Martin Gardner was a unique man of letters, a science writer who not only wrote columns for Scientific American and the Skeptical Inquirer but who was a prolific author of over seventy books! Perhaps his reputation in the long run will depend on the provocative books that he authored over the years. Although we may be at “the beginning of the end of the Age of Books” (alas!), Gardner stands out as a heroic author whose books on pseudoscience we hope will be read in the future with relish and delight—as reminders of how easy it is to be deceived.

I know Martin Gardner best as a book author; Prometheus Books published at least twenty-five of his books. Several of these were new editions of books previously published. I founded Prometheus in 1969, and it has devoted more attention than any other press to publishing books on scientific skepticism and the paranormal. Martin was tickled pink that Prometheus Books was willing to take on the paranormalists.

I first got to know Martin when I founded the modern skeptics movement (in the guise of CSICOP, later CSI), so to speak, and invited him to the inaugural meeting at the State University of New York at Buffalo on April 30, 1976. I was delighted when he accepted and even more so when he appeared. His publishing romance with Prometheus began a few years later. He shared with us a devotion to books—the idea that books should be cherished as virtually “sacred” because of their enduring contributions to culture.

Martin’s first book with Prometheus was Science: Good, Bad and Bogus (1981). The New York Times described it as “a valuable book . . . an ally of common sense.” It was a nominee for a national book award. So his career with Prometheus got off to a rousing start. We would hear from him almost biweekly thereafter, as he kept proposing books and then saw them through the editorial process until publication. Martin had a keen intelligence and a sharp wit, which he used with consummate skill.

We were intrigued with the titles that he came up with, such as On the Wild Side (hardcover 1992, paperback 2004), which dealt with the big bang, ESP, the Beast 666, levitation, rainmaking, trance-channeling, séances, ghosts, and more. Another one was How Not to Test a Psychic (1989). (Incidentally, the complete list of Martin Gardner’s books still available from Prometheus Books may be read online.)

It was amazing to me how Martin was able to delve into what many considered nutty claims. He took them seriously and made them seem even nuttier, such as in his book Urantia: The Great Cult Mystery (1995, revised 2008). Martin told me that he maintained extensive clippings on a wide range of topics and so could bring empirical facts to bear to expose the beliefs held.

An important book by Martin was Great Essays in Science (1994), which included thirty-one of some of the best writings in science over the past 100 years. These included thought-provoking contributions that represented the peak of accomplishments in science.

Prometheus also published a novel by Martin called The Flight of Peter Fromm (1994), which seemed to echo his own religious beliefs. I was curious that Martin himself clung to his religious faith in God, somewhat apologetically. “I can’t prove it,” he seemed to say, “but I am attached to it.” I found this statement rather charming, if only because it contradicts doctrinaire atheists who insist that any true skeptic must be an atheist.

Gardner’s last new book with Prometheus was The Jinn from Hyperspace and Other Scribblings—Both Serious and Whimsical (2007). New Scientist reviewed the book by stating that it was “clear, closely argued, and entertaining . . . a fascinating insight into the breadth of interest and fecundity of the man now in his nineties.”

To which I say amen about all of Gardner’s books, an inexhaustible treasury of insight and wisdom. Martin Gardner played a key role in his time as a keen advocate of science, a luminary in the constellation of skeptics. He will be sorely missed.

The Eleventh World Congress of Centers for Inquiry/Transnational convened in Beijing in October 2007, the culmination of almost twenty years of interchange between the Center for Inquiry and Chinese scientists. Inasmuch as Ken Frazier has so eloquently depicted the highlights of the Congress in this issue of Skeptical Inquirer, I will focus on the reasons for the Congress and what we hope will ensue from it. Like Frazier, I was fascinated by the remarkable changes that have occurred in China since our first visit in 1988. Lin Zixin, former editor of Science and Technology Daily, the largest-circulation scientific newspaper in the world, had invited the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP) to visit China. Chinese scientists at that time, he said, were concerned about the growth of paranormal and occult beliefs. They wished to critically examine paranormal claims and assess the validity of external Qigong and the reality of Chi, psychokinesis, and alleged psychic diagnoses of medical ailments.

We gladly accepted the invitation and gathered a delegation of six well-known skeptics from North America, including Frazier, James Randi, James Alcock, Barry Karr, Philip Klass, and myself. We did not find any evidence of “extraordinary” paranormal powers and issued a report to that effect (see SI’s Summer and Fall issues, 1988).

We noted the chutzpah displayed by psychics, whether adults or children (much had been made at that time about so-called gifted children), who tried but didn’t succeed in hoodwinking us. Intrigued by our methods of testing, our Chinese hosts wanted to remain in contact with us. Actually, the Chinese Association for Science and Technology (CAST), a coalition of over 180 science organizations, sponsored the exchange program. CAST, a nongovernmental organization, is somewhat equivalent to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

The Chinese were especially interested in how they could raise the public’s appreciation and understanding of science, combat superstition, and improve scientific illiteracy. In time they created a new organization, the Chinese Research Institute for the Popularization of Science (CRISP), which overlapped with CSICOP in its concern with the prevalence of antiscientific attitudes and the public’s captivation with parapsychology, UFO abductions, astrology, alternative healing, and pseudoscience in general.

In the early 1990s, CSICOP became an integral part of the Center for Inquiry/Transnational. It has since changed its name to the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI) and broadened its agenda to defend science, reason, and free inquiry in every area of human interest. The Council for Secular Humanism (CSH) also became part of the Center for Inquiry. It was especially interested in responding to fundamentalist attacks on evolution and naturalistic methodology. CFI added to its agenda the defense of secularism and advanced humanist values not rooted in religion but secular in nature. The Chinese became interested in questions concerning individual morality and happiness, which were similar to the moral virtues of Confucianism, so they found this aspect of our work useful.

The agenda of CFI continued to interest Chinese scientists, who sent delegations to each of our Skeptics World Congresses (held in Heidelberg, Germany; Sydney, Australia; Padua, Italy; and Burbank and Amherst in the United States). More explicitly, they began to send dozens of students, scholars, and officials every year to the Summer Institute of the Center for Inquiry in Amherst, New York, and they translated many of our articles and books. CFI responded by sending two additional teams to lecture in China, and this eventually led to the establishment of a new Center for Inquiry in Beijing and the co-sponsorship of the Eleventh World Congress by the Centers for Inquiry (co-hosted by CAST, CRISP, CFI/Beijing, the Chinese Academy of Science, and many top universities and scientific institutes). CFI/Transnational was pleased to send a delegation of twenty distinguished scientists and philosophers from several countries to the Eleventh World Congress.

The basic theme of the World Congress was development of the public’s understanding of science—its methods of inquiry, its naturalistic worldview, and the relationship of science to ethics. These topics are relevant to many societies, but also to the planetary community. The Chinese are concerned with maintaining internal harmony within China and especially expressed worry about global warming and environmental pollution of the atmosphere and water resources. Although there is a preponderance of evidence about the reality of global warming, Ken Frazier pointed out in his paper, a minority of readers of Skeptical Inquirer adamantly claim there isn’t a problem.

All told, some seventy papers—many provocative—were delivered at the Congress, including those by eminent Chinese scientists, such as Professor Qin Dahe, renowned climatologist and meteorologist and Chinese representative to the world agency concerned with global warming (that had just received a Nobel Prize), Cheng Donghong, executive secretary of CAST, and Ren Fujun, the energetic head of CRISP. Ren and I co-chaired the Congress.

Ren said that they wished to expand the role of the Center for Inquiry in China; the enterprise of science popularization has reached an opportune moment as the country grapples with an incredible development boom. It is important, he said, to continue research cooperation between CRISP, CFI/Beijing, and CFI/Transnational to increase the number of Chinese researchers who will participate in summer training classes at the CFI Institute in Amherst, New York, and to co-sponsor international conferences. Many of our Chinese counterparts expressed a desire to establish CFIs in other cities in China. On our trip to Shanghai we met Wang Xin, director of the Shanghai Association for Science and Technology in their new building, and he affirmed that they would like to establish a CFI/Shanghai.

Thus, the Eleventh World Congress ratified and solidified twenty years of interchange and pledged the continued cooperation in furthering the public’s understanding of science.

China’s Soaring Economy

The entire world community is vitally interested in the Chinese economy, and many international conglomerates have opened branch offices and invested heavily in China. Friendly governments have supported this. The world is eager to trade with the Chinese, and many countries are importing their goods and services at an increasing rate. This has led to complaints about displaced workers at home, because large companies have discovered that they can manufacture products in China and ship them back cheaper than they can produce them in their own countries, sparking tremendous economic expansion in China. Encouraged by its economic vitality, foreign capital investment in China is increasing. This is similar to what happened historically elsewhere when foreign capital enabled countries to develop.

The opening of China to the free market in the past two decades has led to its explosive economic growth. As Frazier notes, of the leading twenty companies in the world, in terms of stock valuation, eight of them are Chinese (including China Mobile, China Telecom, PetroChina, etc.). The sudden emergence of a new class of billionaires in China is an astounding development. Indeed, there are an estimated 100 billionaires living in mainland China (according to the Hurun Report and Forbes). Most of the wealth comes from real estate, construction, and manufacturing. The wealthiest person on the list is Yang Huiyan, who received a $17.5 billion gift of stock from her father, a real estate developer. Zhang Yin is worth $10 billion due to a surge in the share prices of his Nine Dragons Paper holdings (he owns 72 percent); Yu Rongman, owner of Shimao Property holdings, has $7.5 billion in wealth. And Huang Guangyu, founder of Gome Electrical Appliances, is worth $6 billion according to estimates. Most of this wealth comes from a real estate boom and soaring prices on the Shanghai and Hong Kong exchanges (similar to Google). The Shanghai and Hong Kong stock markets made more money last year from public offerings than the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ combined. China is now the chief engine of economic growth in the world—projections place it second to the U.S. by 2015.

This indicates, perhaps, that China is hardly a Communist country; it has a mixed economy—the private sector continues to grow by leaps and bounds. Official Chinese statistics indicate that privately owned companies comprise one-third of the total economy, but I think that this figure is too low. Chinese capitalism is now the dominant force accelerating the economy. What China is able to do on top of that, which other capitalist countries cannot, is use the power of the State to plan large projects and harness both private and public companies to achieve them—such as the vast effort to reconstruct a large section of Beijing for the Olympic Games.

Environmental, Societal Challenges

Like Frazier, I was stunned by the evident progress that China had made in the nineteen years since we were there. Everywhere we went new construction was bustling—factories and stores, highway systems, skyscrapers and apartment houses, and entire new towns and cities. China uses one-third of the cranes in the world, according to estimates. The four cities we visited—Beijing, Xi’an, Shanghai, and Guilin (we had visited the first three on our last trip)—are being transformed at a breakneck pace. The Chinese we met on the streets in restaurants and stores seemed proud of these accomplishments, which led to a noticeable improvement in the standard of living, at least in the major cities. This was especially the case in Shanghai, which is truly breathtaking. Daniel Dennett cajoled us into taking a boat ride around the Pudong part of Shanghai. At night the city is dazzling—almost nothing had been constructed when we were there in 1988. It was as if two new Manhattans had sprung up out of nowhere. There are dramatic plans to continue new construction, we were informed by a director of Shanghai’s Urban Planning Exhibition Center where a model city of the future was on display.

We enjoyed royal treatment by our Chinese hosts, first in Beijing, where we were chauffeured by limousine to see the massive preparations for the upcoming 2008 Olympic Games. It appeared to us that they had a long way to go if they are to complete the Olympic facilities on time. But the construction manager assured us that they were working three shifts around the clock and that it would be finished. We didn’t doubt that; China has a vast pool of cheap labor that they can apply to such projects. The rest of the world has discovered the availability of this skilled labor force, transferring vast new industries to China and abandoning their own industrial bases for the allure of Chinese productivity.

Incredibly, the rate of growth of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has been 10 to 11 percent over the last four years. In gross terms, it reached $2.7 trillion U.S. dollars in 2006—this is one-fourth that of the U.S., though China has four times the U.S. population. The Chinese hope to quadruple their economy by 2020, despite unforeseen obstacles that may slow it down.

We found the streets of China choked with automobile congestion. Surprisingly, many of the cars in Beijing and Shanghai are four-door, replacing the ubiquitous bicycles that we saw on our earlier trip. As Frazier observed, the air pollution was thick, far worse than Los Angeles on its bad days. One Chinese official told me that a recent public poll asked the Chinese what they most wanted: a huge majority responded that their main interest was to own a large four-door automobile! Given the vast increase in energy consumption, the environmental problems that China faces are awesome. The Chinese government is aware of the need to reach sustainable development without pollution. By all accounts, 85 percent of the streams and rivers are fouled or rancid, depleting fresh water supplies. China produces 70 percent of the world’s farmed fish in coastal cities and in the mighty Yangtze River, frequently contaminated by mercury, lead, and other toxic chemicals. Murray Gell-Mann reported that Chinese officials said that China is constructing two new power plants per week, fired by polluting coal, but they cannot get provincial leaders to reduce emissions. Moreover, we did not see any great emphasis on the conservation of energy by producing smaller cars (they seemed to have followed Detroit) or dimming their bright lights (much like Las Vegas and Broadway). In this sense, they seem to be emulating America in wasteful, conspicuous consumption, though the government has recently issued guidelines to radically alter how they grow.

No doubt the chief cause of China’s energy/resource/environmental problem is the fact that the population keeps growing. The streets are teeming with pedestrians. Many years ago China instituted a stringent one child per/family policy to restrain population growth. Criticized by the Western world for its restraint on freedom of choice, the Chinese nevertheless felt it was an urgent necessity. This has had unexpected consequences, however, for there may not be enough workers to support their aging parents, the custom in ancient China. The growth of the population is due primarily to the decline of the death rate because of better nutrition and sanitary conditions. The average lifespan has risen from thirty-five years to seventy-two years in the past four decades. Were China to catch up with Japan (where the average lifespan is now over eighty), this would place still greater strains on natural resources. Demographic projections indicate that China will add 300,000,000 people by the year 2030—equivalent to the entire U.S. population! The most likely place they can migrate to is Western China—even then, will China have enough resources to feed and satisfy its vast population?

Another urgent problem confronting them is the great disparity in wealth, which could lead to intense internal conflicts. Hence, the Chinese government has focused on harmony as a central social goal. “Harmony” is Confucian in origin and a moral norm. Traditional Confucian thought emphasizes the cultivation of a virtuous and happy life. One way to do this is to fulfill your station and its duties; another is to reach personal fulfillment. Presumably, in a socialist society, it is to strive for the common good. In any case, there is now interest in classical China, something spurned by Mao.

Overcoming poverty is now a focus of Chinese leadership. The per-capita income in 2006, according to government statistics (which may or may not be reliable), was approximately $2,042, up nearly 20 percent from the previous year, yet still much lower than other industrial countries of Europe, the U.S., and Japan. In major cities such as Shanghai, the per-capita income is approximately $4,000 per person, but in the countryside (we visited model farms outside of Guilin) the peasants only earn $300 per year, barely enough for food and shelter. They live at a subsistence level and use farming methods that go back millennia. Large numbers of people are leaving rural areas for the cities—but there are not enough jobs for everyone. Hence, rising levels of affluence will no doubt lead to a comparative rise in aspirations. Demands from poorer regions point to an explosive powder keg. There are already reports of tens of thousands of protests throughout the country. Perhaps that is why, although the Chinese leadership is strenuously attempting to expand the GDP, it is now emphasizing the need for distribution of consumer goods in poorer areas to achieve social harmony.

One thing is clear: China is not a “Cold War” Communist country. Although its government may be authoritarian, it is not totalitarian; it encourages innovation and enterprise and tolerates some diversity. It has a pluralistic economy with a strong capitalist sector and a great number of privately held stores and restaurants. Former premier Deng Xiaoping’s policies are heralded as the salvation of China. The leadership plans to quadruple its GDP by 2020, and thereby increase the per-capita income and standard of living. There is a growing middle class in major industrial centers and cities of perhaps 15 to 20 million people and a large underclass longing to share in the good life. For these reasons, the Chinese continue to keep the throttles on “high” in order to increase production, enabling a wider distribution of consumer goods and services to vast numbers of the indigent population.

China’s Political Future

While we were in Beijing, the Seventeenth National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (73 million members) was in session. Some 2,200 delegates attended. Viewing the meetings on television news each evening (on an English-translation channel) seemed like an anachronism. Two-thousand Communist Party (CPC) officials were shown in the People’s Hall—the men were dressed in somber, dark suits or uniforms and the women in staid attire. The Congress opened with a statement of allegiance to Marxism/Leninism. There seemed almost no dissent in the sessions of the Congress, at least none was broadcast. A Central Committee (Politburo) and a standing committee of seven run China. They call it collective leadership. Hu Jinatao, head of the Communist Party, laid out the new party line at the Congress. He pointed out that China had not yet reached socialism and that their goal was to move toward “socialism with Chinese characteristics.” The aim, he said, would be to strive for “a moderately prosperous society,” which they hoped to reach by 2020. The agenda sounded—at least on paper—worthy: it recognized the need of the people to “exercise democratic rights” and to act only under “the constitution and by the rule of law.” According to China Daily (Oct. 28, 2007), Chinese democracy will seek “to guarantee freedom, equality, and other rights of citizens.” Yu Keping of the CPC Central Committee declared that “universal values serve to bolster political reforms,” and these include freedom, justice, democracy, equality, and human rights. Presumably, this will contribute to a harmonious society.

Hu promised to appoint more noncommunists as cabinet ministers to governmental positions. The CPC announced on the eve of the Congress the appointment of two noncommunists, Wan Gang, the new Minister of Science and Technology, and Chen Zu, the new Minster of Health, the first such appointees since the 1970s.

Hu also said that although China will continue its rapid growth, it needs to be balanced and sustainable—the Chinese press hailed this as a new “conservation culture.” Reducing the depletion of natural resources and providing environmental protection is the only way to do this. China also plans, he said, to reduce absolute poverty with a reasonable system of income distribution and a growing middle class, guaranteeing everyone a basic standard of living. Thus, they hope to reverse the growing disparity in income. China does not have universal health care, a system of social security, or universal education—services which virtually all of the industrialized democracies of the world have. Compulsory education, where it exists in China, is only for nine years, and large sectors of the country have not even implemented that. One member of the cadre said to me plaintively that the glamour of Beijing and Shanghai do not reflect the massive catch-up that China needs to achieve in the countryside if it is to fulfill its ambitious goals.

The provision of the Communist Party’s Congress that I found most surprising is the supremacy it accords science and technology in its future plans. The Party Congress—it is perhaps the only major power in the world to do so—supports as its highest priority the “scientific outlook on development,” a goal adopted as an amendment to the CPC Constitution. China is now the fastest-growing sustainer of scientific research and development in the world with a growth rate of 18 percent per year over the past five years. It is now in third place behind the U.S. and Japan and moving up fast. The U.S., Japan, and Europe had an overall growth rate in research and development of only 2.9 percent per year. By all reports, the equipment in its laboratories is equal in quality to the rest of the world. Moreover, the Chinese are seeking to attract the brightest researchers to China, and they are eager for partnerships. (See the lead editorial in Science, “Chinese Science on the Move,” by Alan I. Leshner and Vaughan Turekian, December 7, 2007.)

Hu, trained as an engineer, was quoted as saying: “Uphold science; don’t be ignorant and unenlightened.” What a contrast with the current U.S. administration where “intelligent design” theorists oppose evolution and stem-cell research is effectively thwarted. Traditional Marxist theory emphasizes that the expansion of “the forces of production” is essential to economic growth—the Chinese have recognized that increased expenditures for science and technology are crucial to their effective development.

What role does socialism play in China’s future? China is supposed to be in the preliminary stages of socialism. According to Hu, the first aspect is that China should be “people-oriented,” and second, its development should be “sustainable and contribute to social harmony.” They now recognize that basing policies on economic GDP indexes alone is insufficient. They need to pay attention to wasted resources, social unrest, environmental degradation, and regional imbalances. China has vowed to reduce its per-capita energy consumption 20 percent by 2010 and emission of pollutants by 10 percent in the same period. Are these mere ideological slogans, or will China embrace these challenges as it continues to lunge ahead?

More important perhaps for the future is whether there will be conflict within the “relationships of production” between two powerful forces—the free market/capitalist system and its powerful billionaires and thriving middle class versus the Communist Party cadre. Castrating the private sector could halt Chinese productive power as part of the global economy. On the other hand, if its power grows, would it in time dislodge the Communist bureaucracy and lead to a collapse of the system or the emergence of an outright military dictatorship? Will the diplomatic policies of the current regime be supplanted by hostile confrontations in the future? All of these possible scenarios are disturbing, for it may lead to China’s decline, and given the interdependence of the entire global economy, could lead to the unraveling of the world economic-political system as we know it.

Prudence suggests that we should continue to work closely with the Chinese and encourage the democratization of the political system, the growth of other parties besides the Communist Party, the right of dissent, a free press, respect for human rights, and widespread participation and grassroots involvement in the policies of the country.

China is perhaps the oldest continuous culture on the planet with strong family traditions, a set of moral virtues with deep roots in its past, and resourceful, intelligent, and hard-working people. Skilled in business, artful in negotiation, we should not push them—backs to the wall—into a classical confrontation of national power-politics. We should continue to welcome them into the new planetary civilization emerging in this age of instantaneous electronic communication where cultural, scientific, philosophical, artistic, and economic exchange is vital for everyone.

I should add that our contacts with the Chinese people over the years, whether scientists, professors, students, or ordinary folks, have been most gratifying. The Chinese invariably bestow gifts when people visit them or when they travel abroad. They are generous hosts. Everywhere we went we were feted with sumptuous banquets overflowing with savory dishes, and of course hot tea. The Chinese people we met were invariably polite and well spoken and sought not to offend. They display the refined manners that their ancient civilization and rich culture have cultivated for so long.

In its small way, the Center for Inquiry intends to embrace continuous dialogue, intercommunication, and interchange with the Chinese people. Hopefully, this will lead in a modest way not only to the development of a more peaceful and humanistic world, but one that recognizes the mutual interests and needs of everyone in the planetary community as we try to work out values that we share.

When we founded CSICOP in 1976, we were concerned with the proliferation of paranormal claims in the media that were unexamined by scientific investigators. These were often on the borderlines of science. When we announced our intention of creating CSICOP, many scientists heralded the role that we were to play. At long last an organization composed of scientists, educators, investigators, and journalists proposed to carefully investigate alleged mysterious phenomena, which were not being adequately examined by the scientific community.

These questions were generally interdisciplinary; they fell between the cracks of existing disciplines. Distinguished scientists rallied under our banner from the start—including Carl Sagan, Steven Jay Gould, Isaac Asimov, Richard Dawkins, and Nobel Prize winners Murray Gell- Mann, Francis Crick, Glenn Seaborg, Leon Lederman, and others. We also enlisted well-known investigators of the paranormal, such as James Randi, Philip J. Klass, Martin Gardner, Ray Hyman, and others. Scientists worldwide embraced our agenda such as astronomer Cornelius de Jaeger (The Netherlands), Jean-Claude Pecker (France), and Nobel laureate scientists in Italy. We were interested in criticizing the distortions in the media of alleged phenomena, from psychics and UFOlogists to astrologers and faith healers. These posed, in our view, a threat to the integrity of science, for they fudged the differences between genuine science and pseudoscience. We soon discovered that it was often difficult to draw a sharp demarcation line between these two areas; empirical inquiry was the only sensible approach. We were ever careful not to squelch new proto-sciences that might emerge. After thirty years we have established a record in which naturalistic causal explanations for such alleged phenomena are now available. The “paranormal” has been deflated in field after field.

We of course had a broader motive: to explicate the methods of scientific methodology and the scientific outlook, to encourage scientific education, and the development of critical thinking. We viewed ourselves as the defenders of the Enlightenment.

Today there are new challenges to science. For example, the field of biogenetic engineering provides exciting opportunities for the growth of knowledge and its applications to human betterment. Yet powerful moral, theological, and political forces have opposed scientific research on a whole number of issues— such as stem-cell embryonic research. On the other hand, pro-scientific proponents say that we are faced with “a New Singularity,” and that life-extension programs of research offer great promises for extending life. Science demands rigorous peer review. The excessive extrapolation of possible breakthroughs needs careful evaluation. Thus skeptical inquiry needs to examine such claims impartially. There are still other challenges that will no doubt emerge.

Under its new title, the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry will endeavor to be true to its early mission. We intend to invite leading scientific investigators from a variety of fields to carefully evaluate questionable claims and will criticize those who would block science in the name of occult force—such as the imposition of the concept of “soul” to thwart the investigation of the brain. As such, CSI will function as a Socratic gadfly, using the best tools of scientific inquiry and analysis to ferret out what is at stake. Hopefully it can contribute to the public appreciation of science and also distinguish pseudoscientific claims from genuine ones. We have not abandoned the examination of paranormal claims, but we have extended our net more widely to deal with other areas that have provoked controversy.

The Executive Council of CSICOP embarks in this new direction with great enthusiasm. The “new skepticism” that we have cultivated recognizes that skepticism is an important part of the process of scientific inquiry. This it is not simply negative debunking; it can make significant constructive contributions to the development of reliable knowledge.

The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry is part of the broader Center for Inquiry Transnational movement. It likewise is committed to science, reason, and free inquiry in every area of human interest. This, we hope, will greatly enhance the cooperative worldwide efforts to extend the frontiers of scientific knowledge for the benefit of humanity.

In preparation for this overview, I reviewed the entire corpus published in the past thirty years, which will soon be available on CD-Rom. What impressed me greatly was the wide range of topics and the distinguished authors that Ken has attracted to its pages. I can highlight only some of these in this article. I wish to use this occasion to focus on what I believe we have accomplished in the past three decades and to speculate as to what directions our magazine might take in future decades. Today, many threats to science come from disparate quarters—as Ken points out in his editorial, “In Defense of the Higher Values,” in the July/August 2006 issue of the Skeptical Inquirer. These include efforts to undermine the integrity of science and freedom of research, and we are continually confronted by irrational antiscientific forces rooted in fundamentalist religion and ideology. Given these challenges, no doubt skeptical inquiry will continue to be necessary in the future.

The original name of CSICOP was the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal and Other Phenomena, but this mouthful was deemed too long—and the acronym would have been CSICOPOP—so we shortened it! It is clear that the Skeptical Inquirer was never intended to confine itself solely to paranormal issues; and the topics it has dealt with have been truly wide-ranging. The subtitle that was eventually developed and now appears on every issue is “The Magazine for Science and Reason,” which states succinctly what it is all about. It has encouraged “the critical investigation of paranormal and fringe-science claims,” but “it also promotes science and scientific inquiry, critical thinking, science education, and the use of reason.”

I.

The enduring contribution of the Skeptical Inquirer in its first three decades, I submit, has been its persistent efforts to raise the level of the public understanding of science. No nation or region can cope with the challenges of the global marketplace and compete effectively unless it provides a steady stream of highly educated scientific practitioners. This is true of the developing world, which wishes to catch up with the advanced industrial and informational economies; but it is true of those latter nations as well. Today, China and India have embarked upon massive efforts to increase the number of scientists in their countries—China graduates anywhere from 350,000 to 600,000 engineers annually, compared to 70,000 to 120,000 in the United States, of which some 30,000 are foreign born. Alas, we still have a tremendous task, for U.S. students rank only twenty-fourth in scientific knowledge out of the twenty-nine industrialized countries. Only 40 percent of twelfth graders tested had any comprehension of the basic concepts and methods of science. Presumably, even fewer political figures in Washington have the requisite comprehension!

The long-standing policy of CSICOP has been four-fold: (1) to criticize claims of the paranormal and pseudoscience, (2) to explicate the methods of scientific inquiry and the nature of the scientific outlook, (3) to seek a balanced view of science in the mass media, and (4) to teach critical thinking in the schools. Unfortunately, the constant attacks on science, the rejection of evolution by creationists and intelligent design advocates (some thirty-seven states have proposed programs to teach ID and creationism in the schools), the limiting of stem-cell research by the federal government, and the refusal to accept scientific findings about global warming vividly demonstrate the uphill battle that the United States faces unless it improves the public appreciation of scientific research.

Clearly, the major focus of the Skeptical Inquirer, especially in its first two decades, was on the paranormal; for there was tremendous public fascination with this area of human interest, which was heavily promoted and sensationalized by an often irresponsible media. Our interest was not simply in the paranormal curiosity shop but to increase an understanding among the general public of how science works.

The term paranormal referred to phenomena that allegedly went “beyond normal science.” Many topics were lumped under this rubric. And many credulous people believed that there was a paranormal-spiritual dimension that leaked into our universe and caused strange entities and events. Included in this mysterious realm was a wide range of phenomena, which the Skeptical Inquirer examined within its pages over the years: psychic claims and predictions; parapsychology (psi, ESP, clairvoyance, telepathy, precognition, psychokinesis); UFO visitations and abductions by extraterrestrials (Roswell, cattle mutilations, crop circles); monsters of the deep (the Loch Ness monster) and of the forests and mountains (Sasquatch, or Bigfoot); mysteries of the oceans (the Bermuda Triangle, Atlantis); cryptozoology (the search for unknown species); ghosts, apparitions and haunted houses (The Amityville Horror); astrology and horoscopes (Jeanne Dixon, the “Mars effect,” the “Jupiter effect”), spoon bending (Uri Geller); remote viewing (Targ and Puthoff); cult anthropology; von Däniken and the Nazca plains of Peru; biorhythms; spontaneous human combustion; psychic surgery and faith healing; the full moon and moon madness; firewalking; psychic detectives; Ganzfeld experiments; poltergeists; near-death and out-of-body experiences; reincarnation; Immanuel Velikovsky and catastrophes in the past; doomsday forecasts; and much, much more!

The term paranormal was first used by parapsychologists, but it was stretched uncritically by advocates of the New Age, the Age of Aquarius, and harmonic convergence to include bizarre phenomena largely unexamined by mainline science. Murray Gell-Mann, Nobel Laureate and Fellow of CSICOP, at our conference at the University of Colorado in 1986—I can remember it vividly—observed that we skeptics do not really believe in the “paranormal,” because it deals with things beyond science, and as skeptical inquirers, he reiterated that we were dealing with investigations amenable to scientific methods of explanation. We would refuse to stop at any point and attribute phenomena to occult or hidden causes; we would keep looking for causal explanations and never declare that they were beyond the realm of natural causation by invoking the paranormal; and if we found new explanations, we would extend science to incorporate them. Incidentally, he also denied the feeling of some New Agers “that quantum mechanics is so weird, that anything goes” (Skeptical Inquirer, Fall 1986).

Sociologist Marcello Truzzi, who studied satanic cults, pointed out in our very first issue that we intended to examine esoteric anomalous claims, the “damned facts,” as Charles Fort called them (hail in July, a rainfall of frogs, etc.), to see what we could make of them. The public was intrigued by such mysteries, and we tried to encourage scientific investigators to explain them and to find out if they ever even existed or occurred.

Almost every issue of the Skeptical Inquirer attempted to fathom what was really happening in one or another alleged paranormal area. Thus, Ray Hyman described the technique of “cold reading” to show how guesswork and cues were used by psychics to deceive people who thought that they were having a bona fide paranormal reading. Philip Klass, head of CSICOP’s UFO subcommittee, tried to unravel unusual cases of alleged UFO visitations and abductions in answer to astronomer J. Allen Hynek or Bruce Maccabee or other UFO buffs, and offered alternative prosaic explanations to account for apparent misperceptions. Conjuror James Randi and Scientific American columnist Martin Gardner looked for fraud or deceit. This was graphically illustrated in the case of a young psychic named Suzie Cottrell, who had bamboozled Johnny Carson by card reading. Put to the test under controlled conditions, Gardner said that she used Matt Schulein’s forced-card trick, and Randi caught her red-handed peeking at the bottom card (see the Spring 1979 issue).

The Skeptical Inquirer published what appeared to be solutions to previously unexplained mysteries. We became exasperated with the media—such as NBC’s Unsolved Mysteries, because they would present persons as having “real” paranormal abilities in spite of the fact that those persons were fraudulent—as in the case of Tina Resch, the Columbus, Ohio, youngster. Poltergeists supposedly manifested themselves when she came on the scene, lamps shattered, lights or faucets turned off and on. She was exposed by a TV camera that the crew left on while she thought that she was alone in a room: she was seen knocking down a lamp herself and screaming “poltergeist!”

I must say that these early years were exciting and exhilarating. We loved working with James Randi, Penn and Teller, Jamy Ian Swiss, Henry Gordon, Bob Steiner, and other magicians, who could usually duplicate a supposedly paranormal feat by sleight of hand or other forms of chicanery.

Deception is unfortunately widespread in human history, and it is revealing to point it out when it is encountered, especially where loose protocol makes it easy to hoodwink a gullible experimenter. Harry Houdini performed yeoman’s service earlier in the twentieth century by exposing the blatant fraud perpetuated by Marjery Crandon and other spiritualists and mediums. I surely do not wish to suggest that conscious deception is the primary explanation for all or even most paranormal beliefs. Rather, it is self-deception that accounts for so much credulity. There is a powerful willingness in all too many people to believe in the unbelievable in spite of a lack of evidence or even evidence to the contrary. This propensity was due in part to what I have called the transcendental temptation, the tendency to resort to magical thinking, the attribution of occult causes for natural phenomena. The best antidote for this, I submit, is critical thinking and the search for natural causes of such phenomena.

Some paranormalists complained that we were poking fun at them and that ridicule is no substitute for objective inquiry. Martin Gardner observed that one joke might be worth a thousand syllogisms, if it dethrones a phony or nincompoop. Editor Kendrick Frazier, in my judgment, has always attempted to be fair-minded; and if an article criticized a proponent of a paranormal claim, he would invariably give that person an opportunity to respond. We attempted to make it clear that we were interested in fair and impartial inquiry, that we were not dogmatic or closed-minded, and that skepticism did not imply a priori rejection of any reasonable claim. Indeed, I insisted that our skepticism was not totalistic or nihilistic about paranormal claims, but that we proposed to examine a claim by means of scientific inquiry. I called this “the new skepticism” (see the Skeptical Inquirer Winter 1994), to distance it from classical Greco-Roman skepticism, which rejected virtually anything and everything; for no kind of knowledge was considered reliable. But this was before the emergence of modern science, in which hypotheses and theories are based upon rigorous methods of empirical investigation, experimental confirmation, and replication, and also by whether a paranormal claim contradicts the body of tested theories or is consistent with them. One must be prepared to overthrow an entire theoretical framework—and this has happened often in the history of science—but there has to be strong contravailing evidence that requires it. It is clear that skeptical doubt is an integral part of the method of science, and scientists should be prepared to question received scientific doctrines and reject them in the light of new evidence.

II.

Looking back to the early years of the Skeptical Inquirer and CSICOP, it is evident that the salient achievement was that we called for new investigations and researchers in our network of collaborators responded by engaging in them.

1. A good illustration of this is the determined efforts by skeptics to evaluate astrology experimentally. Although not paranormal in a strict sense—it was surely on the fringe of science—nevertheless, the claim that there were astro-biological influences present at the moment of birth could be tested. The “Mars effect” was a good illustration of this. French psychologists Michel and Francois Gauquelin maintained that the positions of planets at the time and place of birth—in this case Mars (in the first and fourth sector of the heavens)—was correlated with whether or not a person would become a sports champion. Egged on by Truzzi and a British psychologist, Hans Eysenck, we attempted several tests of this claim, and scientists tested the birth dates of sports champions born in the United States and France (and similar tests were made for other planets and professions). The results were negative, but it took twenty years of patient investigation to ascertain that. The most likely explanation for the “Mars effect” is biased data selection by the Gauquelins. CSICOP encouraged other researchers (such as Shawn Carlson* and Geoffrey Dean) to test classical astrological claims. The results, published in the pages of the Skeptical Inquirer, again were invariably negative. Astrology provided no coherent theory or mechanism for the influence of planetary bodies at the time and place of a person’s birth.

2. Similar efforts were applied to parapsychology. Ray Hyman, James Alcock, Barry Beyerstein, and others were able by serious meta-analyses to evaluate the results of experimental research. Working with Charles Honorton, Robert Morris, and other parapsychologists, they questioned the findings of parapsychological investigations, and they found badly designed protocols, data leakage, experimenter biases, and insufficient replication by independent researchers.

   The significant achievement of the Skeptical Inquirer was that it helped crystallize an appreciation by the scientific community of the need to investigate such claims. After the establishment of CSICOP, many scientific researchers were willing to devote the time to carefully examine the data. These results were published in the Skeptical Inquirer, so there was an independent record of explanation. And anyone who was puzzled by the phenomena could consult this new literature to deflate the paranormal balloon. This applied to a wide range of other phenomena.

3. Near-death experiences provided insufficient evidence for the conjecture that a conscious self or soul left the body and viewed it from afar—this is better explained by reference to physiological and psychological causes, as Susan Blackmore pointed out in the Skeptical Inquirer (Fall 1991).
4. The ability of fire-walking gurus to walk over hot coals was not due to some mind-over-matter spiritual power but rather because hot embers are poor conductors of heat, and it was possible for anyone to attempt it without injury.

5. Another area of importance was the critical evaluation of the use of hypnosis by UFO investigators, who believed they were uncovering repressed memories that depicted alleged abductions. John Mack, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard, used hypnosis to probe the unconscious minds of certain troubled people who thought they had been abducted aboard UFOs by extraterrestrials. There was a similar pattern in such cases, he said, which was repeated time and time again by his patients: a sense of lost time, flashing lights, out-of-body experiences, etc. Mack thought this provided strong evidence for the claim; skeptics maintained that these evidences were not corroborated by independent testimony. At one point, Carl Sagan wrote to us, urging CSICOP to undertake an investigation of these claims, which by then were proliferating everywhere. We invited John Mack to a CSICOP conference in Seattle in June 1994 to hear what he had to say. There was a colorful confrontation between John Mack the believer and Phil Klass the skeptic—who insisted that hypnosis was unreliable as a source of truth. The influence of urban abduction legends popularized by the mass media predisposed many fantasy-prone persons to imbibe this tale, and the suggestibility of hypnotists reinforced the reality of their subjective experiences. Some critics asked Mack whether he accepted the fantasies of his psychotic patients as true—which gave him some pause.

   “The Amazing” Kreskin, who used hypnosis in his act, appeared at one of CSICOP’s conferences expressing doubt that hypnosis was a genuine “trance state” or a source of truth—it seemed to work in suggestible patients because they followed the bidding of the hypnotist. (Incidentally, many skeptics were highly critical of Kreskin for suggesting that he possessed ESP.)

6. Hypnosis was also used in so-called past-life regressions to provide supposed evidence of previous lives. The Skeptical Inquirer carried many articles criticizing this technique. Past life therapists maintained that the hypnotic state provided empirical support for the doctrine of reincarnation, maintaining that the memory of a previous life was lodged deep within the unconscious. More parsimonious explanations of these experiences are available: creative imagination, suggestions implanted by the hypnotherapist, and cryptomnesia (information stored in the unconscious memory without knowledge of the true source). Again, there was no independent factual corroboration, and these methods seem to rely more on a priori belief in reincarnation than reliable empirical evidence.
7. Many research issues in psychology were critically examined in the Skeptical Inquirer. The work of Elizabeth Loftus is especially noteworthy here. In the decade of the 1990s, the mass media focused on charges that young children had been molested by relatives, friends, and teachers. Many reputations were destroyed after lurid accounts of sexual improprieties were made public. The popularity of such confessions spread like wildfire, and thousands of people claimed that they had been likewise molested. This was dramatized by the McMartin trial in California, where teachers in a day-care center were accused of sexual assaults of young children. This was based on testimony extracted from children and extrapolated by overzealous prosecutors. It had been pointed out that there is a “false-memory syndrome,” which is fed by suggestion, and that testimony based on this is highly questionable. The Skeptical Inquirer was among the first publications to point out the fragmentary nature of the evidence and the unreliability of such testimony. This helped to turn the tide against such accusations, many of which had been exaggerated.

It would be useful at this point to sum up the pitfalls that skeptical inquirers encountered in studying paranormal and fringe-science claims and of guidelines that emerged as a consequence:

• Eyewitness subjective testimony uncritically accepted without corroboration is a potential source of deception (in accounts of molestation, reports of apparitions, past-life regression, UFO visitations, etc.).
• Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence.
• The burden of proof rests with the claimant, not the investigators.
• Paranormal reports are like unsinkable rubber ducks: no matter how many times they are submerged, they tend to surface again.
• There is widespread gullibility and will to believe expressed by certain segments of the population, fascinated by mystery and magical thinking and willingness to accept tales of the occult or supernatural.
• In some cases, but surely not all, blatant fraud and chicanery may be observed, even in young children.
• In evaluating evidence, watch out for hidden bias and self-deception pro and con (including your own) to determine if something is a pseudoscience or not.
• There is no easily drawn demarcation line between science and pseudoscience, for one may be dealing with a proto-science. In my view, we need to descend to the concrete data and we cannot always judge a priori on purely philosophical grounds whether something is a pseudoscience or not (although I agree in general with Mario Bunge’s views about the characteristics of a pseudoscience; see Skeptical Inquirer, Fall 1984 and July/August 2006).

III.

In recent years, popular interest in the paranormal has declined markedly, at least in comparison with its heyday. I do not deny that belief in paranormal phenomena is widespread; however, there are fewer manifestations of it in the mass media, and apparently less scientific interest. In previous decades, there were huge best sellers whose sales figures numbered in the millions: Raymond Moody’s Life After Life, Charles Berlitz’s The Bermuda Triangle, Erich von Däniken’s Chariot of the Gods, etc.

Today, very few such books make The New York Times best-sellers list; and a top-selling paranormal book is likely to sell only 200,000 to 300,000 copies. (Sylvia Browne is the current best-selling guru, but there are few others besides her.) And there are very few major television programs devoted to the paranormal, though there are smaller-market cable shows.

Attention has turned to other areas. First, alternative medicine has grown by leaps and bounds. Prior to 1996, very few medical schools taught courses or offered programs in alternative medicine—and the medical profession was highly skeptical of the therapeutic value of remedies such as homeopathy, acupuncture, Therapeutic Touch, herbal medicines, iridology, and chiropractic. This magazine published many articles critical of these areas. It may be that such therapies are useful—the criterion we suggested was to conduct random, double-blind tests of their efficacy. Until there is sufficient data to support a therapy, the public should be cautious of its use. The medical profession needs to be open-minded yet suspicious of therapies until they are demonstrated to work—notwithstanding the evidential value of placebos.

Interestingly, the skeptical movement in Europe has concentrated on alternative medicines, though this is not strictly paranormal but is on the borderline of fringe medicine. I must confess that we are dismayed by the rapid growth of alternative and complementary medicine, which has had enormous acceptance virtually overnight. This is helped no doubt by the fact that it is a highly profitable source of income for both practitioners and the companies that market herbal remedies. Homeopathy is very strong in Europe and is now making inroads in the United States, though its remedies have never been adequately tested. Therapeutic Touch is so widespread in the nursing profession that it has gained great acceptance, though the basis of its curative powers has not been adequately demonstrated. The role of intercessory prayer as a healing method has provoked considerable controversy. Some advocates of prayer have claimed positive results; however, skeptics have seriously questioned the methodology of these tests. The most systematic tests were recently conducted by a team of scientists led by Herbert Benson (see the July/August 2006 Skeptical Inquirer). Using fairly rigorous protocol, these tests produced negative results.

Many skeptics have likewise been very critical of schools of psychotherapy, notably psychoanalysis, for lacking clinical data about the efficacy of their methods. In this regard, the Center for Inquiry has taken over the journal The Scientific Review of Mental Health Practice edited by Scott Lilienfeld, which evaluates the scientific validity of mental-health treatment modalities. Some people say that the change from evidence-based medicine to other forms of medicine spells the emergence of a new paradigm; Marcia Angel has observed that this shift is toward a kind of spiritual medicine, influenced by the growth of religiosity in the culture.

Over the years, the Skeptical Inquirer has dealt with many other areas that needed critical scrutiny, including the efficacy of dowsing, graphology, facilitated communication, SETI, animal speech, the Atkins Diet, obesity, the Rorschach test, holistic medicine, and veterinary medicine. In addition, there were many articles on the philosophy of science, the nature of consciousness, and the evidence for evolution.

IV.

Kendrick Frazier

Numerous distinguished scientists have contributed to Skeptical Inquirer, including Richard Feynman, Glenn Seaborg, Leon Lederman, Gerald Holton, Steve Weinberg, Carl Sagan, Richard Dawkins, Jill Tarter, Steven Pinker, Carol Tavris, Neil de Grasse Tyson, and Victor Stenger. Among the topics examined have been quantum mechanics, the brain and consciousness, and cold fusion. Thus, the scope of the Skeptical Inquirer under Kendrick Frazier’s editorship has been impressively comprehensive. And I should add that his fine editorials in every issue have pinpointed central questions of concern to science.

In a very real sense, the most important controversy in the past decade has been the relationship between religion and the paranormal and whether and to what extent CSICOP and the Skeptical Inquirer should deal with religious claims. As a matter of fact, evangelical and fundamentalist religion have grown to such proportions that religion and the paranormal overlap and one cannot easily deal with one without the other. The Skeptical Inquirer has dealt with religious claims from the earliest. First, it was in the vanguard of responding to the attacks on the theory of evolution coming from the creationists. Eugenie Scott, who served on the CSICOP Executive Council for a period of time, has done great service in critically analyzing “creation science,” and the Skeptical Inquirer was among the first magazines to do so, demonstrating that creationism is not a science, for it does not provide a testable theory. The young-earth view maintains that Earth and the species on it are of recent origin, a view so preposterous that it is difficult to take it seriously. Most recently, intelligent design theory (which rejects the young-earth theory) claims that the complexity of biological systems is evidence for design. Numerous articles in the Skeptical Inquirer have pointed out that evolution is supported by overwhelming evidence drawn from many sciences. The existence of vestigial organs in many species, including the human species, is hardly evidence for design; for they have no discernible function. And the extinction of millions of species on the planet is perhaps evidence for unintelligent design.

Second, the Skeptical Inquirer was always willing to deal with religious questions, insofar as there are empirical claims that are amenable to scientific treatment. Thus, the Shroud of Turin has been readily investigated in the Skeptical Inquirer (see, for example, November/December 1999), presenting evidence (such as carbon-14 dating) that indicated that it was a thirteenth-century cloth on which an image had been contrived. Joe Nickell (CSICOP’s Senior Research Fellow for the past decade) has said for years that the shroud is a forgery—as did the bishop of the area of France where it first turned up maintained. Moreover, Nickell has shown how such a shroud could easily have been concocted. Similarly, the so-called Bible code was easily refuted by Dave Thomas (see the Skeptical Inquirer, November/December 1997 and March/April 1998).

In recent years, reports of miracles have proliferated, much to the surprise of rationalists, who deplore the apparent reversion of society to the thinking of the Middle Ages. David Hume offered powerful arguments questioning miracles, which he said were due to ignorance of the causes of such phenomena. There is abundant evidence, said Hume, to infer that nature exhibits regularities; hence, we should reject any exception to the laws of nature. In the late eighteenth century, showers of meteorites were interpreted by religious believers as signs of God’s wrath. A special commission of scientists in France was appointed to investigate whether such reports of objects falling from the sky were authentic, and if so, if they were caused by natural events.

The Skeptical Inquirer has dealt with miracles in its pages, given the great public interest in them. The so-called miracle at Medjugorje, Yugoslavia, at a shrine where the Virgin Mary appeared before young children was critically discussed (November/December 2002). The conclusion was that the children’s testimony has not been corroborated by independent testimony and was hence suspect. But as a result of the attention the children received, they became media celebrities. Oddly, the Virgin never warned about the terrible war that was about to engulf Bosnia and Kosovo. The cases were similar for the numerous other sightings of Mary and those of Jesus, which have attracted great public fascination. The investigations of Joe Nickell are models to follow; Nickell refuses to declare a priori that any miracle claim is false, but instead, he attempts where he can to conduct an on-site inquest into the facts surrounding the case. If, after investigation, he can show that the alleged miracle was due to misperception or deception, his analysis is far more effective.

The one area of interest in the paranormal that has also had a resurgence in recent years is “communicating with the dead.” The form it has taken is reminiscent of the spiritualism of the nineteenth century, which had been thoroughly discredited because of fraud and deceit. The new wave of interest is fed by appearances on radio and television by such people as Sylvia Browne, James Van Praagh, and John Edwards. The techniques that the most popular psychics use are the crudest form of cold reading—which they seem to get away with easily. In some cases, they have resorted to doing hot readings (using information surreptitiously gleaned beforehand). This latter-day revival of spiritualism is no doubt fueled by the resurgence of religiosity in the United States, but it also shows a decline of respect for the rigorous standards of evidence used in the sciences.

The question of the relationship between science and religion intrigues many people today. It is especially encouraged by grants bestowed by the Templeton Foundation. Indeed, three special issues of the Skeptical Inquirer, beginning with July/August 1999 were devoted to explorations of the relationship or lack of it between these two perennial areas of human interest.

These issues of the Skeptical Inquirer proved to be the most popular that we have ever published. Most skeptics have taken a rather strong view that science and religion are two separate domains and that science needs latitude for freedom of research, without ecclesiastical or moral censorship. This is one of the most burning issues today. Stephen Jay Gould defended a dissenting viewpoint of two magisteria: religion, which included ethics within its domain, and science. The Skeptical Inquirer has consistently brought philosophers to its pages to discuss a range of philosophical questions on the borderlines of science, religion, and morality. Susan Haack, Mario Bunge, and myself, Paul Kurtz, among others, have argued that the scientific approach is relevant to ethics and therefore ethics should not be left to the exclusive domain of religion (see the September/ October 2004 Skeptical Inquirer).

V.

Skeptics have often felt isolated in a popular culture that is often impervious to or fails to fully appreciate the great discoveries of science on the frontiers of research. They have done arduous work attempting to convince producers, directors, and publishers to present the scientific outlook fairly. When pro-paranormal views are blithely expressed as true, we have urged that scientific critiques also be presented to provide some balance. Our goal is to inform the public about the scientific outlook. We believe that we still have a long way to go to achieve some measure of fairness in the media. Almost the first official act of CSICOP was to challenge NBC for its program Exploring the Unknown, narrated by Burt Lancaster, which presented pro-paranormal propaganda on topics such as psychic surgery and astrology, without any scientific dissent at all. Our suit against NBC citing the Fairness Doctrine was turned down by a federal judge, and our subsequent appeal to the First District Court in Washington was also rejected (see the Fall/Winter 1977 Skeptical Inquirer). Conversely, the Skeptical Inquirer has been the victim of many legal suits or threats of suits over the years. The most notorious was Uri Geller’s protracted legal suits against James Randi, CSICOP, and Prometheus Books. The most recent suit has named Elizabeth Loftus and CSICOP for an article that she authored (with Melvin J. Guyer) on the case of alleged sexual abuse of “Jane Doe” in the Skeptical Inquirer (May/June 2002). So the struggle that we have waged still continues.

On a more positive note, it is a source of great satisfaction that the Skeptical Inquirer is read throughout the world and that CSICOP has helped generate new skeptics groups, magazines, and newsletters almost everywhere—from Australia and China to Argentina, Peru, Mexico, and Nigeria; from India, Eastern Europe, and Russia to Germany, France, Spain, Italy, and the United Kingdom, so that the Center for Inquiry/Transnational (including CSICOP) has become truly planetary in scope. Especially gratifying is the fact that CSICOP has convened meetings in places all over the world, including China, England, France, Russia, Australia, India, Germany, Africa, etc.

Looking ahead, I submit that the Skeptical Inquirer and CSICOP should investigate other kinds of intellectually challenging and controversial claims. It is difficult to know before- hand where the greatest needs will emerge. In my view, we cannot limit our agenda to the issues that were dominant thirty, twenty, or even ten years ago, interesting as they have been. I think that we should of course continue to investigate paranormal claims, given our skilled expertise in that area. But we need to widen our net by entering into new arenas we’ve never touched on before, and we should be ever-willing to apply the skeptical eye wherever it is needed. Actually, Editor Kendrick Frazier has already embarked in new directions, for recent issues of the Skeptical Inquirer have dealt with topics such as cyberterrorism, “A Skeptical Look at September 11,” “The Luck Factor,” and critical thinking about power plants and the waste of energy in our current distribution systems. But there are many other issues that we have not dealt with that would benefit from skeptical scrutiny—and these include issues in biogenetic engineering, religion, economics, ethics, and politics.

Perhaps we have already become the Committee for Scientific Investigation (CSI), to denote that we are moving in new directions. This fulfills our general commitment to science and reason that’s stated in the masthead of the Skeptical Inquirer. But one may say, there are so many intellectually controversial issues at large in society, which do we select? May I suggest the following criteria: we should endeavor to enter into an area, first, if there is considerable public interest and controversy; second, where there has not been adequate scientific research nor rigorous peer review; third, where some kind of interdisciplinary cooperative efforts would be useful; and fourth, where we can enlist the help of specialists in a variety of fields who can apply their skills to help resolve the issues.

We originally criticized pseudoscientific, paranormal claims because we thought that they trivialized and distorted the meaning of genuine science. Many of the attacks on the integrity and independence of science today come from powerful political-theological-moral doctrines. For example, one of the key objections to stem-cell research is that researchers allegedly destroy innocent human life—even when they deal with the earliest stage of fetal development or when a cell begins to divide in a petri dish. First is the claim that the “soul” is implanted at the moment of conception and that human life begins at the first division of a cell, and second, that it is “immoral” for biogeneticists working in the laboratory to intervene. The first claim is surely an occult notion if there ever was one, and it urgently needs to be carefully evaluated by people working in the fields of biology, genetics, and medical ethics; a similar response can be made to the second claim that it is immoral to intervene. There are many other challenges that have emerged in the rapidly expanding field of biogenetic research that might benefit from careful scrutiny: among these are the ethics of organ transplants, the use of mind-enhancing drugs, life-extension technologies, etc. The “new singularity,” says Ray Kurzweil, portends great opportunities for humankind but also perplexing moral issues that need examination.

VI.

In closing, permit me to touch on another practical problem that looms larger every day for the Skeptical Inquirer and other serious magazines like it. I am here referring to a double whammy: the growth of the Internet on the one hand and the steady decline of reading of magazines on the other. No doubt, the Internet provides an unparalleled resource for everyone, but at the same time, it has eroded the financial base of the Skeptical Inquirer; and we do not see any easy solution to the deficit gap that increasingly imperils our survival.

Recognizing these dangers, we have extended our public outreach, first by offering for the first time an academic program “science and the public” at the graduate level. Second, we have just opened an Office of Public Policy at our new Center for Inquiry in Washington, D.C., the purpose of which is to defend the integrity of science in the nation’s capital and to try to convince our political leaders of the vital importance of supporting science education and the public understanding of science.

Finally, the most gratifying factor in all of this has been the unfailing support of the readers of the Skeptical Inquirer, who have helped to sustain us throughout our first three decades. Your support has been especially encouraging to Kendrick Frazier, who has work so diligently in editing and publishing an outstanding magazine. It has been a rare privilege, an honor, for me to have worked with him so closely over these valiant years. We look forward to continuing the great legacy of the Skeptical Inquirer into its fourth decade and beyond.

Notes:

1. Clarification: Shawn Carlson first came to CSICOP’s attention with the publication of his paper “A Double-Blind Test of Astrology” in the December 5, 1985 edition of Nature. CSICOP then summarized Carlson’s paper as the lead News and Comment item in the Spring 1986 issue of Skeptical Inquirer. In November of 1988 Carlson was elected a CSICOP Scientific and Technical Consultant.

I.

Can science and reason be used to develop ethical judgments? Many theists claim that without religious foundations, “anything goes,” and social chaos will ensue. Scientific naturalists believe that secular societies already have developed responsible ethical norms and that science and reason have helped us to solve moral dilemmas. How and in what sense this occurs are vital issues that need to be discussed in contemporary society, for this may very well be the hottest issue of the twenty-first century.

Dramatic breakthroughs on the frontiers of science provide new powers to humans, but they also pose perplexing moral quandaries. Should we use or limit these scientific discoveries, such as the cloning of humans? Much of this research is banned in the United States and restricted in Canada. Should scientists be permitted to reproduce humans by cloning (as we now do with animals), or is this too dangerous? Should we be allowed to make “designer babies?” Many theologians and politicians are horrified by this; many scientists and philosophers believe that it is not only inevitable but justifiable under certain conditions. There were loud cries against in vitro fertilization, or artificial insemination, only two generations ago, but the procedure proved to be a great boon to childless couples. Many religious conservatives are opposed to therapeutic stem-cell research on fetal tissues, because they think that “ensoulment” occurs with the first division of cells. Scientists are appalled by this censorship of scientific research, since the research has the potential to cure many illnesses; they believe those who oppose it have ignored the welfare of countless numbers of human beings. There are other equally controversial issues on the frontiers of science: Organ transplants-who should get them and why? Is the use of animal organs to supply parts for human bodies wrong? Is transhumanism reforming what it means to be human? How shall we control AIDS-is it wicked to use condoms, as some religious conservatives think, or should this be a high priority in Africa and elsewhere? Does global warming mean we need a radical transformation of industry in affluent countries? Is homosexuality genetic, and if so, is the denial of same-sex marriage morally wrong? How can we decide such questions? What criteria may we draw upon?

II.

Many adhere today to the view that ethical choices are merely relativistic and subjective, expressing tastes; and you cannot disputes tastes (de gustibus non disputandum est). If they are emotive at root, no set of values is better than any other. If there is a conflict, then the best option is to persuade others to accept our moral attitudes, to convert them to our moral feelings, or, if this fails, to resort to force.

Classical skeptics denied the validity of all knowledge, including ethical knowledge. The logical positivists earlier in the twentieth century made a distinction between fact, the appropriate realm of science, and value, the realm of expressive discourse and imperatives, claiming that though we can resolve descriptive and theoretical questions by using the methods of science, we cannot use science to adjudicate moral disputes. Most recently, postmodernists, following the German philosopher Heidegger and his French followers, have gone further in their skepticism, denying that there is any special validity to humanistic ethics or indeed to science itself. They say that science is merely one mythological construct among others. They insist that there are no objective epistemological standards; that gender, race, class, or cultural biases likewise infect our ethical programs and any narratives of social emancipation that we may propose. Who is to say that one normative viewpoint is any better than any other, they demand. Thus have many disciples of multicultural relativism and subjectivism often given up in despair, becoming nihilists or cynics. Interestingly, most of these well-intentioned folk hold passionate moral and political convictions, but when pushed to the wall, will they concede that their own epistemological and moral recommendations likewise express only their own personal preferences?

The problem with this position is apparent, for it is impaled on one horn of a dilemma, and the consequence of this option is difficult to accept. If it is the case that there are no ethical standards, then who can say that the Nazi Holocaust and the Rwandan, Cambodian, or Armenian genocides are evil? Is it only a question of taste that divides sadists and masochists on one side from all the rest on the other? Are slavery, the repression of women, the degradation of the environment by profit-hungry corporations, or the killing of handicapped people morally impermissible, if there are no reliable normative standards? If we accept cultural relativity as our guide, then we have no grounds to object to Muslim law (sharia), which condones the stoning to death of adulteresses.

III.

What is the position of those who wish to draw upon science and reason to formulate ethical judgment? Is it possible to bridge the gap and recognize that values are relative to human interests yet allow that they are open to some objective criticisms? I submit that it is, and that upon reflection, most educated people would accept them. I choose to call this third position “objective relativism” or “objective contextualism"; namely, values are related to human interests, needs, desires, and passions-whether individual or socio-cultural-but they are nonetheless open to scientific evaluation. By this, I mean a form of reflective intelligence that applies to questions of principles and values and that is open to modification of them in the light of criticism. In other words, there is a Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, which bears fruit, and which, if eaten and digested, can impart to us moral knowledge and wisdom.

In what sense can scientific inquiry help us to make moral choices? My answer to that is it does so all the time. This is especially the case with the applied sciences: medicine, dentistry, nursing, pharmacology, psychiatry, and social psychology; and also in the policy sciences: economics, education, political science; and such interdisciplinary fields as criminology, gerontology, etc. Modern society could not function without the advice drawn from these fields of knowledge, which make evaluative judgments and recommend prescriptions. They advise what we ought to do on a contextual basis.

Nonetheless, there are the skeptical critics of this position, who deny that science per se can help us or that naturalistic ethics is possible. I think that those critics are likewise mistaken and that naturalism is directly relevant to ethics. My thesis is that an increase in knowledge can help us to make wiser decisions. By knowledge, I do not refer simply to philosophical analysis but scientific evidence. It would answer both the religionist, who insists that you cannot be moral unless you are religious, and the subjectivist, who denies there is any such thing as ethical knowledge or wisdom.

Before I outline this position, let me concede that the skeptical philosophical objections to deriving ethics from science have some merit. Basically, what are they? The critics assert that we cannot deduce ethics from science, i.e., what ought to be the case from what is the case. A whole series of philosophers from David Hume to the emotivists have pointed out this fallacy. G.E. Moore, at the beginning of the twentieth century, characterized this as “the naturalistic fallacy” [1] (mistakenly, I think).

But they are essentially correct. The fact that science discovers that something is the case factually does not make it ipso facto good or right. To illustrate: (a) Charles Darwin noted the role of natural selection and the struggle for survival as key ingredients in the evolution of species. Should we conclude, therefore, as Herbert Spencer did, that laissez-faire doctrines ought to apply, that we ought to allow nature to take its course and not help the handicapped or the poorer classes? (b) Eugenicists concluded earlier in the century that some people are brighter and more talented than others. Does this justify an elitist hierarchical society in which only the best rule or eugenic methods of reproduction be followed? This was widely held by many liberals until the fascists began applying it in Germany with dire consequences.

There have been abundant illustrations of pseudoscientific theories-monocausal theories of human behavior that were hailed as “scientific"-that have been applied with disastrous results. Examples: (a) The racial theories of Chamberlain and Gobineau alleging Aryan superiority led to genocide by the Nazis. (b) Many racists today point to IQ to justify a menial role for blacks in society and their opposition to affirmative action. (c) The dialectical interpretation of history was taken as “scientific” by Marxists and used to justify class warfare. (d) Environmentalists decried genetics as “racist” and thought that changes in species should only be induced by modifications of the environment. Thus, one has to be cautious about applying the latest scientific fad to social policy.

We ought not to consider scientific specialists to be especially gifted or possessed with ethical knowledge nor empower them to apply this knowledge to society-as B.F. Skinner in Walden II and other utopianists have attempted to do. Neither scientist-kings nor philosopher-kings should be entrusted to design a better world. We have learned the risks and dangers of abandoning democracy to those wishing to create a Brave New World. Alas, all humans-including scientists-are fallible, and excessive power may corrupt human judgment. Given these caveats, I nevertheless hold that scientific knowledge has a vital, if limited, role to play in shaping our moral values and helping us to frame wiser judgments of practice--surely more, I would add, than our current reliance on theologians, politicians, military pundits, corporate CEOs, and celebrities!

IV.

How and in what sense can scientific inquiry help us?

I wish to present a modified form of naturalistic ethics. By this, I mean that ethical values are natural; they grow out of and fulfill human purposes, interests, desires, and needs. They are forms of preferential behavior evinced in human life. “Good,” “bad,” “right,” and “wrong” relate to sentient beings, whether human or otherwise. These values do not reside in a far-off heaven, nor are they deeply embedded in the hidden recesses of reality; they are empirical phenomena.

The principle of naturalism is based on a key methodological criterion: We ought to consider our moral principles and values, like other beliefs, open to examination in the light of evidence and reason and hence amenable to modification.

We are all born into a sociocultural context; and we imbibe the values passed on to us, inculcated by our peers, parents, teachers, leaders, and colleagues in the community.

I submit that ethical values should be amenable to inquiry. We need to ask, are they reliable? How do they stack up comparatively? Have they been tested in practice? Are they consistent? Many people seek to protect them as inviolable truths, immune to inquiry. This is particularly true of transcendental values based on religious faith and supported by custom and tradition. In this sense, ethical inquiry is similar to other forms of scientific inquiry. We should not presuppose that what we have inherited is true and beyond question. But where do we begin our inquiry? My response is, in the midst of life itself, focused on the practical problems, the concrete dilemmas, and contextual quandaries that we confront.

Let me illustrate by refer to three dilemmas. I do so not in order to solve them but to point out a method of inquiry in ethics. First, should we exact the death penalty for people convicted of murder? The United States is the only major democracy that still demands capital punishment. What is the argument for the death penalty? It rests on two basic premises: (a) A factual question is at issue: capital punishment is effective in deterring crime, especially murder; and (b) the principle of justice that applies is retributive. As the Old Testament adage reads, “Whatever hurt is done, you shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. . . .” [2]

The first factual premise can be resolved by sociological studies, by comparing the incidence of murder in those states and nations that have the death penalty in force and those that do not and by states and nations before and after the enactment or abrogation of the death penalty. We ask, has there been an increase or a decrease in murder? If, as a matter of fact, the death penalty does not restrain or inhibit murder, would a person still hold his view that the death penalty ought to be retained? The evidence suggests that the death penalty does not to any significant extent reduce the murder rate, especially since most acts of murder are not deliberate but due to passion or are an unexpected result of another crime, such as robbery. Thus, if one bases his or her belief in capital punishment primarily on the deterrence factor, and it does not deter, would one change one’s belief? The same consideration should apply to those who are opposed to the death penalty: Would they change their belief if they thought it would deter excessive murder rates? These are empirical questions at issue. And the test of a policy are its consequences in the real world. Does it achieve what it sets out to do?

There are, of course, other factual considerations, such as: Are many innocent people convicted of crimes they did not commit (as was recently concluded in the State of Illinois)? Is capital punishment unfairly applied primarily to minorities? This points to the fact that belief in capital punishment is, to some extent, a function of scientific knowledge concerning the facts of the case. This often means that such measures should not be left to politicians or jurors alone to decide; the scientific facts of the case are directly relevant.

The second moral principle of retributive justice is far more difficult to deal with, for this may be rooted in religious conviction or in a deep-seated tribal sense of retaliation. If you injure my kin, it is said, I can injure yours; and this is not purely a factual issue. There are other principles of justice that are immediately thrown into consideration. Those opposed to the death penalty say that society “should set a humane tone and not itself resort to killing.” Or again, the purpose of justice should be to protect the community from future crimes, and alternative forms of punishment, perhaps lifetime imprisonment without the right of parole, might suffice to deter crime. Still another principle of justice is relevant: Should we attempt, where possible, to rehabilitate the offender? All of the above principles are open to debate. The point is, we should not block inquiry; we should not say that some moral principles are beyond any kind of re-evaluation or modification. Here, a process of deliberation enters in, and a kind of moral knowledge emerges about what is comparatively the best policy to adopt.

Another example of the methods of resolving moral disputes is the argument for assisted suicide in terminal cases, in which people are suffering intolerable pain. This has become a central issue in the field of medical ethics, where medical science is able to keep people alive who might normally die. I first saw the emergence of this field thirty years ago, when I sponsored a conference in biomedical ethics at my university and could find very few, if any, scholars or scientists who had thought about the questions or were qualified experts. Today, it is an essential area in medicine. The doctor is no longer taken as a patriarchal figure. His or her judgments need to be critically examined, and others within the community, especially patients, need to be consulted. There are here, of course, many factual questions at issue: Is the illness genuinely terminal? Is there great suffering? Is the patient competent in expressing his or her long-standing convictions regarding his or her right to die with dignity? Are there medical and legal safeguards to protect this system against abuse?

Our decision depends on several further ethical principles: (a) the informed consent of patients in deciding whether they wish treatment to continue; (b) the right of privacy, including the right of individuals to have control of their own bodies and health; and (c) the criterion of the quality of life.

One problem we encounter in this area is the role, again, of transcendental principles. Some people insist, “God alone should decide life-and-death questions, not humans.” This principle, when invoked, is beyond examination, and for many people it is final. Passive euthanasia means that we will not use extraordinary methods to keep a person alive, where there is a longstanding intent expressed in a living will not to do so. Active euthanasia will, under certain conditions, allow the patient, in consultation with his physician, to hasten the dying process (as practiced in Oregon and the Netherlands). The point is, there is an interweaving of factual considerations with ethical principles, and these may be modified in the light of inquiry, by comparing alternatives and examining consequences in each concrete case.

I wish to illustrate this process again by referring to another issue that is hotly debated today: Should all cloning research be banned? The Canadian legislature, in March 2004, passed legislation that will put severe restrictions on such scientific research. The bill is called “An Act Respecting Assisted Human Reproduction” (known as C-56), and it makes it a criminal offense to engage in therapeutic cloning, to maintain an embryo outside a woman’s body for more than fourteen days, to genetically manipulate embryos, to choose the gender of offspring, to sell human eggs and sperm, or to engage in commercial surrogacy. It also requires that in vitro embryos be created only for the purpose of creating human beings or for improving assisted human-reproductive procedures. Similar legislation was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives and is before the Senate. It is still being heatedly debated. It includes the prohibition of reproductive cloning as well as therapeutic stem-cell research. Two arguments against reproductive cloning are as follows: (a) It may be unsafe (at the present stage of medical technology) and infants born may be defective. This factual objection has some merit. (b) There is also a moral objection saying that we should not seek to design children. Yet we do so all the time, with artificial insemination, in vitro fertilization, and surrogate motherhood. We already are involved in “designer-baby” technology, with amniocentesis, pre-implantation, genetic testing, and chorionic villus sampling (the avoiding of unwanted genes by aborting fetuses and implanting desirable embryos).

If it were to become safe, would reproductive cloning become permissible? I can think of situations where we might find it acceptable-for example, if couples are unable to conceive by normal methods.

It is the second area I mentioned above that is especially telling-the opposition to any forms of embryonic stem-cell research. Proponents maintain that this line of research may lead to enormous benefits by curing a wide range of diseases such as Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s, or juvenile diabetes. Adult stem cells are now being used, but embryonic stem cells may provide important new materials. The criterion here is consequential: that positive outcomes may result. Opponents maintain that this type of research is “immoral” because it is tampering with human persons possessed of souls. Under this interpretation, “ensoulment” occurs at the moment of conception. This is said to apply to embryos, many of which, however, are products of miscarriages or abortions. Does it also apply once the division of stem cells occurs? Surely a small collection of cells, which is called a blastocyst, is not a person, a sentient being, or a moral agent prior to implantation. Leon Kass, chair of President Bush’s Council on Bioethics, believes that human life cannot be treated as a commodity and it is evil to manufacture life. He maintains that all human life, including a cloned embryo, has the same moral status and dignity as a person from the moment of conception.

This controversy pits two opposing moral claims: (a) the view that stem-cell research may be beneficent because of its possible contributions to human health (i.e., it might eliminate debilitating diseases) versus (b) an ethic of revulsion against tampering with natural reproductive processes. At issue here are the questions of whether ensoulment makes any sense in biology and whether personhood can be said to have begun at such an early stage, basically a transcendental claim that naturalists object to on empirical grounds. These arguments are familiar in the abortion debate; it would be unfortunate if they could be used to censor scientific stem-cell research.

This issue is especially relevant today, for transhumanists say that we are discovering new powers every day that modify human nature, enhance human capacities, and extend life spans. We may be able to extend memory and increase human perception and intelligence dramatically by silicon implants. Traditionalists recoil in horror, saying that post-humanists would have us transgress human nature. We would become cyborgs.

But we already are, to some extent: we wear false teeth, eyeglasses, and hearing aids; we have hair grafts, pacemakers, organ transplants, artificial limbs, and sex-change/sexual reassignment operations and injections; we use Viagra to enhance sexual potency or mega-vitamins and hormone therapy. Why not go further? Each advance raises ethical issues: Do we have the reproductive freedom and responsibility to design our children by knowing possible genetic disorders and correcting them before reproduction or birth?

V.

This leads to an important distinction between two kinds of values within human experience. Let me suggest two possible sources: (a) values rooted in unexamined feelings, faith, custom, or authority, held as deep-seated convictions beyond question, and (b) values that are influenced by cognition and informed by rational inquiry.

Naturalists say that scientific inquiry enables us to revise our values, if need be, and to develop, where appropriate, new ones. We already possess a body of prescriptive judgments that have been tested in practice in the applied sciences of medicine, psychiatry, engineering, educational counseling, and other fields. Similarly, I submit that there is a body of prescriptive ethical judgments that has been tested in practice and that constitutes normative knowledge; and new normative prescriptions are introduced all the time as the sciences progress.

The question is thus raised, what criteria should we use to make ethical choices? This issue is especially pertinent today for those living in pluralistic societies such as ours, where there is diversity of values and principles.

In formulating ethical judgments, we need to refer to what I have called a “valuational base.” [3] Packed into this referent are the pre-existing de facto values and principles that we are committed to; but we also need to consider empirical data, means-ends relationships, causal knowledge, and the consequences of various courses of action. It is inquiry that is the instrument by which we decide what we ought to do and that we should develop in the young. We need to focus on moral education for children; we wish to structure positive traits of character and also the capacity for making reflective decisions. There are no easy recipes or simple formulae that we can appeal to, telling us what we ought to do in every case. There are, however, what W.D. Ross called prima facie general principles of right conduct, the common moral decencies, a list of virtues, precepts, and prescriptions, ethical excellences, obligations, and responsibilities, which are intrinsic to our social roles. But how they work out in practice depends on the context at hand, and the most reliable guide for mature persons is cognitive inquiry and deliberation.

Conservative theists have often objected to this approach to morality as dangerous, given to “debauchery” and “immorality.” Here, there is a contrast between two different senses of morality: (a) the obedience/authoritarian model, in which humans are expected to follow moral absolutes derived from ancient creeds, and (b) the encouragement of moral growth, implying that there are within the human species potential moral tendencies and cognitive capacities that can help us to frame judgments.

For a naturalistic approach, in the last analysis, ethics is a product of a long evolutionary process. Evolutionary psychology has pointed out that moral rules have enabled human communities to adapt to threats to their survival. This Darwinian interpretation implies a biological basis for reciprocal behavior- epigenetic rules-according to E.O. Wilson (1998). [4] The social groups that possessed these rules transmitted them to their offspring. Such moral behavior provides a selective advantage. There is accordingly an inward propensity for moral behavior, moral sentiments, empathy, and altruism within the species.

This does not deny that there are at the same time impulses for selfish and aggressive tendencies. It is a mistake, however, to read in a doctrine of “original sin” and to say that human beings are by nature sinful and corrupt. I grant that there are individuals who lack moral empathy; they are morally handicapped. Some may even be sociopaths. The salient point is that there are genetic potentialities for good and evil; but how they work out and whether beneficent behavior prevails is dependent on cultural conditions. Both our genes (genetics) and memes (social patterns of enculturation) are factors that determine how and why we behave the way we do. We cannot simply deduce from the evolutionary process what we ought to do. What we do depends in part upon the choices we make. Thus, we still have some capacity for free choice. Though we are conditioned by environmental and biogenetic determinants, we are still capable of cognitive processes of selection, and rationality and intentionality play a causative role. (Note: There is a considerable scientific literature that supports this evolutionary view. See Daniel Dennett, Freedom Evolves [New York: Viking, 2003] and Darwin’s Dangerous Idea [New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995]; Brian Skyrm, Evolution of the Social Contract [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996], Robert Wright, The Moral Animal [New York: Pantheon Books, 1994] and Nonzero [New York: Vintage Books, 2001], Matt Ridley, The Origins of Virtue [New York: Viking, 1996], and Elliott Sober and David Sloan Wilson, Unto Others [Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1998].)

Ethical precepts need not be based upon transcendental grounds or dependent upon religious faith. Undoubtedly, the belief that they are sacred may strengthen moral duties for many persons, but it is not necessary for everyone.

I submit that it is time for scientists to recognize that they have an opportunity to contribute to naturalistic ethics. We stand at an interesting time in human history. We have great power to ameliorate the human condition. Biogenetic engineering, nanotechnology, and space research open new opportunities for humankind to create a better world.

Yet there are those today who wish to abandon human reason and freedom and return to mythological legends of our premodern existence, including their impulses of aggres- sion and self-righteous vengeance. I submit that the Enlightenment is a beacon whose promise has not been fulfilled and that humankind needs to accept the responsibility for its own future.

Conclusion

A caveat is in order. In the last analysis, some degree of skepticism is a necessary antidote to all forms of moral dogmatism. We are continually surrounded by self-righteous moralists who claim that they have the Absolute Truth, Moral Virtue, or Piety or know the secret path to salvation and wish to impose their convictions on all others. They are puffed up with an inflated sense of their own rectitude as they rail against unbenighted immoral sinners who lack their moral faith. These moral zealots are willing to repress or even sacrifice anyone who stands in their way. They have in the past unleashed conquering armies in the name of God, the Dialectic, Racial Superiority, Posterity, or Imperial Design. Skepticism needs to be applied not only to religious and paranormal fantasies but to other forms of moral and political illusions. These dogmas become especially dangerous when they are appealed to in order to legislate morality and are used by powerful social institutions, such as a state or church or corporation, to enforce a particular brand of moral virtue. Hell hath no fury like the self-righteous moral fanatic scorned.

The best antidote for this is some skepticism and a willingness to engage in ethical inquiry, not only about others' moral zeal, but about our own, especially if we are tempted to translate the results of our own ethical inquiries into commandments. The epistemological theory that I propose is based upon methodological principles of skeptical scientific inquiry, and it has important moral implications. For in recognizing our own fallibility, we thereby can learn to tolerate other human beings and to appreciate their diversity and the plurality of lifestyles. If we are prepared to engage in cooperative ethical inquiry, then perhaps we are better prepared to allow other individuals and groups some measure of liberty to pursue their own preferred lifestyles. If we are able to live and let live, then this can best be achieved in a free and open democratic society. Where we differ, we should try to negotiate our divergent views and perhaps reach common ground; and if this is impractical, we should at least attempt to compromise for the sake of our common interests. The method of ethical inquiry requires some intelligent and informed examination of our own values as well as the values of others. Here we can attempt to modify attitudes by an appeal to cognitive beliefs and to reconstruct them by an examination of the relevant scientific evidence. Such a give-and-take of constructive criticism is essential for a harmonious society. In learning to appreciate different conceptions of the good life, we are able to expand our own dimensions of moral awareness; and this is more apt to lead to a peaceful world.

By this, I surely do not mean to imply that anything and everything can or should be tolerated or that one thing is as good as the next. We should be prepared to criticize moral nonsense parading as virtue. We should not tolerate the intolerable. We have a right to strongly object, if need be, to those values or practices that we think are based on miscalculation, misconception, or that are patently false or harmful. Nonetheless, we might live in a better world if inquiry were to replace faith; deliberation, passionate commitment; and education and persuasion, force and war. We should be aware of the powers of intelligent behavior, but also of the limitations of the human animal and of the need to mitigate the cold, indifferent intellect with the compassionate and empathic heart. Thus, I conclude that within the ethical life, we are capable of developing a body of melioristic principles and values and a method of coping with problems intelligently. When our ethical judgments are based on rational and scientific inquiry, they are more apt to express the highest reaches of excellence and nobility and of civilized human conduct. We are in sore need of that today.

Notes

1. G.E. Moore. Principia Ethica (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1903).
2. See Exodus 21.
3. Kurtz, Paul (ed.). The New Skepticism: Inquiry and Reliable Knowledge (Amherst, New York: Prometheus, 1992), chapter 9.
4. Wilson, E.O. Consilience (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1998).

Belief in pseudoscience and antiscience has been rising in Russia, as it has in other countries of the world. This is especially true in the mass media and popular press, but pseudoscience has also entered into Russian science, largely because skeptical points of view have not been heard. This has been of special concern to many Russian scientists, who believe that the scientific community needs to provide critical examinations of paranormal claims-which mainstream scientists heretofore have largely deplored but ignored.

With this vexing problem in mind, the Russian Academy of Sciences, cosponsored a special conference with the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP) on “Science, Anti-Science, and the Paranormal.” This was held on October 3-5, 2001, at the headquarters of the Academy of Sciences in Moscow. Founded in the eighteenth century, the Academy survived Stalinist repression during the Soviet period. The Russian Academy is considered Russia’s elite scientific body. It includes in its highly select roster the most prestigious scientists in the country.

The conference was co-chaired by Edward Kruglyakov, a member of the Academy, who is a research physicist and deputy director at the Russian scientific city of Novosibirsk; Valerií Kuvakin, president of the Russian Humanist Society and former chairman of the department of philosophy at Moscow State University; and myself as chairman of CSICOP.

Well over 200 scientists and researchers came from all over Russia and neighboring republics-from Ukraine to Kazakhstan-to participate. Valerií Kuvakin heads the Center for Inquiry at Moscow State University, which opened four years ago. He is also editor of their journal Zdravyí Smysl (Common Sense or Critical Thinking) and editor of a series of books published in Russian. The Center, a joint project of CSICOP and the Council for Secular Humanism, is committed to reason, science, and free inquiry in all areas of human interest.

This conference marked my fifth trip to Russia in the last twelve years. I have participated in several conferences in Russia over the years, but this is the first one devoted exclusively to science and the paranormal. The Russian intelligentsia is largely unfamiliar with our emphasis on skeptical inquiry, but a number of them are now sympathetic to the agenda defended by CSICOP. During the long period of the Soviet Union, the official dogma of the Communist Party ruled the country, and alternative viewpoints were suppressed, though the rulers defended what they called “scientific Marxism.” With the collapse of the Soviet Union, all sorts of paranormal and religious claims proliferated, but there were few defenders of critical thinking.

Both Kruglyakov and Kuvakin have visited the Center for Inquiry in Amherst, New York, Kuvakin several times as a Research Fellow. The Center for Inquiry in Moscow State University is also a strong proponent of human rights and democracy, which it considers essential for the flourishing of science.

Kruglyakov was appointed chairman of the Russian Academy’s new “Commission Against Pseudoscience and the Falsifications of Scientific Studies.” His task is to work with CSICOP and other skeptical groups in providing information about uncorroborated claims. In his paper, “Why Is Pseudoscience Dangerous?” [see page 33], he was particularly concerned with unsubstantiated pseudoscientific theories that are being introduced into mainline physics and accepted without dissent. Kruglyakov was recently asked by President Putin for recommendations in treating this problem. Kruglyakov urged increased funding for scientific research and education. Incidentally, news of the conference prior to our arrival was apparently discussed in the Duma and engendered heated controversy.

Russian scientists at the conference complained about the growth of astrology, psychic phenomena, UFOlogy, and alternative medicine, but until now they said they did not have the proper tools or the information with which to criticize these topics. The need for scientific education in Russia was emphasized by astronomer D.G. Sordin, who said that the funding for scientific research and education is in crisis, for it has declined precipitously. He cited the fact that Russia’s most influential science magazines have lost readership. For example, Science and Life has dropped from 3.4 million during the Soviet period to 40,000 circulation today. Russia’s leading physics magazine, Quantum, has fallen from 315,000 to 5,000 readers. Garry Abelev, also a member of the Academy, said that pseudoscience is growing in biology and medicine. Well-known TV personality Sergeí Kapitsa, vice president of the Academy of Sciences, attributed the growth of pseudoscience to sociological causes and said that it is a symptom of the “worldwide disintegration of society.” Yurií Efremov, another noted astronomer, in his paper [see page 29] criticized the increasing influence of pseudoscientific philosophies, such as postmodernism and religious fundamentalism, which have subtly undermined the naturalistic outlook and the ideals of the Enlightenment.

Representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church and some exponents of spirituality and the paranormal attended the public sessions of the meetings. Much has been written about an alleged religious revival in Russia. Lev Mitrokhin, a member of the Academy and social philosopher, said popular interest, somewhat intense several years ago, has already begun to abate. Most people do not attend church, but they do not call themselves atheists or skeptics. Many Russians were concerned about the possible growth of cults in Russia, but popular interest here has likewise begun to decline.

A number of members of CSICOP participated in this conference. They included Willem Betz from Brussels, who discussed homeopathy and alternative medicine. Amardeo Sarma, head of the European Council of Skeptical Organizations and of CSICOP’s Center for Inquiry in Rossdorf, Germany, dealt with the Shroud of Turin and the problems of creating a skeptics movement in a country. James Alcock, psychologist at York University, analyzed the question “why people believe.” Richard Wiseman from England criticized parapsychology. In attendance from the United States were Lee Nisbet, who talked about media misinformation; Joe Nickell, who discussed miracles; and Jan Eisler, who dealt with the limitations of “therapeutic touch.”

In the last session of the conference the participants passed a resolution against antiscience, charlatanism, and irrationalism in Russia and supported the work of the new Russian committee [see page 28]. The Russian Humanist Society also passed a resolution protesting the violation of the separation of church and state, and, in particular, the efforts by the Russian Orthodox Church to reintroduce religion into the public schools, which they thought would undermine science. Having suffered decades of religious repression at the hands of Stalinism during the Soviet period, participants, however, were cautious in their criticism of religion.

The conference received extensive coverage in the media, front page in Isvestia and other newspapers, as well as considerable comment in scientific journals, TV, and radio.

Last but not least, the proceedings were held in a friendly atmosphere and concluded with many toasts of vodka at the Academy and at the Faculty of Philosophy of Moscow State University, chaired by the dean. The most important conclusion to emerge from the conference is that Russian scientists wish to participate in the world skeptics movement. They wish to take part in future conferences and to dialogue with their colleagues throughout the world.

There have been many conferences recently discussing the relationship between science and religion. The Templeton Foundation, for example, has supported numerous conferences on this theme. Many of those participating in these discussions apparently assume that science and religion are compatible. They argue that there is no contradiction between them, and some even maintain that science confirms the basic principles of religious faith. I suspect that most of the participants of this conference, made up predominantly of skeptics and nontheists, do not agree.

There are many areas where religionists and scientists make radically different truth claims. Some of them are:

1. Does the soul or consciousness exist, as a separate and distinct entity; or is it a function of the brain?
2. Does science provide evidence for “intelligent design,” or does evolutionary biology suffice without it?
3. Is it possible to influence the healing of persons by praying for them at a distance, or are the tests performed completely unreliable?
4. Is there empirical evidence for the claim that “near-death experiences” enable us to reach “the other side,” or are there alternative physiological and psychological explanations for these experiences?
5. Can mediums under certain conditions communicate with deceased persons, or are the protocols of such tests too loose?
6. Does the Big Bang hypothesis in astronomy point to God as the cause of the universe, or is the latter claim beyond science and purely speculative?

In dealing with the above topics various questions emerge: Are coherent theories and testable hypotheses presented? If so, what is the evidence for them? Do paranormal- spiritual-religious explanations survive critical scrutiny?

Skeptics have focused on the examination of paranormal claims. They do not deal with religious claims per se, unless they can be examined empirically. Secular humanists, on the other hand, do wish to deal with religious claims, testing them as best they can. Interestingly, in recent years the borderlines between the paranormal and religion have blurred and it is often difficult to tell when we are dealing with paranormal or religious phenomena. Thus spiritualism, near-death experiences, and communication with dead people interest both paranormal and religious investigators. Similarly for the appeal to intelligent design-a classical philosophical argument-now introduced within evolutionary biology and cosmology.

I have proposed that we use the term paranatural to refer to religious claims that are capable of some empirical resolution and are not transcendental or supernatural. In this sense they are similar to testable paranormal claims.

A good example of the overlap is in the popular belief that mysterious intelligent and beneficent extraterrestrial beings are visiting earthlings and floating them aboard spaceships. This is a quasi-religious phenomenon reminiscent of angels, and other divine or semi-divine beings of earlier ages. The disappearance of the Roswell aliens is not unlike the empty tomb of the New Testament!

In order to analyze the relationship between science and religion, we need to define and characterize each domain. Many consider that religion offers a special kind of higher spiritual truth. They maintain that there are two truths: (1) the truths of science, employing the methods of scientific inquiry, and testing claims empirically, rationally, and experimentally; and (2) the truths of religion, which transcend the categories of empirical fact and logic. Skeptics are rightly dubious of this latter claim.

The most reliable methods, they insist, are those that satisfy the objective standards of verification and justification. The historic claims of revelation in the ancient sacred texts are insufficiently corroborated by reliable eyewitnesses or are based upon questionable oral traditions. These were compiled many decades, even centuries, after the alleged death of the prophets. Many miraculous claims found in the Bible and the Koran-for example, the claims of healings and exorcisms, within the New Testament or the creationist account in the Old Testament-are unreliable. They express the primitive science of an ancient nomadic and agricultural people, and do not withstand contemporary scientific scrutiny.

Unfortunately, some proponents of the historic religions have often used their creeds in order to block or censor scientific inquiry. Freedom of inquiry within science is essential for human civilization; any effort to limit scientific research is counterproductive.

A good illustration of this is the present effort of some to restrict embryonic stem-cell research on moral or religious grounds. It is argued that if a cell begins to divide, even if only six or eight cells, that a “soul” of a person is already implanted, and that any effort to experiment with this is “immoral.” The postulation of a soul to prohibit scientific inquiry is reminiscent of the suppression of Galileo and the teaching of Darwinism. Thus insofar as religion claims to provide some overall imprimatur for scientific research we need a separation of religion and science.

A second area concerns the relationship between science and morality. I raise this question here because many people think that the main function of religion is moral. Stephen Jay Gould in the Skeptical Inquirer talked about two magisteria, science and religion, which he says do not compete and do not contradict each other¹. The domain of science, deals with truth, he says, that of religion with ethics. I think that this position is mistaken. Indeed I would argue that there also ought to be a separation between ethics and religion. Religionists have no special competence in framing moral judgments. I say this because a great effort has been expended in the history of ethics-from Aristotle to Spinoza, Kant, John Stuart Mill, and John Dewey-to demonstrate that ethics can be autonomous and that it is possible to frame ethical judgments on the basis of rational inquiry. There is a logic of judgments of practice, rules of effective decision-making, and ethical knowledge that we can develop quite independently of a religious framework. Science has a role to play here, for it can expand the means at our disposal (technology), and it can modify value judgments in the light of the facts of the case and their consequences. Many people today mistakenly believe that you cannot be moral without religious foundations. Ever since the Renaissance, the secularization of morality has continued quite independently of religious commandments.

A third area which has been hotly debated in the modern world is the relationship between religion and the state. Most democrats today defend the separation of religion and the state; they say that, though religionists have every right to express their point of view in the public square, religion should be primarily a private matter. Religions should not seek to impose their fundamental moral principles on the entire society. Democratic states should be neutral about professing religious principles.

What then is the proper domain of religion? Is anything left to religion? My answer is in the affirmative. This may surprise skeptics, but I think that religion and science are compatible, depending of course on what is meant by religion. Religion has performed an important function that cannot be simply dismissed. Religions will continue with us in the foreseeable future and will not easily wither away. No doubt my thesis is controversial: religious language, I submit, is not primarily descriptive; nor is it prescriptive. The descriptive and explanatory functions of language are within the domain of science; the prescriptive and normative are the function of ethics. Both of these domains, science and ethics, have a kind of autonomy. Certainly within the political domain, religionists do not have any special competence, similarly for the moral domain. It should be left to every citizen of a democracy to express his or her political views. Likewise, for the developing moral personality who is able to render moral judgments.

If this is the case, what is appropriate for the religious realm? The domain of the religious, I submit, is evocative, expressive, emotive. It presents moral poetry, aesthetic inspiration, performative ceremonial rituals, which act out and dramatize the human condition and human interests, and seek to slake the thirst for meaning and purpose. Religions-at least the religions of revelation-deal in parables, narratives metaphors, stories, myths; and they frame the divine in human (anthropomorphic) form. They express the existential yearnings of individuals endeavoring to cope with the world that they encounter and find meaning in the face of death. Religious language in this sense is eschatological. Its primary function is to express hope. If science gives us truth, morality the good and the right, and politics justice, religion is the realm of promise and expectation. Its main function is to overcome despair and hopelessness in response to human tragedy, adversity and conflict, the brute, inexplicable, contingent and fragile facts of the human condition. Under this interpretation religions are not primarily true, nor are they primarily good or right, or even just; they are, if you will, evocative, attempting to transcend contrition, fear, anxiety, and remorse, providing balm for the aching heart-at least for many people, if not all.

I would add to this the fact that religious systems of belief, thought, emotion, and attitude are products of the creative human imagination. They traffic in fantasy and fiction, taking the promises of long-forgotten historical figures and endowing them with eternal cosmic significance.

The role of creative imagination, fantasy, and fiction, should not be dismissed. These are among the most powerful expressions of human dreams and hopes, ideals and longings. Who could have imagined that J.K. Rowlings’s Harry Potter series of fictionalized books or J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings would so entrance young people, or that so many humans would be so fascinated by fictionalized novels, movies, and plays. The creative religious imagination weaves tales of consolation and of expectation. They are dramatic expressions of human longing, enabling humans to overcome grief and depression.

In the above interpretation of religion as dramatic existentialist poetry, science and religion are not necessarily incompatible, for they address different human interests and needs.

A special challenge to naturalism emerges at this point. I think that most of us might agree that methodological naturalism is the basic epistemological principle of the sciences; namely, that we should seek natural causal explanations for phenomena, testing these by the methods of science. Scientific naturalism, on the other hand, goes beyond this, because it rejects as nonevidential the postulation of occult metaphors, the invoking of divine forces, spirits, ghosts, or souls to explain the universe; and it tries to deal in materialistic, physical-chemical, or non-reductive naturalistic explanations. The frenzied opposition to Darwinism today is clearly based upon fear that scientific naturalism will undermine religious faith.

If this is the case, the great challenge to scientific naturalism is not in the area of truth but of hope, not of the good but of promise, not of the just but of expectation-in the light of the tragic character of the human condition. This is in stark contrast with the findings of neo-Darwinism, which recognizes that death is final, not simply the death of each individual but the possible extinction some day in the remote future of the human species itself. Evolutionists have discovered that millions of species have become extinct. Does not the same fate await the human species? Cosmological scientists indicate that at some point it seems likely that our Sun will cool down, indeed, looking into the future, that a Big Crunch may overtake the entire universe. Others talk about a deep freeze. Some star trekkers are inspired by science fiction. They say that one day perhaps we will leave Earth, inhabit other planets and galaxies. Nonetheless at some point the death not only of the individual, but of our species, our planet and solar system seems likely.

What does this portend for the ultimate human condition? We live in an epoch where the dimensions of the universe have expanded enormously on the micro and on the macro level. We are talking about billions of light years in dimension. Much of this is based on speculative extrapolation. Nonetheless, we can ask, Does the naturalistic picture crush human aspiration? Does it destroy and undermine hope? Does it provide sufficient consolation for the human spirit? From this perspective, the central issue for humans is the question of human courage. Can we live a full life in the face of ultimate human extinction? These are large-scale questions, yet they are central for the religious consciousness. Can scientific naturalism, insofar as it undermines theism, provide an alternative dramatic, poetic rendering of the human condition, offering hope, and promise? Countless numbers of brave individuals can live significant lives and even thrive accepting the possible far death of the species and our solar system. But so many other humans-perhaps the bulk of humankind-cannot bear that thought. They crave immortality, and religion satisfies their need. Many others do not stay awake nights worrying what will happen five, ten, or fifteen billion years from now. They find life worthwhile for its own sake here and now.

In conclusion, let me say that we are living through a period of exacerbated religiosity in the United States. There seems to be a new spiritual paradigm emerging, contesting both scientific and methodological naturalism. The United States is an anomaly in this regard, especially in contrast with the decline of religious belief in Europe. Recent scientific polls of belief in European countries-France, Germany, England, and others, even Japan-indicate that the level of belief in a theistic being and the institutionalized practice of organized religion have declined considerably; yet these highly secular societies exemplify good moral behavior, and are far less violent than the United States. The view that without religion you cannot have a meaningful life or high motivation is thus thrown into question. We should not take the current religious bias regnant in America today as necessarily universal for all cultures.

Notes

1. Gould, Stephen J. 1999. “Non-Overlapping Magisteria.” Skeptical Inquirer July/August 23(4).

The Creation of CSICOP

It is well known that I am the culprit responsible for the founding of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal. Why did I do so? Because I was dismayed in 1976 by the rising tide of belief in the paranormal and the lack of adequate scientific examinations of these claims. At that time a wide range of claims were everywhere present. Books such as Erich von Däniken’s Chariots of the Gods?, Immanuel Velikovsky’s Worlds in Collision, and Charles Berlitz’s The Bermuda Triangle were widely popular; and self-proclaimed gurus and soothsayers were stalking the media-from Uri Geller to Jeane Dixon. I was distressed that my students confused astrology with astronomy, accepted pyramid power, Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster, Kirlian photography, and psychic surgery without the benefit of a scientific critique. Most of my scientific colleagues were equally perplexed by what was happening, but they were focused on their own narrow specialties-interdisciplinary efforts were frowned upon-and they did not know what the facts of the case were. Martin Gardner’s Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science was available, but aside from that there were all too few skeptical studies in the literature for open-minded inquirers, let alone the general public.

It is within this cultural milieu as background that I decided to convene a special conference to discuss “The New Irrationalisms: Antiscience and Pseudoscience.” This was held on the newly built Amherst Campus of the State University of New York at Buffalo (where I was a professor) on April 30-May 2, 1976. I drafted a call inviting a number of leading scholars to the inaugural session of the proposed new organization. This was endorsed by many philosophers, including W. V. Quine, Sidney Hook, Ernest Nagel, Brand Blanshard, and Antony Flew. And I invited many of the well-known skeptical critics to this opening session-Martin Gardner, Ray Hyman, Philip J. Klass, Marcello Truzzi, James Randi, L. Sprague de Camp, and Milbourne Christopher. The new organization, which I co-chaired with Truzzi, was to be called the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP). Our long-range goal was public education of the aims of science, particularly an appreciation for scientific methods of inquiry and critical thinking.

There had been other scientific efforts historically to investigate paranormal claims, such as the Society for Psychical Research founded in Great Britain in 1882 and in the United States in 1885 (by William James). And there had been many UFO groups which came into being in the post-World War II period. But most of these groups mainly attracted believers who were predisposed to accept the phenomena; the skeptics in their midst were few and far between. Thus CSICOP was the first body made up predominantly of skeptics, who were willing to investigate the alleged paranormal phenomena. We had been attacked by believers for being “closed-minded” and by other skeptics who claimed that we were dignifying phenomena that did not deserve special attention. But we thought that we had an important task to fulfill.

The Agenda

There were four strategic issues that CSICOP had to address at its founding.

First, what would be our approach to such phenomena? Would we simply be debunkers out to show by ridicule the folly of the claims that were made, or would we be serious investigators concerned with research into claims, dispassionate, open-minded inquirers? The answer was clear: Our chief focus would be on inquiry, not doubt. Where we had investigated a claim and found it wanting, we would express our doubt and perhaps even debunk it, but this would be only after careful investigation.

Second, we asked, what would be our relationship to pro-paranormal believers? We observed that there were by now hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of pro-paranormal magazines and publications in the world, and that we were virtually the lone dissenting voice in the wilderness, as it were. We would be glad to engage believers in debate, but it would be our agenda, not theirs. Accordingly, we decided that we wished by and large to pursue our own research strategy, namely to encourage scientific and skeptical inquiry. Truzzi, cochairman and editor of The Zetetic (founded by him but which we took over), insisted that we present both believers and nonbelievers in dialogue in the pages of the magazine, and this he proceeded to do. Although members of the CSICOP Executive Council found this interesting and perhaps useful, they demurred because they felt that there was already tremendous exposure of the pro-paranormalists’ viewpoint, and that we really wished to focus on the neglected skeptical case. Truzzi resigned from the editorship of the magazine, and indeed from the Executive Council, and the Skeptical Inquirer came into being, edited by veteran science writer Kendrick Frazier, who had covered the first meeting of CSICOP for Science News.

Third, one of the most difficult problems that we faced was, What was the relationship of the paranormal to religion? Would CSICOP deal with religious questions? Our position has been from the start that we would not investigate religious claims unless there were empirical or experimental means for evaluating them. We were not concerned with religious faith, theology, or morality, but only with scientific evidence adduced for the religious claims.

Fourth, a most interesting and unexpected development occurred: immediately after forming CSICOP, many concerned scientists and skeptics said that they wanted to establish similar local groups in their areas in the United States. We helped them to do so by providing our subscription lists and sending speakers. Similarly, researchers in other countries said that they wished to do the same. We assisted this effort in any way we could. I personally visited virtually all of the nascent national organizations or sent other members of CSICOP (especially James Randi, Mark Plummer, and Barry Karr). This included groups in Canada, England, France, Belgium, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Hungary, Mexico, and Russia. Thus skeptical organizations began forming throughout the world. What this meant was that CSICOP had become an international organization. Since science was international in scope, the critical examination of paranormal claims was also a matter for the international scientific community. This became all the more evident as the years went by, as the media became further globalized and paranormal programs produced, for example, in Hollywood, were exported virtually everywhere. Today there are approximately one hundred skeptics organizations in thirty-eight countries and a great number of magazines and newsletters published worldwide, and they continue to grow.

Needless to say the mainstay of the skeptics movement has been the Skeptical Inquirer. Its development and influence grew under the brilliant editorship of Kendrick Frazier.

Some Highlights of the First Quarter Century

After launching CSICOP, we immediately became embroiled in controversy; claims and counterclaims were bandied about. I can only touch on some highlights of my personal involvement in the skeptical movement. It is noteworthy that whatever we did as skeptics was intensely followed. Although we received a warm reception by mainline science magazines, we were bitterly attacked by believers. They accused us of being “the gatekeepers of science.” They said that we blocked any consideration of new ideas and that we were suppressing new Galileos waiting in the wings to be discovered. We of course denied this and were willing to keep an open mind about any testable claim.

Astrology

This was particularly the case regarding the claims of astrology, including the investigations of Michel and François Gauquelin, who tried to support a new form of astrobiology. I will not describe this twenty-year effort except to say that their findings could not be replicated by skeptical inquirers. I think that one of the chief contributions of CSICOP over the past twenty-five years is that more scientific effort has been devoted to testing astrology than ever in the history of the subject, and many of these papers were published in the Skeptical Inquirer. All of the results were negative.

We did at the same time conduct a public campaign in an effort to get newspapers to carry disclaimers to the effect that the daily astrological columns, which were based on sun signs, had no factual scientific support, but should be read for entertainment value only. We have managed to convince some sixty newspapers to carry such disclaimers.

Parapsychology

Many of CSICOP’s efforts were devoted to examining the claims of parapsychologists. We had an excellent parapsychological subcommittee, headed by Professor Ray Hyman of the University of Oregon, and including James Alcock, Barry Beyerstein, and others. This committee worked with other psychologists in the United Kingdom, especially Susan Blackmore, Christopher French, Richard Wiseman, and David Marks.

I should say that although most skeptics believed that there was considerable trickery afoot or self-deception in “psychical research,” I was not certain whether psi phenomena existed. My skeptical colleagues insisted that such phenomena were unlikely, but I decided to investigate for myself, to satisfy my own curiosity. I did this by teaching a course, “Philosophy, Parapsychology, and the Paranormal,” at the university. Most of the students who registered for the course were believers-I gave them a poll on the first day to determine their level of credulity. My plan was to work closely with students on various experiments in order to test psychic and other claims. I repeated the course four times over eight years, and had over 250 students enroll. They conducted nearly 100 independent tests.

The thing that absolutely stunned me was the fact that we never had positive results in any of the many tests conducted. I have never published these findings, for I did them basically to satisfy my desire (and that of my students) to ascertain whether anything paranormal could be uncovered. Was the so-called goat effect (doubters dampening psychic ability) suppressing the evidence? I doubt it. What I do know is that with rigorous protocols we invariably had negative results. Indeed, although 90 percent of the students began the course as believers, by the end 90 percent became extremely skeptical because of the failure to demonstrate the paranormal in their own experiments.

In my view, if we are to accept any psi factor-and we should always be open to further inquiry-we need simply to insist upon three things: first, that any results be replicated in laboratories in which neutral and/or skeptical inquirers are involved; second, that tight protocols be used so that there can be no sensory leakage; and third, that careful and rigorous grading standards be adhered to, for what constitutes a hit is often questionable.

One of my most memorable experiences in the earlier years was my debate with J. B. Rhine on April 19, 1978, at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. One amusing incident that occurred was that we were both wearing the same color and style of suit. I asked Mr. Rhine whether this was of paranormal significance or due to chance. I thought that he was a kindly gentleman but rather naíve.

Uri Geller

From the late 1980s until the mid-1990s CSICOP was confronted with legal suits brought by Uri Geller, who claimed that he had been libeled by James Randi and CSICOP. These legal battles took almost a decade to resolve. Geller was unable to prove his case, and CSICOP was awarded court costs. Geller also sued Prometheus Books for publishing books by James Randi (The Truth about Uri Geller) and Victor Stenger (Physics and Psychics), who had quoted Randi, and me for a passage I had published in The Transcendental Temptation, also drawing upon Randi’s account. We agreed to modify these passages. At the present moment, suits still continue in Great Britain, and threats are constant from Geller, who has sued many others.

In any case, the courts refused to find in favor of Uri Geller, who claimed that he has special psychic powers, which he refused to have tested in a court of law. The amount of time and effort spent in defending ourselves against Uri Geller was exhausting. We were gratified that our readers rallied to the cause. They were deeply concerned about these harassing suits against a scientific body. Any time a new suit was leveled against us, contributions poured in, enabling us to fight back.

UFOlogy

UFOlogy has proven to be especially fascinating. Philip J. Klass, a veteran UFO investigator, became chairman of a new UFO subcommittee which was made up of about nineteen skeptical investigators, including Robert Sheaffer, Gary Posner, and James Oberg. We each were numbered with a 00 before our name; by chance I happened to have the number 007, reminiscent of James Bond. There were so many claims proliferating in the public domain, and in the media, that the most this committee could do was selectively attempt to explain those which were most prominent. Philip J. Klass did a yeoman’s job especially in seeking out alternative causal explanations. I myself was particularly intrigued by the ETI hypothesis because I thought it was entirely possible that intelligent life existed elsewhere in the universe (even though it was sometimes difficult to find it on Earth!). But whether we were being visited or had been visited by extraterrestrial beings manning advanced-state technological spacecraft was the issue. We needed to find some hard physical evidence to corroborate these claims. The one thing that perplexed me was that eyewitnesses were so often deceived. Given the cultural milieu and the prominence of such reports almost daily at that time, many people looking at the sky thought that they had seen UFOs. Obviously they had seen something in the sky, but whether it was a planet, entering rockets from Soviet or U.S. space probes, meteors, weather balloons, advertising planes, or something else was unclear. I had met many people who claimed to have seen UFOs and were intrigued by what I suspected to be the will to believe, or the transcendental temptation at work.

One area that really shocked us was the growth of reports of UFO abductions. Although Barney and Betty Hill in the famous New Hampshire case (in 1961) claimed that they had been abducted aboard a UFO, most UFOlogical investigators were dubious of this and other similar reports. Accordingly, it came as a surprise to us when about ten years ago reports of abductions not only began to proliferate, but were taken seriously. We were puzzled by the claims. I debated many of the proponents on television or radio-Budd Hopkins, David Jacobs, and John Mack. Carl Sagan wrote me to say that given the intense public interest, we really ought to look into this phenomenon carefully to see if anything is there. With this in mind we invited John Mack to our national convention in Seattle, Washington, in 1994, at a special session on UFO abductions. Mack said that he was convinced that these abductions were real, that he had a number of otherwise trustworthy people who reported such experiences under hypnosis, and he had to accept their claims as true. At an open meeting Phil Klass and John Mack tangled, but we allowed Mack every opportunity to present his point of view. What was at issue was whether or not psychiatrists should accept at face value the subjective reports of their patients. Would John Mack accept the hallucinations of schizophrenics who believe deeply in the worlds of fantasy that they concoct? If not, then why accept the uncorroborated reports of UFO abductees?

An interesting sidelight: I headed a delegation of the CSICOP Executive Council to China in 1988. We spoke to several large audiences in Shanghai and Beijing. I invariably raised the open questions: “Has anyone in the audience ever been abducted aboard a UFO?” or “Does anyone know of someone who has been abducted?” The response was always in the negative. What were we to conclude from this: that the ETs are prejudiced against Chinese and only kidnap Westerners, or that the Western media hype at that time had not penetrated the Chinese mainland?

I must say that in my own empirical inquiry I have yet to find a UFO case that withstood critical scrutiny. The “sightings” in my view are not evidence for ET visitations; rather they were most likely in the “eyes of the beholders” and they tell us something about ourselves.

Believing the Unbelievable

Perhaps the most surprising thing that has occurred over the past few years is that as increasing waves of media sensationalism have inundated the public, what was formerly considered to be unbelievable is suddenly accepted as true by much of the public. Added to this is the “unsinkable rubber duck” phenomenon; namely, although skeptical investigators may thoroughly refute a claim in one generation, it may come back to haunt us in the next-as a hydra-headed monster-with new intensity and attraction. I wish to briefly illustrate this by reference to other recent weird claims.

Communicating with the Dead

In the late 1990s a spate of best-selling books by a new generation of spirit mediums have appeared-such as John Edward, James Van Praagh, and Sylvia Browne. These mediums claim to have immediate communication with the dead in which they bring messages to bereaved relatives and friends.

Unfortunately, there are virtually no efforts to corroborate what they have said by any kind of independent tests. Their subjective phenomenological readings are accepted at face value by publishers, popular television hosts, and the general public. This phenomenon is startling to skeptical inquirers who had been willing to investigate carefully the question of postmortem survival, but find this kind of “evidence” totally unreliable. Actually these so-called mediums are using familiar “hot” or “cold-reading” techniques, by which they artfully fish for information while giving the impression it comes from a mystical source. What is so apparent is that gullibility and nincompoopery overtake critical common sense and all safeguards are abandoned in the face of guile, deception, and self-deception.

Miracles

Equally surprising is the return of miracles. By the end of the eighteenth century the belief in miracles had been largely discredited by the powerful arguments of David Hume and other skeptical authors. By the nineteenth century it was believed that miracles were a substitute for our ignorance, and that if one examines long enough, one can find natural causal explanations for otherwise inexplicable phenomena.

The outbreak of reports of miracles in the United States is especially disturbing, since America is supposed to be educationally advanced. There have been a great number of Jesus and Mary sightings, weeping icons and statues, even the return of stigmata. All of these claims, which were considered to be medieval superstitions by educated persons, have been moved to center stage by the media, and tens of thousands of devotees throng to places where miracles are proclaimed. Scientific rationalists thought that the days of miracle-mongering were long gone. Now they have returned with a vengeance.

Intelligent Design

Similarly, the case for intelligent design, long thought to have been discredited in the sciences, has been brought to new prominence. The United States is perhaps the only major democracy in which the theory of evolution is hotly contested and in which a significant percentage of the population still believes in biblical creationism. This battle has been going on in the public schools for many years. What is surprising is the sudden emergence again of the intelligent design argument, such as defended by Michael Behe in his book Darwin’s Black Box. Arguments for intelligent design are also encountered in physics and astronomy. We are beginning to hear statements that the only way the universe can be explained is by postulating a Grand Designer. How else account for the “fine tuning” that has occurred? they ask, supposing that life could not have existed unless the proper conditions were present, and only an intelligent being could have arranged that. The arguments against intelligent design go back in the history of science; to wit, there is no evidence for a Designer. To read into nature the mind of God in analogy with the mind of Man is a vast postulation, a speculative thesis not based upon scientific evidence. Here we are dealing with a leap of faith, not fact.

Alternative Medicine

One other recent and unexpected development is the rapid growth of “alternative” or “complementary” medicine. A wide range of alternative therapies have become popular, most of them ancient, many of them imported from India and China. The list of these therapies is extensive. It includes acupuncture, qigong, therapeutic touch, magnetic therapy, iridology, naturopathy, reflexology, homeopathy, the extensive use of herbal medicines, esoteric cancer cures, crash diets, and the like.

One must have an open mind about such therapies. They cannot be rejected a priori. Skeptical inquirers have insisted that proposed alternative therapies need to be submitted to double-blind randomized testing. Unfortunately, much of the support for alternative medicine is based on anecdotal hearsay or testimonials by self-proclaimed healers-such as Andrew Weil and Deepak Chopra-and much of this is spiritual in character.

Skeptical inquirers are dismayed by this development because scientific evidence-based medicine has made enormous strides in the past century combating illnesses, extending human life, and mitigating suffering-including the discovery of anesthesia, antibiotics, and modern surgery. Of course, not all diseases have been cured by the medical profession, and so out of desperation many patients turn to alternative therapies. In some cases, if you leave an illness alone, the body will restore itself to health. In others, the placebo effect may have powerful therapeutic value. In any case, the failure of large sectors of the public to appreciate how the scientific method works in medicine is one reason why alternative therapies seem to be gaining ground.

Some Concluding Reflections

The development of the skeptics movement in the last quarter of a century I submit is a very significant event in the history of science; for it helped to galvanize for the first time scientific inquirers who are willing to take part in systematic critical evaluations of paranormal claims.

The basic question that we need to ask is, Why do paranormal beliefs persist? One explanation is because the claims of religions-old and new-are largely unexamined within present-day culture. It is considered to be in bad taste to question anyone’s religion. Granted, we ought to be tolerant of other points of view. On the other hand, should claims that are patently false be immune to criticism? There are a plethora of religious denominations in the United States and hundreds of bizarre sects and cults. Religious miracles like paranormal claims postulate a nonnatural transcendental realm that allegedly cannot be evaluated by evidence or reason. The universe is bifurcated into a natural world, which science deals with, and a transcendent spiritual realm, which allegedly lies beyond our ability to comprehend it. Concomitant with these two realms, their proponents insist, are two truths. This dualism is also said to apply to human personality where we confront a “separate soul.”

This classical religious outlook had been eroded by the Copernican and Darwinian revolutions and by steady advances in the behavioral and neurological sciences. In spite of this, the spiritual realm is very rarely questioned. In my view it is often difficult to isolate paranormal claims from religious claims. Most skeptical inquirers have said that they wished to deal only with those questions that have some empirical grounding. Interestingly, believers in the paranormal/spiritual worldview have blurred the borderlines between the paranormal and the religious. Religious conservatives and fundamentalists have, of course, been highly critical of New Age astrology, UFOlogy, and psychic phenomena, which they consider to be in competition with traditional religion.

Nonetheless, paranormal phenomena, which allegedly exist over and beyond or beside normal science, are similar to religious miracles. I have labeled religious miracles as “paranatural,” for they lie midway between the supernatural and the natural and are amenable to some evidential examination. In this sense, communication with the dead, the sighting of ghosts, exorcisms, faith healing, prophecies, and prayer at a distance are not unlike UFO abductions, out-of-body experiences, or precognitive predictions-they all are capable of being investigated scientifically.

Unlike many European and Latin American countries, the United States has never had a strong anticlerical tradition. There are few, if any, objective examinations readily available to the public of the so-called sacred literature. Why should reports of miracles in holy books-faith healing, exorcism, the virgin birth and Resurrection, the ascension of Mohammed to Heaven, or the visitation of Joseph Smith by the Angel Moroni-be any less amenable to critical scrutiny than any other extraordinary paranormal reports? Given the current cultural phobia against the investigation of religion, however, I submit that irrationality will most likely continue strong-unless skeptical inquirers within the scientific community (if not CSICOP itself) are willing to use the best standards of science, including archaeology, linguistics, history, biology, psychology, and sociology to uncover naturalistic explanations.

Another explanation for the persistence of the paranormal, I submit, is due to the transcendental temptation. In my book by that name, I present the thesis that paranormal and religious phenomena have similar functions in human experience; they are expressions of a tendency to accept magical thinking. This temptation has such profound roots within human experience and culture that it constantly reasserts itself.

Transcendental myths offer consolation to bereaved souls who cannot face their own mortality or those of loved ones. They provide psychological succor and social support, enabling them to endure the tragic elements of the human condition and to overcome the fragility of human life in the scheme of things. We need to ask how and in what sense the transcendental temptation can be modified and whether naturalistic moral and poetic equivalents can be found to satisfy it. I am convinced that belief in the paranormal is a religious or quasi-religious phenomenon: Astrology postulates that our destiny lies in the stars. Psychics maintain that there are untapped extrasensory powers that can probe other dimensions of reality. UFOs transport semidivine extraterrestrials from other worlds. All of these are efforts to transcend the normal world.

Still another factor in the recent growth of the paranormal is the introduction of new electronic media of communication that are radically altering the way that we view the world. Symbols and concepts are being replaced by signs and images: the abstractions of logic by contrived virtual realities. The culture of books is supplemented by the visual and auditory arts. These media express imagery and sound, form and color. Cinematography transforms intellectual content. Science fiction becomes the Sacred Church of the Paranormal. Soaring flights of imagination distort what is true or false. Instead of explicating a thesis, the immediacy of photography in motion seizes us and renders products of fancy as real.

The special problem that we face today is that the dramatization of spiritual-paranormal claims without adequate criticism now dominates the mass media, which are all too often more interested in box-office appeal than accurate information. Huge media conglomerates find that selling the paranormal by means of books, magazines, TV, and movies is extremely profitable. There is too little time devoted to dissenting scientific critiques.

Computers are also rapidly transforming the way information is imparted. The Internet is a vast repository of data bytes that presents a huge quantity of unfiltered claims that can be scrolled without critical analysis. By undermining standards of objectivity, any sentence or utterance is as true as any other, and in this process the methods of logic and science are deemed irrelevant. Added to this is the emergence of post-modernism in the academy, which denies the objectivity of science or the possibility of achieving reliable knowledge.

I believe that the skeptical and scientific community has a special responsibility to help redress the current state of distortion and misinformation. This becomes difficult, however, for science has become overspecialized. Surely, a division of labor is essential if we are to advance the frontiers of knowledge; we need technical experts focused on specific fields of investigation. Yet one reason why the scientific outlook is continuously undermined by antiscience and pseudoscience is because specialists in one field may not necessarily be competent to judge claims in others, nor do they always understand that science primarily is a method of inquiry. Likewise there is insufficient understanding of the broader implications of scientific discoveries to our conception of the universe and our place within it.

I submit that it is incumbent on us to defend the naturalistic interpretation of reality, a materialistic not a spiritual-paranormal account. We need generalists of science who can sum up what science tells us about the human condition in a universe without purpose or design, yet who have the ability to awaken wonder and excitement about the scientific quest itself.

Given the massive cultural fixation on the spiritual-paranormal outlook, perhaps the most that skeptical inquirers can hope for is that we can lessen the excessive follies of its proponents. Perhaps our most effective course is to moderate untested overbeliefs and encourage critical thinking as far as we can. Our agenda should be to encourage the extension of critical thinking to all areas of life-including religion, politics, ethics, and society.

Looking ahead, I think that we can expect, unfortunately, that spiritual-paranormal beliefs will continue to lure the public. Although the content of their beliefs may change in the light of criticism, some forms of the paranormal will most likely persist in the future. Skeptical inquirers thus will have an ongoing role to play in civilization. Our mission is to light candles in the dark, as Carl Sagan so eloquently stated, and to become Socratic gadflies questioning the sacred cows of society and cultivating an appreciation for reason.

The former president was to appoint nineteen commissioners. It is the view of the editors of the Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine (the only peer-reviewed skeptical journal in the field) that virtually all of the members of the Commission selected thus far are in favor of alternative medicine, and that the Commission is not fairly represented by skeptical medical scientists. Incidentally, it is unclear at this time as to what the new Bush administration will do with the Commission.

The Commission has been holding open public forums throughout the country. I was invited by the Commission to present testimony before it, and I did so on behalf of CSICOP on December 4, 2000, in Washington, D.C. The following are my written responses to questions provided to me beforehand.

1. Should Complementary Alternative Medicine (CAM) be integrated with conventional medicine and why or why not?

   I do not think that it should be integrated. I deplore the efforts to do so. The term “conventional medicine” is a misnomer. What is labeled as “conventional” is modern scientific or evidence-based medicine. Many or most CAM therapies on the other hand are conventional and ancient, such as traditional Chinese medicine, qigong, or spiritual importations from India.

   Scientific medicine is a relatively recent development in human history, especially since the nineteenth century, when increased knowledge of physiology and human anatomy was refined. There have been a number of brilliant researchers who have contributed to our understanding, such as Claude Bernard, Louis Pasteur, Robert Koch and Joseph Lister. Theories about the nature and transmission of infectious diseases-such as diphtheria, tuberculosis, malaria, typhoid, tetanus, polio-and the development of vaccines had important roles in immunization. Likewise important were the advances in epidemiology, public health, and sanitation. In the twentieth century endocrinology advanced-with the discovery of insulin, cortisone, and sex hormones. In the field of nutrition, researchers discovered the role of vitamins. There have been significant new diagnostic tools, such as X-ray imagery, CAT scans, mammography, and sonograms, to mention only a few. The great strides in surgery have been impressive, including cardiology, neurosurgery, and organ transplantation. The discovery of antibiotics has made enormous contributions to the cure of infectious disease. We should add to this the discoveries of DNA, biogenetic research, gene therapy, and other innovations on the frontiers of research. All of these achievements have led to the reduction of infant mortality and the extension of life spans. Part of this process was the development, beginning in 1904, of rigorous standards of education in medical schools. Thus we see the remarkable effectiveness of modern scientific medicine-all for the benefit of mankind.

   The key factor in evidence-based medicine is that any new diagnostic techniques and therapies be submitted to rigorous, double-blind clinical tests. Unfortunately, CAM therapies, in our view, have not been adequately tested. Too often the claims of their validity have been anecdotal or highly subjective, uncorroborated reports by practitioners and/or their patients, some of these based upon the placebo effect.

   Surely, we cannot lump all CAM therapies together and make a blanket indictment. Each has to be examined objectively and impartially. Scientific medicine admits that fallibility and skepticism are parts of its process of inquiry. On the other hand, we should insist that the public be safeguarded against unproven cures, untested therapies, and quackery by practitioners and manufacturers out to make a profit.

2. Should there be access to and delivery of CAM products and practices? If so, why? If not, why not?

   I do not think that there should be universal access and delivery of CAM products and nostrums. This will tend to weaken what is one of the finest health care systems in the world. CAM could undermine the line between genuine science and pseudoscience. Each claim to validity must be tested by impartial, neutral observers-not simply their advocates. If a therapy proves to be effective, then it becomes part of scientific medicine. It is vital, in our view, that this Commission represent not only proponents of CAM, but scientists and physicians who are skeptical of its claims.

3. If current CAM utilization trends continue, what consumer protection should be implemented?

   CAM seems to be growing. I think the public should be protected. The government has an obligation to act against spurious or fraudulent claims. The free market-in selling adulterated goods and questionable services-needs to be monitored. The misuse of taxpayers funds needs to be safeguarded. The great issue is the health and welfare of the American public. Government sponsorship of questionable CAM therapies would be a disservice to the public interest.

4. What policy recommendations do you have for the Commission?

   I would strongly urge as a first step the repeal of the 1994 Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act, which freed herbal medicines and dietary supplements from regulation by the FDA. Prescription drugs are required to be tested. There are no such safeguards for dietary supplements. There are now some 20,000 such supplements-including herbal and homeopathic remedies-on the market. Many of the manufacturers make false and misleading claims. Many have dangerous side effects. Some may have positive results. In any case, the packages should be properly labeled-there should be “truth in labeling.” Those medications deemed to have possible noxious side effects by misuse should require a prescription.

   Second, similar regulations should be enacted against other false claims-such as quack cancer cures, crash diets, Chelation therapy, iridology, therapeutic touch, and magnetic therapy. This is particularly important when patients avoid scientific medicine and substitute alternative therapies, believing that since they are offered by the health delivery system, they must be effective. There needs to be peer review, as in scientific medicine, not simply by the practitioners in a field, but by other objective and neutral scientific reviewers.

I had known and worked with Steve Allen for almost thirty years-as a friend and colleague and in my capacity as publisher of Prometheus Books and as Chairman of CSICOP and the Council for Secular Humanism. His intellectual interests were encyclopedic, his devotion to liberal and charitable causes exemplary. He was his own man, standing against the bombast and bunkum of the passing parade.

He was a powerful advocate of the skeptics movement; and he did what he could to further its aims, ever willing to speak at our conferences and workshops. He never tired of lending his support to our efforts. We are particularly grateful for the fact that he was at the inaugural openings of the Center for Inquiry in Amherst, New York (1995) and the Center for Inquiry-West in Los Angeles (1997).

Most notably, Steve Allen accepted the appointment as Co-chairman (along with Nobel laureate Glenn Seaborg) of the Council for Media Integrity, a CSICOP-sponsored organization aimed at getting some balance in scientific reporting in the media and some fairness in evaluating pseudoscientific claims.

Most recently he took TV and movies to task for their excessive violence and vulgarity, though many of his former libertarian friends turned against his campaign against obscenity in the mass media because he allied himself with conservatives — as well as liberals, I might add.

Steve Allen felt a special responsibility to improve the quality of the electronic media. It is not sensationalism or ratings (the bottom line), he said, that should be the sole criteria of programming, but the ideas and values that are expressed. Although he believed in freedom of expression and was opposed to censorship, he thought that the public have every right to criticize the purveyors of false or tasteless programs.

Last spring I invited Steve to a humanist conference in Los Angeles to test his ideas before a liberal audience — and he withstood both criticism and applause with decorum and aplomb. His controversial views will appear in Vulgarians at the Gate-TV Trash and Raunch Radio: Raising the Standards of Popular Culture, which will be published posthumously by Prometheus Books in April 2001.

All told, Steve published fifteen books with Prometheus, including Dumbth: The Lost Art of Thinking with 101 Ways to Reason Better and Improve Your Mind (reissued in 1998)-which became a bestseller. Critical thinking was high on his agenda. He produced Gullible’s Travels, an audiotape for Prometheus Books with original music and script (read and sung by him and his wife, Jayne Meadows), “in order to introduce youngsters to the brain and its proper use.”

His award-winning television series Meeting of the Minds, which he wrote and produced (with Jayne, two decades ago), stands out in distinguished contrast with the mundane wasteland of televised fare. This series pitted Socrates, Marie Antoinette, Sir Thomas More, Tom Paine, Karl Marx, Emily Dickinson, Galileo, Charles Darwin, and other historical figures in dialogue and disputation. When efforts were made by Prometheus (which had published four volumes of the scripts of Meeting of the Minds) to relaunch the series, it was difficult to find syndicators because many in the television industry felt that the series was “too thoughtful” for the American public-a sad commentary on the decline of taste and intelligence.

Two of his most courageous books were critiques of the Bible (Steve Allen on the Bible, Religion and Morality [1989] and a sequel). Martin Gardner, in the preface to the first volume, compared this favorably with Tom Paine’s The Age of Reason. Steve was willing to publish these books because he wished to counter the rise of the Religious Right. What other celebrity in the American media would have the courage to do so? All that we have on the national scene today are professions of piety, almost never reflective dissent - a testament to the independence of the man.

Steve Allen was a freethinker-skeptic and humanist-in the best sense of those terms. His creative accomplishments were so many that I could only touch on some of them. What a grievous loss his death is to American culture and to those of us who knew him personally, admired, and loved him.