Will the new presidency of Barack Obama usher in a more welcoming age for science and reason? We at least have cause for hope. A president’s intellectual outlook is only one of many things that shape changes in culture and society, but the early signs are encouraging.

The Bush administration chalked up so many negatives in regard to scientific thinking, reason, and open inquiry that there may be no way to go but up. The president himself was a born-again and encouraged the far-right evangelical wing of his party; he ascribed to the “equal time” strategy of creationists in their opposition to teaching evolution, for example. His political appointees left a long and well-documented record of ideological interference in the recommendations of scientists at NASA, the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and on and on. He restricted stem cell research, and only begrudgingly came to accept global warming. He actively practiced a “from the gut” style of decision making that marginalized well-informed rational analysis and caused a litany of international problems.

Obama, elected by a 53 to 47 percent margin, is the stark opposite in many key respects. His background is multicultural and his outlook international. He espouses learning and education, including science education. He has exhibited a welcome centrist, moderate, pragmatic outlook that seems to eschew ideological extremes on either side of the political spectrum. He has repeatedly demonstrated intellectual agility, a critical awareness, and an ability to synthesize and plan. He has shown an obvious willingness to entertain a wide variety of viewpoints before making decisions, one mark of a critical thinker. He has shown every tendency to welcome the best minds to his administration, including former rivals, and to listen to them. He signaled early on that he quickly would rescind the Bush administration’s rulings against research on new lines of stem cells. He recognizes that climate change is real and says, “We all believe what the scientists have been telling us for years now, that this is a matter of urgency and national security, and it has to be dealt with in a serious way.”

His lengthy written response during the campaign to the top fourteen science questions facing America (www.sciencedcebate2008.com) was shaped by numerous scientific notables including Nobel laureates—a welcome sign in itself—and said everything a science-minded person would like to hear. (The topics were climate change, energy, education, national security, pandemics and biosecurity, genetics, stem cells, ocean health, water, space, science integrity, research, and health.) He promised to defend scientific integrity: “I will restore the basic principle that government decisions should be based on the best-available, scientifically valid evidence and not on the ideological predispositions of agency officials or political appointees.”

His appointment of Nobel laureate physicist Steven Chu, director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, as energy secretary harks back to a welcome tradition when distinguished scientists not politicians headed the top energy agency (the Atomic Energy Commission, a forerunner to the Department of Energy).

Some scientists called for him to quickly appoint a top-flight science advisor and give that person prominent status in the White House. Obama had pledged to strengthen the role of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and to restore the credibility and role of the Office of Science and Technology Policy as an office within the White House structure. But it didn’t happen immediately. The first month of Obama’s post-election transition was necessarily devoted to responding to the sudden US and world financial crisis that brought the most serious downturn in the economy since the Great Depression. He rapidly assembled his economic and national security teams before beginning the rest of his cabinet and other appointments. Given the urgent circumstances, few would dispute that priority.

Word about Obama’s Science Advisor appointment then came on December 19, the day after he completed his cabinet appointments. His Science Advisor is John Holdren, a respected physicist long known for his work on energy, climate change, and nuclear proliferation. Holdren is director of the program on science, technology, and public policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. He was president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 2006.

Obama’s appointee as head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, another key science appointment, is marine biologist Jane Lubchenco. She is professor of marine biology at Oregon State University and the OSU Distinguished Professor of Zoology. She is a MacArthur Fellow and, like Holdren, also a former AAAS president. “When has NOAA been headed by a member of the National Academy and a fellow of the Royal Society?” commented Andrew Rosenberg, a University of New Hampshire professor of natural resources and a former NOAA deputy director under the Clinton administration. “That’s exactly the right signal¿. It establishes NOAA as one of those key scientific agencies.” He called her an “absolutely world-class scientist” and said the appointment means science agencies now have a role in policy.

In his science team rollout radio address of December 19, Obama not only announced those appointments but also revealed that science notables Harold Varmus and Eric Lander would be co-chairs of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, along with Holdren. “Together, they will work to remake PCAST into a vigorous external advisory council that will shape my thinking on the scientific aspects of my policy proposals,” said Obama.

Varmus is a 1989 Nobel laureate in medicine, former director of the National Institutes of Health, and president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Lander, is director of the Broad Institute at MIT and Harvard, and was, as Obama proudly said, “one of the driving forces behind mapping the human genome—one of the greatest scientific achievements in history.”

So the Obama White House could hardly have a more distinguished set of people in the key science positions. And it sounds as if Obama sees them as more than figureheads.

“It is time to once again put science at the top of our agenda and work to restore America’s place as the world leader in science and technology,” said Obama, words that should please all who have long been warning of America’s slippage in the world of science. And for those concerned about the integrity of science and its previous abuses, his words were an early Christmas present: “The truth is that promoting science isn’t just about providing resources—it’s about protecting free and open inquiry. It’s about ensuring that facts and evidence are never twisted or obscured by politics. It’s about listening to what our scientists have to say even when it’s inconvenient—especially when it’s inconvenient. Because the highest purpose of science is the search for knowledge, truth, and a greater understanding of the world around us. That will be my goal as president of the United States—and I could not have a better team to guide me in this work.”

So the outlook is tentatively hopeful for a time in which scientific thinking, education, learning, and unfettered inquiry will have some greater support and encouragement from the highest position in the land. And that is welcome.

Nevertheless, there are limitations to how much a president can do. Money is the top problem. The federal budget was under serious pressures even before the October-November financial meltdown and the resulting hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer-financed bailouts. Obama’s first large spending program announced as president-elect was to rebuild the nation’s infrastructure, surely a welcome and much-needed enterprise. But that spending will further restrict his options on funding new programs of scientific research. Unless and until the economy can begin expanding again, science will have access to one piece of a shrinking pie.

An early sign of this problem was a statement from his new economic council director Lawrence Summers that while an increase in federal research and development is good for the long-term health of the economy, R&D would not be included in the economic stimulus package. The Association of American Universities subsequently released a proposal sent to Obama for just such a stimulus, including “academic research facilities modernization and $1.8 billion to research universities to hire more young scientists and engineers.

Secondary-school education in the U.S. is funded mainly at local and state levels, and those entities are likewise under new financial constraints. And, even if they weren’t, money isn’t the sole solution. Results of the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, or TIMSS, announced in December, show U.S. students are doing no better on this international science exam than they were ten years ago, while a number of other countries’ performances rose. One bright spot was U.S. students’ performance in mathematics. The average score among fourth-graders has jumped 11 points since 1995, to 529. Eighth graders also earned a higher average score than in 1995 and were better than their counterparts in 37 countries (but still less than China, South Korea, Singapore, and Hong Kong). Educators and policy makers have been focused on improving math education in recent years. One can hope science education and scientific literacy will likewise get a new emphasis in American culture.

And while it will be wonderful to have a president who doesn’t doubt evolution, national political leadership can only go so far in shaping attitudes in this area. Well-funded evangelical groups are still mounting intense media campaigns denouncing evolution as false science, or worse, and extolling two-thousand-year-old biblical stories as real science. Much of this effort takes place on religious television broadcasts, in churches, and in political action at the local and state level. As communications researcher Jon D. Miller has said, America is out on a limb by itself in its rejection of evolution. Polls show the U.S. is thirty-third out of thirty-four countries in evolution acceptance (only Turkey rates lower). That’s not going to be fixed by a new president, no matter how enlightened.

Whether the economy and budget considerations end up trumping the hopeful plans and intentions of the Obama administration remains to be seen. But he represents a welcome breath of fresh air and a sense of hope not only to the population at large (both in the U.S. and worldwide) but to all who support science-based inquiry and the use of rationality and reason in examining issues important to us all.

Nevertheless, most scientists seem to prefer as a practical matter that science should stay clear of religious issues. This is a good strategy for those who wish to avoid conflicts between science and religion, which might lead to less public acceptance of science and that most dreaded of all consequences—lower funding. However, religions make assertions about the natural world, and these have no special immunity from being examined under the cold light of critical analysis. Scientists are abdicating their responsibilities when they avoid applying their expertise to evaluate religious claims that can be tested against empirical facts, especially when religious thinking is used to override science in the making of public policy.

In one of its official statements supporting evolution, the Academy states, “Science is a way of knowing about the natural world. It is limited to explaining the natural world through natural causes. Science can say nothing about the supernatural. Whether God exists or not is a question about which science is neutral” (National Academy of Sciences 1998). This is simply untrue. Not only can science examine any claim that bears on empirical data, reputable scientists from reputable institutions are doing just that, for example, in experiments on the efficacy of intercessory prayer.

In the battle between evolution and creationism, the political strategy adopted by many scientific organizations such as the Academy and the National Center for Science Education has been to seek support of Catholics and moderate Christians whose clergy have stated their support for evolution. The uncomfortable fact that evolution implies humanity is an accident, rather than the special creation of God in his own image, is conveniently swept under the rug.

But there are worse things happening in America and the world as the direct result of religious thinking than children hearing the dreaded word creation in the classroom. Both abroad and at home, we are engaged in cultural wars that threaten the very existence of secular society and the health, safety, and well-being of humans everywhere. Islamic radicals have declared war on the modern world and are steadily gaining adherents in all countries with large Muslim populations. George W. Bush’s “War on Terror,” which he has characterized in religious terms as a holy war of good against evil, has advanced rather than deterred this trend.

The born-again U.S. president has based his policies, foreign and domestic, on faith rather than evidence—faith that his own instincts are divinely inspired and any evidence that contradicts these instincts may be ignored and even suppressed.

A series of recent books has extensively documented how a small group of influential Christian extremists, with large financial resources at their disposal, have taken control of the Republican party and used churches to build enough support at the polls to gain control of the White House and Congress in 2000 and 2004 (Mooney 2005, Phillips 2006, Goldberg 2006, Linker 2006, Hedges 2007). Only with the 2006 midterm election has their influence slipped. But this may be attributed to the unmitigated disaster of Iraq rather than any sea change in public opinion. You can bet these groups have not thrown in the towel on their goal of converting America to a Christian theocracy.

Let me list some examples of Bush policies that are founded in theology rather than evidence and how he and his administration have acted to suppress scientific studies that contradict the faith-based assumptions that lie behind these policies.

In one of his first acts as president, Bush restored a gag rule on aid to international organizations that counsel women on abortion. Of millions of dollars spent on preventing and treating AIDS in Africa, 30 percent was earmarked for promoting sexual abstinence and none for condoms. Here at home, $170 million was spent in 2005 alone on promoting abstinence-only sex education in schools. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was pressured to remove from its Web site scientific findings that abstinence-only programs do not work. According to a 2003 report issued by Democratic Congressman Henry A. Waxman and the minority staff of the Government Reform Committee, the Bush administration modified performance measures for abstinence-based programs to make them look effective.

Similarly, under pressure from conservatives in Congress, a National Cancer Institute Web site was changed to reflect the view that there may be a risk of breast cancer associated with abortions, a claim made by evangelicals that has no scientific support (Mooney 2005, pp. 206—207).

Bush’s obstruction of stem-cell research, which holds promise to provide a wide range of therapies, is based on the theological view that a 150-cell embryo contains a human soul. While scientists may prefer to remain neutral on the matter of souls, they should point out that an embryo cannot suffer while stem-cell research could result in the reduction of real suffering in fully developed humans (Harris, 2005, pp. 165—167; Mooney 2006, pp. 185—204).

Bush’s appointee to the Food and Drug Administration’s Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory committee, gynecologist W. David Hager, is an evangelical who prescribes Bible readings to treat premenstrual syndrome. Hager was primarily responsible for the FDA blocking over-the-counter sales of the birth-control drug known as Plan B. This was despite testimony before his committee by a scientific advisory panel that “Plan B was the safest product that we have ever seen brought before us” (Mooney 2005, pp. 215—220).

Evangelicals have also influenced Bush administration policies on the environment, leading the White House to intervene in 2003 to remove cautions against global warming from a report on the environment (Mooney 2005, p. 90). More recently, Bush has seemed to make an about-face on global warming, but NASA is still delaying or canceling a number of satellites designed to obtain critical information on Earth climate. Bush gives the space station higher priority, despite the fact that a consensus of scientists regard it as scientifically useless.

In October 2005, George Deutsch, a presidential appointee at NASA headquarters, sent an e-mail message to Flint Wild, a NASA contractor working on a set of Web presentations for middle-school students. The message said the word theory should be added after every mention of the Big Bang. The Big Bang is “not proven fact; it is opinion,” Mr. Deutsch wrote, adding, “It is not NASA’s place, nor should it be, to make a declaration such as this about the existence of the universe that discounts intelligent design by a creator” (Revkin 2006b). This was just another instance where NASA scientists were pressured to limit discussions on topics uncomfortable to the Bush administration, including global warming (Revkin 2006a).

While scientists have begun to speak out on these issues, they have not directly confronted the religious thinking that forms the basis of these policies. Presumably, they fear offending “deeply held beliefs.” I am pleading that religion no longer be given this free ride. The stakes are too high.

Let science compete with religion in the marketplace of ideas. Scientists should question religious assumptions just as they question those of other scientists. And they should vigorously protest whenever faith is used to suppress sound scientific results.

References

• Goldberg, Michelle. 2006. Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism. New York: W.W. Norton.
• Harris, Sam. 2005. The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason. New York: W.W. Norton.
• Hedges, Chris. 2007. American Fascists. New York: Free Press.
• Larson, Edward J., and Larry Witham. 1998. Leading scientists still reject God. Nature 394:313.
• Linker, Damon. 2006. The Theocons: Secular American under Siege. New York: Doubleday.
• Mooney, Chris. 2005. The Republican War on Science. New York: Basic Books. National Academy of Sciences. 1998. Teaching about Evolution and the Nature of Science. Washington, D.C: National Academy of Sciences: p. 58. Available at: www.nap.edu/ catalog/5787.html; accessed March 5, 2006.
• Phillips, Kevin. 2006. American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century. New York: Viking Penguin.
• Revkin, Andrew C. 2006a. Climate expert says NASA tried to silence him. The New York Times. January 29.
• Revkin, Andrew C. 2006b. NASA chief backs agency openness. The New York Times. February 4.

If it has been the long-term goal of the PEAR group to be featured in the mainstream literature, then they have finally achieved their goal. The imminent closure of the PEAR laboratory has been commented upon in both The New York Times (Carey 2007) and Nature (Ball 2007). The Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC) featured a long and sympathetic interview with the director of PEAR, Professor Robert Jahn, on February 27. There are no plans by Princeton to continue to support work in this area. The university administration has maintained a discreet silence about the PEAR group and its remarkable research.

The startling claims of the PEAR group fall into the broad category of parapsychology, specifically psychokinesis (moving objects with the mind) and remote viewing (extrasensory perception). However, the PEAR team avoids terms such as psychokinesis and telekinesis in favor of less provocative terms such as anomalous transfer of information and anomalous injection of information into the data stream. The PEAR group has recently published a summary of the first twenty-five years of their work (Jahn and Dunne 2005). A critical analysis of some of the PEAR claims has recently appeared in this journal (Jeffers 2006).

Much of the work of the PEAR group has employed “random event generators” (REGs), which are essentially electronic random number generators whose “operators” are invited, by dint of their own intentionality, to bias in such a way that the mean of the random number distribution would be either higher or lower than it would be in the absence of their intentional efforts. The claim is that some “operators” can achieve a bias consistent with their intentions at a level that, although minute, is statistically very unlikely to have arisen by chance.

In his CBC interview, Professor Jahn stood fervently by his claims and said that he would repeat this long effort “in a heartbeat.” He remains convinced that his work reveals something profound about the nature of mind and matter. However, it is somewhat telling that, despite this long record of experimentation, very few in the academy have been convinced of the validity of the claims. Most of the work has been reported in the Journal of Scientific Exploration, a periodical specializing in claims for all kinds of physical, biological, and parapsychological anomalous effects. Two papers have appeared in more mainstream journals, the IEEE (back in 1992) and Foundations of Physics. The attitude of most of the academy has either been immediate rejection without a close examination of the evidence or simple indifference. One notable exception is the support offered to the PEAR group by one Nobel Laureate in physics, Brian Josephson. One waggish editor did offer to publish a PEAR paper “if it could be transmitted telepathically.”

The work of the PEAR group does raise larger issues for the academy concerning academic freedom. Princeton, to its credit, has recognized Jahn’s freedom to pursue a controversial area despite the obvious discomfort of some of the faculty, particularly in the physics department.

As with any other claim, the veracity of PEAR’s claims will finally be settled by time-honored methods of science—and demand reproducibility. Here PEAR has a significant problem. To its credit, PEAR did engage two other groups of researchers at two different German universities in a three-way attempt at validating the claims. However, none of these groups—including PEAR itself—was able to reproduce the claimed effects.

Furthermore, as has been previously pointed out, there are some problems with the calibration data of PEAR’s REG. As far back as 1987 (Jahn and Dunne) the PEAR team claimed that the performance of their REGs when no one was invited to influence them showed a distribution that was better than Gaussian. This effect was dubbed “baseline bind.” It was attributed to the unconscious actions on the part of “operators” to please the experimenters (how one can test for unconscious intentionality is unclear). However, the baseline data reported later over a long period exhibits a trend that is unlikely by chance at the p=.05 level. This was the level of statistical significance previously employed to claim a significant effect. I have argued that the later data exhibit baseline bias and hence the REG over the long term is not generating random numbers as claimed. This has to call the basic claims into question.

Although the PEAR lab will be no more, work in this area is expected to continue under the auspices of the International Consciousness Research Laboratories, a not-for-profit public foundation. One suspects that, without the cachet that attaches to the Princeton name, this group will have an even more difficult time convincing the skeptical community.

References

• Ball, P. 2007. When research goes PEAR shaped. Available at nature.com.
• Carey, B. 2007. After 28 years, Princeton loses ESP lab to the relief of some. The New York Times, February 10.
• Jahn, R.G., and B. Dunne. 1987. Margins of Reality: The Role of Consciousness in the Physical World. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
• —. 2005. The PEAR proposition, Journal of Scientific Exploration, 19, (2), 195—246.
• Jeffers. 2006. The PEAR proposition—Fact or fallacy? Skeptical Inquirer, 30 (3): 54—57, May/June.

Today the climate has changed fundamentally. Complementary therapies seem to be encouraged everywhere. A government-sponsored patient guide published by the Prince of Wales’s Foundation for Integrated Health reads like a promotional brochure for complementary practitioners. The recent “Smallwood Report,” which was commissioned directly by Prince Charles (and funded by Dame Porter), goes one decisive step further: it advocates homeopathy as “an alternative” to conventional asthma treatments. And in his WHO address, Prince Charles again spoke out in favor of complementary medicine: “We need to re-discover and re-integrate some of the knowledge and well-tried practices that have been accumulated over thousand of years.”

With all this plugging and promoting, few people seem to bother about the scientific evidence. Is there, for instance, reasonable proof that homeopathy treats asthma effectively? If not, such advice could actually kill hundreds of British asthma patients per year! The answer is that the totality of the best evidence available today fails to show that homeopathy works for asthma. We therefore have a case in which the current trend toward “integrated health” is disclosed as being detrimental to the health of the nation.

Nonetheless, “integrated healthcare” is being pushed at all cost as the new buzzword for providing complementary medicine to the masses. According to Prince Charles, “We need to harness the best of modern science and technology, but not at the expense of losing the best of what complementary approaches have to offer. That is integrated health—it really is that simple.” In his WHO address he put it differently: “I believe that the proper mix of proven complementary, traditional, and modern remedies, which emphasizes the active participation of the patient, can help to create a powerful healing force for our world.”

This statement, it seems to me, is in fairly good agreement with the view expressed in a recent letter by thirteen British doctors (I was one of them) to all National Health Service (NHS) trusts. We urged the NHS to use those treatments (complementary or orthodox) that are backed up by good evidence and abandon those that are not. In other words, we did something entirely obvious and legitimate: we advocated the application of the rules of evidence-based medicine and pleaded for a single standard in healthcare. One could argue that Prince Charles’s public statements are a lay person’s expression of the concepts of evidence-based medicine. Great! I am delighted. But let’s be honest. If he means what he says, he should forthwith instruct all who work for him to stop promoting unproven or disproven treatments.

My team and I have researched complementary treatments for thirteen years. We have found many that generate more good than harm and many that don’t. In the second edition of our Desktop Guide to Complementary and Alternative Medicine (just published by Elsevier), we summarize the evidence in fifty-two different situations where one complementary therapy or another is unquestionably effective and many others where effectiveness is likely. If we all, including Prince Charles and his Foundation for Integrated Health, use this type of evidence wisely we can maximize the benefits of complementary medicine with minimal risk. But this approach requires critical analysis rather than unquestioning belief—and we don’t even need a new name for it. It’s called evidence-based medicine.

Velikovskyism saw ancient world history through a bizarre prism of civilization-affecting planetary pinballs.

Von Danikenism attributed major achievements of ancient history, especially in the New World, not to the ingenuity of indigenous peoples but to ancient astronauts visiting Earth and stimulating creation of its archaeological wonders.

Gellerism promoted a showman conjuror as a real psychic with an ability to bend spoons with his mind and to cause several prominent but credulous physicists to lose their grips on reality.

Astrology had gained such a foothold on thought that astronomer Bart Bok and Paul Kurtz provoked worldwide controversy over a simple “Objections to Astrology” statement signed by 192 prominent scientists saying that astrology was bunk and had nothing to do with astronomy.

Paranormalism seemed everywhere, and New Age mystical thought that arose as part of the counterculture revolution of the late '60s influenced and entwined broad segments of society.

And reports of UFOs, despite the critical Condon report only seven years earlier, flew in regularly and gained credulous publicity in the press.

In the intervening three decades the specific claims that we might broadly label paranormal or pseudoscientific have changed dramatically. Most of the specific manifestations of the enthusiasms I just mentioned have waned. Some have even disappeared.

The situation has changed so much that Paul sometimes argues that no one is interested in the paranormal anymore. (I almost detect a certain longing!) We have some interesting internal debates about that, but to the degree it is true I have argued, and still do argue, that one key reason has been the remarkable work of CSICOP and the Skeptical Inquirer . . . and the network of scientists, scholars, and investigators worldwide it invigorated in forcefully addressing these and similar claims, providing detailed scientific analyses that showed their empirical poverty, and-in the end-debunking them. Solidly. Convincingly. Comprehensively. I think it has been a remarkable achievement.

Of course, as many of us note, although the cultural climate has shifted a lot, and in some respects for the better, the modern communications revolution has multiplied almost exponentially the number and types of outlets now available for the rapid promulgation of all new information and ideas, good and bad, reliable and unreliable-and that goes for pseudoscientific and paranormal nonsense and all its popular manifestations.

I won't even begin to detail all this here. We've dealt with all these matters in the Skeptical Inquirer now for years-and of course will continue to do so. Also, we have never limited ourselves to just the paranormal and pseudoscience. We deal with all topics at the intersection of science, public perception, and public misperception, with emphasis on those that attract large notice or that raise important public issues.

What I want to do here is sketch out some new and-I think-disturbing aspects of the cultural climate we find ourselves in and emphasize the higher values that CSICOP and the Skeptical Inquirer exemplify and promote-values that seem essential to a modern, progressive, humane society; values that are under assault from broad quarters of society here and abroad. No matter the specific, topical subjects we analyze and critique-the defense of these values is what we are really all about.

If thirty years ago Paul Kurtz and others were worried that we were in danger of descending toward a new dark age of superstition, paranormalism, mysticism, and pseudoscience, we in fact seem now to be in danger of descending toward a new dark age of a slightly different-and perhaps even more dangerous-sort. The first was more one of credulous, wide-eyed acceptance of wondrous, incredible claims. In retrospect, it all has a certain air of innocence. These claims all had their counterparts, after all, in science and could be seen or interpreted as just misguided but understandable fascinations uninformed by real science. Show people the real science and they might easily-at least in principle-shift their support to it. UFOs ’ the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Astrology ’ astronomy. Van Daniken pseudoarchaeology ’ real archaeology. Psychic powers and parapsychology ’ experimental psychology and modern studies of neuroscience and cognition. And so on.

But the new areas you and I are most concerned about now aren't like that. Not at all. They arise from deep-seated ideologies. They arise from a dangerous capturing of mainstream, liberal, open-minded, religious viewpoints by those with far more extreme, narrow, rigid, authoritarian, judgmental religious viewpoints. They a- rise from a willingness, even a devout-many think God- sanctioned-determination to impose those viewpoints on everyone else. We've seen this abroad, but it is happening here in American too.

Their attacks are on many things, but among those that concern us here are-

The open-minded tolerance of others slightly different from oneself that marks a progressive society.

The love of learning and the quest for new knowledge that mark a progressive society.

The willingness to entertain and examine new ideas that marks a progressive society.

A free and open society’s distrust of authoritarian dogma, whatever the source-biblical or otherwise.

Freedom of expression and the clear separation of church and state on which this nation was founded.

Reliance on science-based evidence over unexamined belief and prejudice.

The basic rights of women to make their own choices, to be educated, and to shape their own futures.

A deep appreciation for education and a nurturing of environments for creativity and achieving novel solutions to problems.

A related deep appreciation for not just the useful achievements of science but for the methods of science in determining and advancing provisional new truths, small and large, about the natural world.

An acceptance that those methods of science often result in reliable judgments about what is real and what is not.

A realization that we humans-while unique in our humanity-are nevertheless part of the natural world, and derived from and influenced by a long co-evolutionary history with the other life forms, large to microscopic, of the natural world.

In short, these attacks are on many key aspects of the modern world first shaped by the Enlightenment and the beginnings of science-when we began to develop the first abilities to actually deeply understand nature and, to some degree, exert some fledgling, limited controls of it for the well-being of people. They are attacks on curiosity and learning and on the scientific outlook itself. They are attacks on intellectual inquiry and thought-the open-minded, no-holds-barred examination of competing ideas and claims that is essential to an open, democratic society.

In many respects - although their proponents in America would no doubt dispute being so characterized-these are attacks on democracy itself. For these fundamentalist partisans would-if allowed-willingly impose their own, very specific ideological views on those they oppose.

We have to fight these trends.

We will fight these trends.

Our efforts at CSICOP and in the Skeptical Inquirer can't and don't deal with these issues in the abstract. Instead, we examine, critique, review, and report on specific, concrete topics, within the broad context of science and reason.

But it is important to keep in mind the higher values we nevertheless are defending:

• Reason and rationality, among the highest, most hard-won attributes of thinking, independent people.
• The scientific outlook, with its rich tradition of creative, open-minded, empirical inquiry and evidence-based probing of nature’s secrets.
• The skeptical attitude, a key component of the scientific outlook, with its obligation to put all new assertions to tests of empirical evidence.
• The traditions of learning-real learning, deep and broad-and the value of education not only in achieving a better life for each person but in creating reflective minds and in improving the lot of society.
• The deepest traditions of democracy-valuing human dignity and rights, drawing on the free and open interplay of ideas, and depending upon an educated, informed citizenry for making wise decisions.

No small matters. No small challenges.

Are we up to it? We have to be. There is no choice.

Resentment of American cultural and political dominance clearly fuels other “disbelievers,” including those political groups who had been hoping for a different outcome to the Space Race—for example, many Cuban schools, both in Cuba and where Cuban schoolteachers were loaned, such as Sandinista Nicaragua, taught their students that Apollo was a fraud.

Like a counter-culture heresy, the “moon hoax” theme had been lingering beyond the fringes of mainstream society for decades. A self-published pamphlet here, or a “B-grade” science fiction movie there, or a radio talk show guest over there—for many years it all looked like a shriveling leftover of the original human inability to accept the reality of revolutionary changes.

But in the last ten years, an entirely new wave of hoax theories have appeared—on cable TV, on the Internet, via self-publishing, and through other “alternative” publication methods. These methods are the result of technological progress that Apollo symbolized, now ironically fueling the arguments against one of the greatest technological achievements in human history.

NASA’s official reaction to these and other questions was both clumsy and often counter-productive. On the infamous Fox Television moon hoax program, which was broadcast several times in the first half of 2001, a NASA spokesman named Brian Welch appeared several times to counter the hoaxist arguments (Welch was a top-level official at the Public Affairs Office at NASA Headquarters, who died a few months later). The poor TV impression he gave (a know-it-all “rocket scientist” denouncing each argument as false but usually without providing supporting evidence) may have been due to deliberate editing by the producers to make the “NASA guy” look arrogant and contemptuous. But to a large degree it accurately reflected NASA’s institutional attitude to the entire controversy. The disappointing results of participating seemed to strengthen the view within NASA that the best response was no response—to avoid anything that might dignify the charges.

Roger Launius, then the chief of the history office at headquarters, was an exception to NASA’s overall unwillingness to engage the issue. As an amateur space historian and folklorist, I had been discussing with him for years the need for NASA to fulfill its educational outreach charter and to issue a series of modest monographs (a historian’s term for a single-theme pamphlet-length publication) on many different widespread cultural myths about space activities. These ranged from allegations of UFO sightings (and videotapings) by astronauts, to the discovery of alien artifacts on the Moon and Mars and elsewhere, to miraculous and paranormal folklore associated with space activities, to the hoax accusations. Launius, nearing retirement in early 2002, decided it was time for a detailed response to the Apollo hoax accusations, and offered me a sole-source contract to write a monograph that analyzed why such stories seemed so attractive to so many people. Launius departed NASA soon thereafter, leaving the project in the care of a junior historian, Stephen Garber.

My requests for inputs from various NASA offices and public educational organizations soon reached the ears of news reporters, and some print stories appeared in late October. Although NASA officials were somewhat taken aback by the publicity, they were at first inclined to defend the project on educational grounds.

Then, on Monday, November 4, 2002, the eve of the national elections, ABC’s World News Tonight anchor Peter Jennings chose the subject for his closing story: “Finally this evening, we're not quite sure what we think about this,” he intoned. “But the space agency is going to spend a few thousand dollars trying to prove to some people that the United States did indeed land men on the moon.”

Jennings described how “NASA had been so rattled” it “hired” somebody “to write a book refuting the conspiracy theorists.” He closed with a misquotation: “A professor of astronomy in California said he thought it was beneath NASA’s dignity to give these Twinkies the time of day. Now, that was his phrase, by the way. We simply wonder about NASA.”

Jennings was referring to Philip Plait, an educator (not a professor) in California who runs the Bad Astronomy Web site that discusses many mythical aspects of outer space. What Plait actually had said was that he felt it was proper for NASA to respond, but that it did seem “beneath their dignity” to be forced to do it. Contrary to Jennings’s account, Plait fully supported the monograph contract.

But that TV insult did it as far as NASA management was concerned. Their dignity called into question, and fearing angry telephone calls from congressmen returning to Washington after the election, they decided to revoke the contract. They paid for work done to date and washed their hands of the project.

Many educators contacted me in dismay. Like them, and unlike the NASA spokesmen, I had always felt that “there is no such thing as a stupid question.” And to me the moon hoax controversy was not a bothersome distraction, but a unique opportunity.

This is the way I see it: If many people who are exposed to the hoaxist arguments find them credible, it is neither the fault of the hoaxists or of their believers—it’s the fault of the educators and explainers (NASA among them) who were responsible for providing adequate knowledge and workable reasoning skills. And the localized success of the hoaxist arguments thus provides us with a detection system to identify just where these resources are inadequate.

I intend to complete the project, depending on successfully arranging new funding sources. The popularity of this particular myth is a heaven-sent (or actually, an “outer-space-sent”) opportunity to address fundamental issues of public understanding of technological controversies.

Much the same could be said for those of us toiling on behalf of science and reason and scientific skepticism. Paul Kurtz and CSICOP and many others in the skeptical movement have regularly been chided over the years for even raising the possibility that forces of unreason could actually threaten our modern democratic world, that opponents of reason, rationality, critical thinking, freedom, tolerance, openness, learning, and personal human and intellectual dignity might actually gain such a foothold as to be a threat to us all. I don't think anyone is saying that anymore.

We have long advocated not just good science but an open, scientific outlook-a viewpoint that values an open-mindedness to new ideas, a determination to let facts and evidence rather than wishes and preconceptions and ideology shape our judgments, skepticism toward assertions unsupported by good evidence, wide open debate and communication and publication, and the application of critical analysis and judgment at every step of the process.

Much of what we have critiqued has come under the rubric of the paranormal, of fringe science, of pseudoscience, of bogus science. Science is my passion, and all these represent anti-science or counter-science manifestations that confuse, taint, misdirect, delude, distract us all-but the believers most of all-from what the real world is all about. We no longer can indulge such distractions.

I think in the short term at least we are going to see less nonsense. Psychic abilities failed to warn us of the September 11 attacks, and now it should be clear to all but the most committed or muddle-headed that such powers just don't exist. The attacks were soon followed by bogus Nostradamus “predictions” and other inevitable clap-trap, but those were quickly countered by anti-hoax, urban legend Web sites and frequent media stories debunking the BS and giving the true facts. The new real world has less tolerance for pretense. When the first anthrax attacks came, people turned to modern medicine, not unfounded remedies. As Bob Park of the American Physical Society pointed out in his “What’s New” electronic newsletter, “Fortunately those exposed to anthrax are being diagnosed and treated with the very latest scientific medicine. They are not being treated with homeopathy, acupuncture, touch therapy, magnets, reflexology, crystals, chelation, craniosacral therapy, echinacea, aromatherapy, or yohimbe bark. And no one is complaining.”

Yes, shameless promoters emerged claiming that certain herbal remedies, even homeopathy, might help against anthrax. Yeah, sure! I will give those claims credence when the first person with a confirmed diagnosis of anthrax rejects any application of antibiotics and insists on taking herbs or homeopathy, as the only treatment, instead of (not in addition to) modern antibiotics. That’s the criterion we must hold that claim to.

So I think we now have, if only for a short time, a new era of no-nonsense. People know they have no choice but to confront the real world directly, on its own terms. There is no escape into a trivial, pretend world of nonexistent woo-woo.

I also want to offer a few words about the future of scientific skepticism and what might be called the modern skeptical movement. We celebrated our twenty-fifth anniversary this year. We are far from perfect and we have occasionally made mistakes, but I think CSICOP and the many scientists, psychologists, scholars, writers, and investigators worldwide who make up the movement have done, all in all, a remarkable job of defending science and scientific inquiry. They have critically examined virtually every important case asserting powers or forces “unknown to science.” They have helped educate the public and the media about what good science is all about. And they have helped keep alive, amid a media-driven frenzy of uncritical popular acceptance of outlandish nonsense plus postmodernist-driven obscurantism in too many parts of academia, the true scientific spirit toward claims of knowledge.

In my own twenty-fifth anniversary essays in the Skeptical Inquirer this past year (May/June and July August 2001), I made a number of recommendations for how to keep scientific skepticism strong, vital, and relevant for the twenty-first century. I'll mention only a few here:

• Continually emphasize what we are for: honesty, integrity, good science, clear thinking, intelligence, scientific literacy, science education, open scientific inquiry.
• Always strive to bring a scientific viewpoint-even an imaginative scientific viewpoint-to skepticism. Keep ourselves close to science. Science is exciting, intellectually stimulating, interesting, popular with the public, and all that can carry over to skeptical investigation.
• Treasure the imaginative/creative and the skeptical/evaluative aspects of science and keep them together, as they should be.

And now I'll add two more that I didn't mention in those essays:

• Fight, critique, and examine at all levels, but stay high-minded; keep the moral high ground. Paul Kurtz has exemplified that, and it must be continued.
• We must do everything possible to find and identify the next generation of leaders of the skeptical movement-bright, curious, intelligent, concerned young men and women knowledgeable about science and skepticism, concerned about unreason wherever it exists, and full of energy and determination to do all they can, in their own way, and able to communicate their passion to the broader public in all the diverse ways now available. I know many such people (some are working right now at or with CSICOP), but we need more, and they need encouragement from all of us.

The influence of both CSICOP and the Skeptical Inquirer has been significant. Both are widely referenced in scientific and scholarly publications as well as the popular media. CSICOP’s media outreach efforts provide responsible, authoritative scientific information and experts to media worldwide.

The controversy and media and public interest that accompanied our founding still surround almost everything we do. I believe that maintaining close ties to the values of science and scientific inquiry has guided us through and around the worst thickets and pitfalls.

In my view, our reputation for commitment to scientific skepticism, reason and rationality, critical thinking, and scientific integrity is stronger than ever. That serves us well. It serves science well. And serves the public well.

As we find ourselves in the early stages of a period of human history riddled with fearful new perils we hoped we would never have to face, our battles for clear, realistic thinking and against the forces of unreason-wherever they manifest themselves-are more important and more relevant today than ever before.

Today, under the mandate of the Congress and in the name of “national security,” the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is using much the same technique with a little box wired to unwary subjects: the polygraph. The polygraph has its own colorful history, not unlike its Roman predecessor. In 1915, a Harvard professor named William Moulton Marston developed what he termed a “lie detector” based on measurements of blood pressure. A few other bells and whistles were added over time, but for all intents and purposes the polygraph has remained unchanged over the past eighty-five years. Marston went on to gain fame not as the inventor of the polygraph, but from the cartoon character he created: Wonder Woman, who snapped a magic lasso that corralled evildoers and forced them to tell the truth.

Perhaps polygraphers would do better with Wonder Woman’s lasso than they have been doing with their box. The secret of the polygraph-the polygraphers’ own shameless deception-is that their machine is no more capable of assessing truth telling than were the priests of ancient Rome standing knee-deep in chicken parts. Nonetheless, the polygrapher tries to persuade the unwitting subject that their measurements indicate when a lie is being told. The subject, nervously strapped in a chair, is often convinced by the aura surrounding this cheap parlor trick, and is then putty in the hands of the polygrapher, who launches into an intrusive, illegal, and wide-ranging inquisition. The subject is told, from time to time, that the machine is indicating “deception” (it isn't, of course), and he is continuously urged to “clarify” his answers, by providing more and more personal information. At some point (it’s completely arbitrary and up to the judgment of the polygrapher), the test is stopped and the polygrapher renders a subjective assessment of “deceptive response.” Even J. Edgar Hoover knew this was senseless. He banned the polygraph test from within the ranks of the FBI as a waste of time.

Every first-year medical student knows that the four parameters measured during a polygraph-blood pressure, pulse, sweat production, and breathing rate-are affected by an uncountable myriad of emotions: joy, hate, elation, sadness, anxiety, depression, and so forth. But, there is not one chapter-not one-in any medical text that associates these quantities in any way with an individual’s intent to deceive. More important, dozens of studies over the past twenty years conducted in psychology departments and medical schools all over the world have shown that the polygraph cannot distinguish between truth-telling and lying. Despite testimonials from polygraphers, no evidence exists that they can find spies with their mystical box. Indeed, their track record is miserable: Aldrich Ames and the Walker brothers, unquestionably among the most damaging of moles within the intelligence community, all passed their polygraphs-repeatedly-every five years.

The truth is this: The polygraph is a ruse, carefully constructed as a tool of intimidation, and used as an excuse to conduct an illegal inquisition under psychologically and physically unpleasant circumstances. Spies know how to beat it, and no court in the land permits submission of polygraphs, even to exonerate the accused.

Many innocent people have had their lives and careers ruined by thoughtless interrogation initiated during polygraphy. David King, a twenty-year Navy veteran suspected of selling classified information, was held in prison for 500 days and subjected to multiple polygraphs, many lasting as long as nineteen hours. A military judge dismissed all evidence against him. Mark Mullah, a career FBI agent, was the subject of a massive, nighttime surprise search of his home, followed by a review of every financial record, appointment book, personal calendar, daily “to-do” list, personal diary, and piece of correspondence-all as a result of a “positive” polygraph test. He was then placed under surveillance around the clock, and was followed by aircraft as he moved about during the day. Nothing was ever proved, and his FBI badge was restored, without apologies. But his career was destroyed, and he was never again above suspicion, all because a polygrapher-with eighty hours of “training”-asserted that he had lied. Even barbers must have 1,000 hours of schooling before earning a license to cut hair.

And yet the polygraph is one of the major tools in the new DOE program to bolster security at the nation’s nuclear weapons labs: Sandia, Los Alamos, and Lawrence Livermore. In the wake of the Wen Ho Lee debacle in 1999, bureaucratic Washington, in search of a “quick fix,” made the classic bureaucratic mistake: doing something first, and thinking later. It was the high point of the election cycle, and then-Energy Secretary Bill Richardson was hoping to be nominated as the Democratic vice-presidential candidate. But Richardson, reeling from massive cost-overruns on a gigantic laser project in Livermore, calculated that he needed to show toughness rather than intelligence. Instead of doing the difficult but correct thing-reinstating guards at entry points into the Labs that had been eliminated by his predecessor Hazel O'Leary-Richardson elected to recommend a widespread, screening polygraph program throughout the DOE. Congress went along, and real security was sacrificed on the altar of politics.

The response among the scientific staff at the Labs was universal and united: polygraphs should be avoided at all costs because they undermine national security. The scientists reasoned as follows: first, polygraphs create a false sense of security. As the Aldrich Ames scandal showed so clearly, even when repeated many times, polygraphs are incapable of ferreting out spies. Second, polygraphs would drain enormous resources from sensible security measures and replace them with a feckless deterrent. And finally, polygraphs would demoralize staff, and threaten the vital work of guaranteeing the safety and reliability of nuclear weapons.

After days of official hearings before polygraphs became official policy, neither the DOE nor the Congress paid any attention to the scientists’ concerns. Each of the predictions has come to pass. Wen Ho Lee passed, then failed, then again passed a polygraph, and his polygraphers (both of whom are still working for the DOE) disagree to this day on his veracity. The DOE polygraph program has wasted millions of dollars during the past six months, and will squander $10 million more before the first phase of testing is finished. And, most disturbing of all, the majority of Sandia engineers and scientists who service nuclear weapons in the field have refused to take the test, and the DOE is suddenly without authorized staff to deal with a nuclear weapons emergency. Recruitment of new scientists to this program and to the Labs in general has become nearly impossible. The Laboratories’ leaders are learning that no one feels valued if they are presumed guilty until “proven” innocent by a disreputable test.

But the damage and foolishness doesn't stop there. The DOE has run roughshod over the sensibilities of scientists through a continuous series of distortions over implementation of polygraphs. For example, DOE polygraphers claim that there are but four questions to the examination, all directly related to national security. This is a lie. In each and every polygraph exam, the subject will invariably be told something like this: “You've done pretty well, but there is a problem here with question number 3. Is there something you were thinking or worried about that you would like to get off your chest before we continue?” This isn't directed questioning; it is a fishing expedition, and has no place among loyal scientists nor in civil society.

Further, during the public hearings, polygraphers admitted that there was no scientific evidence that medical conditions (such as diabetes, high blood pressure, or heart disease) affected the outcome of the polygraph. Yet, they still insist that each subject provide a list of all prescription medications and a complete history of medical conditions. The reason they do so is to maintain the aura of the magical polygraph: “We need to know about medications,” said David Renzelman, chief of the DOE polygraph program, “so we can adjust our machine and our readings.” Really? I must have slept through that lecture in medical school.

But things are changing. At the recommendation of Sandia National Laboratories’ chief medical officer, who has determined that polygraphs are a risk to the health and safety of employees, President C. Paul Robinson has informed the DOE that intrusive medical questions will stop, or he will instruct Sandians not to take the polygraph. This principled action may precipitate Congressional hearings-long avoided by polygraphers-which could finally reveal the truth about the polygraphs grave effects on national security.

Protecting secrets is a challenging task. Spies, particularly those operating within the national security establishment, are very difficult to find. But certainly we should not make their task easier with measures like the polygraph that are, in the end, self-defeating. The scientists at the national laboratories are willing to sacrifice some of their constitutional protections for meaningful benefits to security, but they are unwilling to do so for nonsense. It is time to relegate the polygraph-the fanciful creation of a comic book writer-to the ash heap of bad ideas and misplaced belief.