Committee for Skeptical Inquiry

Volume 24, Number 5, September/October

• Buy this back issue
• The Psychic Staring Effect
• The Laws of Nature: A Skeptic's Guide
• Investigative Files: Haunted Inns
• Book Review: The Truth Never Stands in the Way of a Good Story!
• Book Review: Qigong: Chinese Medicine or Pseudoscience?

Articles

Voodoo Science and the Belief Gene
How do people decide what to believe? And why do some believe while others doubt? Science offers a strategy for sorting out the truth.
Robert L. Park

Rogerian Nursing Theory
A Humbug in the Halls of Higher Learning
Schools of nursing at major academic institutions would seem to be unlikely places to find beliefs in the paranormal, crackpot scientific theories being taught, and personality cults flourishing. The emergence of pseudoscientific nursing theories, however, is cause for alarm.
Jef Raskin

Sun Sign Columns
Response to an Invitation
The authors invited astrologers and interested scientists to submit ideas for testing sun sign columns. Their responses suggest that the negative results to date are unlikely to change.
Geoffrey Dean and Arthur Mather

The Psychic Staring Effect
An Artifact of Pseudo Randomization
Rupert Sheldrake claims that people can tell when some- body is staring at them. Unfortunately the sequences used in Sheldrake's research are not properly randomized. When random sequences are used people can detect staring at no better than chance rates.
David F. Marks and John Colwell

Management of Positive and Negative Responses in a Spiritualist Medium Consultation
Analysis of two spiritualist medium consultations reveals the medium's strategies to elicit positive responses from the client and to manage negative responses.
Peter Greasley

The Laws of Nature
A Skeptic's Guide
Awareness of the fundamental laws of nature is essential to any skeptical endeavor. These principles are presented so they can be understood, and explained to others, without assuming specialized prior knowledge.
Zoran Pazameta

Special Report

On Ear Cones and Candles
Three experiments by the authors melt a New Age claim of ear wax extraction. Philip Kaushall and Justin Neville Kaushall

Columns

Editor's Note

News and Comment

• Dowsing for Truth: Report on Tests of California Wire-Dowser
• New York Jury Finds Alternative Medicine Doctor Negligent in Patient's Death
• American Chemical Society Honors Walter McCrone, Cites Work on Shroud of Turin
• New Age 'Rebirthing' Treatment Kills Girl
• Magnet Therapy Update: Support for Your Feet, but Little Support from Science
• Miraculous Eli‡n
• Paranormal Radio Is Alive and Well After Art Bell's Departure
• 'Miracle Staircase' Carpenter Finally Identified
• 'I Speak to Dead People': Medium John Edwards Hosts SciFi Cable Show

Notes of a Fringe-Watcher
Little Red Riding Hood
Martin Gardner

Investigative Files
Haunted Inns
Tales of Spectral Guests
Joe Nickell

Psychic Vibrations
We'll Feng Shui Until the Contrails Get Us!
Robert Sheaffer

New Books

Science Best Sellers

Articles of Note

Guide for Authors

Letters to the Editor

Book Reviews

The Truth Never Stands in the Way of a Good Story
By Jan Harold Brunvand
Benjamin Radford
[Read the Review] [Shop for this book]

Qigong: Chinese Medicine or Pseudoscience?
By Lin Zixin, et al.
Donald Mainfort
[Read the Review] [Shop for this book]

The Coming Global Superstorm
By Art Bell and Whitley Strieber
Robert Baker
[Shop for this book]

Randomness
By Deborah J. Bennett
Mark Durm
[Shop for this book]

How to Know God
By Deepak Chopra
Rudolph Muska
[Shop for this book]

The Killing of History: How Literary Critics and Social Theorists Are Murdering Our Past
By Keith Windschuttle
Mark Bauerlein
[Shop for this book]

Feedback | Reverse links for this page | Translate this page