The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom
—Isaac Asimov

A few weeks ago, we heard in the news the chilling and alarming statement that Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), chair of the House Science and Technology Committee, wants to subject all the scientific research grants of the National Science Foundation (NSF) to political scrutiny. No longer was it sufficient that the NSF conduct peer review of grants by experts in the field to determine whether they are worthy of funding. No, the House Committee has decided that they are better judges of good science that the scientific community itself, and they ought to be able to override the decisions of scientists who work in the field.

We’ve seen this kind of political interference in science before, but never at such a high level. Even more disturbing, the GOP members of the House Science and Technology Committee are not the kind of people that most of us would want judging the quality of science. They are nearly all science deniers of one sort or another. This committee includes such luminaries as Rep. Paul Broun of Georgia (an M.D., even!), who said (in a recent speech at the Liberty Baptist Church Sportsman’s Banquet):

“God’s word is true. I’ve come to understand that. All that stuff I was taught about evolution, embryology, Big Bang theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of hell. It’s lies to try to keep me and all the folks who are taught that from understanding that they need a savior. There’s a lot of scientific data that I found out as a scientist [note: Broun is NOT a real scientist] that actually show that this is really a young Earth. I believe that the Earth is about 9,000 years old. I believe that it was created in six days as we know them. That’s what the Bible says. And what I’ve come to learn is that it’s the manufacturer’s handbook, is what I call it. It teaches us how to run our lives individually. How to run our families, how to run our churches. But it teaches us how to run all our public policy and everything in society. And that’s the reason, as your congressman, I hold the Holy Bible as being the major directions to me of how I vote in Washington, D.C., and I’ll continue to do that.”

In addition to several other creationists on the panel, they also include Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner from Wisconsin. He’s one of the loudest climate-deniers in Congress, with a list of quotes showing he’s absorbed nearly every lie from the climate denier lobby. Or how about Congressman Ralph Hall from Texas, who

was asked about climate change and said, “I don’t think we can control what God controls.” He also said he agrees with Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) that climate scientists are involved in a conspiracy to receive research funding. When the reporter noted that a survey published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that 97 percent of climate-science researchers agree that human activities have contributed to global warming, Hall responded, “And they get $5,000 for every report like that they give out,” adding, “I don’t have any proof of that. But I don’t believe ‘em.”

Or take Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama, who still chatters on about the debunked idea that scientists were predicting global cooling in the 1970s. Or Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, from an extremely conservative district in southern California. He has said in recent months that

an earlier period of global warming may have been caused by “dinosaur flatulence.” Last year, after coming under fire for seeming to suggest that if global warming is real it could be addressed by cutting down trees (when in fact forests reduce global warming by absorbing atmospheric carbon), he issued a statement saying, “I do not believe that CO2 is a cause of global warming.”

These statements of scientific illiteracy and science denialism are appalling enough by themselves, but even scarier is the thought that they come from the members of the House Science and Technology Committee! Lamar Smith (another climate change denier) is the Chair, Rohrabacher is the Vice-Chair, and Hall, Sensenbrenner, Broun, and Brooks are all prominent members. Previous members included the infamous Missouri Republican Todd Akin, a creationist with rather peculiar views on human reproduction. How is it that the House Committee with the greatest influence over science funding and policy in this country is dominated by people with demonstrably false views about science? How is is that the clowns are being allowed to take over the circus?

[It's no surprise that most of these guys are climate deniers. In addition to climate denial being a party platform of the GOP, most of them received a major share of their campaign funds from the oil and gas industry. Lamar Smith received over $83,000 in 2012 alone from the oil industry, and over $342,000 from all energy industries since 1999. Ralph Hall's largest contributor by far was oil and gas, with $59,000 in the last year alone. Broun received $10,000 from oil and gas, even though he represents a district in Georgia with no oil resources. You can go to the website www.opensecrets.org to find a rundown on how many of the climate deniers in Congress are heavily subsidized by the energy industry.]

This is not the first time we’ve heard politicians making appallingly ignorant statements about the value of science. Last year, Sarah Palin made a fool of herself attacking fruit fly research that was actually essential to prevention of an infestation of important crops in the U.S. Or take the recent attacks on a project doing research on snails, which sounded trivial at first until the important benefits were explained. Nearly every time politicians target one specific proposal (usually amounting only a trivial cost), they are quickly schooled on the fundamentals of the science, and why the project was deemed worthy of support by people who actually know science (as opposed to the science deniers and science illiterates on the House Science Committee).

Perversely using the Orwellian name “High-Quality Science Act,” Smith and the other members of that committee are now proposing new criteria for decisions about funding NSF grants, specifically that they “advance the national health, prosperity, or welfare, and to secure the national defense by promoting the progress of science.” However, we already spend a huge part of our federal budget on national defense, and health is funded by the NIH, so there’s no need for the NSF (which funds pure, non-defense related, non-health related, non-commercial science) to do the same. Besides, NSF grants already have that criterion built into them. When I wrote my last few grant proposals, “intellectual merit” was no longer sole criterion for funding, but we also had to discuss the “broader impacts” to the scientific community and society in our grants. When I served on NSF panels that looked at all the reviews and made the recommendations for funding, those “broader impacts” on society made a lot of difference on what grants actually get funded. That’s not a trivial task, since most branches of the NSF fund at most 20% to 30% of the proposals they receive, and lots of excellent, world-famous scientists get turned down routinely.

But this raises a larger question: how are we to know which research will advance society? As I pointed out in a previous post, “pure” science which follows curiosity and doesn’t need to justify its benefit to society is where nearly all the great breakthroughs in science occur. Many of the greatest discoveries are made by accident, by serendipity, and cannot be predicted or anticipated by the researcher trying to justify their work in a grant proposal. When we fund pure research, we make unanticipated discoveries that have been shown to pay off at least 20 times as much as they cost. If we clamp down on pure research and only fund projects which have obvious practical societal benefits, we will choke all the creativity and sense of exploration from science, and guarantee that we will no longer be the ones who make the next great, unanticipated discovery or breakthrough. Members of the scientific community who do the grant review process know this—but its clear from their track record that politicians don’t.

In a Slate blog, “Bad Astronomer” Phil Plait put it clearly:

This is not a joke. Smith wants politics to trump science at the National Science Foundation. This prompted a brilliantly indignant letter from Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas), who calls this idea “destructive” to science. She’s right. What Smith is doing strongly reminds me of Lysenkoism, when the Soviet government suppressed science on genetics and evolution that didn’t toe the party line. In these attacks on the NSF, a few lines of research have been highlighted that sound silly out of context. We’ve seen this before from those on the far right who attack science, from Sarah Palin to the Wall Street Journal. But when you look more deeply into the research you usually find it’s actually quite important, leading to new insights in biology, medicine, and more. While government funds science and should have oversight to make sure that funding is fairly granted, the best people to make the decisions about what constitutes good science are the scientists themselves, not agenda- and ideologically-driven politicians. And there’s a bigger picture here as well. The entire endeavor of science must be allowed the freedom to pursue ideas wherever they lead, and must have the flexibility to pursue ideas that may not pan out. From a financial view, the ones that work invariably subsidize the ones that don’t. We can’t know in advance what lines of research will yield results, but the ones that do succeed benefit us, increasing our knowledge vastly and leading to a better understanding of the world. That’s a critical human endeavor, even ignoring the vast, overwhelming material benefit we get from scientific advances. And the huge return on investment we get as well. What Smith is advocating is incredibly dangerous. When a society’s government starts dictating what can and cannot be investigated, scientific and creative progress stalls. Lysenko’s work, advocated by Stalin, led to the USSR falling almost irretrievably behind other, more progressive countries; ones like the United States. That was a hard-won lesson in history for the Soviets, but apparently lost on many current American politicians.

This, of course, does not mean that the consensus must be correct, but (along with other data) it makes it unreasonable to claim that there is no consensus, or that there is significant scientific controversy on this topic. In fact, the 97% figure exactly matches prior surveys. Many scientific organizations have also officially endorsed this consensus.

One of the common methods of deniers is to pretend as if there is a raging scientific controversy when in fact there is a solid consensus. Creationists, for example are constantly trying to portray evolution as a “theory in crisis,” when in fact it is doing quite well, thank you.

The study employed an interesting methods. They reviewed 12,000 peer-reviewed published papers on topics relevant to climate change. They then tabulated, for those papers in which the researchers expressed a clear opinion about climate change, whether or not they supported the conclusion of anthropogenic global warming. In over 97% of cases they did.

From the abstract:

We analyze the evolution of the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming (AGW) in the peer-reviewed scientific literature, examining 11 944 climate abstracts from 1991–2011 matching the topics ‘global climate change’ or ‘global warming’. We find that 66.4% of abstracts expressed no position on AGW, 32.6% endorsed AGW, 0.7% rejected AGW and 0.3% were uncertain about the cause of global warming. Among abstracts expressing a position on AGW, 97.1% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming.

No survey is ever perfect – whenever you evaluate a subset of people in order to draw conclusions about the larger group, there is the possibility of selection bias. In this case one might argue that scientists who reject anthropogenic global warming are less likely to express those views in a peer-reviewed paper, or to have such views published.

This method, however, is reasonable. They also backed this up with another phase of the study in which they invited authors to rate their own research and opinions, and 97.2% endorsed the consensus of global warming. While it’s possible to quibble about this number, given the strong agreements among various methods around the 97% figure, it’s difficult to argue that the true figure is significantly different.

Why do we care about the consensus? Isn’t this just an argument from authority? Well, yes and no.

It seems reasonable, especially for those who consider themselves skeptics, to argue that facts and logic should determine a scientific question, not authority. Or that we should “let the facts speak for themselves.”

Unfortunately, facts cannot speak for themselves. Scientific evidence needs to be examined, rated for quality, interpreted, and put into a broader context. There is often no simple connect from facts to conclusions in science – background knowledge, knowledge of the processes of science, familiarity with critical thinking, logical pitfalls, and the effects of bias on interpretation are all necessary to come to a reliable conclusion about what those facts are telling us.

Different individuals are likely to have different biases and knowledge bases, and therefore may come to different conclusions about the same set of data. No individual, therefore, can be the ultimate authority on any scientific question.

The power of consensus is that individual quirks and biases will tend to average out. The consensus of scientific opinion, therefore, is a way to gauge the agreement and power of the scientific evidence.

The only other alternative is to evaluate all the scientific evidence first hand and come to your own conclusion. The potential pitfall here, however, is that individuals who are not experts in the relevant field believe that they can do this by examining secondary sources, such as popular writings on the topic. This is naive, however.

In order to really understand the evidence base for any scientific question you need to be able to read the technical literature first hand, and have a reasonable working knowledge of this literature. You then need to challenge your understanding of the evidence by discussing it with other experts, who may be familiar with evidence you missed, or have a perspective you do not. In other words – you have to engage intimately and extensively with the evidence and with the community.

In order to do this you pretty much have to be a full-time scientist focusing on the relevant area of study.

It seems absurd, when you really look at it, to substitute your own opinion based upon reading a smattering of simplified popular writings for that of the consensus of scientific experts who live and breathe the science.

What typically happens is that individuals who reject the consensus often come to the conclusion that science itself is broken. They reject science and the institutions of science, in order to justify their rejection of the particular consensus on which they disagree. Scientists, they believe, are therefore closed-minded, corrupt, or mindlessly follow the herd.

This is little more than ad-hoc special pleading, however (they are just making it up). Anyone who works with actual scientists would find such statements to be hopelessly out of sync with reality. Sure, there are individual scientists who are corrupt or closed-minded, but most vigorously defend their own intellectual independence.

Conclusion

For the average person (someone who is not a working expert in a particular field) the consensus of scientific opinion must be taken very seriously, and should not be casually tossed aside. In grappling with any scientific question, you should first try to understand what the scientific consensus is, how confident are scientists, is there any significant and viable minority view, and why scientists have come to that conclusion.

Humility and reason dictate that the consensus view should be given appropriate respect. I am not discouraging anyone from trying to understand the evidence first hand, in fact I recommend it. Learn and understand the primary evidence as much as your interest, time, and ability take you. Just be extremely cautious before you believe your opinions trump those of hundreds or thousands of working scientists.

With respect to anthropogenic global warming, there is a solid and confident consensus. You should be especially cautious of rejecting this consensus because it does not agree with your political world view.

Order the hardcover
Order the Kindle Edition

When I started my graduate career at the American Museum of Natural History in New York in 1976, I soon realized that I had stumbled upon an incredible opportunity. In addition to the world-famous fossil halls that have amazed generations of visitors, there are at least a hundred times as many fossils stored in research collections for study by qualified scientists. This is where the real work of paleontology takes place: specialists dedicated to the study of one group of organisms spending weeks to months to years examining every fossil in the collection, trying to reconstruct their anatomy, determine their relationships, and decipher what is the correct taxonomic name for any group of specimens. Without this fundamental work determining which species are valid, and when and where they lived, all other work in paleontology (especially computer models which are based on counting taxa studied by others and compiling them into databases) is “garbage in, garbage out.”

The American Museum is particularly important for such research, because it has the original collections of pioneering paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope, collected from the 1870s and 1880s, plus the huge numbers of fossils accumulated by its legendary paleontologists from 1895-1935 (Henry Fairfield Osborn, William Diller Matthew, Walter Granger, and others), as well as later collections obtained by the most brilliant paleontologist of the twentieth century, George Gaylord Simpson. The collections of dinosaurs, other reptiles, birds, amphibians, fish, and other vertebrates huge, but they are all outstripped by the gigantic collection of (mainly North American) fossil mammals. In the 1920s, the millionaire Childs Frick (son of the robber baron Henry Clay Frick, Andrew Carnegie’s partner) became interested in the origin of the mammals he used to shoot on big-game hunts. Starting about 1930 and for the next 35 years he used his wealth to pay for field crews to work year-round in the important fossil beds of the western United States, making giant collections from key localities and finding many more localities. Consequently, where we used to have just isolated teeth and jaws and maybe a skull of most mammals, the Frick Collection usually has many complete skulls or skeletons. This allows a paleontologist to see the complete anatomy of a particular mammal, examine variability within a population, and determine a much more informed and modern classification of names that had been based on isolated scraps of teeth described a century ago. Thus, most of the major groups of North American fossil mammals have to be completely restudied using the huge Frick Collection before we can make any conclusions about how many species existed, and when and where they lived.

To give you a sense of the size of the collection, there is a separate wing to house just the fossil mammals, built in an interior courtyard so it is invisible to the public. The fundraising and construction was started after Frick died in 1965, and not completed until shortly before I arrived in 1976. The Frick Wing has 10 floors altogether: an entire floor of rhinos, an entire floor of camels, an entire floor of horses, an entire floor of mastodonts and mammoths, three more floors of other groups of mammals, and the top three floors are the prep lab, the offices, classrooms, library, teaching collections, and other essential spaces. The horse floor is largely studied and published, but almost nothing has been done on the camel floor or the mastodont floor. When I arrived in 1976, the Museum’s curatorial assistant Dr. Earl Manning took me under his wing and introduced me to the study of North American rhinos, which had been neglected since the 1920s. At first we worked on projects together, but after he left in 1980, I continued working on the rhinos for another 25 years, finally publishing my comprehensive book-length monograph on them in 2005. Where once rhinos were a mess of invalid species, outdated names, mistaken identifications, and uncertain relationships, now they are one of the best-documented groups of North American mammals. Using my book, you can identify any bone of any North America rhino to genus and species.

Order the hardcover

In addition to the North American rhinos, I spent a lot of time looking at the gigantic specimens of the huge hornless Asian rhinos known as indricotheres. The American Museum has the best collection of them outside Beijing and Moscow, acquired by the legendary Central Asiatic Expeditions to Mongolia in the 1920s. After my 2005 North American rhino book, I thought it might be fun to write about these amazing creatures, which weighed as much as 20 metric tonnes, larger than the largest elephant or mammoth. When I had a sabbatical in late 2011, I finally had a chance to sit down and write a book about them, and the book has just appeared.

The first thing to realize is that much about what you see about extinct animals on TV documentaries is artistic guesswork, not based on any hard evidence. In the case of indricotheres, we have only the bones, and only partial skeletons at that. There is no direct information about the color of the animal, skin texture, what it ate, how it walked or how it behaved or sounded. All of this information, so often a crucial part of the CG animations that now dominate most documentaries about prehistoric life, are entirely conjectural and cannot be determined directly from the bones. The usual approach is to model indricotheres on the basis of living rhinos, with thick gray hairless skins with numerous folds, although we have no skin impressions or mummified specimens to test this idea, one way or another. The behavior and colors and sounds of the animals in these CG animations (such as in the documentary “Walking with Prehistoric Beasts”) are completely imaginary, and have no basis in any real-world data. Although most scientists are aware of this, a surprising number of people who watch these TV shows are stunned when they find out that so much of the show is pure fiction for entertainment, rather than science. The only real science in these shows is the interviews of expert paleontologists, and the pictures of bones and fossil localities.

Although most of the stuff you see in CG animations of prehistoric beasts (including the indricotheres) is mostly guesswork, there are living analogues that can give us some guidance about indricothere biology. The best models might be elephants, which approach indricotheres in body size. There are certain constraints about life at such large body size for elephants that must also apply to the indricotheres:

Thermoregulation: Elephants have a huge body volume and mass compared to their surface area (remember, volume increases as a cube while area only increases as a square). As the debate about hot-blooded dinosaurs back in the 1980s revealed, such huge animals with an endothermic physiology (that is, they generate their own body heat from metabolism) have a severe problem getting rid of excess body heat, especially if they live in warm climates. Living elephants have huge ears as radiators to shed excess body heat from their bloodstream, and it is reasonable to infer that indricotheres did too. African elephants and rhinos and hippos spend much of their daytime resting in the shade or wallowing in waterholes and mud puddles to cool down, and so must have the indricotheres. Elephants, rhinos and hippos feed and move mainly at night, as indricotheres must have done. Elephants and rhinos both have largely naked skin since hair holds in body heat, which is why such elephant-like naked gray skin seems appropriate for indricotheres. Large-bodied endothermic mammals are in a constant battle to dump body heat and avoid overheating.

Digestion: There are certain other constraints for large-bodied herbivores as well. All herbivores eat large amounts of cellulose in their diets, which is a relatively indigestible carbohydrate. Most plant eaters must use some kind of specialized gut bacterium in their digestive tract to break down the cellulose and release the nutrients. Such a breakdown requires fermentation, and takes time to absorb the nutrients from the fermentation process into the lining of the intestines. There are two basic types of herbivore digestion: foregut fermenters and hindgut fermenters.

The only living foregut fermenters are the ruminant artiodactyls (camels, cattle, sheep, goats, antelopes, deer, and pronghorns), which do this by “ruminating” using a four-chambered stomach. The first chamber, the rumen, is a digestive vat full of bacteria, so that when they swallow a bite of partially chewed plant material, it goes immediately into the rumen where it begins bacterial breakdown. Later, when they are resting, ruminants regurgitate some of the contents of their rumen back into their mouths, where they can “chew their cud” and break the material down further, before swallowing it again. By the time the food reaches the lining of their intestines, it is highly broken down into nutrients and easily absorbed. Thus, ruminants use nearly every bit of their food efficiently, and can survive on relatively small amounts of good-quality vegetation. But if they eat too much high-quality vegetation, they can become bloated and their rumen can swell and even rupture and kill them with all the gas released from the rapid bacterial fermentation.

The remaining herbivorous mammals are hindgut fermenters. These include the perissodactyls (odd-toed hoofed mammals, today including the horses, tapirs and rhinos), the elephants, the non-ruminant artiodactyls (pigs, peccaries, and hippos), and other herbivores such as rabbits and some primates. Instead of a highly specialized foregut with a rumen, they have the normal mammalian digestive tract, with an esophagus, acid-filled stomach, and then intestines for absorption. Most have a pouch off the intestine called a caecum that is the primary location of bacterial fermentation.  Lacking a rumen, the hindgut fermenters pass the mostly undigested cellulose through the digestive tract until it reaches the caecum, but bacterial fermentation only just starts in the caecum before the food goes through the remaining intestines and is then excreted. Consequently, they get relatively little nutrition out of each bite of fodder, and must eat much larger volumes of mostly low-quality food (especially grasses) to get enough to live on. Most hindgut fermenters, like horses, rhinos, and elephants, are by necessity be high-volume low-efficiency eaters, and eat huge volumes of material just to survive, since they are so poor at extracting the nutrients. When you see the feces of these animals (like the “road apples” of horses), they are typically full of undigested plant matter compared to the “cowpies” of a ruminant, or the tiny pellets of a deer or pronghorn. Rabbits are a special case. If you have ever kept rabbits in a hutch, you will notice that they eat their own feces. This gives them a chance to run the food through their gut a second time after the bacterial fermentation has had time to work, and get more nutrition this way.

For these reasons, there are certain things we can say with confidence about indricothere feeding dynamics. Because they were not ruminant artiodactyls, they had to be hindgut fermenters, like horses, other rhinos, and elephants, so they must have consumed and processed huge amounts of food in a day, just as elephants do now. Their feces would have been full of undigested plant material, just like those of a horse or an elephant. Like almost all large herbivores, they must have had a big part of their abdomen occupied by their large digestive tract, giving them a large bulging “gut” like that of an elephant. The fermentation in their gut, by the way, creates additional body heat, which exacerbates the problems they have of producing excess body heat to begin with.

Locomotion and Home Range: As an animal increases in body size, the stresses on their limb bones increases even more because of the power of three expansion of volume and the corresponding mass increase. Models of the dynamics of large dinosaurs show that they could not have run very fast, or their limbs would break. Modern elephants also cannot run very fast compared to true specialized runners like antelopes, horses or cheetahs. Their maximum speed in an all-out charge clocked at only 18 mph (29 kph), but their normal walking speed is about 6-12 mph (10-19 kph). Remember, they have an advantage in their speed because they have much longer limbs and strides than any other animal. Given that indricotheres were just slightly larger than modern elephants, we can predict that they too would have not been fast runners, but ambled along at a moderate pace like that of an elephant.

However, African elephants are capable to moving enormous distances (typically 20 miles or 32 km) in the course of a day, migrating from one food source to another. To support their food needs of about 300 pounds (140 kg) of food they consume in the 16 hours of each day they eat, elephants need huge home ranges of 300-600 square miles (750-1500 square km). Consequently, huge home ranges and long migrations would be expected of indricotheres as well, especially if they lived in a harsh desert scrub setting with scarce food sources that were easily wiped out. A similar model has been proposed for the large sauropod dinosaurs, which lived in a scrubby, semi-arid habitat in the Late Jurassic time (Morrison Formation), and probably roamed in small herds from one patch of trees to another.

Predators and Life Habits: Certain other ecological parameters are also dictated by the giant body sizes of elephants and indricotheres. Once they reach a large enough body size, healthy modern elephants have no natural predators—not even lions or tigers are foolish enough to tackle them. (This has all changed now with human poaching, which has nearly wiped out elephants in the wild). Only the babies and young calves are vulnerable to predators, and in elephant herds, there is a strong matriarchal hierarchy so that every calf is closely protected not only by its mother, but also by its sisters, grandmother, aunts, great-aunts, and other close female relatives. All non-human predation of elephants in the wild occurs when predators catch vulnerable calves.  Almost a quarter of the calves born to Asian elephants are lost to tigers before they reach their first birthday. If indricotheres maintained small herds in the elephant mode, such freedom from predation except for the young would also be true. However, in the Bugti beds there are gigantic crocodiles (Crocodylus bugtiensis) that are 10-11 m (33-36 feet) long! These would have been large enough to attack almost any indricothere that might be at the edge of the river to drink. Indeed, many of the specimens from the Bugti beds have crocodile tooth marks on them.

There is also a well-known relationship between the gestation period, size of the litter, and body size. Elephants have the longest gestation period of any land creature (22-24 months, or about two years). The females do not reach sexual maturity until they are ten years old, and may produce a single calf every three to four years, the slowest reproductive rate of any mammal. Such could be expected of indricotheres as well, since growing to such large body sizes, and having such large calves, is very similar to the constraints on elephant reproduction. Like elephants, indricotheres would be expected to grow quickly at first, then grow relatively slowly once they reached maturity.

There is also a strong relationship between body size, metabolic rate, and blood pressure. An elephant has a relatively slow metabolic rate. Its heart beats only 30 times per minute, while humans have a pulse of 60 beats per minute, and hamsters have a pulse rate of over 450 beats per minute! The indricothere heart would have had a pulse rate close to that of an elephant, but probably a bit higher. This is because it must have also been able to exert a blood pressure close to the 300 mm Hg that giraffes produce (humans typically have a blood pressure of 120) to be able to lift its head so far above the ground without fainting.

Finally, there is also a well-known scaling of longevity with body size, with larger animals (and their slower heart rates) living longer. A rodent typically lives no longer than 3-5 years, a cat or a goat about 15 years, pig or monkey about 20-25 years, and a cow or giraffe about 25-30 years. Elephants typically live 35-50 years in the wild (at least they did until recent years, when poaching has nearly wiped them out), and the record is 71 years. Similar lifespans could be expected of indricotheres as well.

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.

The interview was very enlightening. In my opinion it was an excellent example of the power of motivated reasoning – if we have a conclusion in mind, people are very good at finding a mental path to get there.

We rarely do confrontational interviews on the SGU, but the few we have done I am generally happy with. The risk is that the tone of the interview will go sour. I have only done such interviews when I feel that the person being interviewed will be able to stay calm and professional even as we dismantle their position. Another risk is that the interviewee, who likely is a passionate and eloquent defender of their fringe position, will make it difficult to get a word in edgewise, resulting in a Gish Gallop.

Don McLeroy, I have to say, was an exemplary guest. He stayed polite throughout, and did not bristle even when directly confronted on his position. He also did something I find extremely rare in such interviews – occasionally acknowledging a point on the other side or a weakness in his own position. He also had clearly made a genuine effort to read pro-evolution material and criticisms of his position.

I came away with the impression that he is genuinely trying to understand the creation/evolution debate and to rely on only valid arguments. This makes him a very interesting and valuable skeptical subject. I think he demonstrates a few phenomena about which skeptics should be aware.

First is that when we begin to learn critical thinking skills and principles we tend to apply them to the beliefs of others very easily, but only more reluctantly to our own beliefs. Second, when we do apply critical thinking skills to our own beliefs, the pathway of least cognitive dissonance is to use those skills to make our own rationalizations more subtle and sophisticated, rather than to actually change our core beliefs. The more strongly held those core beliefs are, the greater the mental barriers are to change them, the harder it is to get over the hump to actually changing our flawed beliefs.

Individuals can be in all three of these phases (critical of others, rationalizing our own beliefs, and being truly critical of our own beliefs) at the same time with respect to different beliefs.

With regard to evolution and creationism, Don McLeroy seems to be firmly in phase 2 – he is engaging in a fairly sophisticated form of denialism with respect to evolutionary theory.  In this and in a follow up post I will address what I found to be Don’s main points. I have also invited him to respond and publish his responses.

Free to Believe

One point Don made that was tangential to the evolution-creation discussion, but which I think reveals his perspective, is that he feels as a fundamentalist Christian he is more free to either accept or reject evolutionary theory than I am as an atheist. I have heard this argument before, but still found it stunning because it is exactly opposite to my impression of reality.

His logic superficially makes sense – those with religious beliefs accept both materialist and supernatural explanations of the world, while strict materialist atheists accept only materialist explanations. Therefore an atheist has no choice but to accept evolutionary theory. Meanwhile someone who is religious can either accept or reject it.

The former component of this argument is strictly true in that there are Christians who accept evolutionary theory. One can have faith and accept the findings of science. In fact, I would suggest that those who choose to maintain a personal faith find a way to do so without rejecting science or the findings of science.

However, this ignores the fact that certain denominations of Christianity have as a strong and firmly held part of their core faith the literal accuracy of (there interpretation of) their version of the Bible. They would have to radically change many of their core beliefs – their entire approach to their faith, if they accepted scientific findings that directly contradict their biblical interpretation (specifically in a recently created world).

Don may be free to accept evolution, but doing so would force him to rethink major aspects of his faith, actually changing his denomination to one that is not fundamentalist. I cannot take seriously the claim that this does not provide a powerful motivation to deny evolution.

We should not also ignore the cultural aspects of this. Young Earth creationism is now a subculture of belief, with their own publications, mythology, distorted and cherry picked facts, institutions, and websites. When someone is deeply embedded in this community, young earth creationism is both encouraged and supported with a robust and sophisticated network. This creates a deep psychological and social hole out of which for anyone to dig themselves.

On the flip side, it is also strictly true but misleading to argue that scientists are forced to accept materialism. Yes, science does require methodological naturalism, because the process of science cannot function otherwise. Science is about providing natural explanations for observed phenomena, so it is trivially and pointlessly true that science only offers naturalistic explanations.

Don’s point is therefore the equivalent of saying that mathematicians are forced to provide mathematical answers to mathematical problems, and they do so using mathematical equations and processes.

There is also the assumption in Don’s position that evolution is the only materialist possibility. When you follow the process of science, evolutionary theory is currently the answer to which all the evidence leads. If the evidence pointed in another direction, then that would be the currently accepted theory. If the evidence were ambiguous or scant, then perhaps the current answer would be, we don’t know.

Science is a process of following logic and evidence, so you cannot fault scientists for following logic and evidence to the conclusion of evolutionary theory.

Don’s argument also appears to contain a hidden assumption – that the goal of all this is to arrive at the Truth. This is a bit of a deep philosophical discussion, and there is a range of opinions here, but to give my quick summary – science is about producing testable theories that make predictions about how nature will behave and what we will observe in nature. It is not about metaphysical certitude, but about testable models.

At present evolutionary theory is the best model we have of how life changes over time, and how existing life got to its current form. It has withstood over 150 years of potential falsification. New scientific disciplines have arisen since Darwin (genetics, for example) that could have entirely falsified evolutionary theory, but instead have strengthened it.

Teaching science is about teaching scientific methods and the current best theories that have emerged from applying scientific methods. It is not about Truth or belief.

In my next post I will address more of the arguments that Don put forward in the interview.

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.”

The surreal sight of Margaret Downey and Jessica Ahlquist dueling with bananas in the foreground, while evangelist Ray Comfort interviews P.Z. Myers in the background

“Letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend is the policy for promoting progress in the arts and the sciences”
—Mao Zedong

Last weekend I had the privilege of speaking at the Orange County Freethought Alliance fourth annual conference. Although I’ve spoken at The Amazing Meeting (this coming July will be my third such time), and frequently at the Skeptic Society meetings over the years (my “home base”), and made the big AAI meeting when it was in Burbank in 2009, this was the first of the smaller regional meetings in California that I had ever attended. I’m familiar with big events like TAM, with its lineup of all-star speakers and gigantic ballroom crammed with over 1600 people, so this smaller local meeting with about 300 participants was a nice change of pace. The venue was a smaller convention/ ballroom facility in the Fullerton Howard Johnson’s hotel. We were in the heart of Orange County, long the most conservative place in all of California. Since we were just blocks away from Disneyland, as you walked in that morning there was a continuous flood of tourists (mostly Asian) headed out for The Magic Kingdom. Yet the weather was nice (after a record-breaking heat wave on Thursday and Friday), the sun was out, and the swimming pool beckoned to our speakers who had flown from cold and snowy Minnesota or Philadelphia.

I got there much earlier than necessary (I never take chances on LA traffic, and since I was a morning speaker, I wanted to make sure my talk was working properly). The organizer, Bruce Gleason, had done a remarkable job with his small cadre of volunteers running the registration table and badges, handling the AV, manning the exhibitors’ booths in the back, and assigning one volunteer to be the speakers’ “go-fer” and another to give us warning on how much time we had left. The meeting price included catered lunch and dinner buffet style, which was excellent, and very efficient in feeding a large group and getting them back quickly.

The theme of the meeting was “What is the Future of Secularism?”, so Gleason opened the session and enlivened each break with some vintage music with a futuristic theme, from “There’s A Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow” (which used to be the theme of Disney and GE’s ‘Carousel of Progress’ of the 1964 World’s Fair and then in Disneyland for many years) to the themes from “The Jetsons” and “Lost in Space.” His emcee was a talented musician, Gary Stockdale (composer of Penn & Teller’s music, and many other familiar themes), who enlivened each break with one of his original  secularist songs on piano or guitar. Many of the smaller secularist groups from San Diego to Ventura County had their own tables with signs above them, and they had a special table for us speakers right next to the podium and screen. Best of all, they had a “green room” rented from the hotel, where the speakers could relax and work on their talks, complete with snacks and drinks.

The published schedule was rather lax in practice, so we began at 10:30, not 10:00 as published. But it didn’t matter, since Gleason had made sure that each speaker only went 35 minutes, left plenty of time for questions, and gave everyone a 5- to 10-minute break between talks. This is a BIG improvement over some of these conferences, where the speakers go non-stop for hours with minimal breaks, and it becomes very hard to focus when you’ve been sitting for three hours. The session opened with Jessica Ahlquist, the high school student who had challenged her school in Cranston, Rhode Island, about their big religious prayer banner on the campus and won in court. Her account of the threats and harassment, and the betrayal by people she thought were her friends, was truly chilling. Even more impressive was her amazing poise and strong will for someone so young (she’s now 17), and how well she handled an extremely difficult situation, stuck to her guns, and got this violation of the First Amendment removed. The audience was so moved that they gave her a long standing ovation at the end, and it was well deserved.

Her act was a tough one to follow, but I gave a talk I’d previously given to other skeptical/ secularist groups (such as NYC Skeptics and Minnesota Atheists) about the parallels between the different types of science deniers, from creationists to global warming deniers to anti-vaxxers to AIDS deniers, and how they all borrow tactics pioneered by the Holocaust deniers, and smokescreen strategies used by the tobacco companies. It is a brief taste of my upcoming book Reality Check: How Science Deniers Threaten our Future, which is due out in time for TAM in July. It got a lot of great questions, and lots of people talking to me personally afterwards, so it must have been well received. The crowd around me took so long to disperse that I was the last one in the lunch line, but there was more than enough food.

The afternoon session was even more stellar, even though we were just a little regional meeting. We led off Matt Dillahunty, the prominent Austin, Texas, TV and radio host of several different secular shows, who talked about  ”secular soul-winning”: which kinds of arguments worked for convincing religious people and which ones didn’t. He was followed by Greta Christina, the famous blogger, feminist, and LGBT activist, who talked about how to “come out” as a secularist, and what lessons we can learn from when the LGBT community came out. Then came the exuberant Dr. Darrel Ray, the Kansas author of The God Virus and Sex and Secularism, who talked about his surveys that explored the sexual hangups and guilt that people lost when they got out of repressive church backgrounds. The afternoon concluded with the gut-wrenching accounts of Margaret Downey. She illustrated her point about winning people from religion by telling our own stories with her own background as part of a mixed-race family in the Deep South in the 1960s, who rebelled against repressive church teachings at a young age. She went through some horrendous life experiences yet came out stronger in her need to help others trapped in religious shackles.

At dinner, they had a lavish buffet that included steak and salmon, and the speakers were asked to sit in the “green room” where those who wished to sit with us could join us. I had a great time talking to a whole table full of people I had never met before. As dinner was winding down, we looked out the window and saw a bizarre sight: the clownish evangelist Ray Comfort  (the “Bananaman”) was interviewing P.Z. Myers! Although they have fought back and forth in the blogsphere for years, apparently they had never actually met. Soon, almost the entire conference was hovering around nearby, mesmerized, and capturing the moment on a hundred cell phone cameras. P.Z.’s account of what Comfort asked is recounted here (but don’t be surprised if Comfort edits it to make P.Z. look bad or confused). At one point, Jessica Ahlquist and Margaret Downey brought a couple of bananas from the green room and were clowning around, dueling, and otherwise satirizing Comfort’s famous shtick that the banana was “created” to perfectly fit the human hand.

After that surreal experience, the evening concluded with the two biggest names among our speakers. First, P.Z. Myers talked about science and science education in our society, and pointed out that even without the problems of religion tampering with science, we have other issues like a Texas high school which spent $16 million on a football stadium, but no extra money for science labs or teachers. He talked about how the entire edifice of scientific research in the U.S. is a relatively new phenomenon. It was confined to the rich private Ivy League universities until World War II, when science and technology were harnessed for the wartime effort. Then after the war, it was Vannevar Bush (a Republican) who set up the modern scientific research apparatus, and turned the huge land-grant public universities from places to train farmers and teachers to full-service research centers. Now these same places are going into rapid decline as federal and state funding has dried up, and the students are now bearing the major share of the costs. Likewise, it was GOP president, Eisenhower, who fostered this expansion of research, and also got the interstate highway system built, and spent much on our infrastructure. Now, most of that system is gradually crumbling and falling apart (as documented by numerous engineering studies), exemplified by the collapse of the I-35 bridge in Minneapolis just a few years ago.

The final speaker was Jamy Ian Swiss, who focused on the distinctions and overlaps between skepticism, atheism, and secular humanism (apparently, a version of the talk he gave at TAM in 2012). In his metaphor, we are all armies fighting a common enemy, and overlapping in most of our goals and even membership. But we each inhabit slightly different “tents” pitched next to each other on adjacent hills. We welcome others to our own tent, but we don’t want others moving our tent (skepticism) and making it theirs. Needless to say, this is contentious topic in the secular world right now, and P.Z. Myers was not very happy about it. There was no time for discussion at the end because our final act was a choir, “Voices of Reason.” Although I could not attend, they had Sunday field trips to see the Space Shuttle at the California Science Center and to view an IMAX movie about the Hubble space telescope.

In short, it was a very interesting and stimulating conference, with a surprising number of top-rank speakers for such a small local meeting. More importantly, it demonstrated a phenomenon that is happening all over the U.S.: the rapid grassroots growth of the secular movement. Where once TAM and the SkepTrac of Dragon-con were the only shows in town, attracting all the top speakers, now the calendar is crowded with secular meetings nearly every weekend, all over the country. In southern California alone, we have  over two dozen different freethought groups, science clubs, humanist groups, and “coalitions of reason.” As I read various blogs, I hear about the great conferences run each year in Missouri, in Minnesota, the NECSS in the northeast, and so many others. Of course, I don’t have the time or funds to go to all these meetings, or even a tiny part of them, but it is so encouraging to see this rapid growth and expansion of meetups between people who would otherwise remain isolated and ostracized in their tiny church-run communities. Thanks to the internet, so many people who once would remain “in the closet” and not realize that they were not the only non-religious person in their town have now come out of the woodwork. They are banding together with meetings at every level which show that the non-religious are indeed the fastest-growing group in the American religious scene. We seculars greatly outnumbers Jews, Muslims, most Protestant denominations, and we’re expanding (especially with young people) at a time that evangelical churches are on the decline. This was especially apparent at this meeting, as well as at TAM and AAI and others I’ve attended: where once it was the domain of old cranky white guys, now the meetings are overwhelmingly young people under 30, with almost equal numbers of men and women. We’re still not so successful in attracting people of color to our ranks, but during the meeting there was a lot of discussion about how that can be overcome.

Although the pernicious influence of fundamentalists on our science education and public policy may not vanish in my life time, the demographics show that we are indeed on the path to becoming a more secular place some day, as most of western Europe has already become (and for that matter, even Canada). That is the most exciting thing I realized from the entire meeting.

Amanda Berry

Grief Vampire Sylvia Browne has once again proven herself to be the worst possible psychic medium in known history. Skeptics should be happy she is back in the news this time for her ”incorrectly predicting”(?) the outcome of the Amanda Berry disappearance. Chalk up another totally reprehensible miss to her worthless career.

Words cannot be used here at Skepticblog that could express my utter contempt for this bottom-feeding woman and her supporters. This time out she not only caused untold grief to family and community members, but also may have contributed to Amanda’s mother Louwana’s untimely death:

From:  http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2013/05/amanda_berrys_mother_louwana_m.html

“The case was featured on “American’s Most Wanted.” Louwana Miller appeared on Montel Williams’ nationally-syndicated talk show in November 2004. On the show, a psychic (read as Sylvia Browne)  told Miller that Amanda was probably dead.

“I still don’t want to believe it,” Louwana Miller said in an interview after the show. “I want to have hope but . . . what else is there?”

Louwana Miller: Amanda’s Mother: Dead of a Broken Heart?

Activist Art McKoy befriended Louwana Miller during her ordeal. He said he could tell that the stress and heartache were wearing her down. The visit with the psychic was the breaking point, he said.“From that point, Ms. Miller was never the same,” McKoy said. “I think she had given up.”

For those who say psychics like Browne, Edward et. al. somehow help or comfort those in need and repeat the phrase “What’s the harm?” there should be a real answer in what has taken place here. How much more can we stand without getting The Law involved in these sorts of horrible mind games? This is not comforting or entertainment – this is blatant criminality of the worst kind. Sylvia and her ilk make a very good living doing this day in and day out. How many other people have had their lives, hopes and dreams shattered by these predatory harpies?

Browne to Miller: “ She’s not alive, honey.”

The Hornbeck Family

In a related development: French television news program “Enquete exclusive – Voyants, mediums, mentalistes revelations sur leurs mysterieux pouvoirs’” which featured myself and CFI/IIG’s Jim Underdown, showcased through amazing interview footage the entire Shawn Hornbeck drama. If you are not already familiar with Browne’s mis-deeds in this matter – it’s too much to go into here. Let’s just say once again, Sylvia told Shawn’s parents on nationwide television he was dead when he was later found quite well and alive.

French program here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34Iji3aMAa0

Not only do the Hornbeck parents come forward and speak out about the emotional damage that ravenous bad-tempered shrew Browne inflicted on their lives, they also give a very negative shout out to that other slimeball James VanPraagh for doing the same sort of “comforting.”

Maureen Hancock

In the “Enquete” program, “The Medium Next Door,” everybody’s darling Maureen Hancock also gets her fair share of explicit exposing when Jim and I reveal the latest trend in mediumship: using “hot reads” taken from credit card information to later reveal dramatic “hits” in a live audience performance. This isn’t a magic or mentalism show folks, this is a con pure and simple.

Later in another segment of the program, Hancock is also shown in her opulent home psychically picking out suspects and leading police (and another mother of a missing woman) on wild goose chases that lead everybody off the track. It is obvious Maureen is bluffing her way through the whole segment. Hancock has absolutely no track record anywhere for her claims as a successful “psychic detective” – other than her known background an “associate member” of the Licensed Private Detective Association of Massachusetts. What might that tell us about her ability to suss out information on people? So why isn’t this mis-use of private information a crime? Isn’t this tantamount to filing a false police report? Having the French television crew capturing her deceptions on camera in the presence of their own law enforcement officers should be extra embarrassing for the police involved. How do you feel about being seen internationally as dupes for this woman?

It is heartening to see Hornbeck’s parents speaking out so freely on the “Enquete’” special that has been seen by millions of French and European audiences, but where are the American counterparts in all this? There must be hundreds of stories and victim files on this sort of fraud. Why are we not seeing people stepping up who have been so abused by these media vultures?

As I have asked here at Skepticblog over and over: Isn’t this kind of money making enterprise. i.e. selling a product; (life and death information) under false pretenses (unproven psychic skills) against the law? Shouldn’t such conscious manipulators have to show in a court of law they can come up with the verified proof before they are allowed to waste time, money and manpower by continuing such outright deception?

I don’t understand how this goes on day after day without people so horribly burned by these cons seeking legal intervention or speaking up to the media. If they are so dispirited or too depressed to deal with coming forward themselves, well okay we have seen enough. Isn’t the justice system set up to protect those who cannot protect themselves? Are our law makers and police personnel really that inept and plain stupid? Sadly, (at least here in America) I think we all know the answer to that question.

In answer to those who object to my calling out or using all caps to say DO SOMETHING without any place to go to learn how and what to do, there are tons on vids, lectures and podcasts by myself on these subjects at my website www.themarkedward.com and here’s a great link:

http://www.skepticink.com/gps/2012/11/16/protesting-pseudoscience-a-how-to-guide/

And here’s a major working group for those of you who don’t want to leave the house and want to do something in your jammies:

http://guerrillaskepticismonwikipedia.blogspot.com/2013/05/gsow-rocks-internet-with-major-updates.html

I realise it may be way to soon to expect anyone to step forward an speak up against psychic mediums in the Amanda Berry case, and with Mom dead, …well who is to do the speaking up? It’s a double tragedy this time.

Give up Sylvia.

For whatever it’s worth: I’m calling out the family of Amanda Berry and Amanda Berry herself, along with her community, local media and law enforcement to DO SOMETHING about the rising tide of scum-bags like Sylvia Browne and the damage they inflict on everybody concerned in these fiascoes. Pretending to receive messages from beyond or deferring to any form of “psychic powers” concerning missing persons has to stop or at the very least be exposed as the terrible scam it is.  

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.