“I used equipment he invented as well as adaptations made of Dr. Walter J. Kilner's screens for some years before I discovered that my eyes could see auras without visual aids.” -J.C. Pierrakos (2005)

One might feel compelled to reread the above quote because, after all, there is presently no objective evidence for the existence of auras. The word aura itself comes from a Greek word meaning breeze. The aura is claimed to be a glowing field surrounding a human being that is undetectable, except by gifted psychics. By interpreting the aura of an individual, one is said to be able to deduce personality, health, and present emotions (Randi 1995).

Believers in the aura describe it as a “vital force [that] spills beyond the perimeters of the skin into the atmosphere to create an energy field, or aura, which provides a

great deal of information about the nature and functioning of human beings” (Pierrakos 2005, 18). Many methods have been used to test whether the aura exists. One method has been to test gifted individuals who claim to see auras. Attempts have also been made to look for auras with the aid of various instruments and apparatus. The great majority of these tests, which we review here, have shown limited or no evidence for the reality of auras. In spite of the lack of empirical evidence, proponents continue to advocate their existence. In the second part of this article we will discuss several explanations for proponents' continued belief in spite of the lack of evidence.

Empirical Studies of Auras

An obvious method for testing the existence of auras is to test psychics who claim to be able to detect them. In one such experiment, a windowless television studio with a barrier in the center and entrances at each end was used (Loftin 1990). A psychic and an experimenter stood on one side of the barrier while one or two subjects entered the studio on the other side. The psychic had less than three minutes to discern how many auras she detected. Two white-noise generators were used to cover any subtle sound cues, such as the sound of breathing, that might give away how many subjects were present in the room. Not surprisingly, the psychic did not score above chance.

Another experiment had a more elegant methodology (Gissurarsson and Gunnarsson 1997). It took place in a room that contained four screens made from unpainted fiberboards, which were placed in a row on one wall of the room. In this experiment, unlike in the one previously described, a control group was used. Ten aura seers and nine non-seers (the control group) were selected to participate in the experiment. All of the participants had to guess behind which one of the four screens the experimenter was hidden. This task was based on the assumption that the aura radiates a few inches from the body and should have been visible above the screen. Blinds covered the large windows on the wall behind the screens, and the whole wall was covered with brown paper. Suggestive shadows were eliminated through the use of Luxo lamps positioned across from the screens. A total of thirty-six sessions consisting of 1,449 trials was run. The results were non-significant for both groups, although “the control group did slightly better than the experimental group” (Gissurarsson and Gunnarsson 1997, 41).

Attempts have been made to measure the aura objectively and experimentally. Various instruments have been used or even invented for the purpose of observing the aura. In the early 1900s, W.J. Kilner thought that the aura could be made visible through the use of dicyanin screens containing a coal-tar dye. The dye appeared to alter the sensitivity of the eye by “making the observer temporarily short-sighted and therefore more readily able to perceive radiation in the ultra-violet band” (Kilner 1965, viii). Kilner studied the human aura for diagnostic purposes and made an explicit disclaimer of any clairvoyant or occult preoccupation. Ironically, the spiritualist movement quickly endorsed Kilner's findings as proof of existence of the aura. Shortly thereafter, aura spectacles and aura goggles were invented, based on the idea of the dicyanin screens (Gissurarsson and Gunnarsson 1997).

Existing instruments have also been used to attempt to quantitatively measure the radiation that an aura supposedly emits. A photomultiplier tube, a highly sensitive device, has been used to try to detect this radiation (Dobrin et al. 1977). The photomultiplier responds to small quantities of light by producing measurable amounts of electric charge. The amount of charge produced is proportional to the amount of light detected by the tube. This tube responds to light in the visible and ultraviolet range but not in the infrared range, which rules out heat effects. This experiment demonstrated that humans do reflect energy in the visible and ultraviolet spectrum, but this is not surprising. If the human body did not reflect energy in the visible range, it would be invisible.

Kirlian photography has also been used in the attempted examination of auras. A Kirlian photographic image of an object is obtained when a large electric potential is applied between the object and a dielectrically isolated electrode (Pehek et al. 1976). A famous instance in which Kirlian photography seemed to prove the reality of the aura happened when a section of a plant leaf was photographed and then torn away. The leaf was then rephotographed, which resulted in a faint image of the torn-out section still appearing in the second photo (Randi 1995). The luminous low-current gaseous discharge, known as a corona discharge-resulting from variance in pressure, humidity, grounding, and conductivity surrounding the leaf-persisted temporarily after the torn part was removed and was responsible for the Kirlian image of a complete leaf (Pehek et al. 1976).

Continued Belief in Auras

Seeing auras is actually one of the less common psychic experiences. Zingrone, Alvarado, and Agee concluded, based on a review of studies of the general population, that the “prevalence [of seeing auras] ranged from 0% to 6%” (2009, 161).

One explanation for the persistence of belief in auras, given that there is essentially no objective evidence for their reality, could be rare cases of synesthesia. Synesthesia is a nonpathological neurological condition in which sensory experiences that are usually separate are experienced together. The most common type is color–number/letter synesthesia, in which the synesthete perceives numbers and letters in color (Spector and Maurer 2009). In a rarer type, colors are associated with faces. Ward (2004) reported a case study of G.W., a synesthete who experienced a color for names of people whom she knew personally. She reported that she perceived colors occupying her whole field of vision when her synesthesia was elicited by words. G.W. distinctly visually perceived the names and faces of people she knew with colored halos or “auras” projected around the person or name. “G.W. does not believe that she has mystical powers and has no interest in the occult. However, it is not hard to imagine how, in a different age, such an interpretation could arise” (Ward 2004, 770). There are other case studies in which synesthetes report projecting colors onto people (Riggs and Karwoski 1934; Collin 1929; Cytowic 1989; Weiss et al. 2001; Ramachandran and Hubbard 2001 as cited in Ward 2004). It is especially interesting that in two separate samples, Zingrone, Alvarado, and Agee (2009) found that individuals who reported seeing auras were significantly more likely to report synesthetic events.

There are other explanations why belief in the existence of auras might persist. Perceptual distortions, illusions, and hallucinations might promote belief in auras. Physiological processes, such as rare cases of human luminescence caused by bacterial infections, might also be responsible for some reports of auras (Alvarado 1987). Psychological factors, including absorption, fantasy proneness, vividness of visual imagery, and after-images, might also be responsible for the phenomena of the aura. Gissurarsson and Gunnarsson (1997) discuss four classes, or models, of possible explanations: scientific, clinical, psychical, and aura imagery. In the scientific model, for example, an individual might experience visions of a series of colored halos surrounding another person's head. This phenomenon is known as “the glory” and usually occurs outdoors under certain meteorological conditions when a shadow is projected on a cloud of uniform water droplets. In the clinical model, seeing an aura might be related to epilepsy. Although epileptic auras are usually olfactory or emotional, visual auras also have been reported. Migraine headaches commonly result in visual phenomena that could easily be interpreted as auras (Sacks 1985). Eye disorders might also account for aura-like experiences. According to the psychical model, auras might be attributed to unknown electromagnetic field radiation energy that somehow is visible to only some individuals. This seems highly unlikely. The aura imagery model suggests that individuals who claim to see auras might actually be perceiving a person through their senses while their mind and memory reinterpret this information as the experience of luminous beings.

Psychological factors positively related to claims of psychic experiences might also contribute to the belief in the phenomenon of the aura (Zingrone et al. 2009). One study (Alvarado and Zingrone 1994) reported that aura vision was related to higher levels of reports of vividness of visual imagery and of imaginative-fantasy experiences. In another study, a positive relationship between auras and the claims of other psychic experiences was found (Zingrone et al. 2009). Seeing auras has been associated more with aspects of absorption and less with aspects of dissociative processes. Absorption was described as “a predisposition towards the processing of unusual perceptual input or of imagery” (Zingrone et al. 2009, 163). These authors also found that people reporting seeing auras were also more likely to report precognitive dreams, lucid and more vivid dreams, and out-of-body experiences.

Psychological factors, such as fantasy proneness, suggestibility, and the like, are related to levels of dopamine activity in the brain (see Raz et al. 2008 for a brief review). Catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) is an enzyme that breaks down dopamine in the brain. It has been found that which allele of the COMT gene an individual has is related to the degree of his or her suggestibility and hypnotizability (Raz 2007). Thus, propensity to see auras may have, at least in part, both a neurochemical and a genetic basis.

In summary, although there is ample evidence that human beings are surrounded by thermal, electromagnetic, and electrostatic fields (Presman 1970 as cited in Dobrin et al. 1977), there is a lack of evidence for the existence of the aura that psychics claim to see. Continued belief in the reality of auras can be attributed to several psychological, neurological, and optical effects.

References

Alvarado, C.S. 1987. Observations of luminous phenomena around the human body: A review. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 54: 38–60.

Alvarado, C.S., and N.L. Zingrone. 1994. Individual differences in aura vision: Relationship to visual imagery and imaginative-fantasy experiences. European Journal of Parapsychology 10: 1–30.

Dobrin, R., C. Kirsch, S. Kirsch, et al. 1977. Experimental measurements of the human energy field. Psychoenergetic Systems 2: 213–16.

Gissurarsson, L., and A. Gunnarsson. 1997. An experiment with the alleged human aura. Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research 91: 33–49.

Kilner, W. J. 1965. The Human Aura. New Hyde Park, NY: University Books.

Loftin, R.W. 1990. Auras: Searching for the light. Skeptical Inquirer 14(4): 403–9.

Pehek, J.O., H.J. Kyler, and D.L. Faust. 1976. Image modulation in corona discharge photography. Science 194: 236–70.

Pierrakos, J.C. 2005. Core Energetics: Developing the Capacity to Love and Heal. Mendocino, CA: Core Evolution Publishing.

Randi, J. 1995. An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural. New York: St. Martin's Press.

Raz, A. 2007. Suggestibility and hypnotizability: Mind the gap. American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis 49: 205–10.

Raz, A., T. Hines, J. Fossella, et al. 2008. Paranormal experience and the COMT dopaminergic gene: A preliminary attempt to associate phenotype with genotype using an underlying brain theory. Cortex 44: 1336–41.

Sacks, O.W. 1985. Migraine: Understanding a Common Disorder. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Spector, F., and D. Maurer. 2009. Synesthesia: A new approach to understanding the development of perception. Developmental Psychology 45: 175–89.

Ward, J. 2004. Emotionally mediated synaesthesia. Cognitive Neuropsychology 21: 761–72.

Zingrone, N.L., C.S. Alvarado, and N. Agee. 2009. Psychological correlates of aura vision: Psychic experiences, dissociation, absorption, and synaesthesia-like experiences. Australian Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis 37: 131–68

Bridgette M. Perez and Terence Hines are in the Psychology Department at Pace University in Pleasantville, New York. Hines is a Committee for Skeptical Inquiry scientific consultant and author of Pseudoscience and the Paranormal (Prometheus Books 2003). Email: TerenceHines@aol.com.

Magnetic charms, bracelets, insoles, and braces remain popular and are sold with claims that they improve athletic performance, relieve arthritis pain, increase energy, and pretty much treat whatever symptoms you might have. These products may seem modern and high-tech, but similar devices and claims have been around for centuries.

The notion that magnets can be used for healing has existed since humans discovered them. Several ancient cultures, such as those of Egypt, Greece, and China, discovered natural magnetic rocks, or lodestones. People had a hard time explaining the unusual properties of these rocks given the scientific knowledge of the time, so they came up with fanciful explanations like “minerals have souls too.” This was compatible with the general belief that everything has an “essence.”

It was also observed that this magnetic property can be transferred. Socrates wrote: “That stone not only attracts iron rings, but imparts to them a similar power of attracting other rings; and sometimes you may see many pieces of iron and rings suspended from one another to form quite a long chain; and all of them derive their power of suspension from the original stone” (quoted in Keithley 1999).

It then seemed natural that because living things have an energy and essence, and certain rocks contain an energy and essence, that such rocks could be used to heal illness-to transfer their energy to a living being. Even today, this idea has an emotional and even rational appeal. Who wouldn't want to be healed by the equivalent of McCoy's medical scanner, which non-invasively uses invisible and painless energy fields to return our tissues to health at the cellular level. When we fantasize about future medicine, that is what we imagine. It is no surprise, then, that through the centuries magnetic healing has been very popular-and its popularity has only increased with advancing scientific understanding of magnetism and the eventual discovery of electromagnetism.

The relationship between medical academia and popular marketing hasn't changed in hundreds of years either. In 1600, William Gilbert wrote De Magnete, in which he described detailed experiments with magnets and electricity and systematically disproved hundreds of popular health claims for such treatments. This established debunking of magnetic therapy continued into the seventeenth century with Thomas Browne (Macklis 1993). Considering how primitive scientific methods and medical knowledge were at this time, the claims of magnetic healers must have been especially fantastical and their treatments remarkably worthless.

But “The Man” was not able to keep magnetic healing down. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Franz Mesmer dramatically increased the popularity of magnetic healing with his “animal magnetism” theory. Mesmer thought that animal magnetism was a unique force of nature that flowed like a fluid through living things. He also thought he could manipulate it through a combination of hypnotism and laying-on of hands. After a high-profile debunking by a commission led by Benjamin Franklin, however, Mesmer's fame faded, and he died poor and forgotten. But his legacy survived-magnetic healing remains very popular to this day.

Today the relationship among magnets, popular health claims, and the medical/scientific community remains the same. The public is fascinated by the notion of healing with electricity, electromagnetic fields, and magnetic energy. The fact that many medical interventions are legitimately based upon electromagnetism increases this interest. People understand that we use magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to peer into the body. Recent studies indicate the potential for transcranial magnetic stimulation as an effective treatment for migraines (Lipton and Pearlman 2010). We routinely measure electrical (and now even magnetic) brain waves to assess brain function.

Electromagnetism is the real energy of life, and therefore it is very plausible that all sorts of magnetic and electrical interventions will be useful for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes. But this potential also opens up a market for countless quack magnetic devices that exploit this appeal. You can buy what are essentially refrigerator magnets to strap to your elbow or knee or put in your shoe or under your pillow. These static magnetic fields have no demonstrable effect on blood flow or living tissue, and their fields are so shallow that they barely extend beyond the cloth in which they are encased, let alone to any significant tissue depth. The scientific evidence for their efficacy is negative (Pittler et al. 2007). Even more absurd are magnetic bracelets that are supposed to have a remote healing effect on the body. Their plausibility plummets even further.

It is eternally frustrating that scientific evidence and academic acceptance of medical claims seem to have no bearing on the marketing and popular appeal of those claims. This disconnect appears to be especially true of claims for magnetic devices and treatments-and it has survived for centuries.

References

Keithley, Joseph F. 1999. Measurements from the beginning through the Middle Ages. In The Story of Electrical and Magnetic Measurements: From 500 B.C. to the 1940s. New York: IEEE Press. Available online at http://media.wiley.com/product_data/excerpt/30/07803119/0780311930-2.pdf.

Lipton, Richard B., and Starr H. Pearlman. 2010. Transcranial magnetic simulation in the treatment of migraine. Neurotherapeutics 7(2) (April): 204–12.

Macklis, Roger M. 1993. Magnetic healing, quackery, and the debate about the health effects of electromagnetic fields. Annals of Internal Medicine 118(5) (March): 376–83.

Pittler, Max H., Elizabeth M. Brown, and Edzard Ernst. 2007. Static magnets for reducing pain: Systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized trials. Canadian Medical Association Journal 177(7) (September): 736–42.

“I don't believe that,” he said. “I can't believe that.”

“Why?” I asked.

“I was in the Marines,” he answered. “They told me about ‘the door.' Do you know what I'm talking about?”

No one did, so he explained: “In the Marines they taught me that no matter what horrible situation I might find myself in, there will be a door that will let me out, and if I look for that door I will find it. If you tell me because I'm Hispanic I'm screwed, I can't accept that. I don't care what statistics you give me. I have a wife and a kid and a job, and this school is my door, and I believe we're going to be okay. No offense, but you're not helping me by telling me I'm disadvantaged being Hispanic in America.”

A lively class discussion ensued, and my own head spun.

The facts of minority disadvantage notwithstanding, for the first time I realized how an American mindset-perhaps the American mindset-can place itself in flat-out opposition to a logically constraining reality, and that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Roberto's perspective reminded me of “the right stuff” that Tom Wolfe explored in his 1979 book of the same name. Wolfe was describing the essential fighter-pilot mentality of the early NASA Mercury Program astronauts of the 1960s. They ignored the grim statistics on combat and experimental aviation and instead viewed mission failure (death) under any circumstances as the result of individual human error-avoidable by those endowed with a sufficient amount of a particular but somewhat ineffable combination of steely confidence and initiative: “the right stuff.”

This willful trumping of circumstantial disadvantage by sheer faith in innate resourcefulness harkens back to a more primal American ethos, that of the early New England Puritans. America's first European settlers believed that those among them predestined to be saved also had “the right [spiritual] stuff” and were therefore divinely allowed to prosper in their new land. Those who didn't have it failed. Simply put, personal courage bespoke salvation in this world and the next.

It has often been noted how this same faith in self-demonstrating salvation has, in a more secularized form, permeated the cultural DNA of American society ever since. Social commentators during the nation's nineteenth-century industrial boom idealized the innately proactive “self-made man” and stigmatized the will-deficient “born loser.” If economic socialism remains an anathema in American public discourse today-at least as an abstract proposition-it is because our citizens just can't grasp how personal self-affirmation can be achieved through federal dispensation. (And also, why should slackers be saved?) Similarly, if labor-union membership is at a record low, it's probably because American workers, deep down, still believe that individual gumption and resourcefulness will get them what they need-or else they don't deserve it. (And collective bargaining seems like just more socialism for noncompetitive losers.)

But who knows? Maybe this trait of optimistic individualism is truly genetic. The great majority of Americans are the descendants of-or are themselves-immigrants who believed enough in themselves and their personal chances of success to jump headlong into a rough-and-tumble new world. So we are literally a self-selected gene pool of risk takers, hardwired to believe in Roberto's door.

To be sure, it is no coincidence that, as social critic Barbara Ehrenreich has observed, Americans have also been exploited since the mid-nineteenth century by a massive and massively profitable “positive thinking” industry. Today, despite the hard-nosed economic realists piping in the media and genuine suffering caused by the recession, Americans remain awash in the monetized optimism business. Whether fronted by megastar self-help boosters like Oprah Winfrey, alternative-medicine gurus like Deepak Chopra, or corporate motivational speakers like Tony Robbins, the message has never been louder: if you believe-really believe-you can (diet, heal, profit, succeed, whatever), then you can! But as Ehrenreich has pointed out, the essential cheat in this message is not in the dreams themselves but in the seductive ease, the implied “wishing makes it so” means, by which these dreams may be realized.

If we Americans seem so susceptible to these profiteering pied pipers of confidence, it may be because, ironically, they really had us at “hello.” Despite all the stark statistics, sober analysis, and smell-the-coffee reality dispensed before and after the recent financial crises, odds are that we (or more likely our children) will again recklessly invest in pie-in-the-sky IPOs that pop like bubbles. We will again, if permitted, take out mortgages we should rationally anticipate not being able to pay off. And count on it: we will again crash and burn, simply because we don't believe we will. Perhaps it is in the nature of how true liberty works. If we are really free in America, then we must be free to be fools, too. We will pay for our mistakes (and yes, the burden will fall much more on some than others-we need to do something about that) and then we will make more.

For better or for worse, there is clearly some fundamental expression of American character in this disposition of perennial, reckless optimism. Not sure? Answer me this: do you or don't you, in your gut, expect America to come out of this recession sooner rather than later and (eventually) get to Mars? I rest my case.

The Internet is a wonderful medium for communicating ideas and information in a rapid, interactive way. Many online articles are followed by a section for comments. Like so many things in this imperfect world, comments are a mixed blessing. They can enhance the article by correcting errors, adding further information, or contributing useful thoughts to a productive discussion. But all too often the comments section consists of emotional outbursts, unwarranted personal attacks on the author, logical fallacies, and misinformation. It provides irrational and ignorant people with a soapbox from which to promote prejudices and false information.

To illustrate, let's look at some responses to a piece I wrote about a weight-loss product called Isagenix, which is sold through a multilevel marketing (MLM) scheme. To quote its website verbatim, “The Isagenix cleanse is unique because it not only removes impurities at the cellular level, it builds the body up with incredible nutrition. Besides detoxing the body, Isagenix teaches people a wonderful lesson that they don't need to eat as much as they are accustom [sic] to and eating healthy choices are really important and also a lot of the food we are eating is nutritionally bankrupt.”

I didn't set out to write this article. It started when I received an e-mail inquiry about Isagenix. I posted my answer on a discussion list, and it was picked up and published at http://healthfraudoz.blogspot.com/2006/11/critique-of-isagenix.html. Sandy Szwarc, author of a blog titled Junkfood Science, approved of it and kindly reposted it (see http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/2006/11/can-you-really-cleanse-your-way-to.html.)

As I write, the comments on the healthfraudoz website have reached a total of 176. A few commenters approved of what I wrote, but the majority tried to defend Isagenix. Their defense was irrational, incompetent, and sometimes amusing.

It was as if no one had actually read what I wrote. No one bothered to address any of my specific criticisms. No one even tried to defend Isagenix's false claims that toxicity accounts for most disease, that the body protects itself from toxins by coating them with fat, and that internal organs become clogged and deteriorate if you don't cleanse. No one offered any evidence that “detoxification” improves human health. No one tried to identify any of the alleged toxins or show that they are actually removed. No one tried to provide any rationale for the particular combination of ingredients (all 242 of them!) in Isagenix products. No one questioned my assertion that “no caffeine added” is inaccurate labeling because green tea, which is added, contains caffeine. No one commented when I observed that the amount of vitamin A in these products is dangerous and goes against the recommendations of the Medical Letter. No one offered any evidence that more weight is lost by adding Isagenix to a low-calorie diet and exercise. I offered some alternative explanations that might account for people believing that Isagenix is effective when it isn't; no one commented on that.

The medical advisor on the Isagenix website argued that at five dollars per day, Isagenix is less expensive than open-heart surgery. I pointed out that this is a laughable false dichotomy: good health is not a matter of choosing between open-heart surgery and diet supplements. No one commented on that. Instead of rational responses, we got:

Testimonials

The greatest number of comments were testimonials: “I took it and I lost weight.” People claimed not just weight loss but a variety of improvements. Isagenix allegedly cured fibromyalgia, osteoarthritis, and hemorrhoids. It facilitated getting off sleeping pills and caffeine, balanced brain chemistry (what does that mean?), improved focus and mental clarity, allowed running longer marathons with less fatigue, saved a failing marriage, stopped irritability and crankiness, and kept an arm from getting sore after pitching.

“Made my son interact appropriately with peers, take care of himself, and want to be hugged and kissed,” claimed one.

“I made money selling it,” said another.

One person wrote, “My out-of-control Irritable Bowel Syndrome disappeared and I had the healthiest BM in about 6 years!... You can't brainwash POO!!”

Two people commented that the Isagenix program provides motivation; one said he needs “structer” (structure?) to stay on a diet.

The plural of anecdote is not data. Two commenters appropriately objected to all this testimonial evidence. They pointed out that testimonials are unreliable and subject to post hoc ergo propter hoc error, that all the “it works for me” comments can be attributed to a low-calorie diet and exercise, and that the testimonials are almost exclusively from people who are selling the product.

Anti-Testimonials

Quite a few commenters reported that they had tried Isagenix and it either didn't work or caused side effects, such as five days of violent diarrhea. One reported gaining a lot of weight while taking it; many reported losing weight just as well without it. Several reported credit-card disputes with the company and failure to get their money refunded. One reported that his parents are using Isagenix and it seems to be slowly killing them: they have decreased energy, declining health, mood swings, and poorer control of diabetes.

Rebuttals to Negative Testimonials

Supposedly the people Isagenix hasn't helped haven't been following the program correctly. Apparent bad reactions are just signs that it is working: “When one is cleansing out years of accumulation of toxins, chemicals, jet fuel, gasoline, arsenic, heavy metals, radiation poisoning-one will have reactions.”

‘Evidence' That It Works

One commenter heard a doctor speak who cited all kinds of studies to support the theory behind Isagenix-that Isagenix cleansing can supposedly solve the problems of environmental toxicity, depletion of nutrients in the food supply, gastrointestinal malabsorption, and our incessant food cravings.

Here are some of the other commenters' opinions, a few of which I've replied to in brackets.

A former Hare Krishna was impressed by the array of nutrients in the products and believed that the doctor on the website had integrity and cared about her patients.

Several people claimed that we need nutritional supplements because the ground has been depleted of nutrients.

“There have been many valid scientific research [sic] to back the claims of Isagenix.” [I couldn't find any, and they provided no clues as to where to look.]

Others claimed that because lots of MDs are recommending Isagenix it must work; these MDs can't all be quacks. [Apparently they can. Lots of MDs recommend homeopathy, and some of them believe in astrology.]

Some commenters pointed out that Isagenix has paid for independent studies. [Where are they? What did they show? If Isagenix was paying, were they truly independent?]

Mainstream physicians are starting to realize cleansing is important, other commenters claimed. [Not any of the ones who practice science-based medicine.]

One commenter proposed that cleansing makes sense because one of the main ingredients of pesticides and insecticides is estrogen. It makes women fat and casues erectile dysfunction in men. Toxicity is a bigger cause of obesity than most people realize.

Another commenter insisted that because these products are “designed and formulated by professionals and advocated by professionals,” they must work.

One MD commenter claimed, “I have the before and after pictures and the lab tests to prove it.”

Pseudoscientific claims peppered many comments, such as this one: “Most people only absorb 8% to 12% of what we eat-the rest is waste which we flush down the toilet. With Isagenix we can absorb up to 94% of what is ingested with less waste going down the toilet. Isagenix is full of good probiotics which help rebuild our digestive systems, fights candida. Isagenix also helps the body become alkaline, which is a healthy body. John Hopkins 2008 Cancer Report stated that cancer cannot live in an alkaline body only acidic bodies. Processed food makes our bodies acidic-thus the epedemic [sic] of cancer and diabites [sic] in the USA along with heart disease.” [This is all nonsense.]

Isagenix is food, many commenters insisted. Regular food is from depleted soils. Organic food made children behave better at lunch in a school study. Genetically modified food is lacking in nutrition. “The majority of people fill their stomachs with foods void of natural nutrition and the evidence supports that they behave poorly, learn less, misbehave more and commit more crimes than those who fill their stomachs with highly nutritious organic produce and meats.” [Wow! Instead of the Twinkie defense, criminals can claim their non-organic lunch made them do it!]

“Isagenix is a divine blessing in this toxic sick world.”

These people apparently expect us to believe unsubstantiated assertions.They have no concept of what constitutes scientific evidence or why controlled studies are needed.

Defense of Multilevel Marketing

“MLM is not a scam, but one of the last bastions of free enterprise.” Some commenters claimed that MLM is good because products approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) don't work, and that MLM is “the most legitimate business out in the world today.” All corporations are a pyramid anyway, they said.

But one commenter called MLM an “exploitative business model” and pointed out that the average yearly income for Isagenix distributors is only $116.87. Another pointed out that 97 percent of MLM schemes fail.

Personal Attacks on Me

“A Dr Harriet Hall wrote a very funny one sided arguement [sic] against [Isagenix] but omitted to inform the world how much money she has made conning patients into taking drugs she should know are harmful to you.”

Some commenters thought I was arrogant: “If it were up to know-it-all MDs like Harriet Hall, I'd still be in chronic pain.”

“To [sic] bad when you look up Dr. Hall in Washington no such person is licensed to practice medicine. Sad day when you have to lie to get people to pay attention to anything you say....” [It took me about one minute to locate verification of my license at https://fortress.wa.gov/doh/providercredentialsearch/SearchResult.aspx.

One commenter questioned whether I am really a doctor and says I have a small brain and a big mouth.

One claimed I write only to feed my ego.

Another said I shouldn't make comments without doing any research.

One thought I should try it for myself.

Another questioned why I didn't learn more by attending a meeting for the product, interviewing company representatives, or talking to the press.

Some thought instead of writing for the public I should have contacted the doctors at the company and discussed my concerns with them.

“Don't try to convince us, Dr. Hall, that you necessarily have ‘the answer.'” [Did I say I did?]

One alleged that I came to a conclusion without any research whatsoever; this is from a doctor who said, “Cleansing is now my first choice for my patients.” One wondered what research he did to make that choice.

“Going out of her way to trash Isagenix this way is pathetic.”

“PS ‘Dr.Hall' your little family practice designation really doesnt buy alot [sic] of cred.”

“Real doctors don't waste their time sitting on the internet making bogus posts about different health products.... could sign as doctor and no one would know.”

“This article is and the author is full of crap. I know it and he knows it.” [I know I'm not a “he.”]

Some commenters thought I didn't know anything and I should just shut up.

“This is just another doctor that stands to loose [sic] their income by the masses becoming healthy.”

“What ever [sic] Dr. Harriet Hall is selling, I'm not interested.” [For the record, I'm retired and the only thing I'm “selling” is critical thinking.]

Some suggested that just because I went to medical school doesn't mean I'm a smart person.

Kudos

A few commenters offered agreement and praise; they pointed out that no one had actually addressed any of the points I made or offered any evidence that what I wrote was wrong. They reprimanded other commenters for resorting to ad hominem attacks.

Attacks on the Medical Profession

Many of the commenters seemed to think that doctors know nothing about nutrition. Doctors just put bandages on problems: they sell pills that mask symptoms and wreak havoc on your body instead of treating underlying causes. They only want to make money. They want to keep people sick so they won't lose their kickbacks. [What kickbacks?] There are lots of malpractice suits.

“Most MD's [sic] will not even take the death dealing treatments they inflict upon the rest of the population.”

Some commenters claimed that even if evidence showed Isagenix worked, conventional medicine still wouldn't adopt it because of competition from drug companies. Many doctors are typically overweight and/or out of shape. The majority of emergency department doctors are lacking skills in emergency procedures.

One person commented, “MD's [sic] keep American's [sic] addicted to drugs! MD's also fancy themselves as God like. They think that being an MD allows them to keep American's from seeking nutrition.”

“Our medical doctors have failed us,” one person lamented.

Another observed: “So sad that people in our medical profession have no idea what they are talking about!!!”

Attacks on Science

Commenters insisted that instead of listening to science, one should listen to one's own body.

Some asked: even if it's only a placebo, why not use it?

Western medicine is trying to “squash Eastern medicine,” one commenter believed.

Another warned: “Things work for different people. Chiropractic and acupuncture work. If you ask for everything to be backed by studies, they just tailor the studies to benefit industry. Research things for yourself and don't be a sheep taking pills from an MD.”

Two commenters attacked the scientifically impeccable website Quackwatch, asserting that Stephen Barrett is literally funded by Big Pharma, the American Medical Association (AMA), and the FDA to produce disinformation aimed at discrediting alternative medicine. [He has no ties to any of those organizations.]

“See how herbs can treat people, not drugs,” one commenter advised.

“Did any of you see Sicko? If you did how could you possibly take one physicians [sic] ‘opinion' about something she didn't even try over the many testimonials.”

Some commenters felt they knew better than any doctor: “I choose to observe how my own body feels and reacts to what I ingest.”

“If you think its [sic] going to help it will,” one commenter suggested.

Some put forth that the real answer is to integrate Eastern with Western medicine.

“Oh, and I have found prayer helps me,” one Isagenix proponent added.

One commenter tried to turn the tables on me: “I feel it is unfair to say Isagenix is making unsubstantiated claims, and that it doesn't actually help you at all....... isn't that an unsubstantiated claim too?” [I didn't claim that it didn't work; I said there was no evidence that it did, and no reason to think it would.]

Attacks on the FDA and Big Pharma

Many commenters suggested that the FDA disclaimer about Isagenix is meaningless and believe we shouldn't take FDA warnings seriously: “It is a terrorist organization that lies, cheats steals, and intimidates anyone who stands between them and the targets of their wrath.”

“Dr Hall if you think the FDA is doing a good job you must love some of the poison they approve, such as Aspartame.”

Some commenters erroneously thought doctors got commissions for prescribing drugs.

One even asserted that a conspiracy of J.D. Rockefeller is behind the pharmaceutical industry and that many prescriptions are made from manipulation of petroleum.

People die from drugs, commenters insisted.

“My doctor wanted me to start beta blockers, after much investigation I decided that I was to [sic] young to have my liver contaminated by these pills... .”

Many commenters assured us that natural remedies work just as well and are safer than prescriptions.

Several commenters fervently believed that pharmaceuticals are the ultimate money-making scam.

Off-the-Wall False Claims

“The FDA (yes, those great friends of ours) just recently put a new advisement out there that we will soon be required to irradiate ALL raw vegetables and fruits [it certainly did not!]. Do you all know what irradiation does to food? It not only kills ‘bad' things like e. coli, but it kills nutrients from your foods as well.”

Try It for Yourself

Numerous commenters seemed to think the best way to determine if a treatment works is to try it yourself. But one commenter rightfully pointed out that the try-it-yourself argument is fallacious and condescending: “One does not have to experience snake venom to know to stay away from snakes.”

Haven't Tried It But Plan To

Several commenters were planning to try it after reading the article and comments. One of these said he knows firefighters who use it and he “would rather have one of the firefighters doing brain surgery on me, than let the average physician tell me what is going on in my body.” [Wow! Does this guy even have a brain?]

It's a Scam

Quite a few people agreed with what I wrote. Several were outspoken in calling Isagenix a scam.

“People would rather rave about this crap than admit that they were fooled into wasting their money.”

“Without even considering the science, common sense helped me spot this as bullshit.”

“Isagenix is a freakish cult perpetrated on the uncritical, by the unscrupulous, using the desperate search for the ever-elusive ‘easy solution.'”

One reported that a cousin and her boyfriend are “making a TON of money selling this stuff to all of you morons stupid enough to buy it and make them rich. ISAGENIX only ‘works' for the people selling it. Diet and exercise WORKS for everyone!”

Concerns

A few commenters expressed concerns about the product. One commenter said the Isagenix company representative couldn't answer questions about origin of ingredients and quality control. There have been no controlled studies. Where is the evidence? How do we know it is safe? Long-term results remain to be seen. How many can maintain this restrictive lifestyle for years? Why isn't Isagenix being regulated by the FDA? “I am a little concerned about the way some people discuss this product in almost cult-like fashion. It makes me wonder if there are mind-control drugs in this stuff.”

Two Jokes

“I got a refund check from [the] IRS after starting Isagenix.”

“I have some magic beans for sale. Try eating right and exercising instead.”

Funny, Unhelpful, and Bizarre Comments

“Who cares whether it works or not. This stuff tastes like 9-day old garbage mixed with water from a sewer.”

One man took it on the recommendation of his chiropractor; he now distrusts both Isagenix and his chiropractor. “I have been feeling better ever since I stopped having my head wrenched and being put on a rack and practically decapitated week after week, except for the apparently permanent click in my neck that wasn't there before.”

“We fertilize our soil with fake nutrients and usually do not replace with all 60 nutrients the plants need to be healthy so they are prone to diesease [sic-a disease that they die from?] and incests [sic].” [Gotta watch out for those incestuous plants!]

“I never hear anything from the medical field about elevating the PH level in the human body to keep in from being to acidic. That study was done by Dr Lioness Paulings medical reseacher and nobel prize winner.” [Errors in original. Lioness?!]

“Whoever started this blog is an idiot.”

“I am amazed at the amount of ingnorance [sic] on this Blog. Whom [sic] ever allows this should be ashamed.”

My favorite comment of all was “Dr Harriet Hall is a refrigerator with a head.” I don't know what that means, but its whimsical imagery appeals to my sense of humor.

In looking back at this whole kerfuffle, it became clear to me that there had been a colossal barrier to communication. The person who had originally asked me about Isagenix, the blog owner, and I were all operating in the arena of science and evidence. Most of the commenters were operating in a whole different universe of discourse based on belief, hope, hearsay, and personal experience. Science is like a foreign language to them, and they were incapable of understanding my points. Pearls before swine... ]]> Wed, 27 Apr 2011 12:07:00 EDT info@csicop.org () http://www.csicop.org/si/show/the_conspiracy_meme http://www.csicop.org/si/show/the_conspiracy_meme Many of these theories are clearly absurd, but some are plausible and others actually contain elements of truth.

Conspiracy theories are easy to propagate and difficult to refute. Having long flourished in politics and religion, they have also spread into science and medicine. It is useful to think of conspiracy theorizing as a meme, a cultural invention that passes from one mind to another and thrives, or declines, through a process analogous to genetic selection (Dawkins 1976). The conspiracy meme competes with other rhetorical memes, such as the fair debate meme, the scientific expertise meme, and the resistance to orthodoxy meme.

The central logic of the conspiracy meme is to question, often on speculative grounds, everything the “establishment” says or does and to demand immediate, comprehensive, and convincing answers to all questions. Unconvincing answers are taken as proof of conspiratorial deception. A good example is the film Loose Change 9/11: An American Coup (Avery 2009), which started out as a short fictional 2005 video about the World Trade Center attacks that was marketed as if it were a truth-seeking documentary. The 2005 video went viral on the Internet and has been viewed by over ten million people. Loose Change raises a long series of questions illustrated by tendentious information, such as the fact that the fires in the World Trade Center were not hot enough to melt steel. But no one had claimed that the steel had melted, only that it had gotten hot enough to weaken and collapse, which it did. The video presents the fact that the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is keeping certain people's tax returns secret, set to an ominous musical background suggestive of evildoing-despite the well-known fact that the IRS keeps everyone's tax returns secret.

When an alleged fact is debunked, the conspiracy meme often just replaces it with another fact. One of the producers of Loose Change, Korey Rowe, stated, “We don't ever come out and say that everything we say is 100 percent [correct]. We know there are errors in the documentary, and we've actually left them in there so that people [will] discredit us and do the research for themselves” (Slensky 2006).

When the conspiracy meme is reinforced by a regular diet of “alternative” videos and one-sided literature, it can become a habitual way of thinking. People who believe in one conspiracy are more likely to believe in others (Goertzel 1994; Kramer 1998). A young self-declared conspiracy theorist challenged me to debate one conspiracy theory per week with him, including theories about genetically modified (GM) foods, vaccine neurotoxins, AIDS, and September 11, 2001. He expressed his “true belief” that there is a “kernel of truth” in almost every conspiracy theory and claimed that once you understand the kernel, all you have to do is “connect the dots to make a picture.”

Conspiracy theorists have connected a lot of dots. The ninety-two conspiracy theories described in a recent handbook (McConnachie and Tudge 2008) range in topic from Tutankhamen and the curse of the pharaoh, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and satanic ritual abuse to the alleged scheming of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, and the British royal family. Other theories involve religious cults, alien abductions, or terrorist plots. Some are merely amusing, but others have fueled wars, inquisitions, and genocides in which millions of people died.

Scientific and technological conspiracies often allege the misuse of science by government, the military, or large corporations, and they include bizarre claims that the military suppressed technology that could make warships invisible, automobile or oil companies possess hidden technology that can turn water into gasoline, and the military is secretly in cahoots with space aliens. Conspiracy theorists have argued that the AIDS virus was deliberately created as part of a plot to kill black or gay people, the 1969 Moon landing was staged in a movie studio, and dentists seek to poison Americans by fluoridating public water supplies. Other theorists claim that corporate officers and public health officials suppress evidence that preservatives in vaccines cause autism and silicone breast implants cause connective-tissue disease (Specter 2009; Wallace 2009).

Conspiracy theories include claims that a major drug company hid reports stating that its leading anti-inflammatory drug caused heart attacks and strokes (Specter 2009) and that environmental scientists have conspired to keep refereed journals from publishing papers by researchers skeptical that global warming is a crisis (Hayward 2009; Revkin 2009). There are many theories about physicians or drug companies conspiring to suppress non-mainstream medical treatments, vitamins, and health foods. One author alleges that big business and the medical establishment conspired to obstruct the search for a cure for AIDS so that they could sell their ineffective drugs and treatments (Nussbaum 1990).

Many of these theories are clearly absurd, but some are plausible and others actually contain elements of truth. How can we distinguish among the amusing eccentrics, the honestly misguided, the avaricious litigants, and the serious skeptics questioning a premature consensus? With scientific claims, the only definitive answer is to reexamine the original research data and repeat the experiments and analysis. But no one has the time or the expertise to examine the original research literature on every topic, let alone repeat the research. As such, it is important to have some guidelines for deciding which theories are plausible enough to merit serious examination.

One valuable guideline is to look for cascade logic in conspiracy arguments (Susstein and Vermeule 2008). This occurs when defenders of a conspiracy theory find it necessary to implicate more and more people whose failure to discover or reveal the conspiracy can be explained only by their alleged complicity. Another guideline is to look for exaggerated claims about the power of the conspirators, claims that are needed to explain how they were able to intimidate so many people and cover their tracks so well. The more vast and powerful the alleged conspiracy, the less likely that it could have remained undiscovered.

For example, the claim that the Moon landing in 1969 was a hoax implies the complicity of thousands of American scientists and technicians, as well as that of Soviet astronomers and others around the world who tracked the event. It is incredibly implausible that such a conspiracy could have held together. On the other hand, the theory that a few individuals in Richard Nixon's campaign conspired to break into their opponents' offices in the Watergate building was plausible and proved worth investigating. Similarly, the theory that a group of climate scientists conspired to suppress research that they believed to be misleading and harmful to public policy is plausible and worth investigating, despite the small likelihood that such a conspiracy would remain undetected for long.

Definition of ‘Conspiracy'

The conspiracy meme works because conspiracies do exist in the real world. Claims of conspiracy cannot be reflexively dismissed, but they are difficult to test because lack of evidence can be interpreted as proof of how cleverly the conspirators have hidden it. The first step in testing claims of conspiracy is to establish precisely what is being claimed. There is no single accepted definition of “conspiracy,” and people apply the term differently depending on their point of view. The Oxford English Dictionary defines a conspiracy quite loosely as “an agreement between two or more persons to do something criminal, illegal, or reprehensible.” There are legal definitions of criminal conspiracy, but whether something is “reprehensible” is in the eye of the beholder. When Hillary Clinton protested that her husband was the victim of a “vast right-wing conspiracy” and Lyndon Johnson accused the media and liberal activists of a “conspiracy” to oppose his Vietnam War policies, these claimants were intentionally vague as to whether they referred to illegal or merely reprehensible behavior (Kramer and Gavrieli 2005). Any group of people organizing for a cause the speaker does not like may be denounced as “conspirators.”

But the word conspiracy also usually implies something that is secret and hidden. Pigden (2006, 20) defines a conspiracy as “a secret plan on the part of a group to influence events in part by covert action.” Conspiracies so defined certainly do take place, and it may be that the most successful ones are never discovered. They include the (failed) conspiracy to assassinate Adolph Hitler; the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks; and the Watergate conspiracy. But the term “conspiracy theory” usually refers to claims that important events have been caused by conspiracies that have heretofore remained undiscovered (Coady 2006). The claim that the World Trade Center was bombed by al-Qaeda would not be a conspiracy theory in this sense, but the claim that it was bombed by Israeli agents or that American authorities knew about it in advance would be. There is no chance of getting agreement on an “official” definition, but people alleging conspiracy should be challenged to be clear about their meaning.

The conspiracy meme flourishes best in politics, religion, and journalism, where practitioners can succeed by attracting followers from the general public. It isn't essential that practitioners actually believe the theory; they may just find it plausible and useful to raise doubts and discredit their competitors. But this strategy should not be enough for scientists. Scientific findings are just that-findings, not speculations about undiscovered goings-on. These findings must be replicable by other scientists.

In their routine work, scientists have little use for the conspiracy meme because success in scientific careers comes from winning grant applications and publishing significant findings in peer-reviewed journals. Attacking other scientists as conspirators would not be helpful for most scientists' careers, however frustrated they may be with referees, editors, colleagues, or administrators who turn down their manuscripts or grant proposals or deny them tenured jobs. But the conspiracy meme may be useful for scientists who are so far out of the mainstream in their field that they seek to appeal to alternative funding sources or publication outlets. The conspiracy meme also occasionally surfaces when a scientist's mental health deteriorates to the point that he or she loses touch with reality.

Trial lawyers, on the other hand, have a great deal of use for the conspiracy meme because they succeed by convincing juries. It is part of the standard repertoire of memes they use to discredit evidence offered by “experts” of all kinds, including scientists. Lawyers focus on the motivations of the experts, on who hired them, on what they are being paid for their testimony, and so on. They also seek out an “expert” who will testify on their side, implying that expertise is for sale to the highest bidder and that opinion is divided on the issue in question. The rewards can be very great if a class-action lawsuit results in a settlement against a wealthy corporation.

Vaccine Conspiracies

Conspiracy theories about vaccines were given a tremendous boost when the esteemed medical journal the Lancet published a study reporting a hypothesized link between the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism (Burgess et al. 2006). The media highlighted the story despite the study's very small sample size and speculative causal inferences, and the public reaction was much larger than medical and public health authorities anticipated. Reasons for the public reaction included resentment of pressure on parents, distrust of medical authorities, and the potentially catastrophic nature of possible risk to a vulnerable population. There was also the potential for large class-action settlements in favor of parents who believed their children were injured by the vaccines, some of whom desperately needed help to care for autistic children.

The result was a decline in the proportion of parents having their children vaccinated and a subsequent increase in disease, especially in the United Kingdom. The authorities responded by citing findings from large epidemiologic studies, but much of the press coverage highlighted anecdotal accounts and human-interest stories. Recovery of public confidence in vaccination may be due more to revelations of conflicts of interest on the part of the physician who published the original article-which was eventually withdrawn by the journal-than to the overwhelming evidence for the lack of a relationship between vaccination and autism rates.

Conspiracy theorists typically overlook lapses in logic and evidence by their supporters, but they are quick to pounce on any flaw on the part of their opponents. When a leading Danish vaccine researcher was accused of stealing funds from his university, the vaccine conspiracy theorists pounced. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., son of a former U.S. Attorney General, used the occasion to denounce the “vaccine cover-up” on the influential blog Huffington Post (Kennedy 2010). He explained away the research findings on vaccines and autism on the grounds that there had been a change in the Danish law and the opening of a new autism clinic. He criticized vaccine researchers for receiving money from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for their studies and for “being in cahoots with CDC officials intent on fraudulently cherry-picking facts to prove vaccine safety.” But if the CDC had not funded this research, largely in response to popular concerns, vaccine opponents would have denounced it for not doing so.

Genetically Modified Food Conspiracies

Public alarm about GM foods was aroused when a scientist, Árpád Pusztai, claimed in a television interview that rats had suffered intestinal damage due to eating GM potatoes (“Genetically modified” 2010; Enserink 1999). The finding was clearly preliminary; there were only six rats in each of two groups, and one group was fed GM potatoes for only ten days. The reported effects on the rats were minor, but the study received tremendous publicity because it fed into fears that had long been cultivated by environmentalist and anti- capitalist social movements. As the controversy progressed, questions were raised about the integrity of the study, leading Pusztai to leave his research institute. But anti-GM activists denounced criticisms of the research as a conspiracy and circulated a petition among scientists supporting Pusztai's rights. Finally, the Lancet published his study, which had not yet appeared in a refereed journal. They sent it to six reviewers, only one of whom opposed publication. But one of the reviewers who favored publication said he “deemed the study flawed but favored publication to avoid suspicions of a conspiracy against Pusztai and to give colleagues a chance to see the data for themselves” (Enserink 1999).

By releasing his findings on television, Pusztai received extraordinary attention for a study that otherwise might never have been accepted by a leading scientific journal. At least, that was the opinion of the editor of a competing journal who asked “when was the last time [the Lancet] published a rat study that was uninterpretable? This is really lowering the bar” (Enserink 1999). Releasing controversial findings on the Internet or through press releases is justified as a way of making important discoveries available quickly, but it also serves to circumvent the normal scientific review process. Sometimes these “findings,” such as the claim that the decline in crime in the United States in the 1990s was due to the legalization of abortion in the 1970s, become part of the conventional wisdom before other scientists have a chance to debunk them (Zimring 2006).

The Fair Debate Meme

Dissenters from mainstream science often invoke the meme that there are two sides to every question and each side is entitled to equal time to present its case. George W. Bush famously suggested that students be taught both evolution and creationism so that they can judge which has the most convincing argument. Similarly, holocaust deniers demand equal time for their side of the argument, and they might travel to Tehran or wherever they can find a receptive audience. If these dissenters, or “revisionists,” succeed in getting an opportunity to present their case, they will hammer away at any gaps or contradictions in the evidence presented by mainstream researchers, using rhetoric that questions their opponents' motivations while avoiding any hint of weakness or bias in their own case.

This advocacy meme is widely used in law courts and political debates, and it can work well when the question at hand is one of taste or morality. It doesn't work well for scientists because there are objectively right and wrong answers to most scientific questions-they can't be resolved by votes of schoolchildren. Schoolchildren in 1945 might have agreed with U.S. Admiral William Leahy's famous statement that “the [atomic] bomb will never go off, and I speak as an expert on explosives.” But once the bomb went off, there were no longer two sides to the question.

The Scientific Expertise Meme

In deciding to pursue the atomic bomb project, President Harry Truman relied on another meme that is very powerful in western societies, that of reliance on scientific expertise. Decision makers and the general public are most likely to be persuaded by this meme when scientists are in agreement and when their advice and policy prescriptions have a good track record. There is an inherent tension between the policy makers' desire for consensus and the scientists' need to remain open to alternative theories and evidence. Scientists who wish to influence policy may be tempted to claim a scientific consensus when the facts do not yet warrant one.

We social scientists have forfeited much of our potential influence because we are too often perceived as advocates for a cause rather than as objective researchers. Our ability to predict policy outcomes is very limited, yet we sometimes fall into the trap of claiming to know more than we do. Econometricians have been publishing conflicting analyses of the relationship between capital punishment and homicide rates for decades without making any real progress, yet they continue to use their findings to advocate for or against capital punishment (Goertzel and Goertzel 2008). When President Bill Clinton proposed welfare reform in the United States, social scientists specializing in the topic almost universally predicted that a disastrous increase in poverty and hunger would result. In some cases they defended their predictions with elaborate statistical models, despite the fact that these models had no demonstrated track record for predicting trends in poverty (Goertzel 1998). President Clinton deferred to politicians and conservative activists who predicted that poverty and dependency would decline as, in fact, they did.

Memes Collide: HIV/AIDS Deniers

The conflict between the fair debate meme and the scientific expertise meme was pronounced in the dispute between the late Nature editor John Maddox and biologist Peter Duesberg, who opposes the theory that HIV causes AIDS. Relying on the norms of fairness in debate, Duesberg (1995) sought the right to reply to scientific papers that defend mainstream views about the HIV-AIDS connection. At a certain point in the debate, Maddox refused to continue to give Duesberg “the right of reply,” arguing that Duesberg had “forfeited the right to expect answers by his rhetorical technique. Questions left unanswered for more than about ten minutes he takes as further proof that HIV is not the cause of AIDS. Evidence that contradicts his alternative drug hypothesis on the other hand is brushed aside.” Maddox argued that Duesberg was not asking legitimate scientific questions but rather making demands and implying, “Unless you can answer this, and right now, your belief that HIV causes AIDS is wrong” (Maddox 1993).

Maddox observed that “Duesberg will not be alone in protesting that this is merely a recipe for suppressing challenges to received wisdom. So it can be. But Nature will not so use it. Instead, what Duesberg continues to say about the causation of AIDS will be reported in the general interest. When he offers a text for publication that can be authenticated, it will if possible be published.” As an editor of a scientific journal, Maddox was justified in saying that he would publish papers that offered new findings, not ones that just picked at unanswered questions in other people's work. But Maddox was realistic in realizing that his refusal to publish additional comments by Duesberg would be portrayed as censorship by believers in the AIDS conspiracy theory.

The Resistance to Orthodoxy Meme

Duesberg and other dissenters also rely on another well-established rhetorical meme, that of the courageous independent scientist resisting orthodoxy. This meme is frequently introduced with the example of Galileo's defense of the heliocentric model of the solar system against the orthodoxy of the Catholic Church. And there are other cases of dissenting scientists who have later been proven right. Thomas Gold (1989) reports confronting the “herd mentality” of science when advancing his theories on the mechanisms of the inner ear and the nature of pulsars as rotating neutron stars, both of which later came to be accepted. This “herd mentality” is not the product of a deliberate conspiracy, although it may be perceived as one. It is a collective behavior phenomenon: a belief is reinforced and becomes part of the conventional wisdom because it is repeated so often. This is why those who offer differing views are important. Being a dissenter from orthodoxy isn't so difficult; the hard part is actually having a better theory than the conventional one. Dissenting theories should be published if they are backed by plausible evidence, but this does not mean giving critics “equal time” to dissent from every finding by a mainstream scientist.

In his response to Duesberg, Maddox refers to the philosophical argument, associated with Karl Popper, that science progresses through falsification of hypotheses. Maddox says, “True, good theories (pace Popper) are falsifiable theories, and a single falsification will bring a good theory crashing down.” But he goes on in the next sentence to implicitly rely on a different philosophy of science, often associated with the work of Imre Lakatos, which is that science normally progresses by correcting and adding to ongoing research programs, not by abandoning them every time a hypothesis fails. Maddox says, “Unanswered questions are not falsifications; rather, they should be the stimulants of further research.”

Scientists do change their ideas in response to new evidence, perhaps more often than people in most walks of life. Linus Pauling abandoned his triple-helix model of DNA as soon as he saw the evidence for the double-helix model. But he never abandoned his advocacy of vitamin C as a treatment for the common cold and cancer, no matter how many studies failed to show a significant difference between experimental and control groups. Pauling found flaws in each study's research design and insisted that the results would be different if only the study were done differently. He never did any empirical research on vitamin C himself, research that would have risked failing to confirm his hypotheses. He instead limited himself to debunking published scientific studies. Unfortunately, Pauling is probably better known by the general public for this work than for his undisputed and fundamental contributions to chemistry. Pauling did not claim that he was the victim of a conspiracy; he saw himself as challenging the herd mentality of science. But his scientific prestige lent credibility to those who sought to discredit scientific medicine as a conspiracy of doctors and drug companies (Goertzel and Goertzel 1995). Scientific expertise is usually quite specialized, and scientists who advocate for political causes only tangentially related to their area of specialization have no special claim on the truth.

Conspiracy theorists often seem to believe that they can prove a scientific theory wrong by finding even a minor flaw or gap in the evidence for it. Then they claim conspiracy when scientists endeavor to fix the flaw or fill the gap. If the scientists persist in their work, on the assumption that a solution will be found, they are again charged with conspiracy. In fact, the occasions when an entire scientific theory is overthrown by a negative finding are few and far between. This is especially true in fields depending on statistical modeling of complex phenomena for which there are often multiple models that are roughly equally good (or bad), and the choice of a data set and decisions about data-set filtering are often critical. The more important test of a research program is whether progress is being made over a period of time and whether better progress could be made with an alternative approach. Progress can be measured by the accumulation of a solid, verifiable body of knowledge with a very high probability of being correct (Franklin 2009).

Climate Change Conspiracy

The conspiracy meme has been especially prominent in the debate about global warming. When the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published its report in 1996, an eminent retired physicist, Frederick Seitz (1996), accused it of a “major deception on global warming” on the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal. Seitz did not offer a scientific argument that the report's conclusions were wrong. Instead, he attacked the committee's procedure in editing its document, accusing the editors of violating their own rules by rewording and rearranging parts of the text to obscure the views of skeptical scientists. This seemingly obscure point about the editing of a UN technical document proved remarkably effective in providing a rallying point for opponents of the report's conclusions.

A careful review of the incident (Lahsen 1999) concluded that the editors did not violate any of their own rules and that the editorial changes were reasonable. Editors, after all, do edit texts, all the more so when the texts are written by a committee. The skeptical arguments were not deleted from the report, but they were repositioned and rephrased, perhaps giving them less emphasis than Seitz thought they deserved. But the conspiracy meme was successful in shifting much of the public debate from the substance of the issue to criticism of personalities, procedures, and motivations. The climate scientists felt attacked and apparently began to think of themselves more as activists under siege than as neutral scientists. In 2009, computer hackers released private e-mails apparently showing that some climate scientists had pressured editors not to publish papers by skeptics and that the climate scientists had looked for ways to present their data to reinforce their advocacy views (Revkin 2009; Hayward 2009; Broder 2010).

Climate science is heavily dependent on complex statistical models based on limited data, so it is not surprising that models based on different assumptions give differing results (Schmidt and Amman 2005). In presenting their data, some scientists were too quick to smooth trends into a “hockey stick” model that fit with their advocacy concerns. Several different groups of well-qualified specialists have now been over the data carefully, and the result is a less linear “hockey stick,” with a rise in temperature during a medieval warm period and a drop during a little ice age. But the sharp increase in warming in the twentieth century, which is the main point of the analysis, is still there (“Hockey stick controversy” 2010; Brumfiel 2006).

This is not the place to review the substance of the issue, which has already been debated extensively in this journal. An encouraging thing, however, is that despite the bitterness is the debate about scientists' behavior, there is considerable consensus on the issue of global warming itself. One of the responsible critics, for example, frankly states that “climate change is a genuine phenomenon, and there is a nontrivial risk of major consequences in the future” (Hayward 2009). But there is no consensus on how high the risk is, how quickly it is likely to materialize, or the costs and benefits of strategies needed to counter it.

The less responsible critics simply dismiss the issue as a hoax and focus exclusively on the peccadilloes of the other side. The climate scientists gave the conspiracy theorists an opening by letting their advocacy color their science, which compromised the legitimacy of their enterprise and, ironically, weakened the political movement itself. This is especially unfortunate because the underlying science is fundamentally correct.

Conspiracy Consequences

Faced with assaults on their professional credibility, scientists may be tempted to retreat from the world of public policy. But allowing the conspiracy theorists to dominate the public debate can have tragic consequences. Fear of science and belief in conspiracies has led British parents to expose their children to life-threatening diseases, the South African health department to reject retroviral treatment for AIDS, and the Zambian government to refuse GM food from the United States in the midst of a famine. Fear of science is not new. Benjamin Franklin was afraid to vaccinate his family against smallpox and regretted it deeply when a son died of the disease in 1736. Parents are making the same mistake today.

Advocacy groups sometimes find it easier to arouse fears of science than to advocate for other goals that may actually be more fundamental to their concerns. The movement against GM foodstuffs in Europe was mobilized largely by anti-capitalist, anti-corporate, and anti-American activists who found it more effective than attacking corporate capitalism directly (Purdue 2000; Schurman 2004). These ideologies have much less support in North America, and efforts to organize against GM food here were much weaker. North Americans have suffered no significant ill effects from the integration of these foods into their diet, a fact that Greenpeace and other advocacy groups studiously ignore. One suspects that if GM seeds had been invented by a socialist government, these advocacy groups would have heralded them as a great victory in the war against hunger.

Public policy requires reaching consensus to make decisions, even though some uncertainty usually remains. If scientists cannot do this, surely it is too much to expect politicians or journalists to do it. Efforts to define a consensus are vulnerable to attacks by conspiracy theorists who portray a consensus as a mechanism for suppressing dissent and debate. But there will always be dissenters, and at a certain point arguing with them becomes unproductive. In 1870, Alfred Russell Wallace allowed himself to be drawn into an extended conflict with Flat Earth theorist John Hampden, editor of the Truth-Seeker's Oracle and Scriptural Science Review. Their dispute over whether the Earth is round involved measuring the curvature of the water on the Old Bedford Canal in England. There was a public wager, which Wallace won, followed by a lawsuit when Hampden refused to pay, a threat against Wallace's life, and a prison term for Hampden. Hampden and his followers were never convinced the Earth is not flat, and belief in the “round Earth conspiracy” apparently persists to this day (Garwood 2008; O'Neill 2008).

Scientists will never reach a consensus with Flat Earthers or with those who believe the Earth was created in 4004 bce. Nor do they need to. The best that science can provide is a clearly specified degree of consensus among scientists who base their conclusions on empirical data. Efforts to reach consensus on important questions have been discouraged due to the influence of philosophers of science who emphasize conflicting research programs, paradigm shifts, and scientific revolutions (Franklin 2009; Stove 1982). Although these events do occur in the history of science, they are exceptional. Most sciences, most of the time, progress with an orderly, gradual accumulation of knowledge that is recognized and accepted by specialists in the field. Opposition rooted in religious or ideological concerns is acceptable as part of the democratic political process, but it need not prevent scientists from reaching a consensus when one is justified.

Peer Review

The peer review process in scientific journals plays a central role in determining which research findings deserve to be incorporated in the scientific consensus on an issue. As such, this process is a target for conspiracy theorists. Peer reviewers are usually anonymous, which suggests they may have something to hide. Although authors' names are usually removed from studies to be reviewed, reviewers are specialists in the same field and can often guess who the authors are. Reviewers are not in a good position to detect actual fraud; they can't redo the experiments or the data analysis. And they may reject papers that go against the conventional wisdom or political consensus in their field (Franklin 2009, 205–11). No adequate alternative to peer review has been proposed, but initiatives to make the review process more transparent may help, including making reviewers' comments and the original data sets available on the Internet.

The credibility of peer review has been undermined in the recent dispute over global warming because the reviewers are drawn from a fairly small pool of specialists who are known to have a policy agenda. The appointment of panels of distinguished scientists to review the body of research in the field is an excellent step to rebuilding credibility (Broder 2010). The review panels must have full access to all the data sets, as well as the time and expertise to conduct their own analyses if necessary-which cannot normally be expected of volunteer reviewers for a journal. It is important that these reviewers give qualified specialists an opportunity to present alternative views, as long as these views are based on scientific analysis of appropriate data and not just polemical criticism. No matter how well they do their work, however, these panels are likely to be attacked by conspiracy theorists.

If the blue-ribbon scientific commissions confirm the original research findings, perhaps with only modest caveats, many people will be convinced. But individuals with strong feelings about the issue may resort to cascade logic, suspecting that the review panel is also part of the conspiracy. Cascade logic can easily develop into a generalized distrust of anything that comes from a mainstream or elite source. In the past, social psychological studies found that this kind of generalized belief in conspiracies was most common among people who were discontented with the established institutions and elite groups in their society, believed that conditions were worsening for people like themselves, and believed that authorities did not care about them (Goertzel 1994; Kramer 1998).

The conspiracy meme can convert a dry scientific issue into a human drama in which malefactors can be exposed and denounced. Scientists are not trained in dealing with this kind of debate, and there is no reason to expect them to be especially good at it. If they also have strong feelings about the issues, they may fall into the conspiracy meme themselves. But when scientists succumb to the temptation to “fight fire with fire,” they risk losing their credibility as experts. It may be tempting to exaggerate findings in mass media outlets by using graphics that highlight the most extreme possibilities. This may be effective in the short run, but the public feels deceived when today's newest scare is refuted by tomorrow's press release; their belief in science is diminished. In today's political climate, scientists need to be careful about releasing their findings on controversial issues; they must make sure the findings have been thoroughly reviewed and that the data sets are available for others to analyze.

Political decisions will inevitably reflect economic interests and emotional concerns that conflict with what scientists believe is best. But scientists can be more effective if they avoid using the conspiracy meme and other rhetorical devices and instead clearly separate their scientific work from their political advocacy as citizens.

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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.