Committee for Skeptical Inquiry

[SkeptInq@aol.com]

 Skeptical Inquirer and CSICOP in the News

 CSICOP and the Skeptical Inquirer garnered good media attention recently.
Here is some of the notable coverage:

 Paul Kurtz and CSICOP Get Broad Public Exposure in Forbes

 In the March 6, 2000 issue of Forbes magazine (circulation 847,516), "The
Forbes Lunch" writer Dyan Machan interviews Paul Kurtz in a feature titled
"Bah, Humbug!"

 The lunch with Forbes gives the magazine's readers a balanced and favorable
look at Kurtz and CSICOP. Dyan writes a good synopsis of CSICOP's and the
Skeptical Inquirer's mission, and quotes Kurtz's dissatisfaction with the
rising gullibility in the public and media with few apologies. Dyan does
question whether America is indeed in danger of completely losing its
critical and scientific senses-as Kurtz and the rest of us here at CSICOP
feel-but elsewhere she is frank about the media's contribution to the
public's belief in the paranormal and pseudoscience.

 Dyan's choice of words sometimes seems to imply that skeptics are
cold-hearted curmudgeons. The title of the article is, after all, "Bah,
Humbug!", and Dyan finds it noteworthy that Kurtz's home base is in
"partially frozen Amherst, N.Y." On the other hand, Kurtz is described as
"relaxed," a couple of his jokes are quoted, and his top ten list of hoaxes
and frauds takes a prominent place towards the end of the article. Other
papers, including The Buffalo News, have picked up the Forbes top ten list
for use in their papers.

 Is there a REAL doctor in the house?

 In the March 6, 2000 edition of the New York Times , the Skeptical Inquirer
and Dr. Ragnar Levi get mentioned in "Finding and Judging, Advice Online".
The writer cites Dr. Levi's article in the new March/April Skeptical Inquirer
and refers to the Health on the Net Foundation's Web site
(www.hon.ch/HONcode/HONcode_check.html) which "provides a checklist of
questions that can help people assess a site's credibility."

 Joe Nickell won't bet one thin dime on miracle claims.

 CSICOP Senior Research Fellow Joe Nickell is the voice of reason in two
February articles on miracle healings. Nickell punctures miracle claims in an
article titled "Certainly a Mystery" in the February 21, 2000 edition of The
Inquirer (Philadelphia).

 The article explores the purportedly miraculous cure of Amy Wall, a young
child diagnosed with moderate-to-severe deafness not long after her birth.
Apparently, Amy began hearing normally four months after her family started
making daily intercessory prayers to a deceased Philadelphia nun, Mother
Katharine Drexel.


 This past January, the Pope decreed that Amy Wall had Mother Katharine's
intercession to thank for her cure. According to one otolaryngologist, "It
defies medical explanation. This kind of reversal is extraordinarily rare.
I've never seen anything like it."

 In the article, the author quotes Joe Nickell, who rebuffs the poor
reasoning behind these miracle claims. "To say, 'Because this event is
unexplained, it must be a miracle' is a form of false reasoning know as an
'argument from ignorance' or lack of knowledge," says Nickell. "You're
saying, 'We don't know why something happened, therefore this is why it
happened,' but logically you can't do that."

 Nickell is also quoted in a feature story on author and filmmaker, Peter
Shockey, written by religion editor Ray Waddle in the February 20, 2000
edition of The Tennessean (Nashville, Circulation 197,064).

 Peter Shockey's film credits include the award-winning documentary "Life
After Life," "Angel Stories," and "Stories of Miracles." Now Shockey is
promoting his new book, Reflections of Heaven: A Millennial Odyssey of
Miracles, Angels and Afterlife (Doubleday), a book that "sympathetically
chronicles stories of unusual healings, coincidences, and mystic
experiences." Waddle writes that Shockey describes his book as a "collection
of fresh spiritual activity after centuries of spiritual decline in a
rationalist-minded culture."

 Nickell's answer to Shockey in the article is clear: "When you say faith
creates expectations of miracles, you also open the door for self-deception."

 www.csicop.org review in Web Guide magazine

 The February 2000 issue of Web Guide (circulation 120,000) features a review
of www.csicop.org, the Web site for CSICOP and Skeptical Inquirer.  Readers
are given a thorough synopsis of the information available on csicop.org, the
mailing list, the "Answer Man", etc. The CSICOP site is described as a
resource to help the "…intelligent person with a reasonably open and
inquiring mind distinguish [fact from fraud]".

 Nature quotes Chris Carter on CSICOP

 In a review of Anne Simon's new book, The Real Science Behind The X-Files:
Microbes, Meteorites and Mutants in the journal Nature, Chris Carter says he
feels like a scapegoat for the public's credulity regarding the paranormal.
From Chris Carter's perspective, CSICOP got personal. According to Nature
senior editor Henry Gee, "When Chris Carter was invited to address the
Committee for the Scientific Investigation into(sic) Claims of the Paranormal
(CSICOP), he felt that his audience held him personally responsible for 'all
the loopy, looney trends in angels and aliens, in superstition, and even in
fundamentalism'. It was as if he was 'threatening to destroy yet another
generation of minds by feeding them more bogus claptrap'. But Carter had his
secret weapon in Anne Simon, who, like Carter's accusers, 'is a skeptic and,
like Agent Scully, has a trust and faith in the scientific process'. CSICOP
seems to have got the message-'I've never heard from them since,' says
Carter."

 Final Note

 Joe Nickell's recent book Entities: Angels, Spirits, Demons, and Other Alien
Beings (Prometheus 1995) is now available in Japanese, courtesy of the Ohta
Publishing Company, Tokyo, Japan.

 Kevin Christopher
 Press Relations
 CSICOP
 SIKevinC@aol.com