Committee for Skeptical Inquiry

The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI), formerly known as the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP) is a U.S. not-for-profit organization whose stated 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."^[1] CSI was founded in 1976 by Paul Kurtz to counter what he regarded as an uncritical acceptance of, and support for, paranormal claims by both the media and society in general. Its philosophical position is one of scientific skepticism. CSI's fellows have included many notable scientists, philosophers, educators, authors, and celebrities.

Name change

When the organization was formed in 1976, the original name proposed was "Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal and Other Phenomena" which was shortened to "Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal." The initial acronym, "CSICP" was difficult to pronounce and so was changed to "CSICOP." According to James Alcock, it was never intended to be "Psi Cop" (Kurtz 2001:42), a nickname that has been taken up and used frequently by the group's detractors.

On November 30, 2006, the organization further shortened its name to "Committee for Skeptical Inquiry" ("CSI", pronounced C-S-I.)^[2] The reasons for the change were to create a name that is shorter and more "media-friendly", to remove "paranormal" from the name, and to reflect more accurately the actual scope of the organization with its broader focus on critical thinking, science, and rationality in general.^[3]

The formation of CSI

In the early 1970s, there was a significant upsurge of interest in the paranormal in the United States. This generated concern in some quarters, where it was seen as part of a growing tide of irrationalism.^[4] It was against this backdrop that CSICOP, as it was to become known, was officially launched by philosophy professor Paul Kurtz at a specially convened conference of the American Humanist Association (AHA) at the Amherst campus of the State University of New York at Buffalo on April 30 and May 1, 1976.^[5] In 1975 Kurtz had previously initiated a statement, "Objections to Astrology," which was endorsed by 186 scientists and published in the AHA's newsletter The Humanist,^[4] of which Kurtz was then editor. In addition, according to Kurtz, the statement was sent to every newspaper in the United States and Canada. The positive reaction to this statement encouraged Kurtz to invite "as many sceptical researchers as [he] could locate" to the 1976 conference with the aim of establishing a new organisation dedicated to critically examining a wide range of paranormal claims.^[5] Amongst those invited were Martin Gardner, Ray Hyman, James Randi, and Marcello Truzzi, all members of the Resources for the Scientific Evaluation of the Paranormal (RSEP), a fledgling group with objectives similar to those CSI would subsequently adopt.^[4] Kurtz was successful in his aims; RSEP disbanded and its members, along with others such as Carl Sagan, Isaac Asimov, and Philip J. Klass joined Kurtz to form CSICOP.^[6]

Activities

According to CSI's charter, in order to carry out its major objectives the Committee:

1. maintains a network of people interested in critically examining paranormal, fringe science, and other claims, and in contributing to consumer education;
2. prepares bibliographies of published materials that carefully examine such claims;
3. encourages research by objective and impartial inquiry in areas where it is needed;
4. convenes conferences and meetings;
5. publishes articles that examine claims of the paranormal;
6. does not reject claims on a priori grounds, antecedent to inquiry, but examines them objectively and carefully.

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

Media response

Many of CSI's activities are oriented towards the media. As CSI'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."^[7]

This involvement with mass media continues to the present day with, for example, CSI 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). CSI 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, CSI 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, CSI has also been critical of programs such as The X-Files and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which its members believe portray skeptics and science in a bad light and help to promote belief in the paranormal. CSI’s Web site 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.”

Following pseudoscientific and paranormal belief trends

CSI changes its focus with the changing popularity and prominence of various aspects of what it considers to be pseudoscientific and paranormal belief. For example, as promoters of intelligent design have increased their efforts to have this teaching included in school curricula in recent years, CSI has stepped up its own attention to the subject, creating an "Intelligent Design Watch" Web site[1] and publishing numerous articles on evolution and intelligent design in Skeptical Inquirer and on the Web.

Health and safety

An issue of particular concern to CSI 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 CSI 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. CSI 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.

Humor

As referenced by CSI 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."^[8] 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

CSI 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

CSI awards the Robert P. Balles Annual Prize in Critical Thinking. The first award was shared by CSI fellows Ray Hyman and Joe Nickell and by Andrew Skolnick for their reports in 2005 on CSICOP's testing of Natasha Demkina, the girl who claimed to have X-ray eyes.(Skeptical Inquirer 2006)

Publications

Main article: Skeptical Inquirer

CSI 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".^[9] In addition, it publishes Skeptical Briefs, a quarterly newsletter published for associate members.^[10]

Standards of evidence

An axiom often repeated among CSI members is the famous quote from Carl Sagan: "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."^[11] (This was based on an earlier quote by Marcello Truzzi "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof", who traced the idea back through the Principle of Laplace to the philosopher David Hume.)^[12] CSI members argue that none of the paranormal claims have met the strictest standards of scientific scrutiny.

Umbrella organization

A transnational not-for-profit umbrella organization called the Center for Inquiry encompasses both CSI 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 scientific 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 CSI fellows (past and present)

The inside front cover of each issue of the Skeptical Inquirer lists the CSI fellows.^[13]

Controversy and criticism

Uri Geller filed a number of unsuccessful lawsuits against CSICOP

CSI's activities have garnered criticism, in particular from individuals or groups that have been the focus of the organization's attention.^[14] TV celebrity and claimed psychic Uri Geller, for example, was until recently in open dispute with the organization, filing a number of unsuccessful lawsuits against them.^[15] Some criticism has also come from within the scientific community and at times from within CSI itself. Marcello Truzzi, one of CSICOP's co-founders, left the organization after only a short time, arguing 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.” [3] Truzzi coined the term pseudoskeptic to describe critics in whom he detected such an attitude.^[16]

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."^[17] CSICOP's Philip Klass responded by circulating an article to CSICOP members critical of Rawlins' arguments and motives;^[18] 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" rather than judged in the negative. Josephson, the director of University of Cambridge's Mind-Matter Unification project, questioned the researchers' motives saying, "On the face of it, it looks as if there was some kind of plot to discredit the teenage claimed psychic by setting up the conditions to make it likely that they could pass her off as a failure."^[19] Ray Hyman, one of the three researchers who designed and conducted the test, published a response to this and other criticisms,^[20] and the Commission for Scientific Medicine and Mental Health also published a detailed response to these and other objections, saying that biasing the odds against Natasha was appropriate because her claims were unlikely to be true.^[21][22]

Rebuttal to general criticism

On a more general level, CSI has been accused of pseudoskepticism and an overly dogmatic and arrogant approach based on a priori convictions. It has been suggested that their aggressive style of skepticism could discourage scientific research into the paranormal.^[23] 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. In certain cases [criticism of CSICOP] is to some degree justified. 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 ... CSICOP represents a counterbalance, although not yet nearly a loud enough voice, to the pseudoscience gullibility that seems second nature to so much of the media.^[24]

Attempt by Church of Scientology to discredit

In 1977, an FBI raid on the offices of the Church of Scientology uncovered a project to discredit CSICOP (as it was then called) so that it and its publications would cease criticism of Dianetics and Scientology. This included forging a CIA memo and sending it to media sources including the New York Times, to spread rumors that CSICOP was actually a front group for the CIA. A letter from CSICOP founder Paul Kurtz was forged to discredit him in the eyes of parapsychology researchers.^[25]

See also

References

External links

• CSICOP homepage
• Skeptical Inquirer official home page
• "CSICOP and the Skeptics: An Overview" - An essay on the organization by the American Society for Psychical Research, a pro-paranormal organization.
• 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.
• The New Skepticism
• The Creation of CSICOP
• Name change to Committee for Skeptical Inquiry
• James Randi comments on Mars Effect controversy