A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. -- William James

In light of a recent news article about skepticism and the paranormal, I am going to take an in depth look at some interesting points. There is much to learn here. Before continuing, I highly suggest you read and fully comprehend the article to better understand where exactly I stand. Also included on this page are other PGHA member responses. Both members and non-members are encouraged to send us your comments. At the bottom of the page, you can E-mail us your thoughts and we'll post them here for all to view.

If you are a skeptic turned believer, we would like to hear from you!

The paranormal? Pshaw!

Ghosts? Auras? Space aliens? Nonsense, growing numbers of skeptics and unbelievers say. But the ranks of those who believe are growing, too. By Tanya Barrientos.

If it's not an abduction by space aliens, then it's a ghost sighting or an aura reading done by someone claiming to be psychic.

It all makes Bob Glickman's skin crawl.

Tales of ESP, pictures of crop circles, claims of soul travel, they're in the best-selling books and the top-rated television shows and the block-buster movies these days.

Enough already, says Glickman, president of the Philadelphia Association for Critical Thinking, or PhACT.

How wacky can things get? How about a healthy dose of skepticism?
Just like the all-believing FBI agent Fox Mulder in television's The X-Files, Glickman believes the truth is out there. But in the real world, he says, the truth behind the paranormal is simple -- it's probably all bunk.

At least that's what Glickman and members of his four-year-old skeptic organization believe. And they are not alone. Skeptic organizations, dens of doubters, are popping up all over the world in a scientific backlash to society's love affair with the paranormal.

As America arches toward the millennium, there has been a steady increase in people embracing New Age philosophies, alternative healing methods, guardian angels, space aliens and mysterious conspiracies.
But there's also been growth on the other side of the debate, and while it is significantly smaller, there has been a rise in the number of grassroots skeptic societies around the world.

There are now 38 skeptic groups in 22 states and the District of Columbia, compared with fewer than 30 only 10 years ago. And internationally, skeptic societies reach from New Zealand to Canada.
On the Internet, skeptics can locate books about debunking, read skeptic magazines, and click onto Web sites and home pages with titles such as Saucer Smear and Donna Kossy's Kooks Museum.

Talk about ghost busting!

Currently, Glickman said, PhACT has about 120 members, most of whom are scientists, doctors and college professors from the Philadelphia area. The club meets eight times a year for lectures about paranormal activities and the scientific explanations behind them. Members are encouraged to do their own scientific research and publish papers debunking the supernatural.

"Weird things are going to happen, but most of the time they're just coincidences," says Glickman, who works as a nurse at Frankford Hospital. Or simple trickery, he adds.

Of course, some people doubt the doubters, claiming that skeptics simply refuse to believe no matter what evidence is presented to them.
"I call them scoffers, not skeptics," says Marcello Truzzi, director of the Center of Scientific Anomalies Research at Eastern Michigan University.

Truzzi, who studies what he calls protoscience, was a founding member of the world's oldest and most respected skeptic society, the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP). But Truzzi says he withdrew after growing disillusioned with the group's research methods.

"They tend to block honest inquiry, in my opinion," he asserts. "Most of them are not agnostic toward claims of the paranormal; they are out to knock them."

Truzzi says that some of the CSICOP researchers set the bar of proof outrageously high when it comes to the study of the paranormal.
"When an experiment of the paranormal meets their requirements, then they move the goal posts," he says. "Then, if the experiment is reputable, they say it's a mere anomaly."

A group of local believers in the paranormal say they would welcome any skeptics to come along with them during their regular investigations into the existence of ghosts.

Lewis and Sharon Gerew, leaders of the Philadelphia Ghost Hunters Alliance, say they take photographs of ghosts, or at least strange bits of light that they say can't be seen by the naked eye.

"We understand there are going to be skeptics," says Lewis Gerew, who is an X-ray technician at a hospital he didn't want to name. "But we're mounting the evidence."

His evidence is a collection of snapshots that show bits of light that look like reflections, raindrops, smoke or overexposed film. Gerew says that he controls the investigation scenes to make sure there is no smoke, reflections or rain, and that this proves the images are supernatural.
Asked if his methods would stand up to scientific scrutiny, Gerew said: "The problem with science is that science needs a control group, and you can't control ghosts."

Gerew said any skeptics who want to accompany his group to a photo session should arrive armed with an open mind, because too much skepticism gives off negative vibes.

"When I was a teenager, I fell hook, line and sinker for all that stuff -- ancient astronauts, UFOs, the whole shebang," said DeeAnne Wymer, an anthropologist and founding member of PhACT. "It was all so mysterious, and it sounded so scholarly."
But she said that when she went to college, she found out "that everything they said was nonsense."

Wymer, a professor at Bloomsburg University, teaches a course called "Myths, Monsters and Mayhem" in which she encourages her students to be skeptical.

She shows them movies revealing the human hand behind crop circles and teaches them the carnival trickery behind most alleged psychic readings.

"I tell them that every incident of pseudo-science has turned out to be somebody fooling them, or them fooling themselves," she said.
Still, people want to believe, and James Randi, a former magician who now runs a national center for debunking the paranormal, says there's no harm in that, if it's just for fun.

The problem, he says, is that too many people are beginning to take the paranormal seriously. And that, he contends, is not only frustrating, but potentially dangerous.

For example, last week Ballantine Books announced that it paid California jazz singer Pamela Stonebrooke $100,000 to write about her alleged sexual experiences with a space alien.

And in January, the book Talking to Heaven by James Van Praagh, who claims to be able to talk to the dead, made the New York Times bestseller list (where it remains), prompting Oprah Winfrey to invite the self-described medium onto her show.

"We as a society are not critical thinkers. We are believing everything because it's politically correct to do so," Randi says. "The attitude these days seems to be: Believe everything, and know nothing."
All Randi and other skeptics say they want is for pure science to get equal time and a lot more respect.

Skeptic organizations see themselves as consumer-protection agencies for victims of pseudo-science.

"Fun is fun, but we need to teach people to think critically and use their reflective intelligence," said Paul Kurtz, chairman of CSICOP.

"There is a tremendous growth of irrationality in the world right now," Kurtz contends. "It involves the New Age, the millennium . . . the mysterious, the occult, it's all big business. But I don't think a lot of people realize that, and it's dangerous when our country is confused between fiction and reality."

Kurtz says he's particularly concerned about books and television shows that cast science and scientists as the enemy.

A professor emeritus of philosophy at the State University of New York, Buffalo, Kurtz founded CSICOP in 1976. The group publishes a magazine called the Skeptical Inquirer in which scientists regularly poke holes into claims of the paranormal. It has a circulation of about 50,000.

This summer, CSICOP is hosting its second World Skeptics Congress in Heidelberg, Germany. Discussion topics will include doomsday prophecies, the Hale-Bopp comet cult, and dowsing.

It'll be taking place at the same time that the movie version of The X-Files is flickering on screens around the world, and Kurtz knows which of the two will get the most media attention.

Skeptics realize that spooky, supernatural mysteries seem more appealing to a mass audience than academic science, but Kurtz is not sure why.

Isn't it just as much fun to know how a magic trick is done, or to unravel a mystery?

"Carl Sagan once said it's not a matter of belief," says Matthew Nisbet, public relations director for CSICOP. "It's a matter of evidence."

He said skeptics are not cynics.

"We don't dismiss things out of hand, but for an extraordinary claim to be accepted by us, there has to be extraordinary evidence," Nisbet explains. "Science isn't perfect, but I'll take it until someone comes up with something better."

Courtesy of the Philadelphia Inquirer. Sunday June 14, 1998.

President's Response

Lew's Response

Members Respond

Kenny's Response

Bob's Response





MAIN PAGE