SI DIGEST 8-31-98
SkeptInq@aol.com
Sun, 30 Aug 1998 15:34:41 EDT
SKEPTICAL INQUIRER ELECTRONIC DIGEST
AUGUST 30, 1998
SI Electronic Digest is the biweekly e-mail news update of the Committee for
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This week's SI DIGEST includes:
--CSICOP Takes to Campuses with Student Skeptics Groups
--OPINION: Generation X Faces a Crisis of Credulousness
--FEATURE: How Psychic Sleuths Waste Police Resources
--The Sci Fi Channel Website Raves About www.csicop.org
CSICOP TAKES TO CAMPUSES WITH STUDENT SKEPTICS GROUPS
Universities are society's greatest educational resources and the college
experience is a dominant factor in shaping the attitudes, beliefs, and
critical thinking skills of generations of citizens across the globe. Campuses
should offer the highest societal standards of critical inquiry, the sharing
of information and the open expression of ideas.
Yet our universities often expose students to curriculums rife with cultural
relativism, heavy on postmodernism and sorely lacking in science requirements.
Compounding the problem, students face overwhelming exposure to the latest
paranormal claims and myths portrayed in the entertainment and news media.
In response, CSICOP is establishing a network of student skeptics groups
across the world. Already, campuses with successful student groups include
the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Georgia, Penn State and
Cornell University. By institutionalizing skepticism on campuses, student
skeptics can help ensure that critical inquiry and the scientific method are
valued tools of evaluation in future national dialogues on medicine, science,
the paranormal and public policy.
Resources now available to students from CSICOP include plans for an
internationally coordinated campus Friday the Thirteenth Superstition Bash,
program material for students looking to teach critical thinking and learning
in local schools, scholarships to CSICOP conferences, a CSICOP-sponsored
campus speaker bureau and a nationally coordinated survey of paranormal
beliefs among students.
The Sagan Society, University of Georgia
<A HREF="http://www.uga.edu/dogsbody/">http://www.uga.edu/dogsbody/</A>
The University Skeptical Society, University of Texas at Austin
<A HREF="http://www.utexas.edu/students/skeptics/">
http://www.utexas.edu/students/skeptics/</A>
For more information or if you are involved with an existing student skeptics
group, contact Matt Nisbet at 716-636-1425 X219 or email SINISBET@aol.com.
OPINION: GENERATION X FACES A CRISIS OF CREDULOUSNESS
Matt Nisbet
Astounding. It is likely that my generation -- the group of twenty-somethings
dubbed Generation X -- will be the first generation to be cloned. Only four
centuries old, science will shape a world by the time of Generation X
retirement that will be wholly dissimilar from the world twenty-somethings
live in today. Indeed, my generation, and post-Generation X teens and
preteens, live on the brink of an era as transformative in human history as
the Enlightenment or the Industrial Revolution.
Consider only a few of the remarkable feats of science and technology in the
past year. Besides the globally shocking cloning of the sheep named Dolly,
science landed a craft on Mars, completed the first maps in decoding the human
genome, uncovered new clues to the origins of the universe using the orbiting
Hubble telescope, and arranged matter from colliding beams of light. Today,
microchips can be found in our cars, phones, and credit cards while computer
software has codified, organized, arranged, and eased our personal and
workplace labors. Even the way Generation X receives news and information has
been fundamentally changed by E-mail and the World Wide Web.
Yet, within the advancement that shapes the future, there exists a deeply
troubling paradox. Generation X and the generations that follow may be the
most technologically proficient generation in history but also the most
scientifically illiterate. Recently, in a comprehensive international study of
American twelfth-graders, our best students in math and physics ranked only
average when compared with students worldwide. In the global marketplace, the
U.S. ranked behind less-developed countries like Greece, Slovenia and Latvia.
The age of advancing science arrives in tandem with an information
revolution. Society is offered an explosion of data, news, and knowledge. But
with no basis in how to think critically about this information, Generation X
will exist minus the tools to sort the reliable information from the
misinformation. In a democratic republic, a generation of Americans unable to
distinguish the valid from the uncertain weakens the foundations of self-
governance. The country risks becoming a societal hierarchy of a few "know-
hows" ruling over a large electorate of "know-nots."
Joining with scientific illiteracy is a growing blight of belief in
superstition and pseudoscience. A 1996 Gallup Poll revealed that a third of
Americans believe in ghosts, a quarter believe in the tenets of astrology, and
a third believe that an alien spacecraft crashed at Roswell, New Mexico, in
1947. In addition, there exists an increasing public infatuation with
alternative medical therapies. Fourteen billion dollars was spent last year on
health-related treatments that have never been scientifically validated.
On college campuses, credulousness thrives. To a degree greater than the
general public, students revel in alien conspiracy scenarios, curiously
consult their horoscopes and tarot cards, fantasize about witchcraft, and
partake of alternative therapies like acupuncture, homeopathy, or the latest
fad in exercise supplements.
Universities and colleges are at partial fault for the growing gullibility of
twenty-somethings. Too often, liberal arts curriculums teach cultural
relativism with a smorgasbord of course offerings that fail to provide
students with the tools necessary to make objective evaluations and to think
critically.
The media also shares a large part of the responsibility. Television has
replaced schools as the main forum for learning, yet much of programming is
rife with the paranormal, the extraordinary and the pseudoscientific. Examples
include Fox's X-Files, the canceled NBC series Dark Skies, and
pseudodocumentaries like the Unexplained, Unsolved Mysteries, and Dan
Aykroyd's Psi-Factor. The media's paranormal push and disregard for science
does not stop with television, but extends across film, book publishing, and
the World Wide Web.
The current crisis of American gullibility merits a call-to-arms to
educators, scientists, members of the media, policy-makers, and students. The
future necessitates society-wide choices on increasingly complex matters. If
America trades generational science awareness and literacy for a fantasyland
of magical thinking, we risk losing the nation's place in the world as a
leader in government, science and economics.
--30--
Matthew Nisbet, twenty-three, is Public Relations Director for SKEPTICAL
INQUIRER magazine, and coordinator for the Council for Media Integrity, a
network of scientists concerned with the balanced portrayal of science in the
media. www.csicop.org
FEATURE: HOW PSYCHIC SLEUTHS WASTE POLICE RESOURCES
Joe Nickell
Uncritical news reports and pseudocumentaries continue to tout the alleged
successes of "psychics" who supposedly assist law enforcement agencies in
solving crimes or locating missing persons. Exaggerated claims
notwithstanding, most police departments (72% according to researchers) have
not used psychics (Durm and Sweat 1994). And of those who have, few have done
so officially or claim significant success for them. Most experienced police
seem to recognize the basic trick of psychics, called retrofitting. This
involves tossing out several vague "clues" (such as a number, a mention of
"water," etc.) which are then interpreted to fit the true facts after they
become known.
But psychics are not merely ineffectual; they actually harm investigations by
misdirecting police efforts -- for example by having them drag rivers, search
rugged areas, dig up yards, and drain ponds, typically to no avail. Following
are 20 selected case studies of such wasted efforts, presented
chronologically.
* * * *
Boston, Massachusetts, 1964. High-profile, Dutch-born psychic detective Peter
Hurkos (Pieter van der Hurk) claimed to have divined the identity of the
serial killer known as the Boston Strangler. Unfortunately for Hurkos, the man
he accused was eventually cleared of involvement in the rape-murders, and
Albert DeSalvo confessed to the crimes. Shortly afterward, Hurkos was briefly
jailed in New York for allegedly impersonating an FBI agent. Hurkos died in
1988. (Nickell 1994, pp. 23-24.)
Nutley, New Jersey, 1968. In December 1967, housewife and mother Dorothy
Allison had a dream that the body of a missing 15-year-old boy was lodged in a
drainage pipe in a park. The Nutley police subsequently expended an afternoon
in digging up the culvert but failed to find the body or even an alleged bend
that supposedly marked the site. The child's body was later found elsewhere,
in a small pond, by a man walking along the river. (Nickell 1994, pp. 44-45.)
Nevertheless, published sources have continued to report that the body was
found in the drainage pipe. (Newport News, Va., Daily Press, June 22, 1988.)
Oakland, Michigan, 1977. Psychic Phil Jordan was called in by police on a
multiple child-murder case. In what police dubbed "Operation ESP," Jordan was
taken to the various abduction sites and provided with evidence and photos to
"psychometrize" (obtain psychic feelings about). Later five senior
investigators reviewed his pronouncements, finding them not only vague but
even contradictory and fundamentally useless. An interoffice memorandum
concluded that such psychic claims "simply cloud the facts and cause an
investigator undue feelings of failure." (Lyons and Truzzi 1991, pp. 226-27.)
Patterson, New Jersey, 1980. Self-styled psychic sleuth Dorothy Allison
offered to help find a missing boy whom she believed had been sexually
molested and murdered. She said the boy's body would be in an abandoned
building's flooded basement. The police enlisted the fire department to pump
out the water but discovered nothing. The boy's body was discovered two weeks
later, across town. According to Detective George J. Brejack, "She was in for
seven days, but she kept making wrong predictions. We went all over the place
with her." (Nickell 1994, pp. 49, 53-54.)
Boston, Massachusetts, 1981. The November disappearance of Harvard student
Joan Webster attracted three psychics, one of whom envisioned her body in a
Manchester, CT., pond. Nine years after the disappearance the student's
skeleton was discovered, by a woman walking her dog, five miles from the pond.
(Morris Co., N.J., Daily Record, May 2, 1990.)
Northern Alabama, 1985. The search for a missing Lockport, N.Y., native,
Elizabeth Kenyon, was extended to rural Alabama by a psychic who asked not to
be identified. The missing woman was supposedly being held in a remote cabin
in the northern part of the state. Sheriff's deputies searched some "two
thousand to three thousand" cabins in a futile search, according to Kenyon's
father who accompanied them. The psychic subsequently claimed the young woman
had been moved. (Buffalo News, April 25, 1985.)
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1987. A search for the body of a 13-year-old girl,
who had vanished in 1975, was directed by psychic Nancy Czetli. She had police
search Schenley Park. The search was a wasted effort, and Theresa Lynn Rhodes
remained missing. (The Pittsburgh Press, September 10, 1989.)
Beaverton, Oregon, 1988. The ten-year-unsolved disappearance of a county
court reporter resulted in a Portland-area private eye consulting Illinois
psychic Bill Ward. Ward envisioned the woman's body buried on one or the other
side of an outdoor barbecue formerly owned by her brother-in-law. Police
removed brick and concrete and dug six-foot-deep holes, each about three by
five feet, as indicated. No trace of a body was discovered. (Portland
Oregonian, March 3, 1988.)
Joliet, Illinois, 1988. In April, a grain-elevator explosion at Archer
Daniels Midland buried the bodies of five men under grain and debris; also a
workman reported that he had seen another blown into the Des Plaines River.
Psychic Bill Ward soon arrived on the scene and confirmed that a body would be
located in water. But as it turned out, the eyewitness was in error and there
was no body in the river, although one corpse was found in the grain
elevator's basement where a water main had burst. Ward did admit he was wrong,
according to his publicist. A fire department spokesman concluded that Ward
was "totally incorrect in his predictions" and was "more trouble than he was
worth," helping to create a circus-like environment. (Nickell 1994, p. 91-92.)
Shadyside, Pennsylvania, 1988. Psychic Nancy Czetli directed volunteer
searchers to a cliff site in an attempt to find the remains of Michael
Rosenblum who had been missing for eight years. Searchers scoured the area and
discovered a fragment of bone. It came from an animal, and Rosenblum remained
missing. (The Pittsburgh Press, September 10, 1989.)
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1989. A Springdale Borough woman, Patricia Drennan,
went missing after a night of bar-hopping. Two days later psychic Doreen Boyd
led police to the Allegheny River which they spent two days dragging in a
wasted search. An anonymous caller, who claimed to be psychic, sent
authorities on another futile search, through a Springdale park. On the sixth
day, Mrs. Drennan's strangled body was found wrapped in a carpet in a local
basement -- discovered by a handyman rather than a psychic. Springdale Borough
Police Chief Jack Killian stated that the use of psychics slowed rather than
aided the investigation "because it led us down other paths." The constant
interference resulted in "taking the police away from the job they have to
do," he said. (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, September 6, 1989; The Pittsburgh
Press, September 10, 1989.)
Vancouver, British Columbia, 1990. A six-week search for Selina Sung, who had
gone missing in her blue Jeep Cherokee, attracted unsolicited reports from
some 40 psychics, who offered varied opinions as to the nature and locale of
her fate, without success. (One businessman with a psychic vision thought Sung
had been kidnapped and was being held in an unfinished cabin on Birkenhead
Lake. He rented a helicopter and flew to the site with the woman's husband --
to no avail.) Later, the crumpled vehicle with Sung's body was discovered by
two rock climbers in Cheakamus Canyon. It had left the highway at high speed,
plunged over a cliff, and lodged in a canyon crevice. (Vancouver magazine,
February 1992.)
Hallsville, Texas, 1990. Twelve-year-old Kimberly Norwood disappeared in May
1989. More than a year later, a Dallas psychic, John Catchings, predicted her
body would be discovered buried in the driveway of her parents' home. The
prediction prompted several hours of backhoe work provided by the Harrison
County road department. A week later, Sheriff's deputies with cadaver dogs
(those trained to search for bodies) were back at the subdivision where
Catchings directed them to six additional sites -- all of them negative.
(Shreveport Times, July 27, 1990.)
South Amboy, New Jersey, 1991. The May disappearance of five-year-old Timothy
Wiltsey from a carnival brought psychic John Monti to the area. But in the
words of a police detective, Sergeant Ray Durski:
He gave us about four different locations
that we checked out. He had strong feelings
that the boy had been in an abandoned building
on our main thoroughfare. We went through the
entire building and found no articles of clothing
that he suggested we might find. The following
day he suggested an area near a railroad track
where he had strong feelings that there was
someone who had committed suicide, and that he
could be in that wooded area. We searched that
area and there was nothing there also. He then
contacted our South Amboy First Aid Department
and gave them strong feelings that we could
possibly find a body in a landfill area adjacent
to the waterfront. Then they conducted a search
with over 100 people and they found nothing there.
After that, he came back again, and he stated that
he sees the boy running away from the mother's
house in the direction of the railroad tracks.
Of course we checked that area, too, and came up
with nothing.
(Nickell 1994, pp. 165-66.)
Falmouth, Illinois, 1991. Psychic Greta Alexander clairvoyantly directed the
search for an elderly man lost on a ginseng hunt September 4. She led
searchers in precisely the wrong direction, even though only a four-square-
mile area was involved. Moreover, Alexander said the man was in a ravine, but
he was eventually discovered in a flat beaufield. Fortunately, the man was
still alive. (Nickell 1994, pp. 143-50.)
Cape May County, New Jersey, 1991. On a chilly November day, 12-year-old Mark
Himebaugh vanished from a park where he had been playing. When an intensive
search by helicopter, ground rescue teams, and bloodhounds failed to locate
the boy, psychics began showing up "like flies to horse manure" as Mark's
father, Jody Himebaugh, characterizes it. He was besieged by palmists, crystal
gazers, psychometrists (who imagine they get psychic visions from an object
that belonged to someone) - even dowsers, who used their divining rods to look
for water that might contain the boy's body. All failed. Himebaugh said the
psychics did not ask for money but seemed to want some type of spiritual
validation. (Albuquerque Journal, August 28, 1994.)
Decatur, Illinois, 1992. A woman missing since Halloween had last been seen
with an unknown man at a service station. The apparently abducted woman left a
note in the restroom saying the man was armed with a gun. Two local psychics
soon claimed to know where the victim was held and directed authorities to an
abandoned farmhouse. Visited by Sheriff's deputies about midnight, with the
psychics in tow, the house was found empty. (Springfield, Ill., State Journal-
Register, November 12, 1992.)
Tulsa, Oklahoma, 1993. The wife and son of a man arrested as a suspect in a
murder were missing and feared dead. On the assurance of a psychic, who
claimed to envision the pair's whereabouts, U.S. Marshals drained a large farm
pond. The result? An empty pond. Diggers then waited for the mud to dry, spent
a day digging by hand, and finally brought in a digging machine, using a crane
truck to keep it from slipping into the pond. "We can't dig to China,"
concluded a U.S. Marshal, who admitted the search had produced no evidence.
The suspect later hanged himself in jail. (Tulsa World, July 25, 1993.)
Dayton, Ohio, 1994. After her son was missing for six weeks, an Ohio woman
consulted a psychic. The soothsayer stated that the son was dead and that his
body was to be found in the Great Miami River. The mother enlisted the aid of
seven volunteer divers who searched the river for the man's body - without
success. (Cincinnati Enquirer, November 28, 1994.)
Arlington, Texas, 1996. The abduction of a nine-year-old girl sparked
"hundreds" of calls to the Arlington police department. "Everyone whose long-
lost sister-in-law had a premonition called in," stated a spokesperson, along
with "people interpreting their dreams. It's well-intentioned, but the volume
of it gets almost unmanageable in a situation like that." One man's "vision"
prompted an unsuccessful search, by helicopter and search parties on foot, of
a south-Arlington park. The girl's body was later found in a rain-swollen
creek near an apartment complex on the opposite end of the city. (Fort Worth
Star-Telegram, January 16, 1997.)
* * * *
As these examples show, psychics are a hindrance rather than an aid to
police. In fact, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, a
branch of the Department of Justice, states there is not a single documented
instance of anyone finding a missing child through the use of psychic power.
(Marder 1994.) The same is true of crime solving. No longer should self-styled
psychics be given credit for the difficult work done by law enforcement
personnel.
References
Durm, Mark W., and Jane Ayers Sweat. 1994. In Nickell 1994, pp. 224-35.
Lyons, Arthur, and Marcello Truzzi. 1991. The Blue Sense: Psychic Detectives
and Crime. New York: Mysterious Press.
Marder, Dianna. 1994. "Psychics Peddle Last Glimmer of Hope," Albuquerque
Journal, August 28.
Nickell, Joe, ed. 1994. Psychic Sleuths. Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books.
THE SCI FI CHANNEL WEBSITE RAVES ABOUT WWW.CSICOP.ORG
Last week, the SCI FI channel in their on-line SCIENCE FICTION WEEKLY
magazine, chose www.csicop.org as the "Sci-Fi Site of the Week."
"With the sheer craziness available on the Internet about government
conspiracies and alien abductions, it's nice to visit a Web site that takes a
skeptical look at what might be going on."
Visit <A HREF="http://www.scifi.com/sfw/issue76/site.html">
http://www.scifi.com/sfw/issue76/site.html</A> for the complete review.
Again, congratulations are in order to Patrick Fitzgerald, CSICOP Webmaster
for his continued devotion and efforts in creating one of the outstanding
science and general interest sites on the web. You can reach him at:
webmaster@csicop.org