. . . About Pseudoscience
and Fringe Science

In the Name of Science (1952), republished as Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science (1957)

Science: Good, Bad and Bogus (1981, 1983, 1989)

How Not to Test a Psychic

The New Age: Notes of a Fringe Watcher* (1998, 1991)

On the Wild Side* (1992)

Weird Water and Fuzzy Logic* (1996)

Did Adam and Eve Have Navels?* (2000)

The Jinn from Hyperspace* (2008)

When You Were a Tadpole and I Was a Fish* (2009)

*In part, collections of his SI columns,

. . . About Science

Relativity for the Million

The Ambidextrous Universe

The New Ambidextrous Universe

Great Essays in Science (ed.)

. . . On Other Topics

Mathematics, Magic, and Mystery

The Scientific American Book of Mathematical Puzzles and Diversions

The Annotated Alice

The Annotated Ancient Mariner

Aha! Insight

The Sixth Book of Mathematical Games from Scientific American

Mathematical Carnival

Aha! Gotcha

Order and Surprise

The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener

The Magic Numbers of Dr. Matrix

Knotted Doughnuts and Other Mathematical Entertainments

The No-Sided Professor (short stories)

The Wreck of the Titanic Foretold? (ed.)

Time Travel and Other Mathematical Bewilderments

Gardner’s Whys and Wherefores

Penrose Tiles to Trapdoor Ciphers

The Healing Revelations of Mary Baker Eddy

Urantia: The Great Cult Mystery

The Universe in a Handkerchief

The Center for Inquiry Libraries at CFI’s headquarters in Amherst, New York, have approximately twelve linear feet of papers donated by Martin Gardner. The papers are arranged as created by Gardner himself: three drawers of materials are organized alphabetically by name; the remaining drawers are organized by topic, including all the various fields of skepticism, the paranormal, religious criticism, etc. Approximately 450 books are similarly categorized. No books or papers concerning Gardner’s mathematical interests or his Scientific American columns are located at the Center, unless they relate to the above topics.

Martin Gardner, the polymath writer, critic, and skeptic who is widely regarded as the father of modern skepticism, died May 22, 2010, in Norman, Oklahoma, at the age of ninety-five. He helped found our Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (then CSICOP) and wrote for this magazine since its inception. (His final “Notes of a Fringe Watcher” column appears on page 10.) Throughout his life, Gardner wrote knowledgeably about an astonishing range of topics with a combination of clarity, wit, and critical intelligence that delighted readers worldwide. Those who knew him regarded him as a dear friend, a modest man, and a national intellectual treasure. In a celebration of his life, writings, and mind, we here present invited tributes from a number of noted skeptics and scholars. We begin with two of his closest friends and colleagues, Ray Hyman and James Randi. Like him, they were founding fellows of CSICOP and original and longtime members of its executive council.

—The Editor

Exposing Crackpots and Charlatans

ROBERT CARROLL

Martin Gardner’s writings on the paranormal and pseudoscience profoundly influenced a generation of writers, including me, as can be seen by the many references to his works in The Skeptic’s Dictionary. He introduced us to a bizarre world populated by the likes of L. Ron Hubbard, Rudolf Steiner, Edgar Cayce, Bridey Murphy, and a host of other characters on the fringe. He taught us that crackpots and charlatans are dangerous. They should not be ignored but instead thoroughly exposed for what they are by detailed critical analysis.

My introduction to Gardner was through his Scientific American column on brain teasers and logic puzzles. When he gave up writing that brilliant and much-missed column, Douglas Hofstadter picked up the mantle. My obsession with Gardner’s writings on the paranormal and pseudoscience began after reading a Hofstadter column titled “World Views in Collision: The Skeptical Inquirer versus the National Inquirer.” Hofstadter’s panegyric to CSICOP and SI is one of the seminal essays in the history of scientific skepticism. Every skeptic should keep it at the ready for inspiration and revitalization. (The essay, reprinted in Hofstadter’s Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern, includes an account of Gardner’s split with Marcello Truzzi over how best to deal with Immanuel Velikovsky and other pseudoscientists.)

Hofstadter’s essay inspired many teachers to become followers of SI, which inevitably led us to become followers of Martin Gardner’s many inquiries. In fact, many of us became somewhat fanatical about our inquiries into what Gardner called “wild beliefs.” We can’t stop investigating and writing about them. Thanks to Martin Gardner, James Randi, and others of like spirit, we won’t be quiet until the last bit of bogus science is buried with the last charlatan claiming paranormal or supernatural powers.

Robert Carroll is emeritus professor of philosophy at Sacramento City College and creator of The Skeptic’s Dictionary Web site. He is a CSI fellow.

Visits to Martin

BRYAN FARHA

It was serendipitous that Oklahoma City University (where I teach) brought in James Randi to speak several years ago. While here, Randi asked me to take him to visit his beloved friend, Martin, in nearby Norman, Oklahoma. Martin had been in an assisted living center there since 2002. Randi introduced us, and this began my personal connection to Martin.

Since that day, I periodically visited Martin in his room. Two visits stand out. On one occasion the visit was professionally motivated because an author asked me to interview Martin for his book. About midway through, Martin turned the tables and he became the interviewer. I was surprised at his sudden interest in me. What stood out most was his inquiring about my beliefs and view of religion—just before I was going to ask him similar questions on the same subject. He sensed my frustration in not knowing exactly how to “label” my beliefs. After giving him a lengthy explanation, he said, “I know how to label your beliefs.” He continued, “You’re a philosophical theist, like me.” It was great to finally be able to concretize my position. Until that time, I really didn’t know what to call it. When my interview of Martin concluded, I went home and immediately Googled the term. The first thing I found was
a Wikipedia definition. The end of the entry now states, “Martin Gardner (1914–2010) was a contemporary defender of philosophical theism.” It was obvious Martin knew what he was talking about.

The other visit that stood out was personally motivated; I took my nine-year-old nephew, Cole, to meet this extraordinary man. Martin amazed Cole with visual illusions, which were displayed throughout his room. Particularly eye-catching to Cole was the “Paper Dragon” illusion—designed for a special gathering honoring Martin. He had a very effective way of using entertainment as an educational tool. It certainly worked for Cole. Although Cole may not have had a full appreciation for the magnitude of Martin’s brilliance, one day he will.

As close as my proximity to Martin was, I’m sorry I didn’t visit him more often—my loss. I’ve had many favorite issues of the Skeptical Inquirer over the years. I suspect this issue will climb to the top of my list.

Bryan Farha is a professor at Oklahoma City University, where he coordinates the graduate program in applied behavioral studies, and is editor of Paranormal Claims: A Critical Analysis.

The Connoisseur of Paradox

JOHN ALLEN PAULOS

A connoisseur of paradox, Martin Gardner had a fittingly paradoxical career. Although he majored in philosophy and took no mathematics courses after high school, he probably did more to stimulate an appreciation for, curiosity about, and discussion of mathematical ideas than scores of us mathematics professors.

I remember reading his books on recreational math as an undergraduate and being eager to explain the puzzles in them to whoever would listen. In a couple of cases I even used them to win small bets. Over the years we exchanged a couple of book blurbs, a benign log(arithm)-rolling that was a signal honor for me, and we also corresponded a bit about his novel The Art of Peter Fromm and other topics, jokes in particular. Once he sent me a letter with some quite funny, quite non-G-rated examples. Later, in the Scientific American, he published a very elegant illustration of a religious hoax I proposed based on Kruskal’s theorem.

His interests ranged from Lewis Carroll and the philosophy of mathematics to scientific hoaxes and popular culture. Even in his last essay for the Skeptical Inquirer (March/April 2010) published in his lifetime, he took on Oprah Winfrey’s pseudo-cures. A modest man, a clear-eyed skeptic, and an expositor extraordinaire, he was a cogent beacon of sanity to the end.

John Allen Paulos is professor of mathematics at Temple University and author of such books as Innumeracy, A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper, and Once Upon a Number. He is a CSI fellow.

Characterizing the Hermit Scientist

SCOTT O. LILIENFELD

I had been deeply interested in scientific skepticism for a solid fifteen years before I read Martin Gardner’s classic book Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science, first published as In the Name of Science in 1952. In fact, for quite some time I had resisted reading it. No book that old, I assumed, could possibly offer much to us today. Moreover, I thought, Gardner’s examples must surely be outdated.

Nothing, I soon discovered, could be further from the truth. Indeed, on finally reading Fads and Fallacies, I was amazed by how fresh and relevant it is to modern skepticism—and to the psychology of pseudoscience. As all dedicated skeptics know, in this book Gardner delineated the core characteristics of the “hermit scientist,” whom we might regard as the prototypical pseudoscientist. For Gardner, the hermit scientist (1) “considers himself as a genius,” (2) “regards his colleagues, without exception, as ignorant blockheads,” (3) “believes himself unjustly persecuted and discriminated against,” (4) “has strong compulsions to focus his attacks on the greatest scientists and the best established theories,” and (5) “has a tendency to write in complex jargon, in many cases making use of terms and phrases he himself has coined.”

These psychological attributes ring as true today as they did nearly sixty years ago. Although some of the lyrics of the song may have changed (Hollow Earthers, orgone theorists, and Lyksenkoists are no longer central foci of skeptical inquiry), the music hasn’t. In contemporary psychological lingo, we might say that Gardner hit upon many of the features of pseudoscientists that predispose them to confirmation bias: the tendency to seek out evidence consistent with one’s hypotheses and to deny, dismiss, or distort evidence that isn’t. When one reads Gardner’s twenty-five remarkable case studies of thinking gone haywire, it is not difficult to discern a common thread running through their enormous surface diversity: the persistent refusal of proponents of pseudoscience to allow contrary evidence to penetrate their web of beliefs. More than anything else, Gardner’s first book is a powerful cautionary tale of the perils of intellectual hubris.

I regard Fads and Fallacies as the most significant work in the history of scientific skepticism, as its message remains every bit as pertinent to the vexing problem of pseudoscience today as it was in the 1950s. Gardner’s passing gives all of us an opportunity not only to mourn the loss of one of the founders of the modern skeptical movement but to revisit the wisdom and insights he imparted so many years ago.

Scott O. Lilienfeld is professor of psychology at Emory University, editor in chief of The Scientific Review of Mental Health Practice, and lead author of 50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology. He is a CSI fellow and SI consulting editor.

The Friend I Never Met

CHRISTOPHER C. FRENCH

I never had the pleasure of meeting Martin Gardner, but I feel as if I have known him as a friend for decades. Over a long and prolific career, he published over seventy books and countless newspaper and magazine articles. These include his regular column for the Skeptical Inquirer, “Notes of a Fringe Watcher,” which ran for almost twenty years and his “Mathematical Games” column, which ran in Scientific American for some twenty-five years.

I cannot claim to have read everything that this great man ever wrote, of course, but I may well have more books on my bookshelves written by him than by any other author. When I try to think back to the first publication of his that I ever read, I simply cannot remember which one it was. Memory is a funny thing, as Martin Gardner well knew, and it feels to me as if his books have been in my life for as long as I can remember, like those really good friends that we all take for granted.

By a process of deduction, I can work out that I must have read his collections of recreational mathematics columns from Scientific American, published under such titles as Mathematical Circus, many years before I read his skeptical classic Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science. The former books entertained and educated me. They made math fun—at least for a self-professed nerd like me!

But Fads and Fallacies had a much more profound impact on me than those stimulating collections of brainteasers. It was one of the first books on skepticism that I read, along with James Randi’s Flim-Flam! and The Truth About Uri Geller and David Marks and Richard Kammann’s The Psychology of the Psychic. The truth is, dear reader, that until well into early adulthood I was . . . well, I guess I have to come clean . . . a believer in the paranormal! The book that actually opened my eyes to the wonderful world of skepticism was James Alcock’s Parapsychology: Science or Magic?, but I quickly followed that excellent volume with the skeptical works of Gardner, Randi, Marks, and Kammann.

One thing is notable about all five of these books: they have all withstood the test of time wonderfully. Indeed, all five are still on reading lists for the course on anomalistic psychology that I teach as part of the BSc Psychology program at Goldsmiths College, University of London (along with lots of more recent texts, of course!). But it should be borne in mind that all of those classics but one were written in the early 1980s. Fads and Fallacies is now well over half a century old and is still well worth reading. It is, of course, somewhat depressing that most of the fads so devastatingly critiqued in this wonderful volume are still going strong today.

Through these works and others (notably, Science: Good, Bad and Bogus and the delightful Annotated Alice books), I felt that I did know Martin Gardner even though I never actually met him. I would like to have met him. I am sure I would have liked him. Like thousands of other fans around the globe, I will miss him.

It is not at all amusing when people are misled by scientific claptrap.

Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science (Dover), p. 6

There is a type of self-styled scientist who can legitimately be called a crank. It is not the novelty of his views or the neurotic motivation behind his work that provide the grounds for calling him this. The grounds are the technical criteria by which theories are evaluated. If a man persists in advancing views that are contradicted by all available evidence, and which offer no reasonable grounds for serious consideration, he will rightfully be dubbed a crank by colleagues.

Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science, p. 8

The modern pseudoscientist . . . stands entirely outside the closely integrated channels through which new ideas are closely integrated and evaluated. He works in isolation.

Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science, p. 11

Even when a pseudoscientific theory is completely worthless there is a certain educational value in refuting it.

Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science, p. 321

I’m not sure why I enjoy debunking. Part of it surely is amusement over the follies of true believers, and [it is] partly because attacking bogus science is a painless way to learn good science. You have to know something about relativity theory, for example, to know where opponents of Einstein go wrong. . . . Another reason for debunking is that bad science contributes to the steady dumbing down of our nation. Crude beliefs get transmitted to political leaders and the result is considerable damage to society.

“A Mind at Play,” interview in the Skeptical Inquirer, March/April 1998, p.36–37

Although “debunker” is often considered a pejorative term, I do not find it so. A major purpose of Skeptical Inquirer has always been to debunk the most outrageous claims of bogus science. I make no apologies for being a debunker. I believe it is the duty of both scientists and science writers to keep exposing the errors of bad science.

Did Adam and Eve Have Navels? (W.W. Norton), p. 2

For every example of a crank who later became a hero there were thousands of cranks who forever remained cranks.

Science: Good, Bad and Bogus (Prometheus), p. xiii

Cranks by definition believe their theories and charlatans do not, but this does not prevent a person from being both a crank and a charlatan.

Science: Good, Bad and Bogus, p. xiv

In discussing extremes of unorthodoxy in science I consider it a waste of time to give rational arguments. Those who are in agreement do not need to be educated about such trivial matters, and trying to enlighten those who disagree is like trying to write on water. . . . For these reasons, when writing about extreme eccentricities of science, I have adopted H.L. Mencken’s sage advice: one horse-laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms.

Science: Good, Bad and Bogus,pp. xv, xvi

I cannot recall when or why I first became interested in pseudoscience. . . . Not being a scientist, but only a science journalist, I have always been intrigued by fringe science, perhaps for the same reason that I enjoy freak shows at carnivals and circuses. Pseudoscientists, especially the extreme cranks, are fascinating creatures for psychological study. Moreover, I have found that one of the best ways to learn something about any branch of science is to find out where its crackpots go wrong.

On the Wild Side (Prometheus), p. 7

As all magicians know, physicists are among the easiest people in the world to be fooled by magic tricks. They are so used to working with Mother Nature, who never cheats, that when confronted with the task of testing a psychic charlatan they have no comprehension of how to set up adequate controls. . . . Am I saying that all psychic researchers should be trained in magic, or seek the aid of magicians, before they test miracle workers? That is exactly what I am saying. The most eminent scientist, untrained in magic, is putty in the hands of a clever charlatan.

“Lessons of a Landmark PK Hoax,” Gardner’s first Skeptical Inquirer column, Summer 1983, p. 18; reprinted as “Project Alpha” in The New Age (Prometheus), 1991 paperback edition

I like to think I am unduly harsh and dogmatic only when writing about a pseudoscience that is far out on the continuum that runs from good science to bad, and when I am expressing the views of all the experts in the relevant field. Where there are areas on the fringes of orthodoxy, supported by respected scientists, I try to be more agnostic.

“A Mind at Play,” interview in the Skeptical Inquirer, March/April 1998, p. 37

Finding 666 in the names of famous people is a number-twiddling pastime that has obsessed numerologists ever since the Book of Revelation was written. With patience and ingenuity it is not difficult to extract 666 from almost any person’s name. For example, using Blevins’s Bible code, I discovered that sun, moon, and Pat J. Buchanan each adds to 666. The same code yields 666 if you apply it to Hal Lindsey B, the B standing, of course, for Beast.

“The Second Coming of Jesus,” “Notes of a Fringe Watcher” column, Skeptical Inquirer, January/February 2000, p. 11

The steady expansion of scientific knowledge is one of the few aspects of human history—perhaps the only aspect—about which we can say dogmatically that genuine progress takes place. Moreover, the progress itself progresses. The expansion occurs with steadily increasing rapidity.

The Ambidextrous Universe (Scribner), preface to the Second Edition

I continue to be amazed that any professional mathematician would suppose that mathematics has no reality apart from human cultures. I am even more astounded that there actually are physicists who think the moon would not be “out there” if no one (not even a mouse? Einstein liked to ask) observed it.

The Jinn from Hyperspace (Prometheus), introduction to Ch. 9, “A Defense of Platonic Realism,” p. 93

If God or the gods, or the Old One (as Einstein liked to call Everything), had a transcendent reason for bringing us into existence, what does it matter whether the first man and woman were formed in one day from the dust of the ground, as Genesis has it, or evolved over billions of years from the dust of a primeval fireball? The fact that we are here proves that we derive, in some crazy sense, from the fireball, and I for one find this more miraculous than the Genesis story.

A review of Steven Weinberg’s book, The First Three Minutes, reprinted in Order and Surprise (Prometheus), p. 319

For as long as I can remember I have been impressed, perhaps overwhelmed is more accurate, by the vastness of the universe and the even greater vastness of the darkness that extends beyond the farthest frontiers of scientific knowledge.

The Night Is Large: Collected Essays 1938—1995 (St. Martin’s Press), p. xvii

We are all little children walking down a road of yellow brick in a crazy, outlandish, Ozzy sort of world. We know that wisdom, love, and courage are essential virtues, but like Dorothy we cannot decide whether it is best to seek for better brains (our electronic computers grow more powerful every year!) or for kinder, more loving hearts.

Introduction to the 1960 Dover edition of The Wonderful Wizard of Ozby L. Frank Baum

Martin Gardner quotes compiled by Kendrick Frazier

I was aware of Martin Gardner at least since I was in high school in Illinois during the 1960s. I hung around as much as I could with friends who were interested in science and philosophy, and in such circles Gardner was already considered a demigod, at the very least. I forget exactly when I first read his Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science, but I was enormously impressed by it. He covered so many subjects in such detail, using such impeccable logic. (From a current standpoint, what’s sobering is how many of these fads and fallacies, thoroughly debunked almost sixty years ago, are still peddled, usually in nearly the same form!)

I first met Gardner at one of the very early CSICOP functions in New York City in 1977 or ’78. He was still living in New York at the time (appropriately on Euclid Avenue in Hastings-on-Hudson). CSICOP held several press conferences to offer itself as a resource for responsible science journalism, as well as to denounce the often-uncritical coverage of “paranormal” subjects in the media. This was long before CSICOP sponsored any public events. I had been working fairly closely with the noted UFO skeptic, the late Philip J. Klass, one of the founding fellows of CSICOP, who helped me get involved with the organization and its activities. Gardner attended all of the CSICOP events in New York City but never spoke to the public or to the press. I remember being awestruck to have the opportunity to meet, and get to know, this soft-spoken, extraordinary man.

I was even more awestruck when he suggested we go down to the hotel restaurant to have lunch together. I realized even at that time that this was an extraordinary privilege. I asked him about his training in mathematics, expecting to hear him rattle off a list of studies and degrees. “I didn’t take much math,” he replied. “I studied philosophy.” I expected to hear that mathematical puzzles flowed effortlessly out of his brain, but that was also not so. He explained that he was not an expert in mathematical puzzles or even a big fan of them; he just kept writing them up because that was what the readers of Scientific American wanted, and typically he was just one puzzle ahead of the magazine’s deadline. We also discussed the famous Cottingley Fairy photos, which had fooled Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and how at that time UFOlogist Jerome Clark, then an editor at Fate magazine, was claiming the photos as proof of some sort of “alternate reality.” Gardner wrote about that in the notes and also in a postscript to his essay “The Irrelevance of Conan Doyle,” published in Science: Good, Bad and Bogus. He also wrote there about my own hoax article suggesting that the Cottingley Fairies were Winged UFO Occupants: “It was printed in Official UFO magazine, October 1977, by editors too stupid to realize that Sheaffer had his tongue in his cheek.”

Later Gardner asked me if I wanted him to mail me his UFO files, saying that I would make better use of them than he could. I gladly accepted his offer. The files were not extensive, consisting mostly of clippings from newspapers and magazines of the 1950s and ’60s, but they contained a number of hard-to-find items. I gratefully merged them with my own files.

After Gardner moved to North Carolina, I never saw him in person again. But we remained in touch on a number of subjects. I remember one time when I contacted him for information about a specific cult. He said that the most knowledgeable critic of that group was a certain individual who I had never heard of. “But be careful in your dealings with him,” Gardner said. “He is obsessed with this cult, and he has a history of unstable behavior.” I cautiously followed up on his lead and discovered that, as usual, Martin had gotten it exactly right.

Looking back on his career, perhaps the most surprising thing is not only the quantity and the quality of his output but the fact that all of it was written without benefit of a computer or word processor! I cannot write anything worth publishing unless I revise it three or four times. He had an amazingly clear writing style: everything Martin Gardner wrote, no matter how technical, is explained so well that the average reader can understand it, and every conclusion he reaches follows directly from the information he just set forth.

Some of the late founding fellows of CSICOP, whose names today are household words, had egos the size of Texas, if not Alaska. This stands in enormous contrast with Martin Gardner, a man for whom they all genuinely proclaimed their admiration yet was nonetheless one of the most sincere and likable human beings I have ever met.

Where to begin? I’ve really no idea where or exactly when I first met Martin Gardner. I believe our first meeting occurred in the offices of Scientific American magazine more than six decades ago, but it seems that I have always known him. He became such a fixture in my life, such a dependable part of my world. I was so very accustomed to picking up the telephone to call him or answering a call from him that always resulted in an improvement of my knowledge of the universe.

Traveling the world, as I have done most of my life, I’ve found that some academics doubt that I actually knew this legendary figure in person. I recall that when I delivered a lecture to the systems engineers of IBM many years ago, a talk during which I referred to Martin, I was besieged by a group from the audience who asked me to settle whether Martin was an actual individual or perhaps an amalgamation of Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, and maybe a magician colleague of mine, since his writings so frequently touched on the sort of expertise that only such a trio could summon up. They were appropriately amazed and edified when I assured them that this paragon was actually a single person, a real human being who was quite as accomplished as he appeared to be.

Another matter on which I was queried from time to time was whether or not Martin actually had academic degrees in mathematics—which he did not. As he once expressed it to me, after beginning his column in Scientific American (SA), he sort of learned it as he went along. And I must say that I believe that was true. He always expressed his delight at something that he had just stumbled upon or that had occurred to his agile mind as he applied it to a problem at hand. Indeed, “delight” was a major characteristic of this man’s makeup. That enthusiasm certainly carried over into his books and his SA column. He was constantly celebrating discoveries, expanding on them, and looking for new ways to communicate them to the public—and especially to young people. He was never happier than when he was in the company of kids to whom he would present a brain teaser, followed by the “Aha!” phase in which he would provide an answer—usually totally unexpected—that made everything quite clear.

That lucidity of his work made him a great teacher. His weaving of a story might have been inspired by his total admiration for the Alice stories by Lewis Carroll. He pored over every sentence that Carroll had constructed and extracted from them every sort of nuance he could, and of course he recorded his observations in writing—to the delight of his many, many fans over the years and around the globe. Martin’s spectrum of interest was very broad. His coterie of friends included major professional magicians, mathematicians of every sort, philosophers, a few scoundrels, and a sufficient variety of weirdos to round out his perception of the world. As an atheist myself, I admit that I was somewhat surprised that this man was a deist. When I inquired about this apparent lapse of logic, he calmly informed me that he was well aware the atheists had a much better argument than he did and that in fact he had no supporting evidence for his acceptance of a deity. It simply made him “feel more comfortable,” and knowing Martin as I did, I merely accepted that fact and somewhat celebrated it. Anything that improved Martin’s life improved mine.

At our next Amaz!ng Meeting in July, we of the James Randi Educational Foundation will certainly not hold any sort of memorial to Martin Gardner. That would have embarrassed him hugely, I’m quite sure. His son Jim, calling me to announce his father’s demise, added that the will he left behind specified that there be no funeral and that cremation would be preferred. That’s my Martin, and I expected no less. No, at the July conference we will celebrate the existence of this fine gentleman, one of my giants, a huge intellect, a prolific author, and a caring, responsible, citizen of the world. If we can manage it, we’ll have balloons and dancing girls—which would have titillated Mr. Gardner, I guarantee you.

Yes, he’s gone away, but his wise words and his great love for reason and compassion will remain with us forever. I loved him dearly, but I leave him to the ages.

Martin Gardner gone? Skeptics, say it isn’t so!

From my earliest days as a magician, skeptic, and investigative writer, Martin was there—a presence as reassuring as that of a beloved relative whom one could always count on when needed but who showed up in person only at the occasional family reunion. Extraordinarily shy, Martin avoided public appearances and didn’t lecture, grant media interviews, or even accept awards when they were conditional on his appearing.

Still, he was there. When I was transforming myself into “Mendell the Mentalist” as a young magician, Martin helpfully pecked out on his typewriter a suggestion: a mind-reading effect based on a principle usually embodied in a close-up trick that he very cleverly adapted to the stage.

Once, while I was working as a researcher on a certain project, Martin invited me to visit his home in Hendersonville, North Carolina, and use his extensive personal library. (This I declined, of course, for it would have been too great an imposition on too generous a friend.)

When I reviewed an event held in honor of the shy genius (who had made an exceedingly rare appearance) for the Skeptical Inquirer, Martin thoughtfully wrote a personal note of appreciation.

And he thought of this same writer in 2002 when he ended his long-running column for SI (since 1983), “Notes of a Fringe Watcher.” Asked who he thought might succeed him as leading columnist for the magazine, he wrote, “Joe Nickell?”

I did not meet Martin in person until 1989 when he uncharacteristically appeared at a CSICOP Executive Council meeting in Tampa, Florida. He did not usually wear ties, but someone got him one for a formal group photo, and I was able to give it a straightening just in time. At the 1996 Gathering for Gardner in Atlanta, Georgia, I brought a tape recorder on behalf of Prometheus Books and recorded Martin in his hotel room reading the introduction to the audiotape version of Science: Good, Bad and Bogus. Time spent with him was precious.

But it was as a writer that his presence was most clearly felt. Despite his personal shyness, his writings were those of a polar opposite: a bold, courageous critic, a prolific correspondent, and a towering thinker and polymath. (Never mind that he once said in an interview in these pages [March/April 1998], “I just play all the time, and am fortunate enough to get paid for it.”)

In 1952 he published the first edition of his seminal book, now known to skeptics worldwide as Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science. The book proved to be the seed that blossomed into the modern skeptical movement. Gardner mentored a small group of skeptical activists—including magician James Randi, psychologist Ray Hyman, and several others—a group that in 1976 philosopher Paul Kurtz expanded and turned into an international organization known as the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (presently the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry).

Now Martin Gardner belongs to history, to the pantheon of great intellects of the twentieth century—many of whom were his admirers. A one-man think tank and the father of modern skepticism, he was a presence indeed. But he remains a presence, still alive in our minds, often smiling amid the juggled words, still teaching us to think—and to not forget to have fun.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Persi Diaconis phoned me on May 17, 2010. He told me he recently spoke with Martin Gardner by phone. Among other things, they had talked about me. He also said that Martin sounded fine and seemed to be as cognitively sharp as always. I had not spoken with Martin for quite a while. I made a note on my calendar to call him on Saturday, May 22. On that Saturday, I was about to call Martin when I got a phone call from Martin’s son, James. James told me that his father had passed away a few moments earlier.

Many persons—too many—would seek mystical meaning in this “coincidence.” Martin, of course, devoted much of his life to teaching us how easily our minds create meaning out of post hoc juxtapositions of random events. Although he thought that most believers were impervious to reason, he persevered in his quest to show that most, if not all, paranormal claims cannot be supported by the evidence. He felt that his background as a magician enabled him to explain how many alleged psychic occurrences were due to trickery or mundane causes.

I first met Martin in 1950 at the home of Bruce Elliot in Greenwich Village in New York. Bruce published a magazine on magic, The Phoenix, and wrote several books about magic. Every Saturday he hosted a gathering for magicians from New York or who happened to be in the vicinity. I was twenty-one years old when I was invited to attend. This was the first time I met many celebrity magicians such as Dai Vernon, Jay Marshall, and Martin Gardner.

Martin and I became good friends. I knew him as a magician, a creator of magic effects, and a writer of excellent books on magic. In addition, we shared an interest in investigating and challenging paranormal claims. Soon after our first meeting, Martin published his classic In the Name of Science (1952). The book was re-issued in 1957, with some updating, under the title Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science. It serves as the prototype for modern skeptical criticism.

From 1958 to 1961, while I was doing psychological research for General Electric, I lived in Hartsdale, about twenty-five miles from Martin Gardner’s home on Euclid Avenue in Hastings-on-the- Hudson, New York. During this period my wife and I would get together with Martin and his wife, Charlotte, for dinner. I also was able to visit and talk with him about our mutual interests.

When I moved to Oregon in 1961 to work at the University of Oregon, Martin phoned Jerry Andrus and told him I had moved into his neighborhood. He suggested that Jerry contact me. Jerry did and we became close friends until Jerry’s unfortunate death in August 2007. Martin and Jerry are the two most impressive individuals I have ever known. Both were essentially self-taught in magic, philosophy, science, and other areas.

You can gain some insights into the range and impact of Martin’s productive life by reading the many obituaries that have appeared online. In the remaining few lines at my disposal, I will discuss only a couple of my many personal stories involving this Renaissance man.

I have always been interested in how productive individuals organize their lives and manage their data. Soon after Martin’s operation for cataracts, I asked him how he managed to read and review so many books while continuing his prodigious literary output and maintaining a colossal correspondence. Martin told me that, in most cases, he did not actually read the books he reviewed. Instead, he simply scanned the index, which provided all the information he needed for his review.

I was incredulous at first, but on second thought I realized that this was consistent with my research on information theory and redundancy. I had already discovered that I could scan the indices of textbooks in statistics, perception, and cognitive psychology and know all I needed to know about how the book handled its topic. For example, by noting the topics the author listed and, more importantly, the ones she did not, I could confidently guess her stance on various issues. This was because I already knew these areas quite well. Martin’s ability to exploit redundancy induced me to conduct research on speed reading. I discovered that graduates from speed reading classes who claim to be reading 1,000 or more words per minute are actually skipping over large chunks of text by exploiting redundancy. When they are given text to read from domains with which they are unfamiliar, their reading drops to the same speed as those who have never taken a special course.

Martin not only wrote the seminal textbook for the modern skeptical movement, but he was also central to the actual founding of the movement. In December 1972, I was sent by the Defense Department to observe Uri Geller and the researchers at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI). My report, which I shared with Martin, made it clear that nothing that this alleged psychic did had anything to do with the paranormal. Soon after that, Randi observed Geller at the offices of Time magazine in New York. He, too, saw through Geller’s pretensions.

In 1973, Randi phoned me from Portland, Oregon. He was touring with Alice Cooper and asked me to travel from Eugene to Portland to meet him. While I was in Portland, Randi reviewed our experiences with Geller and suggested that we get together with Martin Gardner and form a group to counter false claims of the paranormal. He suggested we call the group SIR (Sanity in Research), which evoked the acronym SRI.

Randi and I soon afterwards spent a day with Martin at his home in Hastings-on-Hudson preparing a detailed document of the goals and hopes for our new group. In 1976, SIR joined forces with Paul Kurtz, who was already publishing skeptical articles in The Humanist, which he edited at that time. The resulting organization became known as CSICOP (now CSI), and the contemporary skeptical movement was born.