Skepticblog

Howdy, folks!

We’ve just released our annual appeal for your support of our work at the nonprofit Skeptics Society. For over 20 years the Skeptics Society has been at the forefront of skepticism’s efforts to study the paranormal and fringe science, curb their dangerous excesses, and provide the public with reliable science-based information about those controversial topics.

To learn more about our work, or to learn how to help solve mysteries with a tax-deductible donation, please check out today’s eSkeptic newsletter.

I’d like add a personal note to our organizational appeal. Your support gives the Skeptics Society the resources and inspiration to undertake deep, reflective, useful work across many media. Among those diverse public service projects, one educational effort I am especially proud of and involved in is the Junior Skeptic magazine-within-a-magazine bound inside Skeptic. It’s a rare privilege, as a skeptical researcher and activist, to be able to dig down into paranormal mysteries in a serious, in-depth way—and rarer still to have the time to find ways to distill that research for a young audience.

I know that some of you enjoyed my first book for young readers, Evolution: How We and All Living Things Came to Be, or my recent book with Don Prothero for general readers, Abominable Science! Neither of those projects would exist without the Skeptics Society and the donors who support it. Evolution is a direct adaptation from material created first for Junior Skeptic. Abominable Science! is built upon years of research for various issues of Junior Skeptic. The Skeptics Society is one of the few institutions in the world pursuing research on paranormal topics. Junior Skeptic remains the skeptical movement’s most sustained and substantial outreach project for children. I’m grateful to everyone who lends their support to that work.

Similarly, I’d ask those who enjoy Skepticblog to consider a donation in support of the Skeptics Society. Skepticblog was built by the Skeptics Society, and is maintained at our expense by Skeptic.com Webmaster William Bull. As well, my own posts in particular are made possible with the Skeptics Society’s encouragement, and are built again upon the research that our donors and subscribers make possible.

Thank you to all of you for reading, recommending, and championing our work at Skepticblog, Skeptic magazine, and the Skeptics Society—and thank you for all the thousands of other ways that thousands of individual skeptics have found to share the beauty of scientific understanding.

—Daniel