Here is a third excerpt drawn from Part Two of my two-chapter “Why Is There a Skeptical Movement?” (PDF), which follows my two previous posts: first (in their original order as they appear in the larger piece) “Modern Skepticism’s Unique Mandate” and then “‘Testable Claims’ is Not a ‘Religious Exemption.’” Today we’ll consider an issue which has been addressed in the past by Ray Hyman, Massimo Pigliucci, and other internal critics concerned with the quality and responsibility of skeptical efforts: the dangers of speaking beyond one’s expertise.

Skeptics are Not Everythingologists

Accepting that any and all “testable claims” are in principle within the scope of scientific skepticism—and that untestable claims are, for reasons of principle (though also practicality) outside that scope—does it follow that skeptics should take the initiative to wade into mainstream scientific or academic controversies? Certainly we have often explored controversial areas beyond the paranormal, provided that those areas made testable claims. “The Skeptics also believe that science and rational skepticism can and should be applied to certain claims in the social sciences,” affirmed Michael Shermer in 1992, “including testable statements made in such fields as psychology, sociology, economics, and political science.”¹

But does this broad critical exploration have practical limits? Reading a blog post about the scope of skepticism, I once happened to notice this sentiment expressed in one commenter’s response: “the skeptical movement should strive to become the Snopes of all reality.” Of all reality? This caught my eye—not only because it seems a little ambitious, but because I have often heard similar sentiments in recent years. In 2006, for example, CSICOP co-founder Paul Kurtz attempted to reposition the venerable organization as standing for “science, reason, and free inquiry in every area of human interest.”² Not to put too fine a point on it (and of course Kurtz understood this practical issue³) but there are a lot of areas of human interest. Even assuming the “limited” scope of testable claims (a scope some newer skeptics are loathe to accept) it’s worth asking what such a sprawling mandate—essentially, the critical study of every knowable fact—looks like in practical terms.

Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons

For centuries, skeptics have regarded it as a very bad sign when otherwise smart people weigh in on expert topics outside their own areas of expertise. In 1672, Pseudodoxia Epidemica [or,  Enquiries into Commonly Presumed Truths, also known as Vulgar Errors] author Thomas Browne included this among his many warnings about arguments from authority.

Again, a testimony is of small validity if deduced from men outside of their own profession; so if Lactantius affirm the figure of the Earth is plain, or Austin deny there are antipodes; though venerable Fathers of the Church, and ever to be honored, yet will not their Authorities prove sufficient to ground a belief thereon.⁴

Lactantius was a flat-Earth-believing Christian advisor to the Roman Emperor Constantine, singled out centuries later for a sharp rebuke by Copernicus. In 1543, Copernicus wrote that he would disregard sniping from “babblers who claim to be judges of astronomy although completely ignorant of the subject,” and scathingly noted that “Lactantius, otherwise an illustrious writer but hardly an astronomer, speaks quite childishly about the earth’s shape, when he mocks those who declared that the earth has the form of a globe. Hence scholars need not be surprised if any such persons will likewise ridicule me. Astronomy is written for astronomers.”⁵

Modern skeptics are very familiar with outsider contrarianism, and with the mischief it can cause. Hardly a day goes by here at Skeptic magazine without our getting letters from non-experts who feel they have blown the lid off evolution, Relativity, or some other major scientific theory or branch of expert knowledge. In 2006, for example, we received a press release asking, “What if the next groundbreaking discovery that changes the way we view science and geology is spearheaded by someone outside the field?” The release promoted the idiosyncratic view of comic book artist Neal Adams, who believes “that the Earth was once smaller and somehow it grew. The surface, or crust, simply cracked apart, and the cracks opened up, producing new thin surface, a young surface. In this case the continents didn’t move at all. They stayed where they were and moved outward.”⁶ As an illustrator myself (and a comics fan) I can attest that Mr. Adams earned every bit of his luminous professional reputation—but his profession is illustration, not geology. Expertise in one field does not make us experts in other, unrelated fields. Similarly outside their fields are hydrologists who attempt to debunk evolution, actors who seek to overturn the conventional view of the 9/11 events, comedians who promote contrarian theories about alleged new side effects of vaccination, and even famous biologists who deny the existence of HIV without benefit of relevant specialization. In all such cases, the combination of contrarian opinions, high certainty, and insufficient domain specific expertise adds up to a major, screaming red flag. Paleontologist Donald Prothero has termed the phenomenon of respected scientists blundering beyond their field of knowledge “the Linus Pauling Effect”:

The great Linus Pauling may have won two Nobel Prizes, but his crazy idea that megadoses of Vitamin C would cure nearly everything seems to have died with him. William Shockley may have won a Nobel for his work on transistors, but his racist ideas about genetics (a field in which he had no expertise) should never have been taken seriously. Kary Mullis may have deserved his Nobel Prize for developing the polymerase chain reaction, but that gives him no qualifications to speak with authority on his unscientific ideas about AIDS denial and global warming and astrology….⁷

So where does that leave us? Are self-identified skeptics less likely to make fools of ourselves when commenting outside our personal areas of expertise—perhaps by virtue of our interest in “critical thinking”? Unfortunately, the opposite may be true. Critical thinking is not a substitute for expert knowledge, no matter how much skeptics, creationists, 9/11 Truthers, or deniers of climate science might wish that it were. Applying strong critical thinking skills to insufficient knowledge leads us to perceive patterns and problems that don’t really exist. Most pseudoscience arises from such feral critical thinking. “It would never be healthy for ‘skeptics’ to be more skeptical than the scientific community itself,” Kendrick Frazier cautioned.⁸ Skeptics who venture beyond the limits of our own expert knowledge are at least as vulnerable to becoming pseudoscientific cranks as anyone else. As Ray Hyman warned,

No one, especially in our times, can credibly claim to be an expert on all subjects. Whenever possible, you should consult appropriate experts. We, understandably, are highly critical of paranormal claimants who make assertions that are obviously beyond their competence. We should be just as demanding on ourselves. A critic’s worst sin is to go beyond the facts and the available evidence.⁹

Individually, skeptics are qualified for whatever we’re actually qualified for—and nothing more. Some individual skeptics, of course, are scientists or scholars with the expertise to offer professional contributions to the technical literature within their own fields, but most of us are mere science enthusiasts. Collectively, the skeptical community is a mixed population made up largely of scientific amateurs. For that reason (as I argued in a 2009 article, “What, If Anything, Can Skeptics Say About Science?”¹⁰) the skeptical movement has essentially no ability to contribute responsibly to the mainstream scientific literature, nor to resolve expert scientific controversies. The best we can hope to contribute in areas of genuine scientific knowledge is useful description. My children’s book Evolution: How We and All Living Things Came to Be is such a descriptive project. What I aimed to do in the book was to describe what qualified scientists think. To do that, I had to seek out and describe the prevailing current of opinion, and then ask experts to check that I understood it correctly. That may not sound like much, but it took some doing. It’s important to understand that occupations which “merely” describe the goings on within “only” the empirical scope of science—such as science journalism, science education, and science communication—are themselves established fields, each with an expert literature, university degree programs, and so on. In those expert fields, most skeptics (myself included) are amateurs.

Skeptics are not everythingologists. The idea that skeptics can shed light on every area of human endeavor is a hubristic daydream. But that does not mean we can’t be experts on some things—even the best available experts. Which things, exactly?

How about, “Testable pseudoscientific and paranormal claims”?

Today I thought I might share another excerpt from my two-chapter “Why Is There a Skeptical Movement?”(PDF)—the section that comes immediately before the “‘Testable Claims’ is Not a ‘Religious Exemption’” excerpt I posted last week. (My apologies for any confusion in presenting these out of their original order.) Both excerpts are taken from the second chapter of “Why Is There a Skeptical Movement?” I encourage anyone interested in the topic of scientific skepticism—enthusiasts and critics alike—to consider the larger piece in its entirety if at all possible. (It’s free.) Part One delves into the long, useful, and (I think) noble tradition of scientific skepticism, tracing its development alongside the scientific mainstream in the twentieth and nineteenth centuries and beyond—all the way back to classical antiquity. This excerpt today assumes you’re familiar with the fact that serious attempts to study, investigate, and understand paranormal claims (and to rein in or expose paranormal fraud) go back a very, very long way. Today we’ll consider the context of the most important “recent” milestone on that long road: the founding in the 1970s of formal groups dedicated specifically to the pursuit of scientific skepticism as an organized public service project. (See Part One of “Why Is There a Skeptical Movement?” for further details regarding this and earlier examples of skeptical organizing.)

Modern Skepticism’s Unique Mandate

The 1976 founding issue of North America’s first periodical dedicated to scientific skepticism—now known as the Skeptical Inquirer.

If the critical study of paranormal claims extends back to antiquity, why do most skeptics consider the 1976 formation of the first successful North American skeptical organization, CSICOP [the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, since renamed CSI, or the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry] to be the “birth of modern skepticism” (at least for the English-speaking world)?

The difference is between the long-standing genre of individual skeptical writing, and the recognition that this scholarship collectively comprised a distinct field of study. With the creation of an organization to pursue that work (and soon the emergence of a global network of many such groups) came the accoutrements of any serious field: discussion of best practices; recognition of specialist expertise; periodicals for the publication of new research; infrastructure such as legal entities and buildings; and, eventually, even professional positions for full-time writers and researchers. Together—falteringly, at first, but together—these newly organized skeptics got to work on their unique mandate.

To better appreciate the dimensions of that distinct mission—the much-discussed “scope” of scientific skepticism—it’s necessary to consider the other movements, organizations, and scholarly fields that already existed in North America before CSICOP was formed:

There was already an atheist movement. Although the term “New Atheism” dates back only to 2005, American Atheists was formed in 1963.¹ Thirteen years before the formation of CSICOP, atheist activists had already overturned school prayer in the United States Supreme Court—and of course the “Freethought” movement goes back much further. German Freethinkers who flowed into the United States in the mid-1800s established groups that still exist today. (The oldest I’m aware of is the Sauk County Freethinkers, established in 1852, whose first Speaker wrote that the means to “mental and moral freedom…are not ‘supernatural and incomprehensible means of grace,’ but the natural and comprehensible means by which a human being influences and inspires the mind and heart of his fellows—through speech, song, and the mutual exchange of opinions.”²)

Being a part of that Freethought tradition, there were of course already humanist organizations and humanist media many decades before CSICOP was formed. In fact, CSICOP was a spin-off from the venerable American Humanist Association. It was conceived at an AHA conference³ as a distinct group with a distinct mandate. Founder Paul Kurtz recalled, “CSICOP was originally founded under the auspices of the Humanist magazine, sponsored by the American Humanist Association. But the Executive Council decided immediately that it would separately incorporate and that it would pursue its own agenda.”⁴

Similarly, before CSICOP there were already groups and movements working to advance democratic ideals, civil rights, and feminism. There were already groups fighting for gay rights, for church-state separation, and against racial discrimination. There were already environmental groups.

Likewise, science advocates already existed. There were already science popularizers. Science education and science journalism were established professional fields before CSICOP came along.

CSICOP was even predated by an existing movement to promote critical thinking (a movement that still exists) known not-too-creatively as “the critical thinking movement.”⁵ Since the 1970s, this educator-driven pedagogical movement has been hard at work on a project that skeptics sometimes imagine we should invent: reforming education across all grade levels to teach critical thinking skills, in order to foster a more rational society. Without any particular contact with (or need for) the skeptical movement, the critical thinking community boasts its own non-profit organizations, technical literature, and decades of annual conferences.

With all those movements doing all that work, why bother forming CSICOP? If other movements already promoted humanism, atheism, rationalism, science education and even critical thinking, what possible need could there be for organizing an additional, new movement—a movement of people called “skeptics”?

Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal

The skeptical literature is the work of many decades. Here, for example, is the cover of Skeptic magazine’s premiere issue, published 21 years ago. (Asimov portrait by Pat Linse.) Subscribe today to support our ongoing work.

CSICOP—and with it the global network of likeminded organizations that CSICOP inspired, such as the JREF and the Skeptics Society—was created with the specific yet ambitious goal of filling a very large gap in scholarship. The skeptical movement sought to bring organized critical focus to the same ancient problem that isolated, outnumbered, independent voices had been struggling to address for centuries: a virtually endless number of unexamined, potentially harmful paranormal or pseudoscientific claims ignored or neglected by mainstream scientists and scholars. “The gap means there is a danger that high-level scientific competence may not be applied in examining paranormal and fringe science claims,” explained Skeptical Inquirer Editor Kendrick Frazier in 2001. “This is where I think CSICOP, the Skeptical Inquirer, and the skeptical movement in general come in. We help fill that gap. We are in effect a surrogate in that area for institutional science.”⁶ Many of the people who undertook the work of this newly organized skepticism were personally motivated by the social justice implications of this neglected gap in scholarship (shouldn’t someone protect the sick from con artists?) but it was the gap itself that they organized to fix.

In 2001 Paul Kurtz recalled, “I am the culprit responsible for the founding of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal. Why did I do so? Because I was dismayed in 1976 by the rising tide of belief in the paranormal and the lack of adequate scientific examinations of these claims.”⁷ Setting the “rising tide” rhetoric aside (every generation of skeptic has interpreted the paranormal as posing a uniquely urgent problem in their time) the mandate at CSICOP’s inception was very clear. Organized skeptics would set aside a priori scoffing and strive to become honest brokers, actively working to learn what light the methods of science and scholarship could shine on the vast and long-established portfolio of skeptical topics.

To that end, the scope of the skeptical project was explicitly defined as the investigation of exclusively empirical claims—not just additional opinion, not merely an attitude of doubt, and not simple sniping from the other side of the burden of proof. The first issue of North America’s founding skeptical periodical was unapologetic about this just-the-facts mandate.

This journal, the official organ of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, is intended to communicate scientific information about the many esoteric claims that have shown a growing influence upon the general public, educational curricula, and scientific institutions themselves. … Finally, a word might be said about our exclusive concern with scientific investigation and empirical claims. The Committee takes no position regarding nonempirical or mystical claims. We accept a scientific viewpoint and will not argue for it in these pages. Those concerned with metaphysics and supernatural claims are directed to those journals of philosophy and religion dedicated to such matters.⁸

That same inaugural issue of the magazine that would soon be renamed the Skeptical Inquirer amplified that “the purpose of the Committee is not to reject on a priori grounds, antecedent to inquiry, any or all claims, but rather to examine them openly, completely, objectively, and carefully.”⁹

Think about the sheer, sustained toil this aspiration called for. After all, it’s not easy to be open-minded about every bizarre question to come down the pike, let alone to try to solve them all—and it doesn’t get easier after you’ve seen a thousand similar claims come to nothing. Nonetheless, although skepticism is often denigrated as a club for scoffers (even, if you will, “scoftics”¹⁰), the goal for CSICOP was the opposite of armchair debunking. Kurtz explained in 1985:

How shall people in the scientific and academic community respond to the challenge of paranormal claims? The response should be, first and foremost, ‘By scientific research.’ In other words, what we need is open-minded, dispassionate, and continuing investigation of claims and hypotheses in the paranormal realm. … The dogmatic refusal to entertain the possibility of the reality of anomalous phenomena has no place in the serious scientific context. The hypotheses and data must be dealt with as objectively as possible, without preconceived ideas or prejudices that would mean the death of the scientific spirit.¹¹

Organized skepticism was thus not the place for people to talk big about their beliefs or their disbeliefs, but instead to ante up concrete evidence one way or the other. As Kurtz bluntly concluded, “proof or disproof is found by doing the hard work of scientific investigation.” After all, opinions are like noses¹²—everyone’s got one, and everyone already had one without organized skepticism. Scientific skeptics set out to discover and provide something more useful: demonstrable, verifiable facts on which the public could rely.

CSI’s “follow the evidence” approach (I hope I may be forgiven for hearing hits by The Who in my head when attaching the word “evidence” to CSICOP’s new name) became the enduring engine for an organization, which grew into a network of organizations, which grew into a movement. When I discovered skepticism (over 20 years ago) the empirical “testable claims” approach had been long established as the skeptical movement’s central unifying principle—as central to skepticism as evolution is to biology.¹³ The Skeptics Society, for example, was from the outset committed to this scientific framework. “With regard to its procedure of examination of all claims, the Skeptics Society adapts the scientific method,”¹⁴ affirmed the first issue of Skeptic magazine in 1992. “The primary mission of the Skeptics Society and Skeptic magazine,” Michael Shermer emphasized elsewhere, “is the investigation of science and pseudoscience controversies, and the promotion of critical thinking. We investigate claims that are testable or examinable.”¹⁵

The sheer overwhelming practicality of concentrating on the investigable¹⁶ aspects of paranormal claims—of investigating those things which can be investigated—inspired a generation of skeptics like me. As Steven Novella and David Bloomberg explained in 1999, “The position of scientific skepticism is consistent, pragmatic, and allows the skeptical movement to precisely and confidently define the focus of its mission.”¹⁷

It was also the best guarantee of skepticism’s integrity. When skepticism serves up opinion, it is just more noisy punditry. When skepticism can be counted on to deliver the demonstrable facts, it becomes, like Consumer Reports [or like Snopes.com], a useful public service.

Jamy Ian Swiss explains and defends the work of scientific skepticism. View the speech on YouTube.

Today I thought I might share a short excerpt from my two-chapter “Why Is There a Skeptical Movement?” on the topic of scientific skepticism’s long-standing focus on testable claims (particularly those related to the paranormal or fringe science). It’s an issue that is in the air at the moment following a fantastic speech delivered by magician Jamy Ian Swiss at the Orange County Freethought Alliance conference last weekend. You can view the entirety of Jamy’s speech on YouTube. (For more on the conference, see Donald Prothero’s post here at Skepticblog.)”Why Is There a Skeptical Movement?” was almost two years in the making. As the Skeptics Society has shared it for free, the historical research alone may be worth your price of admission. I do hope you’ll consider delving further into the story of scientific skepticism’s long and proud public service tradition—the work of decades, even centuries, of activism and investigation. But this particular “testable claims” point is so critical to the understanding of skepticism, and so frequently not understood, that I feel that sharing this section from the piece here may be useful. With yet another ghastly news story again raising the question of predatory paranormal fraud, this may be a good time to say once again that the need for this work—the need for clarity, focus, and sustained, dedicated effort—is as urgent as it has ever been. I hope you will support skeptics in doing that work, even if your own primary cause is not the same.

“Testable Claims” is Not a “Religious Exemption”

Skeptics like Steven Novella insist that sticking to the realm of science is “about clarity of philosophy, logic, and definition”¹ rather than strategic advantage or intellectual cowardice,² but some critics find this position unsatisfying—or even suspicious. What are we to make of accusations that skepticism’s “testable claims” scope is a cynical political dodge, a way to present skeptics as brave investigators while conveniently arranging to leave religious feathers unruffled? Like the other clichés of my field (“skeptics are in the pocket of Big Pharma!”) this complaint is probably immortal. No matter how often this claim is debunked, it will never go away.

Nonetheless, it is grade-A horseshit. It’s become a kind of urban legend among a subset of the atheist community—a misleading myth in which a matter of principle is falsely presented as a disingenuous ploy. There is (and this cannot be emphasized enough) no “religious exemption” in skepticism. Skeptics do and always have busted religious claims.

That’s so important and so often misunderstood that I’m going to repeat it: collectively, scientific skepticism has never avoided claims because they are religious in nature—not for political expediency, not to “coddle” anyone, and not for any other reason. As magician Jamy Ian Swiss (founder of the New York Skeptics) explained in a thundering main stage speech at the James Randi Educational Foundation’s Amazing Meeting 2012 conference, the notion that skeptics grant religion “any sort of special pass…is not only a weak position, I don’t think it’s a real position. It’s an imaginary one. It’s one I only seem to hear or see as a straw man that atheist activists accuse skeptics of promoting.”³

Let me amplify that still further: anyone who makes the argument that the testable claims scope is a deliberate ploy to “avoid offending the religious” is either unfamiliar with the literature of scientific skepticism, or chooses to misrepresent it.

Now, here’s what actually is true: scientific skeptics investigate claims that can be investigated (religious or otherwise) and we set aside claims that cannot be investigated (again, religious or otherwise). The “religious” part is irrelevant. It comes up on both sides of the testability equation, so just cross it out and forget about it. The only relevant distinction is simply whether empirical evidence is possible. If we can’t collect evidence, then tough—we can’t. If we can collect evidence, then we do, regardless of whom that evidence may offend.

“If someone says she believes in God based on faith,” clarified Michael Shermer, “then we do not have much to say about it. If someone says he believes in God and he can prove it through rational arguments or empirical evidence, then, like Harry Truman, we say ‘show me.’”⁴

Skeptics have always been willing (and often eager) to confront central tenets proclaimed by venerated religious leaders—claims considered sacred and profound matters of faith by many sincere people—when any concrete, scientifically meaningful claim is advanced.

The textbook example of the testable claims scope applied to religion by scientific skeptics is James Randi’s exceedingly public humiliation of Peter Popoff, a popular Christian minister. Popoff’s multi-million-dollar ministry was built on his reputation as a faith healer who received (it appeared) miraculous knowledge about the medical health and personal details of the faithful in the audience.

Where an atheist activist might have railed against the a priori implausibility of these performances, Randi and his allies (from the Houston Society to Oppose Pseudoscience,⁵ the Society of American Magicians, and the Bay Area Skeptics⁶) instead took scientific skepticism’s much more concrete path: they broke Popoff’s schtick down to its testable components, and then literally tested them.

This point is worth highlighting. A lot of the work of “scientific skepticism,” such as my own historical sleuthing, is “scientific” only in the broadest sense: it is critical, evidence-based, and works within an empirical framework. But Randi’s 1986 Popoff investigation involved direct hypothesis testing (and, hell, even machines that go beep). Setting aside untestable metaphysical speculations, Randi’s team hypothesized that Popoff’s information was harvested directly from the audience. They tested this by seeding the audience with skeptical activists. Randi explained that before his dedicated group of volunteers distributed themselves throughout the audience,

I instructed them to allow themselves to be approached, and to give out incorrect names and other data whether they were “pumped” by questioners, asked to fill out healing cards, or both. They were told to supply slightly different sets of information to the two data inputs, so that if any of them were “called out” we could tell from the incorrect information just which method had been used.⁷

Sure enough, Popoff called out Randi’s people by their false names, and fed back their planted, bogus information. Armed with this result, Randi and his colleague Steve Shaw (a skeptic and professional magician who performs under the name Banachek) further hypothesized that this information was passed to Popoff electronically.

When Steve and I saw Popoff dashing up and down the aisles calling out as many as 20 names, illnesses, and other data, one after the other, we knew something more than a mnemonic system was at work. I said to Steve, “You know what to do?” He replied: “Yep. I’ll go look in his ears.” And he did, almost bowling the evangelist over as he bumped up against him to get a good look. Steve saw the electronic device in Popoff’s left ear. When he reported this to me, I knew what my next step would be.⁹

The following week, Randi, the Bay Area Skeptics, and an electronics specialist named Alexander Jason were ready for Popoff’s performance in San Francisco. The night before Popoff’s event, Jason scanned the radio frequencies active at the same auditorium. With those frequencies saved and filtered out, Jason and Bay Area Skeptics founder Robert Steiner were easily able to dial in to the Popoff operation’s radio frequency.¹⁰ Tape rolling, the team recorded Popoff’s wife secretly feeding him harvested information about members of the audience, which he fed back to the audience as an apparent miracle. Popoff was caught red-handed.

Randi revealed this incontrovertible evidence on network television, on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, airing videotape from the Popoff event with the secret radio transmission overlaid for the television audience to hear. Ouch. The scandal broke the back of this popular Christian ministry: Popoff declared bankruptcy in 1987. (After a period of humiliated obscurity, Popoff built a new ministry—now even more profitable. Randi reflected in a 2007 Inside Edition interview that this was not surprising: “Flim flam is his profession. That’s what he does best: he’s very good at it, and naturally he’s going to go back to it.”¹¹)

Scientific skeptics accept scientific limits. These limits are not conjured up to annoy people, nor adopted for strategic convenience; they’re simply baked into the nature of science. “If it is not measurable even in principle,” Michael Shermer explained, “then it is not knowable by science.”¹²

Contrary to common misconception, this empirical standard is not something skeptics apply only to claims that are considered sacred in modern traditions. The exact same scientific/non-scientific distinction applies to all claims, regardless of their content. Steven Novella explained yet again in 2010, “It is absolutely not about ghosts vs holy ghosts…. Any belief which is structured in such a way that it is positioned outside the realm of methodological naturalism by definition cannot be examined by the methods of science.” Novella went on: “The content of the beliefs, however, does not matter —it does not matter if they are part of a mainstream religion, a cult belief, a new age belief, or just a quirky personal belief. If someone believes in untestable ghosts, or ESP, or bigfoot, or whatever—they have positioned those claims outside the realm of science.”¹³ Science is not able to demonstrate that undetectable metaphysical ghosts do not exist; only that detectable ghosts appear not to, and that many alleged hauntings have other explanations. We cannot determine whether or not homeopathic preparations are really “dynamized” with undetectable vitalistic energy; we can discover whether they have greater treatment effects than a similarly administered placebo. We can’t demonstrate that we ought to value liberty above the common good, or value security over liberty. We can’t demonstrate that taxation is slavery, or that the means of production should be in the hands of the worker. We can’t demonstrate that there is no afterlife, or that gay marriage is morally good, or that Kirk is better than Picard. We cannot demonstrate that Carl Sagan’s neighbor has no invisible, undetectable dragon in his garage—but only proceed, as a methodological matter, on the basis that we are unable to discern any difference between an undetectable dragon and no dragon at all. Are untestable dragons ontologically identical to non-existent dragons? That’s a question for bong hits in freshmen dorms. Science can’t tell, and doesn’t care.

Individual skeptics may have opinions about all those philosophical matters, but none of these are questions science can answer. As Novella and Bloomberg explained [in a well-known 1999 Skeptical Inquirer article], “science can have only an agnostic view toward untestable hypotheses. A rationalist may argue that maintaining an arbitrary opinion about an untestable hypothesis is irrational—and he may be right. But this is a philosophical argument, not a scientific one.”¹⁴

Irrational or not, like everyone else, I hold many strong and (I feel) well-reasoned philosophical opinions. Those are not scientific conclusions—they are opinions grounded in my personal values. I’ll fight for them, but it would be dishonest for me to promote them while waving a “science-based” banner. Skeptics have a word for people who imply scientific authority for their non-scientific beliefs: “pseudoscientists.”

An ongoing common theme of the work that Michael Shermer and I pursue at the Skeptics Society (see for example my recent two-chapter piece “Why Is There a Skeptical Movement?” [PDF]) is the importance of studying the work of the skeptics of the past—from Lucian of Samosata’s debunking in second century Rome, to the investigations and insights of early American skeptics like Mark Twain (PDF) and Benjamin Franklin, to the hard won lessons of early twentieth century pioneers like Joseph Rinn and Rose Mackenberg. It’s essential for skeptics to learn from the lessons of the past, and appreciate that we’re caretakers for the work of those who have come before.

To do that requires not only serious study of that skeptical work in itself, but also consideration of the cultural context in which the work took place. “The Rough Fist of Reason” was widely published in newspapers in 1916.¹ It reflected the general understanding of the public at that time—including a public awareness of skeptical investigation that may seem surprising to us. Rittenberg expected his readers to recognize that the (already decades-old) talking-to-the-dead business of the Spiritualists occupied a twilit middle ground between authentic religious experience and fraudulent con-artistry. He also expected readers to be familiar with the concept of science-based committees² that investigate and in many cases expose the trickery behind apparently supernatural phenomena. There had been many investigation projects by that time, many high profile prosecutions of mediums, and many widely publicized exposés. Generations had grown up with these ideas. Four decades before the invention of the Magnum character, the New York Times could already say, “In this country at least, nearly all the so-called phenomena of Spiritualism have been rationally explained. … Multitudes of exposures have been made of performing ‘mediums,’ whose marvelous phenomena were simple enough when laid bare to the public.”³ Thus, when Rittenberg had Magnum identify himself as “frankly a skeptic,” he presented his detective as the newest iteration of a traditional stock character. “The skeptic” was a template as easily recognizable to readers in 1916 as to television viewers of The X-Files in the 1990s, or to current readers of this blog.

For all its square-jawed bluster, “The Rough Fist of Reason” also raises ethical questions that trouble skeptics today—or which ought to. What guidelines govern skeptical interventions? Is truth (assuming we in fact know how to pursue and reliably demonstrate truth in our areas of claimed expertise) the only ethical principle to consider? Or ought we also to be concerned about the wellbeing of the people we encounter in our work?

—Daniel Loxton

The Rough Fist of Reason, by Max Rittenberg (1916)

At the phrase “spirit photographs,” Magnum interrupted his client brusquely.

“Spirit, photographs!” he repeated. “My dear young lady, I can get them made for you seven and sixpence a dozen, cabinet size, platinotype, finished off with an art mount. It’s a mere question of faking the plates—taking a double exposure. Any raw amateur could turn the trick. When I was on the occult investigation committee, a couple of years back, we had hundreds of such photographs submitted to us. Sent, mark you, in perfect good faith. The people who had them believed them to be indisputable evidence of spirit visitations. Utter rubbish! Trickery, and transparent trickery at that! Why, the so-called spirit faces were demonstrably taken from existing pictures or photographs. The same pose of head, the same turn of expression.”

It was an unusually long speech for Magnum to make. With his quick impatience, his habit of condensing a quart of thought into a thimbleful of crystalized concentrate, he would customarily have answered an inquiry of obvious foolishness with an emphatic “Rubbish!” and allow his tone of voice to drive home the reason behind the summary. But in this instance he felt very strongly and lengthily on the matter. He was an inveterate opponent of superstition or nebulous fancy presented to the world in the garments of science, and wherever possible, liked to smash a fist into it.

His client, Miss Cicely Cotterell, was a modern young woman, those bright-hard college girls who are not abashed by any authoritativeness on the part of man.

1916 readers would have been familiar with the idea of investigation committees. The 1884–1887 Seybert Commission organized by the University of Pennsylvania was just one such project. An example closer in time for the readers of this story would have been the highly skeptical Metropolitan Psychical Society, based in New York City, established in 1905. Members of that group participated in a widely publicized investigation and exposé of a medium named Eusapia Palladino in 1910.

She answered quietly: “I knew you had been on the occult investigation committee, and that is why I came to consult you. You would be able to see at once through any of the customary trickery—anything that had been done beforehand by spirit mediums.. But, before I explain further, tell me this: Do you believe in possibility of supernatural happenings?”

“There is no supernatural,” retorted Magnum, a little decomposed by this quiet self-assurance. “Anything that happens is ipso facto natural. There is the supernormal—something outside the range of ordinary experience.”

“We mean the same thing,” said Miss Cotterell, “though your wording is more accurate.”

“Go on.”

“Do you believe that the soul can leave the body and travel through space?”

“Beliefs are outside my province. Science deals with facts—verifiable repeatable facts. I’d have no quarrel with all that theosophical, astral farrago if they’d put it forward as theory instead of assertion. Now my time’s valuable, so come down to your particular case.”

He glanced up at a large, bold-faced clock which was a conspicuous feature among his plain, workman-like office appointments.

“My aunt, Miss Dallas, has been dabbling with theosophy and spiritualism for a year past. Up to now we have regarded it as a harmless hobby—”

“We?” interrupted Magnum.

“I am representing her family.”

“And heirs?” asked Magnum pointedly. He had no liking for the modern young woman in general, and in regard to Miss Cotterell in particular, he wished to see her decently subdued.

“I want you to understand clearly that my interest in the matter is not mercenary. I’m very fond of my aunt. I want her to live as long as she can naturally live, happily and peacefully. I don’t care it she never leaves me a penny. I have my profession—I’m independent.”

“School?”

“Inspector of factories. However, that’s beside the point. I was saying that my interest in the matter was not mercenary. I hate to see her fooled or tricked, that’s all.”

“And you want me to expose the trickery?”

“Yes, if it is trickery.” Miss Cotterell added a barbed point: “And if you are able to see through it.”

That found Magnum in a tender spot. He had been about to refuse the request, but this doubt of his abilities spurred him to action. “Get down to the facts,” he snapped.

Miss Cotterell produced from her purse-bag a rough-trimmed silver print and handed it over to the consultant. It represented an impression of a woman’s form in a seated position—showing as through the vague outlines of the clothing—and to one side and above it another form apparently issuing from the first, smaller, and less definite in outline, like a cloud of vapor. The rest of the photograph was plain darkness.

“My aunt,” she explained. “What is your opinion of the photograph?”

“There are many ways of faking a print,” answered Magnum cautiously.

“I took it myself,” was the quiet reply. “I exposed the film myself, and developed and printed it myself. I bought all supplies without his knowledge of where they came from.”

“His? The medium’s?”

“Mr. Slivinski is not exactly a medium.”

“Sounds a tricky name.”

“He’s rather a famous man in the occult world, and leads a psychic society in London. He may be genuine—frankly, I don’t know. But if this photograph of mine is the result of some trickery I want it explained and my aunt taken away from his influence before she becomes obsessed with it.”

“Can I see the room where this photograph of yours was taken?”

“It was at Slivinski’s own house.”

“That’s awkward. If I went there he would be sure to recognize me.” Magnum was under the impression all London would know him by sight.

“I don’t think so. You might take an assumed name and pass off as an earnest inquirer. He holds weekly meetings for his circle. The next gathering is tomorrow night, at nine o’clock.”

Magnum hunched his bushy eye-brows at the strange photograph she had passed to him, so suggestive of an “astral body” leaving the material body of Miss Dallas. In view of the girl’s explanation of having exposed and developed and printed it herself, it was something quite beyond his previous experiences in the chicanery of spirit mediums. It was no faked film, no faked print. The “cloud of vapor” might conceivably be accounted for, by the painting of the background with concentrated sulphate of quinine, which, invisible itself to the human eye, would yet affect a photo- graphic plate.”⁴

But no such theory would account for the unearthly manner in which the body of Miss Dallas gleamed through the vague outlines of her clothing. It was ridiculous to suppose that she would have painted herself from head to foot with sulphate of quinine.

The mystery of it piqued Magnum. Was it possible that this was an instance of the “supernormal” which he was ready to admit? Or was it merely some up-to-date development of the spiritualist’s armory of illusion?

“I’ll come,” decided Magnum.

“It would be best first to call at my aunt’s house,” suggested Miss Cotterell. “She dines at seven. After dinner we can drive together to Slivinski’s.”

He nodded assent, and announced his fee for the investigation.

At seven prompt, Magnum’s taxi was at the door of the quiet residence on the height of Campden Hill occupied by Miss Dallas. Outside and inside it suggested leisured dignity of age and amply sufficing means. Miss Dallas herself, a woman of sixty, silver-haired, delicately framed, almost childlike in her simplicity of thought —in a word, Victorian—made a striking contrast to her self-reliant young niece.

Miss Dallas belonged essentially to the class of the “learners,” those who must have some stronger will to obey and rely on. Her confidential maid, her niece and no doubt this fellow Slivinski were at present, the dominants in her life.

Magnum was concentrating on the one problem of that strange “astral” photograph. He decided without hesitation that if some fraud had been perpetrated there had been no connivance on the part of Miss Dallas or the confidential maid, an elderly woman devoted to her interests. It was equally evident that Miss Cotterell was sincerely attached to the aunt.

The dinner was somewhat of a trial to Magnum, whose gastronomic tastes ran to large porterhouse steaks or hearty beefsteak pies, solid, substantial puddings and strong cheeses. At Miss Dallas’ table no meat was served, or any heavy dish, and only for Magnum’s benefit was wine introduced. She herself drank a bottled table water imported from the Caucasus and supposed to have very special medicinal qualities, in the manner of all high-priced table waters.

“My health has improved so wonderfully since I came to know Mr. Slivinski,” she informed Magnum. “I am so glad you are coming with us to see him. You will like him, I am sure. His teachings are so restful and so beautifully expressed. I always feel that merely to listen to his voice is to be carried to a higher plane.”

“I’m interested in that photograph taken by your niece,” responded Magnum. “I’m frankly a skeptic.”

“Yes—the photograph—isn’t it wonderful? I had always felt the truth of Mr. Slivinski’s teachings about the astral plane, and now that I have the evidence of it, in my own person—now that I have seen my own astral body emerging from the shell of the material body—I am comforted beyond measure.”

“I suppose Mr. Slivinski will be building a temple to house the society,” suggested Magnum, groping for the mercenary interest he imputed to the spiritualist. “Something large and costly.”

“No, I don’t think so,” returned Miss Dallas. “Our modest little circle contents us all.”

An illustration for “The Rough Fist of Reason” as it appeared in the Hamilton Evening Journal in January, 1916.

After, dinner, Miss Dallas’ pair-horse carriage came to the door—the modern motor jarred against her tastes—and they drove across London to Sliviniski’s flat in Hampstead. This was furnished simply and tastefully, nor was there any open evidence of the paraphernalia of the medium. Magnum expected to see the familiar black cabinet with black velvet curtains from which the “spirits” usually emerge under cover of a kindly darkness, or the trick pictures on the wall. They were conspicuously absent from the drawing-room into which the visitors were shown. About a dozen others of the circle were already present, nearly all women, and this number presently filled out to twenty-five or thirty.

“Where did you take the photograph?” whispered Magnum to Miss Cotterell.

“Over there,” she answered, pointing to a side wall papered in a sober, self-colored grayish-green.

“Any curtain or screen behind your aunt’s chair?”

“Nothing—only the bare wall.”

“Lights down, of course?”

“Not entirely. I could see quite plainly.”

“Was Slivinski in the room?”

“Yes—over by the fireplace.”

“All the the time you were exposing the film?”

“Yes.”

“A time exposure?”

“He told me to allow five minutes.”

Anton Slivinski entered to take his seat at an open reading desk raised on a platform and flanked by a pair of palms. He had the face of an ascetic and dreamy, far-away eyes. He made his way silently to the desk and sat there in dreamy immobility while a lady at the grand piano played a nocturne of Chopin. Then, without formal preface, he began to read from translated work of Indian mysticism. His voice—as Miss Dallas had indicated—was musical and finely modulated.

At the conclusion of the reading there was another pianoforte selection, and that was followed by an address from Slivinski. His subject was “The Cosmic Consciousness,” and his thoughts on it were mystical in the extreme, vaguely nebulous like a misted scene from a faraway realm of fancy. To the practical Magnum it was a score of nothing wrapped round and round by swathings of beautiful meaningless words, but the audience seemed to find in it some comfort he was totally unable to appreciate.

The gathering broke up into knots and coffee was handed round. Magnum edged away to the side wall against which the photograph of Miss Dallas had been taken, and scrutinized it for some evidence of trick paneling. He could find nothing to bolster up his suspicions.

Presently he was introduced to Slivinski. To Magnum’s relief and disappointment, the mystic did not penetrate his alias, but welcomed him as an earnest inquirer, with courteous words and offers to elucidate any point in the lecture which might have caused difficulty or doubt.

Magnum had nothing to ask about the address, which was far too involved and nebulous to offer opportunity for attack, but he went directly at the subject of the mysterious photograph.

“Do not let us lay too much stress on that,” replied Slivinski gently.

“Why not? It seems to me highly important. As a skeptic, I welcome any form of material proof.”

“Ah, you are a materialist, and so you value the unessential. I would like you to develop the thought that the true essential is the existence of an astral body which those of us who have purified the inner vision can see as plainly as you perceive the material body. The photograph tells me nothing new. I have long since arrived at the purification of the inner vision. My life-work is to train others to the same end. Such a photograph is merely a proof to those who half- believe, and in itself it is has no true value.”

He was winding words around Magnum. The scientist cut into the web with the rejoinder: “Could such a photograph be repeated? Could I, for instance, obtain that effect with a camera?”

“Undoubtedly you could, under the right conditions. Miss Dallas had very carefully prepared herself with fasting and with prayer, and when I perceived that her aura was in the condition of being able to impress itself on a photographic emulsion—which is only rarely in the case of an initiate—I asked her niece, who like yourself is a materialistic skeptic, to expose a film and so register the condition in a visible form.”

“Could I obtain that effect with Miss Dallas?”

“I must repeat, sir, that the necessary conditions are but rarely obtainable, and since the test was only made to satisfy Miss Dallas I cannot see any valid reason for repeating it. It would merely distress her, and it could prove no more than has already been proved.”

“Could I obtain that effect in your own person?” persisted Magnum.

“With myself, yes, almost at any time, for I have long passed the stage of the initiate.”

“Then will you allow me to do s0?”

“To what end?”

“To convince myself.”

“You sincerely wish to be convinced?”

“I am always open to conviction.”

“I must repeat, sir: Do you sincerely wish to be convinced?”

For all this gentleness of speech and courtesy of manner, Magnum realized that the mystic was a man of strong will and determined purpose. He was forced to answer, “Yes.”

“And receiving the proof you desire, will you be prepared to withdraw your doubting, freely and without reservation?”

Magnum was little used lo being cross-examined in that fashion. In his ordinary professional work, it was he who did the probing, but in this instance, hiding identity under an alias, he was at a disadvantage. “Yes, yes!” he answered impatiently, and, after further parleying, an arrangement was made to carry out the test on an evening of the same week, at Slivinski’s flat.

•••••

Magnum neglected no possible precaution that occurred to him. He armed himself with a stereoscopic camera instead of a single-lens instrument; he bought his supplies with extreme circumspection and tested them minutely; he took with him to the flat a screen to place behind Slivinski, backed with a coaling of metallic lend, and he had young Meredith, his laboratory man, to accompany him and watch for any discoverable trickery. He had Slivinski stand for the photograph in a part of the room chosen by himself; and, not satisfied with one exposure, he took three separate photographs with different exposure times.

Late that night, Magnum and Meredith were eagerly developing the plates and printing them on bromide paper. In silence they surveyed the result through a stereoscopic projector. It showed the figure of Slivinski in full solidity gleaming through the vague outlines of his clothing in the same fashion as MissDallas, but more strongly defined—a weirdly impressive effect. The only important difference was that “no cloud of vapor” showed to one side.

“Damnation!” was Magnum’s very unscientific comment.

“I have never heard of such an effect before,” said Meredith mildly. “Do you think it possible that this is really the aura of the man?”

Magnum began to pace the laboratory, puffing furiously at his curved briar pipe; and he went on and on with his pacing until the patient Meredith fell asleep at the bench. The scientist awakened him without ceremony. “I’ll take photographs of ourselves under the same conditions of lighting,” he announced, and proceeded to do so.

The result was entirely negative—a mere vague outline of clothing and head.

“You’d better go to sleep on the office couch,” offered Magnum with belated humanity. “I’ll wrestle this out myself.”

The wash-leather dawn of misty London, peering in timidly through the grimed skylight of the laboratory and shading his eyes against the glare of the electrics, found Magnum sleepless, tousled, reeking of rank tobacco, with smarting tongue and eyelids and harsh skin, perplexed, baffled—but not beaten.

“There must be some simple explanation!” he kept repeating to himself. “Both of them giving the same effect, the old lady and Slivinski. … Same effect, same cause.”

The dawn, gathering courage, was now staring unwinkingly at the unwashed, disreputable figure of Magnum. St. Paul’s boomed out the hour of six, and a host of city churches hastened to confirm the news. Magnum suddenly realized that another working day had begun. Switching out the lights in the laboratory, he went to the office and found Meredith heavily asleep. Magnum’s motor launch was locked in a little water kennel at the back of the laboratories. Magnum unmoored her and sped up the river to Westminster, where he repaired to a Turkish bath near Victoria street.

An hour later he was lying on a couch in the cooling-off room, combining the process with breakfast and a chat with the masseur.

“You’re looking off color, sir,” mentioned the bath attendant, who knew him well. “You ought to try a half bottle of Koslof Liman water.”

“What’s that?”

“One of our regular clients, a Russian gentleman from the Embassy, told me about it, and since then I’ve recommended it to a lot of other gentlemen, and they all find it does them good after—” he was about to say “a night out,” but discreetly changed it to “when they’re off color.”

“Let me see it,” said Magnum idly. “All these waters are wonder workers, every single one of them, if you believe the advertisements.”

The attendant brought a small bottle in characteristic dark-blue glass, decorated with a label in Russian characters, and poured out a tumblerful.

“I’ve seen that stuff before,” exclaimed Magnus. “Quite recently. It was at—”

“The Embassy gentleman says it’s full of radium, sir.”

“How many bottles have you got here?” asked Magnum sharply.

“Nearly two dozen, I think.”

“I’ll take them all.”

“Very good, sir,” said the pleased attendant.

On the evening of the next day, Magnum was again, by appointment, at Slivinski’s flat.

“These are the prints of the photographs I took of yourself,” said Magnum.

The mystic glanced at them without interest. “They tell me nothing new,” he answered, “though doubtless they would seem -wonderful to you. I trust you arc now satisfied.”

Magnum produced another print. “And this is one taken of myself in my laboratory. As you will see, I also seem to have a strongly-developed aura.”
Slivinski’s brow contracted slightly as he looked at the bromide print of Magnum. “You are a man of intense personality,” he replied, “and by training you would pass quickly through the stage of the initiate to the state of the adept.”

“And here,” pursued Magnum, “is one of my office cat, wrapped in an old coat. She also seems to have a strongly developed aura.”

The mystic remained silent.

“And finally,” clinched the triumphant Magnum, “here is a photograph of a bottle of table water wrapped in brown paper. Its aura is more powerful than yours or mine or the cat’s. … Koslof Liman water, the same as you recommended to Miss Dallas.”

Slivinski remained stock still for many moments, his dreamy eyes fixed on some far-away vision. “Well?” asked Magnum sharply. “What have you to say for yourself? All these photographs correspond to the one taken of Miss Dallas, with the exception of the “cloud of vapor” effect, and no doubt you got that by smearing some of the water on the wall to the side of her chair. That water contains something new to me. It’s not radium emanation alone. When I’ve time to spare I shall investigate it further.”

“What I have taught is the truth,” said the mystic with slow, religious intonation in his voice. “An eternal, imperishable truth—but not provable to the materialistic skeptic. In order to help one of weak faith, I arranged to show the invisible in visible form. I told you on our first acquaintance that I laid no stress on the photograph. You have discovered the method, but you have not disproved the essential verity of my teaching! Let me beg of you to let the matter rest.”

“Most decidedly not!”

“Faith has wings of gossamer—do not crush them with your rough fist of reason.”

“These photographs of mine will be placed before Miss Dallas, and she will draw her own conclusions.”

“You fool!” flung out Slivinski with sudden white-hot passion. “You blind fool!”

That was not the type of wording to influence Magnum. He replaced his bromide prints in his pocket, left the flat, sent the result of the investigation to Miss Cotterell, and turned to his ordinary professional work.

•••••

It was a week later when Miss Cotterell came to see him at the Upper Thames Street office. She was dressed all in black, and her features were drawn with pain.

“I wish I’d never shown you that photograph or asked you to investigate,” she told him with a break in her voice.

“You don’t mean that—?”

“Yes; you and I between us have killed my aunt, and I shall never forgive myself.”

“Good God!” exclaimed the horrified Magnum. “I didn’t dream she—”

“When I told her, it brought on a heart attack, and she never recovered from it.”

“It seems incredible that a mere revelation of trickery should produce such a result!”

“There was more behind than I knew of,” she continued with bitter self-reproach. “An early love affair… something she had always cherished… and Slivinski told her that when she came to the stage of the adept she would he able to meet him again on the astral plane. That was how his teachings gave her such comfort. And I shattered her hope. She had nothing more to live for. Oh, why, why did I ever presume to interfere!”

“The gossamer wings of faith,” murmured Magnum.



Token Skeptic podcast host Kylie Sturgess.

I was pleased recently to speak with Kylie Sturgess for her Token Skeptic podcast (audio available here) about my research into the history of skepticism—in particular, my recent two-chapter piece “Why Is There a Skeptical Movement?” (PDF) and Junior Skeptic issues 45 and 46.

I found it a very useful conversation about the many skeptics who have lived, worked, and left the stage before us; their legacy; and the foundational principles of the movement they inspired. For that reason, I’m delighted that Sturgess has now provided a transcript, posted at her Patheos blog Token Skeptic. Here’s an excerpt:

Daniel: Well, it’s quite a big discussion in my piece. I must give something like 15,000 words of discussion in there, so I do hope people will look at it. I think there are some strong arguments that bear on this. Part of it, I would say to anybody, is that if you’re going to talk about changing the foundation of a field, of taking it in a new direction, I think it’s really important that first you understand where it has been and why it was there to start with. What it grew out of, what it was intended to accomplish. Those are some of the things that I wanted to address in [Why Is There a Skeptical Movement?].

When I got into skepticism 20 years ago, there was an established subculture of skeptics. At that time, they weren’t called scientific skeptics. They were just called skeptics, and those were synonyms. They were empirical in scope, they were tolerant to religion, they were interested in solving paranormal mysteries. That was it. For a long time, that stayed true, through the ’90s, I think, right up until the very end of the 90′s.

There started to be a little bit of agitation to expand that, first into general science questions and then eventually into these larger philosophical questions about metaphysics and ethics and religion and politics. Much messier questions, questions which are really much harder to answer and, in many cases, are just outside of the ability of science to answer.

Particularly after 9/11, things started to really change! Like many people who were religious nonbelievers, and like billions of religious believers as well, 9/11 was just so viscerally horrifying that people really cried out to turn critical attention to religion. They wanted to rein in the excesses, the dangers of religion. This was the rise of the new atheism. It was a very powerful moment in history. A lot of people were swept along by this. I was, to some extent. Most people of conscience were to some extent swept along by this.

Read the rest of the transcript at the Token Skeptic blog.

But today I want to take off my skeptic’s hat again for a moment, and write here instead in my personal capacity as an atheist. I hope you’ll forgive the digression.

I’ve been an “out” atheist for more than 20 years. British Columbia’s a pretty secular place, but you know the drill: living openly as a religious nonbeliever causes some friction almost anywhere. Conflicts with family. That intense woman yelling at you on the bus. That time the wedding dress saleslady made that nasty little scoffing noise at my wife, and cast a small, cold shadow over the most beautiful day of our lives. Atheism may not be a civil rights issue in much of the western world, but atheists know all too well that we face bigoted attitudes both from individuals and from the wider culture.

Some of you know that despite that bigotry—or rather, because of it—I feel little personal affiliation with movement atheism, which does not always extend the tolerance and kindness and dignity toward my religious loved ones that I seek for myself and my nonreligious loved ones. For that reason, it’s been a long time since I felt much in the way of atheist pride. I work in skepticism and identify with humanism, but I merely am an atheist whether I like it or not.

Recently, though, my disconnection from atheism has begun to heal, at least a little, with the rise of voices like Chris Stedman who seem to me to speak more closely to my values. As I think more on the common experience and common challenges of people who live without religion, and find myself drawn again to the defense of the human dignity and complexity and value of atheists, I can’t help but think:

Please, people, try not to lump us atheists in with the skeptics. It’s not a good fit, and it undermines atheists.

Euphemisms

Don’t get me wrong—skeptics are just fine, so far as they go. I know some skeptics myself. They’re an eccentric lot, but their hearts are generally in the right place.

As an atheist, though, I have to say this very clearly: skeptics are not the same as atheists. Using the term “skeptic” to say “atheist” is not a matter of employing a synonym, but of concealing one’s atheism behind a euphemism. At worst, this euphemistic language may sometimes be a cynical strategic or political dodge; at best, it is a missed opportunity to forthrightly say, “I’m an atheist, and that’s OK.” As SkeptiCamp founder Reed Esau has put it, “Couching one’s atheism in words other than ‘atheism’ does not exhibit confidence for one’s brand. It’s akin to calling a Gay Pride event a ‘Happy’ event. Sure there are many happy people present, but that isn’t really the point, is it?”¹

I’m not willing to be in the closet in that way, and I don’t have to be. My circumstances allow me to be open about my beliefs. I embrace Richard Dawkins’ call to “renounce all euphemisms and grasp the nettle of the word atheism,” though not because I have any great fondness for the label. Honestly, I wince a little when I hear the word “atheist”—not because it is taboo, but because I am so uncomfortable with the anti-theism, exceptionalist rhetoric, and sometimes even overt religious bigotry to be found within the atheist movement. Yet there’s no getting around the sheer fact of the thing: I am an atheist. I’m even a fairly “hard” or “strong” atheist: I don’t just withhold assent to religious claims, but actively believe that gods and souls and miracles and afterlives do not exist. I can’t demonstrate empirically that my beliefs are correct (as a skeptic, I refuse to pretend I can) and I don’t care if you share them or not—but I believe what I believe, and I’m not hiding.

The Religious Diversity of Skeptics

The “skeptic” euphemism in particular is an especially problematic one for atheists to adopt. To begin with, an awful lot of active movement skeptics believe in god—something like a fifth to a third, depending on the measure. For example, in a 1995 survey of Skeptics Society members, 35 percent answered the question, “Do you think there is a God (a purposeful higher intelligence that created the universe)?” with responses of “Very likely” or “Possibly.” In a more precise 1998 followup survey of Skeptics Society members conducted by Michael Shermer and Frank Sulloway, 18 percent of the 1,700 respondents said “Definitely yes” or “Very likely yes” there is a god.² Recent surveys of attendees of the James Randi Educational Foundation’s The Amazing Meeting conference similarly find that almost a third of TAM-goers identify as something other than atheist or agnostic. Skepticism’s religious diversity is longstanding and will certainly continue, because the largest skeptical organizations, media, and events are organized around scientific skepticism. As Shermer explained about the mission of my own organization, for example, “membership or involvement in any capacity with the Skeptics Society and Skeptic magazine is not exclusionary. We could not care less what anyone’s religious beliefs are. In fact, at least two of our more prominent supporters—the comedian and songwriter Steve Allen and the mathematician and essayist Martin Gardner—are believers in God. Other members of our board may believe in God as well. I do not know. I have never asked.”³

The True Face of Atheism

But there is a more important point to be made here, a point I rarely hear expressed: many atheists do not share the beliefs, views, or attitudes that skeptics promote. Sure, some of us do. It happens for example that I personally wear a “skeptical activist” hat when I’m not wearing my atheist or humanist hats. It’s my personal belief that paranormal and fringe science claims can and should be investigated using the tools of science and critical scholarship; that very few of those claims amount to very much because paranormal phenomena are either very rare or nonexistent; and that science is useful and good and worth promoting.

But I know that my fellow atheists have a very broad range of positions on those topics. (On every topic, in fact, except one.) Nor are the atheists who hold paranormal or pseudoscientific beliefs some sort of dismissible fringe within the atheist community. The opposite is true: we can be confident that a majority of people without theistic beliefs are paranormal believers, just as is true for the hefty majority of the population at large. As Bader et al wrote regarding the findings of the Baylor Religion Survey,

Outside the halls of the academy a broader stereotype is often applied to paranormal believers—people who believe in or have experienced the paranormal are “different.” People who do not believe in the paranormal are perceived to be normal; those who believe in paranormal topics are considered weird, unconventional, strange, or deviant.

There is a big problem with this simplistic assessment—believing in something paranormal has become the norm in our society. When asked if they believe in the reality of nine different paranormal subjects including telekinesis, fortune-telling, astrology, communication with the dead, haunted houses, ghosts, Atlantis, UFOs and monsters, over two-thirds of Americans (68%) believe in at least one. In a strictly numerical sense, people who do not believe in anything paranormal are now the “odd men out” in American society. Less than a third of Americans (32%) are dismissive of all nine subjects.⁴

Some have speculated (or perhaps hoped) that such paranormal beliefs could be less prevalent among religious non-believers, but there’s very little support for that. The Baylor survey, for example, found that that respondents claiming no religion were resolutely in the middle of the pack: nones were roughly as likely (67 percent) to affirm at least one paranormal belief as other groups—slightly less likely than the Catholic or Mainline Protestant groups (both 71 percent), and slightly more likely than the Evangelical (64 percent) and Jewish (62 percent) groups.⁵ Similarly, in a 2003 Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion study, Tom W. Rice found little sign of a consistent or strong statistical relationship between paranormal and theistic beliefs. He noted,

It is also interesting that more than half of the respondents who do not believe in the traditional religious items do believe in many of the classic paranormal items. … This suggests that millions of Americans are doubters when it comes to traditional Christian paranormal dogma, but have no problem believing in classic paranormal phenomena.⁶ [Emphasis added]

Learning that someone is an atheist tells you next to nothing about their paranormal beliefs…except that they probably have some. It just isn’t the case that atheists view the world through a lens of thoroughgoing naturalism. By and large, we don’t.

Look, I understand the temptation to position atheists qua atheists as especially science-minded or naturalistic or rational. Atheists have been kicked around some, historically. We face a good deal of bigotry today. And, we see a lot of people believing a lot of things that we cannot—things that many of us personally consider preposterous. We’ve been told that we’re blind, damaged, wicked, foolish. “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’ They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds, there is none that does good.”⁷ We rightly reject such ugly bigotry—and in rejecting it, we face the dark, all-too-human temptation to reflect it back again. Maybe they’re the “foolish” ones! Maybe atheists are more “rational,” more “scientific,” perhaps even smarter than religious people.

We’ve all heard atheists succumb to that temptation. Perhaps you’ve done it yourself, as I have, in younger days. But we shouldn’t.

To promote the belief that atheists are different than other people does nothing but undermine our humanity. It denies the human complexity of religious nonbelievers. In doing so, it sells out atheists.

This is true—harder to see, but still true—even when the difference we claim sounds positive.

I often meet resistance when I say that atheists should not accept or promote the stereotype that atheists are very clever and fierce, as the New Atheism and the atheist blogosphere seems strongly inclined to do. I’m always surprised by this resistance, because exceptional fierceness and superior cleverness are not the reality of atheists overall. It isn’t even our narrative: the caricature of the acerbic, ultra-rational atheist is a bigoted stereotype that intolerant religious people use against atheists.

And I reject it. Atheists are not “different.” We are not Other. We are just regular people who happen to hold a minority viewpoint on some theological questions. What of it? Minority religious viewpoints are a dime a dozen. Atheism neither makes us less nor more than anyone else, and atheists are ill-served by anyone who tries to say it does. We are not stereotypes, but people—people with every bit of the diversity and complexity of any other large group of human beings.

We atheists pay taxes, and dodge them. We are polite and rude, young and old, kind and cruel. We are doctors and dancers, forklift drivers and cooks and politicians. We vaccinate, and we fear to. We fall in love with science, or are indifferent, or reject it as narrow, reductionist myopia. We atheists see ghosts, and read tea leaves, and recover memories of alien abductions. We write bad plays, transcendent novels, grocery lists. We suck at math, commit crimes, overlook the obvious, find ourselves unable to reason our way out of a paper bag. Just like everybody else.

We atheists are as wicked, as wooly-headed, as foolish and magical as anyone else—and as noble, and as compassionate, and as brilliant.

Why? Because atheists are just like everybody else.

At the time I appreciated the fact that I surprised my clients, but while aware of the fact that I was deceiving them I did not see or understand the seriousness of trifling with such sacred sentimentality and the baneful result which inevitably followed. To me it was a lark. I was a mystifier and as such my ambition was being gratified and my love for a mild sensation satisfied. After delving deep I realized the seriousness of it all. As I advanced to riper years of experience I was brought to a realization of the seriousness of trifling with the hallowed reverence which the average human being bestows on the departed, and when I personally became afflicted with similar grief I was chagrined that I should ever have been guilty of such frivolity and for the first time realized that it bordered on crime.²

Which brings us to another deception that was “a lark” and yet “bordered on crime”: the time that Houdini, according to his lifelong pal Joseph Rinn, conspired to issue a pseudonymous, implied, hoaxed threat against materializing mediums (the subset of psychic performers who purport to be able to summon ectoplasmic manifestations of the spirits of the dead). I must confess that I found this story quite funny on first read—and yet, schadenfreude aside, it also strikes me as a deeply unethical example of skeptical activism.

The story, as Rinn recalled it 50 years after the fact (relying in part upon a newspaper clipping that I have not yet been able to lay my hands on) went like this. In 1896, Houdini and Rinn were chatting in New York City about a recently publicized marriage that one medium had performed between a prominent medical doctor and the materialized spirit of his dead fiancé. Not altogether surprisingly, “Skeptics denounced the marriage as preposterous,” Rinn remembered. Houdini was no exception.

“It was a pure fake—nothing else,” he [Houdini] said hotly. “Mediums always say they that they require darkness to materialize a spirit, yet this stunt, it is stated, was performed in bright sunlight. Those crooked mediums are getting so bold that we should do something to throw a scare into them.”

I agreed, and Houdini and I drew up a letter that we sent to the New York Mercury. It read:

To the Editor of the New York Mercury:

As I frequently attend spiritualistic seances, where materialized spirits are said to come out of a cabinet, I wonder if I would be breaking any law if I fired a pistol shot at one of these figures and a dead body was found on the floor.
D. G.³

This bit of lighthearted terrorism was no joke for the practitioners of the psychic trade. According to Rinn,

This letter, when published, created consternation among spiritualists, especially mediums, and for fully six months no medium advertised that he was giving materializing seances, for fear some fanatic might be tempted to fire a shot at a cabinet spirit. During that period only flowers were materialized.⁴

At this stage of my research I’m forced to rely upon Rinn’s recollection regarding the impact of the hoax, but it is certainly plausible that he and Houdini would have created a stir. After all, “grabbers” and other interfering members of séance audiences were hazards of the trade for materializing mediums—and as mediums were frequently fleecing their clients, these disruptions carried the threat not only of financial loss but of violence. A few years before Rinn and Houdini’s hoax, another American medium had been stabbed during a séance, according to confessed medium Julia E. Garret:

She had been frequently exposed, but always came out all right, as Spiritualists are ready to excuse anything a medium does so long as she claims that it is spiritual. One night, however, while playing spook she came out to a young doctor, claiming to be his sister, or some other relative. He, wishing to prove whether she was mortal or spirit, thrust a surgeon’s knife into her leg. She nearly died from the effects of the wound, and, in fear, gave up the business.⁵

Audience interference was (and is) such a constant danger that institutionalized customs grew up to protect this type of psychic performer, as ex-medium M. Lamar Keene explained in the 1976:

Usually there is present at every materialization seance a “cabinet attendant,” who is actually the medium’s bodyguard. Spiritualists explain his or her role as that of protecting the medium from malicious intruders who might try to grab the ectoplasm and thereby cause the poor medium grave injury, even death. (Heartbreaking stories were told to the faithful about mediums who had suffered internal hemorrhages and writhed on the floor in agony after some heartless nave grabbed their ectoplasm. The official dogma was that rude touching of ectoplasm caused it to recoil into the medium’s body with savage force–like being hit in the gut by a giant rubber band.) Anyway, the cabinet attendant or keeper was there to discourage any tampering with the ectoplasm—and also, in many cases, to provide the ectoplasm.⁶

Personal Reflection

So what are we to make of Rinn and Houdini’s hoax? We may perhaps assure ourselves that the materializing subset of the fraternity of mediums were more-or-less uniformly fraudulent. But does that imply that anonymous death threats—even oblique ones—are an acceptable tactic? Even setting aside the fact that death threats are serious crimes in most countries, I viscerally recoil from that idea. Surely we all do? And yet, in less extreme cases, we may all see grey more often than we should. It’s so easy and so human to regard moral urgency as the gauge for the rightness of our actions. That tendency is responsible for much of the evil in the world (and I think, for the deepest and most grotesque).

A better test is to ask, would this same action or tactic or rhetoric seem acceptable to us if we were the target—my family, or my cause, or my community, or my religious demographic? Skeptics are not immune today to threats or violence; nor were they immune in Rinn and Houdini’s day. Rinn himself said, “After several attempts on my life, I was compelled to carry a pistol for protection.”⁷ In 1891, Rinn’s skeptical collaborator Winfield S. Davis (a key player in an early skeptical activism and investigation scene centered on New York City) received a threat described by the New York Times:

When Winfield S. Davis went to his printing office in Nassau Street yesterday morning he found awaiting him three anonymous letters and a box wrapped in brown paper. The letters threatened him with bodily injury unless he kept to himself for the future his skeptical ideas about modern Spiritualism. He opened the box and found what was intended to pass for an infernal machine.

It had a compartment filled with matches, which were perhaps to be lighted by a sandpaper-lined cover moved by a clock spring. A fire-cracker fuse, starting in the match box, extended into cups filled with grey and pink powder. Packed in a cylinder below the saucers was a mass that looked like a mixture of sand and coal dust.⁸

Davis tested the materials, and determined that the device was non-functional. It was—like Rinn and Houdini’s letter—a hoax intended to frighten.

Hi, folks! I’m excited to announce that my brand new children’s paleofiction storybook Pterosaur Trouble is hitting stores, with both Amazon.com and Amazon.ca now listing it as “in stock.” (The official release date is April 1st. Other vendors, including my own home-team headquarters on the web, the Skeptics Society’s Skeptic.com, will have it in stock in the coming weeks.)

Pterosaur Trouble is the followup to Ankylosaur Attack. It is book two of my Tales of Prehistoric Life series for Kids Can Press. A natural history-inspired fictional storybook for kids aged 4–7, Pterosaur Trouble is written by yours truly, illustrated by myself with Jim W.W. Smith, and edited by Valerie Wyatt (reuniting the team behind Evolution: How We and All Living Things Came to Be). It tells a story of a mighty pterosaur, Quetzalcoatlus, ambushed at a riverside by a pack of much smaller Saurornitholestes dinosaurs. This almost Lilliputian confrontation was inspired in part by (the most spectacular possible interpretation of) a real Canadian fossil find by Wendy Sloboda and staff at Alberta’s Royal Tyrrell Museum: bones of a huge azhdarchid pterosaur gnawed on by small theropods, one of which which left behind a tooth identified as Saurornitholestes langstoni. (See Philip J. Currie and Aase Roland Jacobsen’s paper “An azhdarchid pterosaur eaten by a velociraptorine theropod” for the story of this wonderfully evocative discovery—PDF.)

I’m very proud of the new book. Thanks to eye-watering detail work and ridiculously high-resolution textures—the equivalent of 67 megapixels!—Jim and I were able to achieve even crisper, more photorealistic depictions of our prehistoric creatures in this story. We also brought in paleozoologist Darren Naish (of Scientific American‘s Tetrapod Zoology fame) early in the process as an expert science consultant to help me keep this fictional tale even more carefully grounded in scientific fact.

If you get the chance to take a look at the new book, then I hope you (or your children) enjoy it!

Cheers,

Daniel

Full expert review of the team’s data and methods should emerge in the coming days. In the meantime, science writers identified several serious red flags within hours of the paper’s release.

To begin with, it seems that the paper was roundly rejected by mainstream science journals. “We were even mocked by one reviewer in his peer review,” complained lead author Melba Ketchum.³ So how did the paper get published? Although Ketchum insists that this fact did not influence the editorial process, it seems she bought the publication.⁴ In fact, her paper is the only paper included in the inaugural “Special Issue” of the DeNovo Scientific Journal. Benjamin Radford notes that no libraries or universities subscribe to the newly minted DeNovo, “and the journal and its website apparently did not exist three weeks ago. There’s no indication that the study was peer-reviewed by other knowledgeable scientists to assure quality. It is not an existing, known, or respected journal in any sense of the word.”⁵ Invertebrate neuroethologist Zen Faulkes notes further that DeNovo lists no editor, no editorial board, no physical address—not even a phone number. “This whole thing looks completely dodgy,” he writes, “with the lack of any identifiable names being the one screaming warning to stay away from this journal. Far, far away.”⁶

Beyond these irregularities, there are also signs of serious problems with the paper’s data, methods, and conclusions. Ketchum et al found, for example, that all of the mitochondrial DNA recovered from their samples tested as “uniformly consistent with modern humans,” but argued despite this that anomalies in their nuclear DNA analyses “clearly support that these hominins exist as a novel species of primate. The data further suggests that they are human hybrids originating from human females.”⁷ This scenario, in which “Sasquatch is a human relative that arose approximately 15,000 years ago as a hybrid cross of modern Homo sapiens with an unknown primate species” (as publicized in a 2012 press release about the then-unpublished paper)⁸ is not especially plausible. As Steven Novella explained, “It is highly doubtful that the offspring of a creature that looks like bigfoot and a human would be fertile. They would almost certainly be as sterile as mules. Humans could not breed with our closest living relatives, the chimpanzees, or any living ape.” Novella added, “The bottom line is this—human DNA plus some anomalies or unknowns does not equal an impossible human-ape hybrid. It equals human DNA plus some anomalies.”⁹ These problems are only multiplying now with the release of Ketchum’s paper and data. Ars Technica Science Editor John Timmer, experienced with genetic research,  offers the preliminary opinion that “The best explanation here is contamination.”

As far as the nuclear genome is concerned, the results are a mess. Sometimes the tests picked up human DNA. Other times, they didn’t. Sometimes the tests failed entirely. The products of the DNA amplifications performed on the samples look about like what you’d expect when the reaction didn’t amplify the intended sequence. And electron micrographs of the DNA isolated from these samples show patches of double- and single-stranded DNA intermixed. This is what you might expect if two distantly related species had their DNA mixed—the protein-coding sequences would hybridize, and the intervening sections wouldn’t. All of this suggests…that the sasquatch hunters are working on a mix of human DNA intermingled with that of some other (or several other) mammals.¹⁰

Time will tell. For more on the story as it develops, may I suggest following the #sasquatchdna hashtag on Twitter? You’ll already see it full of reactions like this tweet from the great Carl Zimmer:

The phylogeny in this #sasquatchgenome paper is incomprehensibly illegible & doesn’t seem to use any method I can recognize.

— carlzimmer (@carlzimmer) February 13, 2013

DOWNLOAD Why Is There a Skeptical Movement? (PDF)

Following on the themes of my previous post (riffing on Steve Novella’s recent debunking of some of the oldest clichés about scientific skepticism) I’m pleased to announce that the Skeptics Society released my latest project  yesterday in our eSkeptic newsletter:

For over twenty years, the Skeptics Society and Skeptic magazine have labored at the forefront of the skeptical movement—constantly experimenting, often pushing the boundaries, but always circling back to the heart of the skeptical tradition. …

This week, we’re pleased to present Daniel Loxton’s challenging and provocative new project, “Why Is There a Skeptical Movement?” (PDF). Almost two years in the writing, these two meticulously-researched chapter-length explorations dig deeply into the roots, founding principles, and purpose of scientific skepticism.

It’s a whopper (almost 24,000 words, counting the endnotes) and a labor of love. I hope you enjoy it!

DOWNLOAD “Why Is There a Skeptical Movement?” PDF