Home : Skeptical Inquirer magazine

Volume 27, Number 1
January/February 2003

• Buy this back issue
• How Not to Test Mediums: Critiquing the Afterlife Experiments
• Investigative Files: Amityville: The Horror of it All
• Notes on a Strange World: Don't Try This at Home
• Book Review: American Exorcism: Expelling Demons in the Land of Plenty

Articles

How Not to Test Mediums
Critiquing the Afterlife Experiments

Professor Gary Schwartz makes revolutionary claims that he has provided competent scientific evidence for survival of consciousness and—even more extraordinary—that mediums can actually communicate with the dead. He is badly mistaken. The research he presents is flawed, and in numerous ways. Probably no other extended program in psychical research deviates so much from accepted norms of scientific methodology as this one.

Ray Hyman

Beliefs on Trial, and the Legality of Reasonableness

Ever thought about becoming a lawyer? Here's your chance to don a black robe and horsehair wig, and apply some legal principles to skeptical inquiry.

Richard M. Fisher

Placebos, Nocebos, and Chiropractic Adjustments

Appropriate spinal manipulation provides both real and placebo benefits in the treatment of mechanical-type neck and back problems. But chiropractic adjustments based on the vertebral subluxation theory may offer a placebo effect that is outweighed by a nocebo effect.

Samuel Homola, D.C.

Pliny the Elder
Rampant Credulist, Rational Skeptic, or Both?

Pliny the Elder's Natural History was the premier source of information about the natural world for fifteen hundred years. Yet it contains blatant absurdities. What does that tell us about Pliny, and, perhaps, ourselves?

Ken Parejko

Unfazed: Mark Twain Debunks the Mesmerizer

Mark Twain's career as a debunker of charlatans began earlier than most people realize. As a fifteen-year-old, Twain's life-long skepticism was triggered by his encounter with a traveling mesmerizer.

George Englebretsen

Columns

Editor's Note

Death of the Afterlife Experiments?

News and Comment

• National Academy of Sciences Report Says Polygraph Testing Too Flawed for Security Screening
• Sandia Tests MOLE Detector, Finds Only Chance Performance
• Pop Singer's Death Reveals Visits to New Age 'Miracle Worker'
• Baraka Buys Bunk: Furore Over Poet's Conspiracy Paranoia
• Brain Site Located that Induces Illusory Out-of-Body Experiences

Investigative Files
The Horror of It All

Joe Nickell

Thinking About Science
Causes and Correlations

Massimo Pigliucci

Notes on a Strange World
Don't Try This at Home

Massimo Polidoro

New Books

Science Best Sellers

Forum

• Shattering the Crystal Sphere

  Ralph Estling

Follow-Up

• The Mars Effect Cannot Be Pinned on Cheating Parents

  Suitbert Ertel

• Response to Ertel

  Geoffrey Dean

Guide for Authors

Readers Forum

• Can We Respond More Rationally to Terrorism?

Letters to the Editor

Reviews

The Oxford Companion to the Body

Colin Blakemore and Sheila Jennett

Robert H. Cormack, Robert Holson, and Mark C. Samuels

American Exorcism: Expelling Demons in the Land of Plenty

Michael Cuneo

Kevin Christopher

Anatomy of a Life Possessed

Maria Ferrara Pema

Joseph P. Szimhart

ABC's Primetime Examines the Amityville Horror

Kevin Christopher

Cover

Stills from Dateline NBC, November 17, 2000