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: Skeptical Inquirer magazine
Volume 22, Number 5, September/October 1998
- Buy this back issue
- Coincidences: Remarkable or Random?
- How to Study Weird Things
- Notes of a Fringe-Watcher: What's Going On At Temple University?
- Massive Uncritical Publicity for Supposed `Independent UFO Investigation' Demonstrates Media Gullibility Once Again
Special Section: What are the Chances?
Coincidences: Remarkable or Random?Most improbable coincidences likely result from play of random events. The very nature of randomness assures that combing random data will yield some pattern.
Bruce Martin
Numerology: Comes the Revolution
Strange things can happen by coincidence. Strange things must
happen by coincidence. Fifty-sevens in the American Revolution provide an
example.
Underwood Dudley
Calculated Risks
We are notoriously bad at assessing risk. Cultural context and
human psychology come into play at least as much as statistical realities. For
instance, our perceptual apparatus is geared towards exotic, personal, dramatic
threats. This doesn't mean we're ignorant; just human.
K. C. Cole
Articles
How to Study Weird ThingsMany students are asking to study unconventional topics. There are strategies for working with these students that increase their critical aptitude and analytical reasoning without disenchanting them with science and traditional disciplines.
Frank Trocco
Why Would People Not Believe Weird Things?
Instead of being appalled at the gullibility of the general
public, perhaps we should be surprised that they believe so few strange
things. Compared to widely held religious beliefs and the even more astounding
notions of physics, things like ESP, UFOs, and astrology seem rather
plausible.
Wayne R. Anderson
Starkle, Starkle, Little Twink
There is an informal, effective way to challenge astrology that is
neither a disdainful dismissal nor a tedious, scientific recital. It is just a
matter of asking some simple questions.
Judith Hayes
Of Planets and Cognitions: The Use of Deductive Inference in the
Natural Sciences and Psychology
Inferences of unobserved cognitive events in psychology are not
the same as the inference of the recently discovered, but unobserved extrasolar
planets in astronomy. Unlike astronomy, or the other natural sciences,
psychology has no experimental foundation of laws that justify such
inferences.
Henry D. Schlinger Jr.
Columns
Editor's NoteNews and Comment
- Massive Uncritical Publicity for Supposed `Independent UFO Investigation' Demonstrates Media Gullibility Once Again
- It Is Time for TV Networks to Admit Their Role in Misleading Public About UFOs
- `Pi' April Fool's Joke Gets Out of Hand -- and Goes Round the World
- India Honors Premanand for Exposing `Miracles,' Promoting Science
- Into the Nagual at Last: New Age Author Carlos Casteneda Dies
- New Poll Points to Increase in Paranormal Belief
- Folk Beliefs May Increase Cancer Deaths
- The Aztec UFO Symposium: How This Saucer Story Started As a Con Game
- The Roswell Type
What's Going On At Temple University?
Martin Gardner
Investigative Files
Alien Implants: The New `Hard Evidence'
Joe Nickell
Psychic Vibrations
Apocalypse Foiled Again; UFOlogists Shoot for the Moon
Robert Sheaffer
New Books
Articles of Note
Science Best Sellers
Follow-up
Harold Puthoff Responds on Zero-Point Energy
Harold Puthoff
Responding To Puthoff: Zero-Point Energy
Martin Gardner
Letters to the Editor
Book Reviews
Nonconscious Movements: From Mystical Messages to Facilitated Communicationby Herman H. Spitz
Carol Tavris
UFOs & Alien Contact: Two Centuries of Mystery
by Robert E. Bartholomew and George S. Howard
Robert A. Baker
Therapeutic Madness
by John I. Lynch
Robert A. Baker
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