Committee for Skeptical Inquiry

The Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP) is a U.S. nonprofit organization whose purpose is to "encourage the critical investigation of paranormal and fringe-science claims from a responsible, scientific point of view and disseminate factual information about the results of such inquiries to the scientific community and the public." CSICOP was founded in 1976 by Paul Kurtz to counter what its founders regarded as an apparent uncritical acceptance of, and support for, paranormal claims by both the media and society in general. Its practical goals and philosophical position of scientific skepticism are closely shared by the Skeptics Society, the James Randi Educational Foundation, and many smaller U.S. regional skeptics' organizations, as well as by national skeptics' organizations in other countries. CSICOP's fellows have included many notable scientists, philosophers, educators, authors, and celebrities.

Activities

According to CSICOP's charter, the organization exists to pursue six major goals:

1. Maintain a network of people interested in critically examining paranormal, fringe science, and other claims, and in contributing to consumer education.
2. Prepare bibliographies of published materials that carefully examine such claims.
3. Encourage research by objective and impartial inquiry in areas where it is needed.
4. Convene conferences and meetings.
5. Publish articles that examine claims of the paranormal.
6. To avoid rejecting claims on a priori grounds, antecedent to inquiry, but rather examine them objectively and carefully.

CSICOP conducts and publishes investigations into Bigfoot and UFO sightings, psychics, astrologers, alternative medicine, religious cults, and paranormal or pseudoscientific claims.

Media watchdog

Much of CSICOP's activities are oriented towards the media. As CSICOP's former executive director Lee Nisbet wrote in the 25th-anniversary issue of the group's journal, Skeptical Inquirer:

"CSICOP originated in the spring of 1976 to fight mass-media exploitation of supposedly "occult" and "paranormal" phenomena. The strategy was twofold: First, to strengthen the hand of skeptics in the media by providing information that "debunked" paranormal wonders. Second, to serve as a "media-watchdog" group which would direct public and media attention to egregious media exploitation of the supposed paranormal wonders. An underlying principle of action was to use the mainline media's thirst for public-attracting controversies to keep our activities in the media, hence public eye."

This involvement with mass media continues to the present day with, for example, CSICOP founding the Council for Media Integrity in 1996, as well as co-producing a TV documentary series Critical Eye hosted by William B. Davis (the actor who played the Smoking Man in The X-Files). CSICOP members can also be seen regularly in the mainstream media offering their perspective on a variety of paranormal claims, and in 1999 Joe Nickell was appointed special consultant on a number of investigative documentaries for the BBC. In its capacity as a media-watchdog, CSICOP has “mobilized thousands of scientists, academics and responsible communicators” to criticize what it regards as “media's most blatant excesses.” While much of this criticism has focused on factual TV programming or newspaper articles offering support for paranormal claims, CSICOP has also been critical of programs such as The X-Files and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which its members believe to portray skeptics and science in a bad light and help to promote belief in the paranormal. CSICOP’s website currently lists the email addresses of over ninety U.S. media organizations and encourages visitors to “directly influence” the media by contacting “the networks, the TV shows and the editors responsible for the way it portrays the world.”

Health and safety

An issue of particular concern to CSICOP are paranormal or pseudoscientific claims that may endanger people's health or safety, such as the use of alternative medicine in place of science-based healthcare. Investigations by CSICOP and others, including consumer watchdog groups, law enforcement and government regulatory agencies,[2] have shown that the sale of alternative medicines, paranormal paraphernalia, or pseudoscience-based products can be enormously profitable. CSICOP says this profitability has provided various pro-paranormal groups large resources for advertising, lobbying efforts, and other forms of advocacy, to the detriment of public health and safety.

Following pseudoscientific and paranormal belief fads

CSICOP changes its focus with the changing fads of pseudoscientific and paranormal belief. For example, as promoters of intelligent design have increased their efforts to have this teaching included in school curriculums in recent years, CSICOP has stepped up its own attention to the subject, creating an "Intelligent Design Watch" website[3] and publishing numerous articles on evolution and intelligent design in Skeptical Inquirer and on the web.

Humor

As referenced by CSICOP member Martin Gardner, a maxim regularly put into practice by the organization is H. L. Mencken's "one horse-laugh is worth a thousand syllogisms." Thus, Skeptical Inquirer has carried such articles as reports on the success rate of past years' tabloid "psychic predictions" and coverage of the Australian Skeptics' "Bent Spoon Awards" (winners are notified by telepathy and must pick up their trophies by paranormal means).

Humanism

CSICOP is a member organization of the International Humanist and Ethical Union and endorses the Amsterdam Declaration on the principles of modern humanism.

Awards to fellows

CSICOP awards the Robert P. Balles Annual Prize in Critical Thinking. The first award was shared by CSICOP fellows Ray Hyman and Joe Nickell and by Andrew Skolnick for their reports in 2005 on CSICOP's testing of the purported "girl with X-ray eyes," Natasha Demkina. Template:Ref harvard.

Publications

CSICOP publishes the magazine Skeptical Inquirer, containing articles on skepticism, pseudo-science and the paranormal, as well as reports on experiments conducted to test alleged paranormal phenomena. Skeptical Inquirer was founded by Marcello Truzzi, under the name The Zetetic and retitled after a few months under the editorship of Kendrick Frazier, former editor of Science News. Cecil Adams of The Straight Dope calls Skeptical Inquirer "one of the nation's leading antifruitcake journals".

Standards of evidence

Differences between skeptics and proponents of the paranormal often arise over what constitutes acceptable standards of evidence.

An axiom often repeated among CSICOP members is the famous quote from Carl Sagan: "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." Since paranormal claims are potentially revolutionary scientific discoveries that by definition run counter to the established body of scientific knowledge, CSICOP members argue that nothing less than the strictest standards of scientific scrutiny should be accepted as convincing. Such standards include well-designed and controlled scientific experiments published in reputable peer-reviewed journals, followed by independent replication by other researchers.

Paranormal proponents often advocate a less stringent standard of evidence, arguing for a preponderance of evidence and offering as proof of paranormal phenomena such evidence as eyewitness testimonies, historical quotations, informal experiments, anecdotal evidence, and inference. These lines of evidence are typically published in popular sources and are not subject to formal criticism or peer review.

Umbrella organization

A transnational non-profit umbrella organization called the Center for Inquiry encompasses both CSICOP and the Council for Secular Humanism, as well as other organizations such as the Center for Inquiry - On Campus national youth group and the Commission for Scientific Medicine and Mental Health. While these organizations share headquarters and some staff, they each have their own list of fellows and their mandates are kept distinct: while CSICOP generally addresses questions of religion only in cases in which testable scientifics assertions have been made (such as weeping statues or faith healing), the Council for Secular Humanism is an organization explicitly devoted to humanism and secularism.

Partial list of CSICOP fellows (past and present)

The inside front cover of each issue of the Skeptical Inquirer lists the CSICOP fellows.

George O. Abell Spiro Agnew Jean Alexander Marcia Angell Isaac Asimov Roger Keith Barrett Stephen Barrett Susan Blackmore Bart Bok Jan Harold Brunvand Milbourne Christopher Francis Crick Richard Dawkins L. Sprague de Camp Daniel Dennett Ann Druyan

Paul Edwards Antony Flew Kendrick Frazier Martin Gardner Murray Gell-Mann Fred Gwynne Stephen Jay Gould Douglas Hofstadter Gerald Holton Ray Hyman Philip J. Klass Paul Kurtz Eddie Large Leon Lederman Elizabeth Loftus

John Maddox David Marks Paul MacCready Marvin Minsky Richard A. Muller Joe Nickell Bill Nye James Oberg Robert L. Park Massimo Pigliucci W. V. Quine James Randi Carl Sagan

Eugenie Scott Glenn T. Seaborg Thomas Sebeok B. F. Skinner Robert Sheaffer Jill Tarter Carol Tavris Neil deGrasse Tyson Marilyn vos Savant George Wallace Steven Weinberg E. O. Wilson Richard Wilson Richard Wiseman

Controversy and criticism

CSICOP's activities have garnered criticism, in particular from individuals or groups that have been the focus of the organization's attention. Self-proclaimed psychic Uri Geller, for example, was until recently in open dispute with CSICOP for many years, filing a number of lawsuits against the organization. Some criticism, however, has come from within the scientific community and at times from those involved with CSICOP itself. Marcello Truzzi, one of CSICOP's co-founders, left the organization after only a short time, claiming that many of those involved “tend to block honest inquiry, in my opinion. Most of them are not agnostic toward claims of the paranormal; they are out to knock them. [...] When an experiment of the paranormal meets their requirements, then they move the goal posts.” [4] Truzzi coined the term pseudoskeptic to describe critics in whom he detected such an attitude.

Mars effect

An early controversy concerned the so-called Mars effect: French statistician Michel Gauquelin’s claim that champion athletes are more likely to be born when the planet Mars is in certain positions in the sky. In late 1975, prior to the formal launch of CSICOP, astronomer Dennis Rawlins, along with Paul Kurtz, George Abel and Marvin Zelen (all subsequent members of CSICOP) began investigating the claim. Rawlins, a founding member of CSICOP at its launch in May 1976, resigned in early 1980 claiming that other CSICOP researchers had used incorrect statistics, faulty science and outright falsification in an attempt to debunk Gauquelin’s claims. In an article for the pro-paranormal magazine Fate, he wrote: "I am still skeptical of the occult beliefs CSICOP was created to debunk. But I have changed my mind about the integrity of some of those who make a career of opposing occultism." CSICOP's Philip Klass responded by circulating an article to CSICOP members critical of Rawlins' arguments and motives; Klass's unpublished response itself becoming the target for further criticism.

Natasha Demkina

In 2004, CSICOP was accused of scientific misconduct over its involvement in Discovery Channel's test of the "girl with X-ray eyes," Natasha Demkina. In a self-published commentary, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Brian Josephson criticized the test and evaluation methods and argued that the results should have been deemed "inconclusive." Josephson, the director of University of Cambridge's Mind-Matter Unification project, who has been criticized by colleagues for his enthusiasm for the paranormal, questioned the researchers' motives and alleged that the experiment was "some kind of plot to discredit the teenage claimed psychic." Ray Hyman, one of the three researchers who designed and conducted the test, published a response to this and other criticisms, and the Commission for Scientific Medicine and Mental Health also published a detailed response to these and other objections.

Rebuttal to general criticism

On a more general level, CSICOP has been accused of an overly dogmatic and arrogant approach based on a priori convictions, and it has been suggested that their aggressive style of skepticism could discourage scientific research into the paranormal. Astronomer Carl Sagan wrote on this:

"Have I ever heard a skeptic wax superior and contemptuous? Certainly. I've even sometimes heard, to my retrospective dismay, that unpleasant tone in my own voice. There are human imperfections on both sides of this issue. Even when it's applied sensitively, scientific skepticism may come across as arrogant, dogmatic, heartless, and dismissive of the feelings and deeply held beliefs of others... CSICOP is imperfect. [...] But from my point of view CSICOP serves an important social function — as a well-known organization to which media can apply when they wish to hear the other side of the story, especially when some amazing claim of pseudoscience is judged newsworthy."

Attack planned by Church of Scientology

On at least one occasion, CSICOP was the intended target of a planned attack more serious than mere criticism. In 1977, a government raid on the offices of the Church of Scientology uncovered considerable evidence of a plot against CSICOP by the church; this included plans by Scientology to discredit CSICOP by forging CIA documents. The documents seized by the FBI described a plan to spread rumors that CSICOP was actually a front group for the CIA.

See also

Australian Skeptics Committee for Surrealist Investigation of Claims of the Normal Gerard Majax Indian CSICOP James Randi Educational Foundation Pathological skepticism

Milbourne Christopher The Skeptics Society Association for the Scientific Study of Anomalous Phenomena Föreningen Vetenskap och Folkbildning Watchdog journalism

References

• ^{Randi 1995} Randi, James (1995). An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural. Prometheus Books. ISBN 0-312-13066-X. Available at this webpage

External links

• CSICOP homepage
• Skeptical Inquirer official home page
• "CSICOP and the Skeptics: An Overview" - Arguments against the organization's goals, from The Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research
• Point Of Inquiry - Radio show and podcast for CSICOP's Center for Inquiry.
• True Disbelievers - Former CSICOP member Richard Kammann's account of the Mars-Effect controversy.