Shortly after 8 o’clock on Sunday evening, October 30, 1938, many Americans became anxious or panic-stricken after listening to a realistic live one-hour radio play depicting a fictitious Martian landing at the Wilmuth farm in the tiny hamlet of Grovers Mill, New Jersey. Those living in the immediate vicinity of the bogus invasion appeared to have been most frightened, although the broadcast could be heard in all regions of the continental United States and no one particular location was immune. The play included references to real places, buildings, highways, and streets. The broadcast also contained prestigious speakers, convincing sound effects, and realistic special bulletins. The drama was produced by a 23-year-old theatrical prodigy named George Orson Welles (1915-1985), who was accompanied by a small group of actors and musicians in a New York City studio of the Columbia Broadcasting System’s Mercury Theater. The actual broadcast script was written by Howard Koch, who loosely based it on the 1898 book The War of the Worlds by acclaimed science fiction writer Herbert George (H.G.) Wells (1866-1946). In the original Wells novel, the Martians had landed in nineteenth century Woking, England. Sixty years after the 1938 event, it remains arguably the most widely known delusion in United States, and perhaps world history, and many radio stations around the world continue to broadcast the original play each Halloween eve.

During this sixtieth anniversary year of the Martian panic, it is timely to reflect on the lessons we can glean from the incident, applying the wisdom that six decades of hindsight can provide.

Human Perception and Memory Reconstruction Are Remarkably Flawed

Today many people seem to forget that the Martian “invasion” illustrates far more than a short-term panic. It is a testament to the remarkable power of expectation on perception. A person’s frame of reference has a strong influence on how external stimuli are interpreted and internalized as reality (Buckhout 1974). Perception is highly unreliable and subject to error (Loftus 1979; Wells and Turtle 1986; Ross, Read, and Toglia 1994). This effect has long been known to be pronounced under situations of stress, ambiguity, and uncertainty (Sherif and Harvey 1952; Asch 1956; Krech, Crutchfield, and Ballschey 1962). This message cannot be over-emphasized and continues to go widely unheeded, as visual misperceptions are a common thread in many reports of such diverse phenomena as religious signs and wonders, UFOs, and Bigfoot.

In his famous study of the Martian panic, Princeton University psychologist Hadley Cantril discusses the extreme variability of eyewitness descriptions of the “invasion.” These examples have been usually overlooked in subsequent popular and scholarly discussions of the panic. One person became convinced that they could smell the poison gas and feel the heat rays as described on the radio, while another became emotionally distraught and felt a choking sensation from the imaginary “gas” (Cantril 1947, 94-95). During the broadcast several residents reported observations to police “of Martians on their giant machines poised on the Jersey Palisades” (Markush 1973, 379). After checking various descriptions of the panic, Bulgatz (1992, 129) reported that a Boston woman said she could actually see the fire as described on the radio; other persons told of hearing machine gun fire or the “swish” sound of the Martians. A man even climbed atop a Manhattan building with binoculars and described seeing “the flames of battle.”

The event also reminds us that the human mind does not function like a video camera capturing each piece of data that comes into its field of vision. People interpret information as it is processed. These memories are not statically locked away in the brain forever, but our memories of events are reconstructed over time (Loftus and Ketcham, 1991). Cantril (1947) cited the case of Miss Jane Dean, a devoutly religious woman, who, when recalling the broadcast, said the most realistic portion was “the sheet of flame that swept over the entire country. That is just the way I pictured the end” (181). In reality, there was no mention of a sheet of flame anywhere in the broadcast.

The Mass Media Are a Powerful Force in Society

Not only does the Martian panic demonstrate the enormous influence of the mass media in contemporary society, but in recent years an ironic twist has developed. There is a growing consensus among sociologists that the extent of the panic, as described by Cantril, was greatly exaggerated (Miller 1985; Bainbridge 1987; Goode 1992). The irony here is that for the better part of the past sixty years many people may have been misled by the media to believe that the panic was far more extensive and intense than it apparently was. However, regardless of the extent of the panic, there is little doubt that many Americans were genuinely frightened and some did try to flee the Martian gas raids and heat rays, especially in New Jersey and New York.

Based on various opinion polls and estimates, Cantril calculated that of about 1.7 million people who heard the drama, nearly 1.2 million “were excited” to varying degrees (58). Yet there is only scant anecdotal evidence to suggest that many listeners actually took some action after hearing the broadcast, such as packing belongings, grabbing guns, or fleeing in motor vehicles. In fact, much of Cantril’s study was based on interviews with just 135 people. Bainbridge (1987) is critical of Cantril for citing just a few colorful stories from a small number of people who panicked. According to Bainbridge, on any given night, out of a pool of over a million people, at least a thousand would have been driving excessively fast or engaging in rambunctious behavior. From this perspective, the event was primarily a news media creation. Miller (1985, 100) supports this view, noting that while the day after the panic many newspapers carried accounts of suicides and heart attacks by frightened citizens, they proved to have been unfounded but have passed into American folklore. Miller also takes Cantril to task for failing to show substantial evidence of mass flight from the perceived attack (1985, 106), citing just a few examples and not warranting an estimate of over one million panic-stricken Americans. While Cantril cites American Telephone Company figures indicating that local media and law enforcement agencies were inundated with up to 40 percent more telephone calls than normal in parts of New Jersey during the broadcast, he did not determine the specific nature of these calls:

Some callers requested information, such as which units of national guard were being called up or whether casualty lists were available. Some people called to find out where they could go to donate blood. Some callers were simply angry that such a realistic show was allowed on the air, while others called CBS to congratulate Mercury Theater for the exciting Halloween program. . . . we cannot know how many of these telephone calls were between households. It seems . . . (likely) many callers just wanted to chat with their families and friends about the exciting show they had just listened to on the radio (Miller 1985, 107).

Goode (1992, 315) agrees with Miller’s assessment, but also notes that to have convinced a substantial number of listeners “that a radio drama about an invasion from Mars was an actual news broadcast has to be regarded as a remarkable achievement.” Either way you view it, whether tens of thousands of people became panic-stricken, or more than a million, there is no denying that the mass media have significantly influenced public perception of the event. There is also no disputing that similar broadcasts have resulted in full-fledged panics.

It Can’t Happen Again

Only someone with an ignorance of history would assume that similar panics could not recur. More recent mass panics and delusions have involved the pivotal role of the mass media (especially newspaper and television). For instance, the media were instrumental in triggering a widespread delusion about the existence of imaginary pit marks on windshields in the state of Washington during 1954, erroneously attributed to atomic fallout (Medalia and Larsen, 1958). Mass delusions can also have a humorous side. During March 1993, excitement was created in Texas after The Morning Times of Laredo published a hoax account of a giant 300-pound earthworm undulating across Interstate 35. Many citizens in the vicinity of Laredo believed the story despite claims that the worm was an incredible seventy-nine feet long! What is not humorous is the relative ease at which a spate of media hoaxes were perpetrated across the country in the early 1990s, prompting the Federal Communications Commission to impose fines of up to $250,000 for TV stations knowingly broadcasting false information. But could a repeat of the 1938 Martian panic occur? The answer is, “Yes.”

A widespread panic was triggered following a broadcast of the Wells play by a Santiago, Chile, radio station on November 12, 1944. Upon hearing the broadcast, many fled into the streets or barricaded themselves in their homes. In one province, troops and artillery were briefly mobilized by the governor in a bid to repel the invading Martians. The broadcast was highly realistic. It included references to such organizations as the Red Cross and used an actor to impersonate the interior minister (Bulgatz 1992, 137).

On the night of February 12, 1949, another radio play based on The War of the Worlds resulted in pandemonium in Quito, Ecuador, with tens of thousands of panic-stricken residents running into the streets to escape Martian gas raids. The event made headlines around the world including the front page of the February 14, 1949, edition of The New York Times ("Mars Raiders Caused Quito Panic; Mob Burns Radio Plant, Kills 15”). The drama described strange Martian creatures heading toward the city after landing and destroying the neighboring community of Latacunga, twenty miles south of Quito. Broadcast in Spanish on Radio Quito, the realistic program included impersonations of well-known local politicians, journalists, vivid eyewitness descriptions, and the name of the local town of Cotocallo. In Quito, a riot broke out and an enraged mob poured gasoline onto the building housing the radio station that broadcast the drama, then set it alight, killing fifteen people.

The tragic sequence of events began when a regular music program was suddenly interrupted with a news bulletin followed by reports of the invading Martians wreaking havoc and destruction while closing in on the city. A voice resembling that of a government minister appealed for calm so the city’s defenses could be organized and citizens evacuated in time. Next the “Mayor” arrived and made a dramatic announcement: “People of Quito, let us defend our city. Our women and children must go out into the surrounding heights to leave the men free for action and combat.” Positioned atop the tallest building in the city, the La Previsora tower, an announcer said he could discern a monster engulfed in plumes of fire and smoke advancing on Quito from the north. It was at that point, according to a New York Times reporter, that citizens “began fleeing from their homes and running through the streets. Many were clad only in night clothing.”

Other radio adaptations of The War of the Worlds have had less dramatic consequences, but resulted in some frightened listeners in the vicinity of Providence, Rhode Island, on the night of October 31, 1974, and in northern Portugal in 1988 (Bulgatz 1992, 139).

What of the Future?

Since 1938, the world’s rapidly expanding population has grown increasing reliant on the mass media, and people generally expect the news to contain immediate, accurate information on nearly every facet of their lives. By most projections, the twenty-first century will bring an even greater dependence on information and mass media. While it may be true that you cannot fool all of the people all of the time, as the “War of the Worlds” panics and other mass scares attest to, you need only fool a relatively small portion of people for a short period to create large-scale disruptions to society. That is the lesson we can glean from the reaction to the 1938 broadcast. It can and will happen again. Only the mediums and forms will change as new technologies are developed and old delusional themes fade away while new ones come into vogue.

Each era has a set of taken-for-granted social realities that define it and manifest in unique delusions. During the Middle Ages scores of popular delusions, panics, and scares surrounded the belief that humans could transform into various animals, especially wolves (Eisler 1951; Noll 1992). In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, most recorded delusions were precipitated by a widespread fear of witches and manifested in episodes of mass demon possession and moral panics involving a hunt for imaginary witches (Calmeil 1845; Garnier 1895; Huxley 1952). These episodes often resulted in torture, imprisonment, or death for various minority ethnic groups including Jews, as well as heretics, deviants, the aged, women, and the poor (Rosen 1968; Goode and Ben-Yehuda, 1994). Twentieth-century mass delusions overwhelmingly involve two themes. The first is a fear of environmental contaminants mirroring growing concern about global pollution and heightened awareness of public health. This situation has triggered scores of mass psychogenic illness in schools (Bartholomew and Sirois, 1996), factories (Colligan and Murphy 1982) and occasionally communities (Goldsmith, 1989; Radovanovic 1995), and numerous delusions without psychogenic illness (Miller 1985; Goode 1992). A second series of delusions has spread widely in Western countries that have become dependent on child day care facilities. Their prominence since the mid-1980s coincides with a series of moral panics involving exaggerated claims about the existence of organized cultists kidnapping or molesting children. These myths function as cautionary tales about the inability of the weakened nuclear family to protect children (Victor 1989, 1992).

At the dawn of the twenty-first century and a new millennium, we can only ponder what new mass panics await us. It is beyond the realm of science to accurately predict what these will entail. But it will be vital for scientists to respond to the challenge of this new era of ideas and technologies that will engender an as-yet unforeseen set of circumstances that characterize and define each age. For mass panics and scares can tell us much about ourselves and the times in which we live. Part of this challenge entails remembering the lessons of the past.

References

• Asch, S.E. 1956. Studies of independence and conformity: A minority of one against a unanimous majority. Psychological Monographs 70.
• Bainbridge, W.S. 1987. Collective Behavior and Social Movements. Pp. 544-576. In R. Stark (ed.), Sociology. Belmont, California: Wadsworth.
• Bartholomew, R.E., and F. Sirois. 1996. Epidemic hysteria in schools: An international and historical overview. Educational Studies 22(3):285-311.
• Buckhout, R. 1974. Eyewitness testimony. Scientific American 231:23-31.
• Bulgatz, J. 1992. Ponzi Schemes, Invaders from Mars and more Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. New York: Harmony Books.
• Calmeil, L.F. 1845. De la Folie, Consideree Sous le Point de vue Pathologique, Philosophique, Historique et Judiciaire [On the Crowd, Considerations on the Point of Pathology, Philosophy, History and Justice]. Paris: Baillere.
• Cantril, H. 1947. The Invasion From Mars: A Study in the Psychology of Panic. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Originally published in 1940.
• Colligan, M.J., and L.R. Murphy. 1982. A review of mass psychogenic illness in work settings. Pp. 33-52. In M. Colligan, J. Pennebaker, and L.R. Murphy (eds.), Mass Psychogenic Illness: A Social Psychological Analysis. Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum.
• Eisler, R. 1951. Man into Wolf, An Anthropological Interpretation of Sadism, Masochism, and Lycanthropy; a Lecture Delivered at a Meeting of the Royal Society of Medicine. London: Routledge & Paul.
• Garnier, S. 1895. Barbe Buvee, en Religion, soeur Sainte-Colombe et la Pretendue Possession des Ursulines d’Auxonne [Barbe Buvee, and Religion, Sister Columbe and the Feigned Possession of the Ursulines at Auxonne]. Paris: Felix Alcan.
• Goldsmith, M.F. 1989. Physicians with Georgia on their minds. Journal of the American Medical Association 262:603-604.
• Goode, E. 1992. Collective Behavior. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
• Goode, E., and N. Ben-Yehuda, 1994. Moral Panics: The Social Construction of Deviance. Oxford: Blackwell.
• Huxley, A. 1952. The Devils of Loudun. New York: Harper and Brothers.
• Krech, D., R.S. Crutchfield, and E.L. Ballschey. 1962. Individual and Society. New York: McGraw-Hill.
• Loftus, E. 1979. Eyewitness Testimony. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
• Loftus, E., and K. Ketcham. 1991. Witness for the Defense: The Accused, the Eyewitness, and the Expert who Puts Memory on Trial. New York: St. Martin’s.
• Markush, R.E. 1973. Mental epidemics: A review of the old to prepare for the new. Public Health Reviews 2:353-442. See p. 379.
• Medalia, N.Z., and O. Larsen. 1958. Diffusion and belief in a collective delusion. Sociological Review 23:180-186.
• Miller, D. 1985. Introduction to Collective Behavior. Belmont, California: Wadsworth.
• Noll, R. (ed). 1992. Vampires, Werewolves, and Demons: Twentieth Century Reports in the Psychiatric Literature. New York: Brunner/Mazel.
• Radovanovic, Z. 1995. On the origin of mass casualty incidents in Kosovo, Yugoslavia, in 1990. European Journal of Epidemiology 11:1-13.
• Rosen, G. 1968. Madness in Society. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
• Ross, D.F., J.D. Read, and M.P. Toglia. 1994. Adult Eyewitness Testimony: Current Trends and Developments. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Sherif, M., and O.J. Harvey. 1952. A study in ego functioning: Elimination of stable anchorages in individual and group situations. Sociometry 15:272-305.
• Victor, J.S. 1990. The spread of Satanic-cult rumors. Skeptical Inquirer 14(3):287-291.
• Victor, J.S. 1989. A rumor-panic about a dangerous Satanic cult in Western New York. New York Folklore 15:23-49.
• Wells, G., and J. Turtle. 1986. Eyewitness identification: The importance of lineup models. Psychological Bulletin 99:320-29.
• Wells, H.G. [1898] 1986. The War of the Worlds. New York: New American Library.

The CBS television movie “The Staircase” (April 12, 1998), told how “a dying nun’s wish to complete her order’s chapel is fulfilled by a mysterious stranger” (Bobbin 1998). Starring Barbara Hershey as the terminally ill mother superior and William Peterson as the enigmatic carpenter, the movie is an embellishment of the legend of the “miraculous stairway” at the Sisters of Loretto Chapel in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The wooden, spiral stair is thought to be unique, and some claim its very existence is inexplicable.

The Loretto legend begins with the founding of a school for females in Santa Fe in 1852. A combined day and boarding school, the Loretto Academy was established by the local Sisters of Loretto at the behest of Bishop John Lamy. In 1873 work began on a chapel. Unfortunately some earthly, even earthy events reportedly marred the work: The wife of Bishop Lamy’s nephew caught the architect’s eye and he was killed for his interest — shot by the nephew who was distraught over his destroyed marriage.

At this time work on the chapel was nearing completion and, although the choir loft was finished, the architect’s plans provided no means of access. It was felt that installing an “ordinary stair” would be objectionable on aesthetic grounds and because it would limit seating (Bullock 1978, 6, 8). “Carpenters and builders were called in,” according to one source, “only to shake their heads in despair.” Then, “When all else had failed, the Sisters determined to pray a novena to the Master Carpenter himself, St. Joseph” (the father of Jesus) (Bullock 1978, 8).

“On the ninth day,” reportedly, their prayers were answered. A humble workman appeared outside, leading a burro laden with carpentry tools. He announced he could provide a suitable means of access to the loft, requiring only permission and a couple of water tubs. Soon, he was at work:

Sisters, going in to the Chapel to pray, saw the tubs with wood soaking in them, but the Man always withdrew while they said their prayers, returning to his work when the Chapel was free. Some there are who say the circular stair which stands there today was built very quickly. Others say no, it took quite a little time. But the stair did grow, rising solidly in a double helix without support of any kind and without nail or screw. The floor space used was minimal and the stair adds to, rather than detracts from, the beauty of the Chapel.

As the tale continues:

The Sisters were overjoyed and planned a fine dinner to honor the Carpenter. Only he could not be found. No one seemed to know him, where he lived, nothing. Lumberyards were checked, but they had no bill for the Sisters of Loretto. They had not sold him the wood. Knowledgeable men went in and inspected the stair and none knew what kind of wood had been used, certainly nothing indigenous to this area. Advertisements for the Carpenter were run in the New Mexican and brought no response.

“Surely,” said the devout, “it was St. Joseph himself who built the stair” (Bullock 1978, 8, 10).

No doubt the legend has improved over the intervening century, like good wine. As we shall see, there is more to the story. But Barbara Hershey concedes, “Those who want to believe it’s a miracle can, and those who want to believe this man was just an ingenious carpenter can” (Bobbin 1998). Evidence for the latter is considerable, but first we must digress a bit to understand spiral stairs.

Spiral and other winding staircases reached a high point in development in sixteenth-century England and France, with several “remarkable” examples ("Stair” 1960; “Interior” 1960). To appreciate the architectural and other problems such stairs present we must recognize that builders use turns in staircases to save space or to adapt to a particular floor plan. The simplest is the landing turn which is formed of straight flights joined at the requisite angle by a platform. A variation is the split landing which is divided on a diagonal into two steps.

Instead of a landing, the turn may be accomplished by a series of steps having tapered treads. Such staircases are called winders and include certain ornamental types, like that which takes the shape of a partial circle (known as circular stair) or an ellipse. An extreme form of winding staircase is a continuous winder in the form of a helix (a line that rises as it twists, like a screw thread). This is the popularly termed “spiral staircase” like the example at Loretto Chapel (Locke 1992, 135-36; Dietz 1991, 340-42).

Helixes — unlike, say, pyramids — are not inherently stable weight-supporting structures. They require some kind of strengthening or support. Therefore, in addition to being secured at top and bottom, the spiral staircase is usually also braced by attachment along its height to a central pole or an adjacent wall (Dietz 1991, 342; “Stair” 1960).

Unfortunately, spiral and other winding staircases are not only problematic in design but are also fundamentally unsafe. Explains one authority, “For safety, any departure from a straight staircase requires careful attention to detail in design and construction.” Especially, “Because people tend to travel the shortest path around a corner, where a winder’s treads are narrowest, the traveler must decide at each step where each foot falls. This may be an intellectual and physical exercise best practiced elsewhere. In short, winders are pretty but inherently unsafe” (Locke 1992, 135, 136). Other experts agree. According to Albert G. H. Dietz, Professor Emeritus of Building Engineering at MIT, Winders “should be avoided if at all possible. No adequate foothold is afforded at the angle [due to the tapering] and there is an almost vertical drop of several feet if a number of risers converge on the same point. The construction is dangerous and may easily lead to bad accidents” (Dietz 1991, 341). As a consequence, winders are frequently prohibited by building codes. That is especially true of the spiral stair, which “contains all the bad features of the winder multiplied several times” (Dietz 1991, 342).

Such problems seem to have beset the staircase at Loretto, suggesting that, at most, the “miracle” was a partial one. Safety appears to have been a concern at the outset, since there was originally no railing. At the time the staircase was completed, one thirteen-year-old sister who was among the first to ascend to the loft, told how she and her friends were so frightened — absent a railing — that they came down on hands and knees (Albach 1965). Nevertheless, despite the very real hazard, it was not until 1887 — ten years after the staircase was completed — that an artisan named Phillip August Hesch added the railing (Loretto n.d.). No one claims it was a miracle, yet it is described as “itself a work of art” (Albach 1965; see Figure 1).

Over time, other problems arose relating to the double helix form. The helix, after all, is the shape of the common wire spring. Therefore, it is not surprising that people who trod the stairs reported “a small amount of vertical movement” or “a certain amount of springiness” (Albach 1965) and again “a very slight vibration as one ascends and descends rather as though the stair were a living, breathing thing” (Bullock 1978, 14).

Some people have thought the free-standing structure should have collapsed long ago, we are told, and builders and architects supposedly “never fail to marvel how it manages to stay in place,” considering that it is “without a center support” (Albach 1965). In fact, though, as one wood technologist observes, “the staircase does have a central support.” He observes that of the two wood stringers (or spiral structural members) the inner one is of such small radius that it “functions as an almost solid pole” (Easley 1997).

There is also another support — one that goes unmentioned, but which I observed when I visited the now-privately owned chapel in 1993. This is an iron brace or bracket that stabilizes the staircase by rigidly connecting the outer stringer to one of the columns that support the loft (see Figure 2).

Figure 2. Iron support bracket (unmentioned in published accounts) reveals the “miracle” is a partial one. (Photos by Joe Nickell)

There is reason to suspect that the staircase may be more unstable and, potentially, unsafe than some realize. It has been closed to public travel since at least the mid-1970s (when the reason was given as lack of other egress from the loft in case of fire). When I visited in 1993 my understanding was that it was suffering from the constant traffic. Barbara Hershey implied the same when she stated, “It still functions, though people aren't allowed to go up it very often” (Bobbin 1998). It would thus appear that the Loretto staircase is subject to the laws of physics like any other.

The other mysteries that are emphasized in relation to the stair are the identity of the carpenter and the type of wood used. It seems merely mystery mongering to suggest that there is anything strange — least of all evidence of the supernatural — in the failure to record the name of an obviously itinerant workman.

As to the wood, that it has not been identified precisely means little. The piece given to a forester for possible identification was exceedingly small (only about 3/4-inch square by 1/8-inch thick) whereas much larger (six-inch) pieces are preferred by the U.S. Forest Service’s Center for Wood Anatomy (which has made many famous identifications, including artifacts taken from King Tut’s tomb and the ladder involved in the Lindbergh kidnapping) (Knight 1997). The wood has reportedly been identified as to family, Pinaceae, and genus, Picea — i.e., spruce (Easley 1997), a type of “light, strong, elastic wood” often used in construction ("Spruce” 1960). But there are no fewer than thirty-nine species — ten in North America — so that comparison of the Loretto sample with only two varieties (Easley 1997) can scarcely be definitive.

In the final analysis the “mysteries” of the spiral staircase at the Loretto Chapel are evidence, not of its miraculous production but instead of its human — quite fallibly human — manufacture.

Acknowledgments

Once again I am grateful to Tim Binga, Director of the Center for Inquiry Libraries, for research assistance and to Ranjit Sandhu for manuscript preparation.

References

• Albach, Carl R. 1965. Miracle or wonder of construction? reprint from Consulting Engineer, December, n.p.
• Bobbin, Jay. 1998. “The Staircase.” Review in TV Topics, The Buffalo News, April 12, pp. 1, 24-25.
• Bullock, Alice. 1978. Loretto and the Miraculous Staircase. Santa Fe, N.M.: Sunstone Press.
• Dietz, Albert G. H. 1991. Dwelling House Construction 5th ed. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press.
• Easley, Forrest N. 1997. A Stairway from Heaven? Privately printed.
• “Interior Decoration.” 1960. Encyclopaedia Britannica.
• Knight, Christopher. 1997. “Just What Kind of Wood . . . ?” Wall Street Journal, October 22.
• Locke, Jim. 1992. The Well-Built House, revised ed. New York: Houghton Mifflin Co.
• Loretto Chapel. N.d. Text of display card, photographed by author, 1993.
• “Spruce.” 1960. Encyclopaedia Britannica.
• “Stair.” 1960. Encyclopaedia Britannica.

In the twenty-two years since its beginning, the modern skeptical movement has gone from an idea in the minds of philosopher Paul Kurtz and a handful of concerned colleagues to a widely recognized international network of organizations. Ninety-two skeptics organizations in thirty-three countries now examine paranormal claims, explore the boundaries between science and pseudoscience, and consider social, philosophical, and educational issues involving science and the public.

In the 1980s the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP) — which started it all — began holding conferences about every eighteen months in cities and academic settings around the United States. In 1996, CSICOP celebrated its twentieth anniversary with the first World Skeptics Congress at the place of its founding, the State University of New York at Buffalo (SI, September/October, 1996).

The Second World Skeptics Congress, July 23-26, 1998, in the picturesque city of Heidelberg, Germany, was the most cosmopolitan ever. The sessions took place in a modern lecture hall at the ancient and historic University of Heidelberg (founded in 1386). The congress featured three and a half days of sessions, most in English, some in German, with more than 300 registrants from twenty-three countries.

Heidelberg, site of the Second World Skeptics Congress

It was sponsored by CSICOP and co-sponsored by the European Council of Skeptical Organizations and the German skeptical organization GWUP (Gesellschaft zur wissenshaftlichen Untersuchung von Parawissenshaften).

With the dawn of new millennium looming, the conference theme, “Armageddon and the Prophets of Doomsday” served as a convenient springboard to a wide range of topics in and out of science. Millennium prophecies, natural disasters, and environmental concerns were at the core, but there was ample time to consider antiscience and the postmodernists, alternative medicine, the problems of memory, the paranormal and skepticism in China. And there were some case studies — reports of investigations into such matters as dowsing, the Shroud of Turin, and “bio-energetic products.” There was also a workshop for skeptics.

And — as is not always the case at these session-packed conferences — there was some time for socializing. The traditional conference banquet was replaced by an informal evening on a double-deck boat sailing up the river Neckar, culminating in illuminations of high-perched castles and a magnificent fireworks show, the sounds echoing off the canyon walls.

If you think these science-minded skeptics would therefore automatically pour cold water over every expectation of disaster, you’d be wrong. The threat of catastrophic comet and asteroid impacts onto Earth was deemed real, global warming was taken seriously, sudden climate flip-flops were seen as a strong possibility, and the Year 2000 problem with the world’s computers was far from dismissed. ("Will the worst happen?” asked science and technology writer Wendy Grossman, author of the recent book net.wars. “Who knows? The most informed technical minds believe that the chances are that at least some things will fail.”)

There was lots of real science. Astronomer Alan Hale, co-discoverer of Comet Hale-Bopp, the largest and most dramatic comet in decades, discussed the scientific significance and popular lore of comets and gave a personal account of his discovery.

He then lambasted the combination of scientific illiteracy, willful delusions, a radio talk-show’s deceptions about an imaginary spaceship supposedly accompanying the comet, and a cult’s bizarre yearnings for ascending to another level of existence that led to the Heaven’s Gate mass suicides.

Hale says that well before Heaven’s Gate, he had told a colleague, “‘We are probably going to have some suicides as a result of this comet.’ The sad part is that I really was not surprised.”

“Comets are lovely objects,” he said, “but they don’t have apocalyptic significance. We must use our minds, our reason.” Fellow New Mexico scientist David E. Thomas gave an entertaining talk about his debunking of the “Bible Code” (SI, November/December, 1997). Using the same “equidistant-letter sequence” methods that author Michael Drosnin used in computer-searching the text of the Hebrew Torah, Thomas showed how he could find similar “messages” in other literary works.

Drosnin had claimed that using his methods, the words “Nazi” and “Hitler” appear linked in the Torah but not in Tolstoy’s novel War and Peace. Thomas found both in War and Peace. “I won’t call Drosnin a liar,” said Thomas, “but here is a claim he made that is demonstrably false.”

Using Drosnin’s methods Thomas also found that the King James version of Genesis contained such phrases as “The Code Is Bogus” and “Darwin Got It Right.” Applying them to Drosnin’s own book, The Bible Code, Thomas found “The Code is Evil.”

Giving import to such post-hoc data-mining procedures, Thomas noted wryly, is a double-edge sword. Thomas says he even found in War and Peace a “prediction” that Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls would win the 1998 National Basketball Association title. (They did; see News and Comment, this issue.)

“Either Tolstoy is the Supreme Creator of the Universe — or perhaps the Bible Code is just an arcane mathematical technique that allows one to harvest detailed hidden messages from any text.”

Keynote speaker Elizabeth Loftus, the University of Washington psychologist and expert on the malleability of memory, described a litany of new studies that show, in her words, “the power of imagination to make people believe that they have had experiences that they didn’t have.” As she summarized: “People have been led to remember nonexistent events from two weeks ago, from their childhood, and even from the day after they were born. These findings fill in our understanding of the rather flimsy curtain that separates imagination and memory.”

Numerous other foibles, fallacies, falsehoods, and examples of false science were revealed and targeted in a variety of presentations.

In Europe, homeopathy has wide popular and political support, said Willem Betz, professor of medicine at Brussels University and a national delegate to a program in which fifteen European countries collaborate to set rules for recognition of alternative medicine. Proponents of homeopathic medicine “know quite well” that it “would be quite impossible to meet the criteria, so they offer countless arguments why the strict rules should not apply to homeopathy.”

He also gave an example of typical “homeopathic logic”: Its proponents contend both that “proof is not possible” and that “proof is piling up.” Said Betz: “Never give an aura of science to nonsense.”

Prominent Dutch astrophysicist Cornelis de Jager, a former president of the International Council of Scientific Unions, one-time general secretary of the International Astronomical Union, and current chairman of the European Council of Skeptical Organizations, used well-tuned humor to take on the absurdities of those who attach great mystical significance to measurements of the Great Pyramid. He had the audience in stitches with his deadpan talk about the “meaningful” measurements he took in the corridors of his home. His home is in an astronomical observatory, a location, he said, “that may be very close to the cosmos and well receptive to its incredible powers.”

Jean-Paul Krivine of the French Union Rationaliste described New Age and pseudoscientific practices used in French companies. Many companies in France are widely using nonrational and nonscientific methods such as graphology and numerology. Graphology, he said, is used by most recruiting departments in France.

In recent years the popular press has made frequent references to experiments conducted by a university group from Munich (H. Wagner, H.-D. Betz, and others) that professed to find a core of skilled individuals who supposedly have unexplained success in dowsing. These so-called “Scheunen experiments” have been funded by the German government. They have given the impression that physicists have shown that dowsing is a real phenomenon.

J.T. Enright of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography reported on a thorough reexamination he has carried out of the experimental results. The results, he said, show the exact opposite of what the proponents are claiming. Showing a plot of the scattered data on a chart in which the dowsing proponents claim to see trends supporting dowsing abilities, Enright said: “It is hard to imagine a set of data that represents a more convincing disproof of dowsing. I challenge anyone here to show any difference between randomly generated data and the actual data.”

Lest anyone think he or she is immune to the self-deception that goes into forming and holding to paranormal unsupported beliefs of every sort, psychologists Ray Hyman (University of Oregon) and James Alcock (York University) would relieve you of that misperception. In their world congress workshop on critical thinking, they emphasized how hard it is for us to see through our own preconceptions.

“Teaching people to think critically in their individual lives is hard,” said Alcock. “The world is more likely to give information that confirms our beliefs than not, because of the way we interpret information.

“So if we believe in something, people’s experiences will confirm it.

“All of us — myself included — hold beliefs that are false. I’m sure I do. The problem is I don’t know which ones.”

“Unless we try to use a logical, scientific approach, we will just compound the errors our brains make.”

These were the countries represented at the World Skeptics Congress in Heidelberg:

• Austria
• Australia
• Belgium
• Bulgaria
• Brazil
• Canada
• China
• Czech Republic
• Finland
• France
• Germany
• Hungary
• Ireland
• Italy
• Japan
• Netherlands
• Norway
• Russia
• Slovak Republic
• Spain
• Switzerland
• United Kingdom
• United States

World Skeptics Congress Convenes with Participants from Five Continents

Here is a brief review of several of the sessions at the World Skeptics Congress. More reports will appear in future issues.

At Heidelberg University, on the bank of the Neckar River, some 300 skeptics, scientists, experts, and academics from North America, Europe, Australia, Asia, and South America convened to discuss and critically evaluate the latest claims of the paranormal and pseudoscience and consider some crucial issues in real science.

Opening the World Skeptics Congress, Paul Kurtz, professor emeritus of philosophy at the State University of New York at Buffalo and founding chairman of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), declared: “Skeptics want to focus on inquiry, not doubt. We simply insist that there be sufficient evidence, rational coherence, or replicable experimental confirmation of claims and that hypotheses introduced undergo rigorous peer review and corroboration before they are accepted.”

Leading medical researchers’ comments on the perceived growth of alternative medicine in North America and Europe highlighted half-day plenary sessions on topics that included millennial doomsday predictions and a workshop on critical thinking.

Alternative Medicine Studies Flawed, Politicized

North American and European medical experts emphasized a serious problem: the public is not getting scientifically valid information on alternative therapies. From poor or biased experimental design to “absolute fakery,” Wallace Sampson, M.D., clinical professor of medicine at Stanford University and editor of the Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine, outlined reasons why many studies allegedly proving alternative therapies are flawed. “The best-quality papers and studies on such popular alternative therapies as homeopathy and acupuncture show little effectiveness, while the worst-quality papers and studies show the most effects.”

Sampson pointed out that promoters of alternative medicine and the media often misquote and misreport the findings of the latest studies. As examples, Sampson said that, contrary to popular claims, alternative therapy has not increased in popularity over the last two decades. He refuted the notion that many alternative therapies are more cost-effective than proven scientific treatments. He pointed to insurance-industry studies that show chiropractic care — often cited as the “most effective treatment for back pain” — is the second-most expensive category of care provider, next to neurosurgery.

Willem Betz, professor of medicine at the Free University of Brussels, Belgium, echoed Sampson’s comments when he discussed the state of alternative medicine in Europe. Betz, a member of the European Committee of Science and Technology, said the evaluation of alternative medicine on the continent “is not science, but politics.” The alternative medicine industry uses biased polling results to push alternative medicine acceptance. “Their figures are suspect in promoting alternative therapies, but their math is conventional when billing their patients.” Betz described the alternative medicine industry as now actively focusing on Eastern European markets.

Psychologist Barry Beyerstein (of Simon Fraser University) reviewed the reasons people believe in bogus therapies. Beyerstein says that alternative medicine’s enduring popularity stems from widespread public scientific illiteracy, aggressive alternative medicine-industry marketing, New Age faddishness, inadequate media criticism, a growing distrust of authority that includes the scientific and medical establishment, and an anti-doctor backlash. “Natural is considered safe. Though I like to remind people that tobacco is a naturally occurring substance,” Beyerstein told the audience.

Ways in which purveyors of alternative therapies fool themselves include the human will to believe, the ubiquitous placebo effect, erroneous equations of correlation with causation, overemphasis of anecdotal evidence, naturally occurring self-healing, misdiagnosis, and the post hoc fallacy of automatically assuming that treatments or nostrums triggered subsequent recovery. “Many of these are confounding effects, examples of the classic ‘disease of the week' misdiagnosis, and the failings of human logic.”

The medical experts emphasized that the evaluation and eventual acceptance of alternative therapies necessitate adequate sample size, random assignment of patients, placebo-controlled trials, proper statistical treatment of data, long-term follow-up, and multiple replication of studies.

Astronomer Says Cosmic Impact Threat Likely

The recent Hollywood films Deep Impact and Armageddon have highlighted the threat from cosmic collisions, but the findings of science emphasize the need for increased funding for identifying near-Earth objects (NEOs), said James McGaha, retired USAF Major and director of the Grasslands Observatory of Arizona. “The threat from cosmic impact is real and hazardously dismissed by the public and decision-makers,” said McGaha.

Some 300 identified NEOs may be on potential collision paths with Earth, but there are an estimated 9,000 unknown NEOs of 0.5 km or greater in size. The warning time before collision of a previously unknown NEO would be less than eighty days for a comet and less than thirty days for an asteroid. The impact of a 2 km NEO with Earth would result in catastrophic earthquakes, tsunamis, sun-blocking clouds of dust and ash, drastic drops in temperature, global crop failure, and widespread starvation. More than 25 percent of Earth’s human population would perish.

McGaha said further funding and research needs to be devoted to locating NEOs and developing/testing means of diversion. Currently the U.S. government devotes just $1.5 million to NEO research, with NASA recently approving a marginal increase to $3 million for next year. Testing diversion methods is of special importance, noted McGaha. Once a NEO is within a close enough range to Earth, no diversion method will save lives.

David Morrison, CSICOP Fellow and director of space at NASA Ames Research Center, is part of a team of scientists lobbying Congress for funding for a much-needed “Space Guard” project that would fund six telescopes around the globe to search for and find all NEOs. (For more on the NEO threat, visit the Web site http://impact.arc.nasa.gov/.)

McGaha said the threat from NEOs and sparse budgeting for science make a recent report by the Society for Scientific Exploration advocating government support for UFO research (SI, September/October) appear ridiculous. “Why fund mystery-mongering about UFOs when NEOs are real threats in our skies that go almost totally unheeded?” he asked.

Experts Review Global Climate Threats, Energy-Saving Solutions

In Friday afternoon presentations, two experts, one from academia, the other from business, forecast possible futures for Earth’s climate. William Calvin, a neurophysiologist at the University of Washington, outlined the potential threat of what he calls the “The Great Climate Flip-Flop,” an abrupt cooling of Earth that could result in widespread crop failure, significant landscape change, and genocidal battles among nations for food resources.

“No serious scientist wants to be seen as a prophet of doom, but this is not a prediction, this is history” said Calvin, referring to past climate flip-flops in Earth’s history. Calvin first became interested in the topic through studying climate’s influence on human brain development.

The most dangerous result of global warming could be the triggering of a modern ice age, says Calvin. Contrary to popular belief, global temperature change can be fairly quick and drastic. Earth could be due for another plummet in temperature, a change that could be sparked by the effect of global warming on currents that form a “heat engine” for the north Atlantic.

Much of the warming effect of northern latitudes, including Europe, is created by a powerful North Atlantic current that flows from the tropics to Greenland. The current endows Europe, a continent that shares the same latitude with Canada, with a temperate enough climate to support a population of 650 million.

Drawing on research by Columbia University geochemist Wallace Broecker, Calvin described the North Atlantic current as a conveyer belt, delivering warm surface water to northern regions. Salt-heavy, the current reaches northern latitudes near Greenland, sinks, and travels south to be recycled in waters as far away as the Pacific.

A greenhouse-generated warming effect can cause cooling by dumping large amounts of fresh water into the ocean, and interrupting the conveyer belt flow of water in the North Atlantic. Under greenhouse warming conditions, large amounts of fresh water enter the ocean through increased high-latitude rainfall and melting ice. Shifts in the ice flow can also cause blockages in fjords and other waterways, resulting in the buildup and then sudden release of millions of gallons of freshwater into the Atlantic.

“We cannot avoid trouble by simply cutting down on our current contribution to the greenhouse warming trend. We need to identify the important feedback effects that control climate and ocean currents,” warned Calvin. Possible global cooling prevention strategies include opening channels through fjord ice dams, seeding clouds to deliver rain away from North Atlantic areas of sinking water, regulating the Mediterranean Sea’s salty outflow, and digging a wide sea-level Panama Canal.

Why has discussion of the Climate Flip-flop scenario not received greater attention in the media? Calvin was asked. He observed wryly that “Hollywood catastrophe movies co-opt the marketplace for discussion of possible futures.”

A top advisor to President Clinton on energy policy and global warming, Thomas R. Casten, president and CEO of New York-based Trigen Energy Corporation, outlined his outlook on defeating the greenhouse gas problem through improved energy efficiency. Citing as evidence a correlation between increases in world population and increases in CO2 gas and water vapor, Casten declared that “there is a greenhouse gas problem. I think humankind is rolling some very big dice, and the question is what do we do?”

Casten is a member of the CSICOP Board of Directors and Executive Council.

The U.S. contribution to CO2 gas emission equals 25 percent of the world total, and Casten noted that U.S. waste in power generation exceeds Japan’s total fuel use. “There is market failure across the world. Power generation is drastically inefficient. The best environmental strategy ever devised is efficiency: Don't burn the fuel.”

Current U.S. energy efficiency is at 33 percent, with the country reaching peak energy efficiency in 1959. In comparison, Denmark operates at 50 percent efficiency. “It is an appalling record when you look at advances in computing, jet planes, and other technologies.”

Casten pointed to government protection of utility monopolies as causing disincentives to improved energy use and production. “We've protected our companies from competitiveness, and you get what you reward. If you don't reward the energy industry, you won't get efficiency.” Casten said that new energy regulations should emphasize input versus performance standards in efficiency and pollution. Government efforts also have to target phasing-out and cleaning up decades-old power plants. Many of the older plants have grandfathered-in emissions compliance, allowing them to be more than 100 times more polluting than new facilities.

To reduce costs, Casten recommended that barriers to competition be eliminated. But since increasing competition will not induce companies to seek optimal environmental solutions, regulations need to guide power companies with efficiency standards. Finally, Casten suggested that megawatt hours of electricity have to be less and less dependent on fossil fuels.

Trigen Energy uses trigeneration of electricity, steam, and cooled water to build power plants that are 91 percent efficient, Casten said. The company, serving more than 1,500 customers at 22 locations in North America, provides heating, cooling, and electricity with one half the fossil fuel and one half the pollution of conventional generation.