CSICOP
True skeptics, or blinkered debunkers (2004)
I recently profiled
Martin Gardner, the premier skeptical writer of our time.
It’s no accident that the bulk of the octogenarian author’s
writings have appeared in Skeptical Inquirer, the house
organ of CSICOP, the Committee for the Scientific
Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal. A large,
influential skeptic's group formed in 1976, CSICOP takes as
its mandate the weeding out of pseudoscience from the
garden of science.
As the most public
body engaged in the debate on the paranormal, this
organization has had fairly significant influence on the
media and academic institutions, primarily through their
many chapters throughout the US. CSICOP has signed on a
number of major scientific figures onto its board, as well.
A fair number of the group’s members are professional and
amateur magicians, like “The Amazing Randi” (The Amusing
Randi to his detractors). This representation by magicians
isn’t that odd, given that their profession relies on the
same sort of perceptual tricks and misperceptions that
CSICOP insists are behind claims of paranormal activity.
CSICOP has cast doubt on many claims psychic phenomenon, by
demonstrating how the same effects can be duplicated by
trickery. Many of their targets, such as Uri Geller and his
spoon-bending, pretty much wither under their gaze.
CSICOP’s
raison d’être is mostly public relations work for a
non-religious, materialistic viewpoint, meant to target the
public at large, rather than professional scientists.
The organization’s
publication, Skeptical Inquirer, is a kind of Consumer
Reports of the mind, and there’s no denying it performs a
public service by exposing the cranks, crackpots, and
snake-oil salesman who work the New Age and fundamentalist
sideshow circuit. But CSICOP doesn’t limit its animus to
easy targets; it also goes after professional scientists at
major universities as well.
Robert Jahn, former dean of engineering at Princeton,
incurred their displeasure by investigating (and claiming
evidence for) psychic phenomenon in the lab. When asked in
a BBC interview that surely professional skeptics like
CSICOP wouldn’t attack the character of scientists, rather
than examine the evidence for such claims, Jahn responded
wistfully that “they can, and they will.”
Despite the “research” tag in their name, actual research
is of low priority for the Committee. In fact, CSICOP
instituted a policy against doing investigative work. The
organization relies on theoretical arguments against
laboratory evidence for psychic phenomenon, rather than
attempts to replicate such experiments.
Writer Robert Anton Wilson, who penned a blistering attack
on the organization called The New Inquisition, jokes that
CSICOP stands for the Committee for Slander, Invective and
Calumny against Open-minded People.
Commenting on an article in Skeptical Inquirer, medical
professor Louis Lasagna echoed Wilson, saying that “one can
almost smell the fiery autos-da-fe's of Torquemada and the
Spanish Inquisition.” Engineering Professor Leonard Lewin
noted that in Skeptical Inquirer articles, “the rhetoric
and appeal to emotion seemed rather out of place.” Another
professor wrote, “I cannot escape the conviction that those
who control CSICOP are primarily bent upon the vilification
of parapsychology and parapsychologists.”
Reading an anthology of SI articles, science fiction author
Michael Chrichton “was disturbed by the intemperate tone of
many writers” he admired. “There was a tendency to
attribute the basest motives to their opponents.”
The average CSICOP member is an older white male
professional in a science or engineering-related field
(When I attended my first and last CSICOP meeting in the
mid-nineties, I could see very few ethnic faces, and fewer
still that appeared under 40 — and that’s in an audience of
over 500). There are a few women in the ranks of CSICOP,
but it’s pretty much an Old Caucasian Guys club. (Not that
there’s anything wrong with that, to quote Jerry Seinfeld.)
And it's some club. V.S. Naipaul once wrote a book called
Among the Believers. Well, I was among the disbelievers,
big time. From Bigfoot to the Kennedy assassination, CSICOP
doesn't buy into any of it. That may be eminently
reasonable when it comes to certain fringe topics — but
even “magic bullets“ and hairy humanoids deserve a fair
hearing.
One gets the sense that the members’ minds are made up well
in advance, before they examine any evidence. (In fact, one
of the group's co-founders, Marcello Truzzi, left because
he found more reflex naysaying among the members than
actual skepticism.
You may ask, what kind of a person puts such an emotional
premium on disbelief? CSICOPers often comment on people's
misguided need to believe in oddball things, from elves to
Elvis. However, in their distaste for psychoanalysis
(that's bunk too), CSICOP members seem somewhat blind to
their own motivations.
As I said, CSICOP members are animated by a strong distaste
for religion. Organized religion has arguably been one of
the principal divisive forces in human history — we can
give them that. But the debunkers go beyond an anticlerical
posture into hard-core atheism. At the conference I
attended, those in the audience were asked for a show of
hands as to how many believed in the existence of God. To
gradually building laughter, the CSICOP audience realized
how homogenous their thinking was; not a single person
raised a hand.
I suspect this indicates there's often as much a belief
system among debunkers as there is among “believers.”
Atheism has no more a logical foundation than blind faith —
you can no more disprove than prove the existence a Supreme
Being.
This non-show of hands gave me insight into the emotional
reaction CSICOP members have to one of their pet targets
for over-the-top contempt: unidentified flying objects. Not
surprisingly, compelling physical evidence for UFOs (radar
reports, film, etc.) studied by competent scientists such
as astrophysicist Jacques Vallee, have never been
adequately addressed by CSICOP. The reason, I believe, is
that the idea of a superior intelligence from above
hearkens back to the very thing that CSICOPers find most
repellent: religion.
Often, the very reason people uncritically accept the
existence of UFOs (without examining the evidence for or
against) is essentially the same reason others so
uncritically reject them: for their archetypal, mythic
baggage.
God is dead, CSICOP has decided, and any bug-eyed monsters
out there aren't doing so well either.
CSICOP presents itself as a scientific organization, but
that depends on what you mean by science. The reality of
the situation is, so-called scientific debates are often
fraught with unacknowledged quasi-religious and
socio-political baggage. The debunkers who are so adept at
pointing out this mindset in others are blind to their own.
Seen in this light, CSICOP is comprised mostly of people
who have replaced one religion with another — scientism —
and turned disbelief into a belief system in itself.
Again, this is
not to say worthwhile work isn’t done by CSICOP. There is
dangerous con-artistry out there from cults and money-mad
gurus. And yes, science is under attack these days from
pseudosciences, and various ethereal, feel-good, New Age
philosophies.
But I would say the danger from such fringe beliefs is
matched by the social fallout from a culture of naysaying,
that refuses to investigate extraordinary claims.
There’s a possibility that ground has been gained by some
illegitimate beliefs by default: science is in retreat from
genuine anomalies, like psychic phenomenon, leaving such
fringe topics largely in the hands of non-professionals.
And here's where the non-researching negativists in CSICOP
has done the most damage, in promoting a retreat from
active investigation of extraordinary claims, and
advocating the professional censure of the few qualified
investigators.
We all have our cliques, our in-groups, both professionally
and privately. But it is dangerous when any group is
convinced it has a hotline to The Truth.
In weeding out
the garden of science, CSICOP may only end up digging
rational inquiry into a deeper hole.
Geoff Olson
