Committee for Skeptical Inquiry

[Barry Karr <SkeptInq@AOL.COM>]

Items of Note

1)  Alien Abduction Feature in New York Times Sunday Magazine
2)  Honors to Phil Klass and the end of Skeptics UFO Newsletter
3)  Wikipedia needs skeptics


1) NY Times Article

CSICOP Fellow James Oberg forwards the following from  Will Bueche - Center for Psychology & Social Change:

A feature article on the alien encounter experience, by Times
writer Bruce Grierson will appear in the Sunday July 27th
edition of The New York Times Magazine.** The article is not
expected to be favorable towards experiencers of alien contact
(though stranger things have happened).

The article focuses on a young Harvard researcher, Susan Clancy,
who designed a memory experiment in an effort to disprove the
validity of repressed memories of childhood sexual abuse. For
the experiment, she recruited subjects whose memories are, in
her opinion, patently false: "experiencers" of alien contact.

The article is expected to highlight Clancy's remarkable
resistance to criticism from researchers such as Dr. John Mack
who believe that alien encounters are real, and from her Harvard
Medical School colleagues who believe that traumatic memories
are routinely repressed.

Interviews were conducted in Cambridge, Massachusetts earlier
this year with Susan Clancy, her colleague Richard McNally, John
Mack, filmmaker Laurel Chiten (of the documentary film
"Touched"), some of the subjects who took part in Clancy's
experiment and went on to speak out against her conclusions, and
others from Harvard (the final article may or may not include
all of these perspectives).

**Those wishing to get an advance look at the article should
sign on to the New York Times website on the Friday before that
Sunday's issue: the Times' website gets a head start on the
print edition. Here is the direct link:

http://nytimes.com/magazine


2)  Phil Klass

Also From James Oberg:

The July 14, 2003 issue of 'Aviation Week & Space Technology', on page 5, has a news item and photograph (attached) -- my apologies to the copyright-holders, I felt that this story (and a second one, below) needed to be spread around to all of Phil's colleagues and friends, among whom I count myself for more than a quarter century.
 
BEHIND THE SCENES: Philip J. Klass, a longtime avionics editor for 'Aviation Week & Space Technology' recently received the Senior Wingman Award from Editor-in-Chief David M. North at a ceremony in Washington. Klass was honored for professionalism and teamwork during his 51 years with the magazine. He joined the magazine as avionics editor in early 1952. Klass is credited with popularizing the word 'avionics' to best describe airborne electronics. He later became senior avionics editor and remains a contributing avionics editor. Photo: Mary Francis Koerner.
 
The same day, I received my 'Skeptics UFO Newsletter' (SUN) #76, whose last news item credits some recent review work I did, and then concludes: "Regrettably, advancing years (I am nearly 84 years old) and physical disabilities . . . prompt a very difficult decision: I HAVE DECIDED TO TERMINATE PUBLICATION OF "SKEPTICS UFO NEWSLETTER" with this issue." Phil explicitly thanked Gary Posner for many years of crucial support -- and I'm sure we all second that motion. 
 
As I've followed Phil's humor for more than a quarter century, I skeptically checked around for stuff such as a suspicious date or a clue that he was just teasing, or was fiendishly leading UFO believers onto a path of hope that would be suddenly dashed with another dose of Phil's incisive argumentation and evidence analysis. 
 
But I've seen him face to face enough in the last year or two to realize that he's not joking. However, that's no ground for hope of relief or amnesty in the world of UFOria, I'll bet. Phil will still have views, opinions, assessments, and new angles, and we can probably find a modern means of disseminating them with less overhead than the newsletter. Maybe (see the first clip, above) he can invent a new term such as 'webionics', and become the elder master of it, to all of our benefit. 
 
Well done, across the board and across the decades and beyond all boundaries of time and space, Phil! You found long ago that you never could retire -- you've never been a retiring sort of guy -- and your inner energy has been astonishing and heroic and inspirational -- I know it is to me and I'm counting on a lot more along those lines. Long may it surge!
 
Jim Oberg


3)  Wikipedia needs skeptics

Many of you may already have heard of Wikipedia (
http://www.wikipedia.org ). It is an open, non-profit encyclopedia
project which already has more than 140,000 articles in the English
version alone. Many of these articles are much more detailed than what
you would expect in traditional encyclopedias -- see
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Brilliant_prose for a collection
of our current favorites. Anyone can contribute to Wikipedia, and its
contents may be freely distributed and modified, making them eligible
for almost any use and ensuring that the work of Wikipedia authors can
never be lost. In fact, you can download a copy of the entire Wikipedia
database and set up your own copy if you desire to do so.

Wikipedia articles are written from a "neutral point of view" (
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view ), meaning
that controversial views that are presented on Wikipedia must be
attributed to their adherents. This way we ensure that people who think
that abortion is murder and those who think that it is a legitimate
choice can work together to produce a reasonable article that discusses
all arguments on the matter. In many if not most cases, we succeed at
giving a balanced picture that nevertheless often reveals quite clearly
the holes in certain arguments. For example, several Scientology critics
have commended our current article about the group and added material.

Given that anyone can contribute to Wikipedia, people with strong
beliefs sometimes dominate an article until others fill in the gaps (or
rather, expose them). As a result, there are, of course, many articles
on Wikipedia that would benefit greatly from input by knowledgeable
scientists and skeptics. If you count yourself as part of that group, we
especially invite you to edit articles. You can also help by granting us
permission to include existing material you have written. Because
Wikipedia grants the right to use our material to everyone, including
third parties, giving permission to Wikipedia alone to use material is
not sufficient -- it must either be in the public domain or licensed
under our so-called "copyleft" license, the GNU Free Documentation
License (developed by the GNU project, which is responsible for large
parts of the open source GNU/Linux operating system). See
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights for details.


Articles of interest

Which articles might you want to work on? The following topics are
particularly controversial and in need of good arguments, scientific
references and a neutral tone. Just visit one of the following URLs,
click "Edit this page" and start working:

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_viewing
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telepathy
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extra-sensory_perception
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clairvoyance
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precognition
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychokinesis
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parapsychology
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-of-body_experience
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-death_experience
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reincarnation
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudoscience
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernatural
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creationism
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witchcraft
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_paralysis
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_memory
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_sexual_abuse
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satanic_ritual_abuse
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_theory

There's plenty more, so just consider these some starting points. If you
have material that you want to use, and you are the copyright holder,
feel free to paste it right in -- you implicitly license text under the
GNU FDL open content license by submitting it, but that does not
preclude you from licensing it in other ways. If you become a regular
contributor, please do create a user account (
http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Userlogin ), so that
your contributions are assigned to a name; anonymous edits are generally
regarded with some suspicion.

Hopefully, you'll get hooked on Wikipedia soon and can add yourself to
the list of "Wikipediholics" ;-). If you have any questions, feel free
to drop me an email or leave a message on my user page:

http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User_talk:Eloquence&action=edit

Yours,

Erik Möller
Wikipedia user, sysop and developer
-- 
Scientific Reviewer, Freelancer, Humanist -- Berlin / Germany
Phone: +49 (0)30 45491008 -- Web: http://www.humanist.de/erik
Editor of: http://www.violence.de, http://www.infoanarchy.org
    Save the Public Domain: http://action.infoanarchy.org