably why I wasn’t surprised in the slightest that upon getting a hold of a copy of the DSM-IV-TR (an 886-page manual—not “textbook,” as Ronson puts it—published by the American Psychiatric Association that lists every known mental disorder), Ronson promptly starts investigating the descriptions of various disorders and “instantly diagnosed [himself] with twelve different ones.” This reminded me of a relative who also derived a similar enjoyment from perusing an ancient medical dictionary—with conditions ranging from tinea to Black Death—and used it to explain his rapidly occurring conditions (he is probably now joining the many legions of online “cyberchondriacs”).

Ronson’s regular meetings with the actual Psychopathy Checklist-Revised creator, Robert Hare, are among the most intriguing parts of the book, as they dovetail with the history of diagnosing psychopathy, which has led to the incarceration of some of Ronson’s interviewees. His treatment of the mismanagement and politics behind diagnosis of psychopathy in individuals is somewhat balanced by a wider investigation into how possible psychopaths manage in wider society. Ronson’s analysis of the eventual collapse of the Sunbeam factory as the combination of the desires of a likely psychopathic need to satiate ambition and the greed of share-holders dilutes the notion that it’s easy to blame one person for any potential disaster that might result from such pathological tendencies.

Ronson isn’t an unknown figure in skeptical circles, having appeared at TAM London in 2008. His friendly interaction with scientologists (which included a tour) while researching psychopaths might therefore raise some eyebrows. As a part of wider research into popular criticism of psychiatry, Ronson cites some of scientology’s popular mythologies (such as BF Skinner’s treatment of his children) along with a number of other prejudices. However, Ronson’s discussion is not without a quirky (and ill-timed) joke about the reverence scientologists have for L. Ron Hubbard.

Talking to scientologists about what a diagnosis of psychopathy might mean leads Ronson to visit an incarcerated man, known only as “Tony,” who has spent much of his youth committed as a psychopath. This is despite Tony’s claims that his diagnosis was built upon his practice of acting out popular-culture portrayals of the condition rather than a genuine reflection of his mental state. Ronson raises the question: When someone is diagnosed as a psychopath, what happens to him once he’s been recorded within the criminal justice system—and how does he get out if he is not one? “I wondered if sometimes the difference between a psychopath in Broadmoor and a psychopath on Wall Street was the luck of being born into a stable, rich family,” Ronson ponders. After all, poor people are “crazy,” but rich people are merely “eccentric.”

Ronson’s accounts of various aspects of his investigations into mass murderers, conspiracy theorists, and even fellow journalists and reality TV producers is framed by the ongoing saga of a “cryptically puzzling book” that a neurologist received in the mail. I found myself wondering about the place for creativity and imagination, which easily leads to great novels and films being made about madness yet does not condemn their creators as mad. The power of labels and diagnosis via testing must have its limitations, as Ronson demonstrates with a chapter on false epidemics in America, such as the diagnosis of bipolar disorder among children, which is apparently of great concern to many of the neurologists and child psychiatrists that he interviews.

In another interview, Hare discussed the entrapment of people who are then blamed for horrific murders on the basis of manipulative lures and a mere Certificate of Attendance for a psychopath identification workshop. “I think [Hare] saw his checklist as pure—innocent as only science can be—but the humans who administered it as masses of weird prejudices and crazy predispositions.” Hardly a vote of confidence for a system, despite my prejudice against scientology and what its members claim about psychiatry.

It also must be very exhausting to be an investigator such as Jon Ronson, whether or not his kind of obsession is something that can be diagnosed as a particular condition. The number of aspects he tries to cover certainly makes for a wide-ranging, if at times slightly jarring, read. Even though Ronson continually second-guesses his opinions of potential psychopaths, his conclusion that “if you recognize some of those [psychopathic] traits in yourself, if you’re feeling a creeping anxiety about it, that means you are not one” must be as great a comfort to himself as to his readers.

Three hundred people in the Ramada Manchester Piccadilly joined in the world-wide phenomenon of the 10:23 Campaign via a symbolic overdose on homeopathic “Belladonna” at the Question, Explore, Discover Convention (QEDCon), held over the weekend of the 5^th and 6^th of February. It was one of many memorable elements that made for an inspirational and thought-provoking weekend.

While the weather outside was astonishingly chilly (I was a little disappointed that it didn't actually snow, having travelled from a sweltering Australian summer), the warm congeniality and lively banter within the convention rooms was unequalled by any other convention I’ve attended. Presenters happily mingled with the crowd, discussing philosophy and illusions, science and communication skills—usually while posing for photos next to the Dalek that was wheeled into prime place to watch all the action on the main stage.

From the very beginning, when MC George Hrab requested that the audience come up with alternatives for what “QED” could stand for, the audience was challenged to think and reflect. Even now, debate rages over “how kind is too kind” when it comes to ethical behavior when investigating ghosts, as discussed in a measured panel discussion featuring experts Christopher French, Hayley Stevens and Trystan Swale.

Professor Bruce Hood’s presentation on the psychology of superstitious behavior, from the galvanic response when watching a beloved teddy bear explode to juggling a grenade for demonstrative purposes of “bomb dowsing,” was both brilliant and sobering—especially in the light of continuing investigations into how such beliefs can cost lives.

In a similar vein, Professor French’s lecture was a very welcome addition to the convention, extending upon the psychology of belief in hauntings. While his excellent presentations as a part of the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit at Goldsmiths College are available online, this was my first opportunity to see him present as a headliner at a major convention; I hope it’s not the last. With the addition of a lively lecture by international podcasting and neuroscience celebrity Steven Novella, they made for a scientific triumvirate that was second to none on the first day of the convention.

During the first “breakout room” session, I was asked to contribute to a panel along with NCSE’s Eugenie Scott, Sense About Science’s Sile Lane, and science communication lecturer David Kirby on the topic of “Reaching Out Reasonably.” Confidently led by Janis Bennion of the “Ladies Who Do Skepticism,” we debated the merits of discussing with colleagues and peers some of the trickier aspects of believing in “weird things.” While encouraging critical thinking is something that everyone can do, doing it well and doing it with consultation and reflection is vital.

It was followed by a hilarious and rollicking live show of the InKredulous podcast which had host Andy Wilson showing how little Jon Ronson knows his Dungeon and Dragons manual (unsurprisingly, Novella was on hand to give tips for that one). Jim Al-Khalili gave a mind-boggling talk on the possibilities of time travel, determinism and relativity, with excellent questions from the audience. Slightly less scientific but just as intriguing, UK TV celebrity Kat Akingbade gave insights into not only her own family’s experience with religion but a personal experiment comparing different faiths. Unfortunately I couldn't attend Chris Atkin’s presentation on media hoaxes and the gullibility of journalists, but the breakout room alternative featured the popular live show of “the Pod Delusion,” which demonstrated the eagerness of skeptics to contribute their voices and ideas for the benefit of podcast listeners.

The Saturday evening was slightly marred by an unfortunate cancellation due to emergency by Robin Ince, but after a delay due to technical hitches, the night fired off with the topic of space exploration given by an energetic replacement, Helen Keen. Her stand-up routine based on the Space Race was followed by a hilariously creative skewering of Conservapedia by Matt Parker.

As George Hrab concluded the night with a number of songs off his new album “Trebuchet,” I was entertained by Milton Mermikides discussing audio illusions with Bruce Hood. If a evening can include an equally enjoyable amount of science, wine and laughter, it’s a fairly good bet that skeptics from the UK are involved somehow.

Sunday began with Michael Marshall of the Merseyside Skeptics leading the homeopathic overdose, with a slide show acknowledging the protesters worldwide (including my friend Paul Willis in Antarctica!). While I was familiar with the writings of Wendy Grossman, her decisive presentation on unfortunately widespread policy-based evidence proved her to be another example of a speaker who should be profiled more often. Simon Singh’s popular talk on big bang cosmology even included a cheeky suggestion that “climate numpties” be used to refer to people like James Dellingpole and Lord Mockton.

The closing sessions included several hundred people chanting the lines about “magnets and how they work” from Insane Clown Posse’s ludicrous song “Miracles,” as Jon Ronson explored his recent journalistic investigations and his forthcoming book “The Psychopath Test.” For my own part, getting a lesson in improving juggling skills from Colin Wright after his clever talk on the mathematics and number theory was a delightful bonus.

Eugenie Scott’s lecture was the last featured on the stage and although her presentation focused on American perspectives on the problem of creationism, she included a few relevant references to international issues that scientists and educators face. The standing ovation at the conclusion confirmed the high regard that she has across the globe for her continued efforts to prevail when pseudoscience masquerades as education.

The organisers of QEDCon didn't need to proclaim the success of their convention from the stage—it was evident from the beginning to the end. What made this more astonishing was that this is the very first convention that the Merseyside Skeptics and Greater Manchester Skeptics have organized, and on the basis of this, many will return and should return as both presenters and audience for another.

When I got a closer look at Australian actor, comedian, and musician Tim Minchin’s eyes, I discovered that kooky contact lenses make his irises a weird shade of turquoise. At the time, I was helping him check his teeth for any residue after his breakfast of toast at the Blue Waters cafe on Cottesloe Beach in Perth, Australia, prior to filming an interview. It’s not exactly typical of my interviews, but it did lead to a conversation on how branding and appearance matter when building a reputation as a polished performer—even if you do play piano with bare feet and have scarecrow-style straightened hair.

My interview with Minchin, conducted on the steps behind the Indiana Tea House on the shores of the beach, was disrupted twice by passersby. One was an old friend of Minchin’s, hailing from his time attending Christ Church Grammar School and the University of Western Australia; the other was a young female fan who knocked over my camera in her wildly excited state.

The “local boy makes good” attitude is something Perth is particularly proud to adopt. Minchin’s endorsement of a new theater named after Heath Ledger was printed in the local paper. His patronage of the WA Youth Theatre Company and his voice-over work on the Academy Award-winning short animated film The Lost Thing (by fellow West Australian artist Shaun Tan) is brought up every time the Perth media promotes his tours.

Over the past two years, Minchin has been on an international tour, featuring U.K. and Australian orchestras in various states and cities. Songs with titles like “Rock ’N’ Roll Nerd” and “The Pope Song” with lyrics about sex, religion, and cheese aren’t the usual fare for fifty-five-piece orchestras, but they’re massively popular. At the time of this writing, all of Minchin’s tour dates were sold out and a live broadcast from the Sydney Opera House was scheduled to air on Australia’s ABC television station.

What Tim Minchin doesn’t discuss much in the media is his atheism and skeptically minded attitude toward paranormal and pseudoscientific claims—although from the lyrics of his songs, these views are fairly obvious. Minchin recently produced the music and score for the Royal Shakespeare Company’s new musical version of Roald Dahl’s Matilda (which will now head to London’s West End). I’ve always thought that it might not best serve Minchin’s multitude of talents to pigeonhole himself as a spokesperson on certain issues.

I began my interview by asking him who he thought the likely audience for his kind of comedy.

Tim Minchin: I don’t know. It’s kind of a disclaimer to say that my work appeals to certain people; it’s kind of a defensive position. Not everyone’s going to like my work, even if you desperately want everyone to like it.

I think my stuff has quite a broad appeal; last night I had a twelve-year-old and a seventy-eight-year-old in the queue to get autographs and stuff—and I love that. I think that people who love the show, it probably goes without saying, are people who think much like me. The people who see their own ideas and sense of humor reflected on the stage are the people who are most attached to it. But I don’t know what people like me are. I suppose [they are] people who have a kind of a dark sense of humor and get off on some of the ideas I get across.

Kylie Sturgess: So, how funny is skepticism as source material for your work?

Minchin: It can be very funny watching people respond with absolute clarity and skepticism to strange ideas that are so passionately scatter-gunned—the delivery of them can be so wild and enormous and evangelical.... One fact [is] presented and then other’s respond with [screams of] “But no no no no!” And then someone calmly responds with “Yeah—but [then there’s] this.” I find that very funny. But I don’t know how much [of] that [type] of my material I’m doing in my show... I mean, people do like it; the song that leads many skeptics to find me is “Don’t Open Your Mind Too Much or Your Brain Will Fall Out”:

And if anyone can show me one example in the history of the world of a single homeopathic practitioner who has been able to prove under reasonable experimental conditions that solutions made of infinitely tiny particles of good stuff dissolved repeatedly into relatively huge quantities of water has a consistently higher medicinal value than a similarly administered placebo... I will give you my piano, one of my legs, and my wife.

I got that quote out of Francis Wheen’s book, but I can’t remember the journalist who the original quote came from. But that song isn’t funny; it’s just funny because of the way it is presented.

Sturgess: It’s James Randi’s million dollar challenge but with a piano accompaniment. Which leg would you give away, by the way?

Tim Minchin: Oh, I don’t know! But it’s a genuine offer, you know, and it is absolutely inspired by those kinds of challenges. I just thought it’d be funny. It only took me an hour to write; there’s nothing musically complicated about it. I think there’s one rhyme in it. But what I [was] doing was a little ditty that’s almost like an advertisement that is actually infallible. I think it’s right. I don’t think you can pick holes in it. All I’m saying is that if you can give me one example historically, then you get my wife!

Sturgess: When the topic of skepticism [and its influence] was raised on your website, I noticed that there was a variety of views amongst your fans. Do you get the same kind of differences amongst the public who go to your shows? Those who might get your autograph and yet also go to see John Edward perform?

Minchin: “You’re my second favorite comedian after John Edward!” That would be a good joke! I surprisingly don’t get many people challenging the ideas I’m always interested. Last night there were twelve hundred people in the room and they’re all laughing at my jokes about Tony the Fish and evolution gags and Jesus being punished for having a schizophrenic discourse with a God that is created by man to explain the existence of feet and all that—and I wonder. But statistically, something like fifty percent of those people are meant to be Christians. This is my big problem with all of that: I don’t actually believe in people’s belief very much. When people tell me they’re Christians, I sort of, in a horribly condescending kind of way, feel like saying “Really? Are you? What do you mean?” And part of my reason [for finding] that difficult to get my head around is because they’re my jokes and because everyone laughs and because surely you’d stand up waving your fists and stuff [if you disagreed].

But I get letters saying things like “bashing religion isn’t funny or interesting and it’s boring,” and I got one that tried to say “You think you’re cool bashing religion but it’s been done,” and that’s a really interesting thing to me too—because I agree. We shouldn’t be having this discussion anymore all these years later.

I do a joke in the show: “The theory of evolution: not only is it… how would you say... right!” and people laugh, and sometimes I say during the show, “I cannot believe that people are laughing two hundred years later...”

Sturgess: When Charles Darwin has already done that joke so often...

Minchin: Yes, was it Woodrow Wilson who said something like, “I don’t think any intelligent or rational person could question organic evolution in this era”?—And that was back in 1922.

Sturgess: You’ve said online that “love is completely observable and explicable in the context of what we know about humans.” As an actor and musician, did you nearly feel like you had to hand in your actors’ union card for not perpetuating the mystery? You’ve even done Shakespeare, so it is not killing the poetry.

Minchin: I write about love all the time. It’s one of my favorite topics. I try to address, not love specifically, but in my shows, the misconception that to be skeptical is to be cynical. Or that to have no religious belief is to see no beauty in the world. For me, to observe a sunset and not attach to it any supernatural or mystical significance is to see its true beauty. You can be completely overwhelmed by beauty and the inexplicable nature of a sunset. There [are] degrees to which it’s inexplicable, I mean [there are] the ongoing questions about why.

I know that there [are] X billions of years and this is a rock that orbits [the sun] and so forth. But still you can be overwhelmed by the beauty and by love, and there’s poetry in the world that is not influenced by stripping away a god or whatever. To add to it a whole lot of rhetoric, which are old ideas that are not particularly interesting or clever, I don’t see what [the idea of God] adds to it. To see the sunset and see God—that’s just confusion.

I’ve written a Christmas song that has a verse that says “I don’t go in for ancient wisdom. I don’t believe that just because ideas are tenacious it means that they are worthy.” I like that line, but I think only fifty percent of the audience know what tenacious means, but I can’t articulate it more succinctly than that.

I think I constantly allude to that, that such tenacity makes no sense whatsoever. If you know even the slightest bit about the history of Christianity and its ebbs and flows—how much of it was promoted for non-charitable reasons and the things it stole and the people killed in religion’s name, how much it usurped the spiritualities of other people, polytheistic religions it overtook—you’d know it’s because it’s been promoted. It’s still around because people have had self interest and have promoted it, the same way you promote Coca-Cola. It’s stupid to ignore that. To say that Christianity must be right because it’s been around so long is to completely dismiss that it’s an Abrahamic religion out of which has also come Judaism and Islam.

Sturgess: What would you do if you were requested to lose the references to challenging people’s beliefs—particularly in America?

Minchin: Now that I’m getting a wider audience, I understand that perhaps I do have a forum in which to maybe spread some ideas that could be helpful. My primary aim is to entertain, and the way I entertain is to discuss ideas that intrigue me. The more true you are to your interests, the better you can be at your job. If you try to discuss things that don’t interest you, you don’t have an interesting take on [anything].

America is interesting to me because it is the next market for me. People are worried about it because of how much religiosity and conservatism there is over there. But there’s also fifty million-odd extreme lefty-liberal minded people. There’s always going to be people like that; you just have to find your audience. Like all [others of] this sort of thing, you end up preaching to the converted. The type of people who are going to come to my shows will tend to be the kind who don’t mind swearing and don’t mind talking about the non-existence of God. So mostly you’re not going to change anyone’s opinions. But just like all art, cumulatively it has an effect. Like, going to James Randi’s website showed me that there [are] others out there and encouraged me. I think it’d be a great pity if I was shot by a radical Muslim as I don’t think it’d be worth it—I don’t really think what I’m doing is that important.

But I think if you keep putting out your ideas, you’ll attract like-minded people and hopefully make some almost-like-minded people more like-minded, and maybe one in a million times the cumulative effect of all art that addresses these issues might just change the balance in the world of people who like thinking in an exploratory manner rather than in a small way.