Paul Kurtz reminisces
Paul Kurtz, founder of CSICOP, has written a reminiscence about the early days of that organization. To put it into perspective, think of this:
Suppose there were a prominent creationist organization called "the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of Evolution." To celebrate the 25th anniversary of the founding of CSICOE, the founder wrote an essay reminiscing about the history of the Committee.
How do you think the "Skeptics" would respond if he were to write the following? (Which, by the way, I've patched together with sentences taken from Kurtz's essay.)
"It is well known that I am the culprit responsible for the founding of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of Evolution. Why did I do so? Because I was dismayed in 1976 by the rising tide of belief in evolution and the lack of adequate scientific examinations of these claims. I was distressed that my students accepted abiogenesis and other aspects of the theory of evolution without the benefit of a scientific critique.
It is within this cultural milieu as background that I decided to convene a special conference to discuss 'The New Irrationalisms: Evolution and Pseudoscience.' I invited many of the well-known critics of evolution to this opening session- Duane Gish, Michael Behe, and William Dembski among them. Historically, there have been many efforts to examine the claims of evolution, but most of these groups mainly attracted believers who were predisposed to accept evolution; the skeptics in their midst were few and far between. Thus CSICOE was the first body made up predominantly of skeptics, who were willing to investigate the alleged evolutionary phenomena.
There were a number of strategic issues that CSICOE had to address at its founding. First, what would be our approach to such phenomena? Would we simply be debunkers out to show by ridicule the folly of the claims that were made, or would we be serious investigators concerned with research into claims, dispassionate, open-minded inquirers? The answer was clear: Our chief focus would be on inquiry, not doubt. Where we had investigated a claim and found it wanting, we would express our doubt and perhaps even debunk it, but this would be only after careful investigation.
I should say that although most skeptics believed that there was considerable trickery afoot or self-deception in "evolution research," I was not certain whether evolution was true or not. My skeptical colleagues insisted that such phenomena were unlikely, but I decided to investigate for myself, to satisfy my own curiosity. I did this by teaching a course, 'Philosophy, Evolution, and Origins' at the university. My plan was to work closely with students on various experiments in order to test psychic and other claims. I repeated the course four times over eight years, and had over 250 students enroll. They conducted nearly 100 independent tests. The thing that absolutely stunned me was the fact that we never had positive results in any of the many tests conducted. I have never published these findings, for I did them basically to satisfy my desire (and that of my students) to ascertain whether anything paranormal could be uncovered."
By the way- let's also suppose that this creationist had made a career of writing for creationist magazines about his "crusade" against evolution, which he consistently described as an enemy of Christianity and as being a great threat to society.
How likely is it that the "Skeptics" would take his claims at face value? Would they accept that he was genuinely openminded and undecided about evolution at the time he founded CSICOE? Would they accept CSICOE as a genuine research organization, when it has so clearly stacked its membership and its rhetoric towards one side of the debate? And yet, Kurtz describes the founding of CSICOP in precisely those terms- I've done little other than to substitute "evolution" for "paranormal". Look closely at what Kurtz is saying:
* Just as creationists muddy the distinction between abiogenesis and evolution, Kurtz and his fellow skeptics routinely lump together Bigfoot, conspiracy theories, and other non-paranormal issues with psychics and astrology: "I was distressed that my students confused astrology with astronomy, accepted pyramid power, Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster, Kirlian photography, and psychic surgery without the benefit of a scientific critique." According to the Skeptic's Dictionary, "An event or perception is said to be paranormal if it involves forces or agencies that are beyond scientific explanation." You know, like psychic powers, or radiation before Einstein explained it. There's nothing paranormal about a giant ape, or a conspiracy, or for that matter extraterrestrials.
* Kurtz is not a scientist, and has zero published research papers. Nonetheless, he points to his own extensive "research" with his students as proof that paranormal phenomena don't exist. It would be nice if his "research" were subjected to peer review, or if he were even to describe what, exactly, their experiments consisted of. But, alas, Kurtz's work cannot be subjected to a scientific critique, because he won't tell us anything about it, at all, except that it disproved the paranormal.
* "Would we simply be debunkers out to show by ridicule the folly of the claims that were made, or would we be serious investigators concerned with research into claims, dispassionate, open-minded inquirers?" Why was this ever a matter for debate? Who took the position that CSICOP should ridicule claims before investigating them, and why are they in CSICOP, when their position is so clearly antithetical to critical thinking?
* Just like Michael Behe, Kurtz is willing to speak out of both sides of his mouth. On the one hand, he's trying to present himself as an open-minded investigator. On the other hand, he writes articles with titles like, "Two sources of unreason in democratic society: The paranormal and religion." (Annals of the NY Academy of Sciences 775: 493-504 1996) and "Humanists crusade against parapsychology", (Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research 72 (4): 349-357 1978.)
* For that matter, just look at the title of the conference at which he first proposed CSICOP: "The New Irrationalisms: Antiscience and Pseudoscience." Are we really to believe that he was undecided about the paranormal? Or that CSICOP was meant to be devoted to serious, open-minded scientific research?
Most problematic is the fact that when these kinds of statements are made by their own side, the "Skeptics" are unable to see any problem with them. In response to my earlier claim that Skeptics problematically blur the distinction between research and media advocacy, and gerrymander their interests to fit their agenda, I got the following response from Mikkel at factsforum.org:
"Well, most conspiracy theories share a common denominator with magical, paranormal, supernatural, religious and metaphysical claim. They are considered Absolute. That is what denotes Believers. They start with an Absolute and then 'fit' or invent the facts."
And this, of course, encapsulates the entire problem. "Skeptics" view the world as divided betwen themselves and capital-B "Believers." Why does Skeptical Inquirer deal with such a crazy-quilt of issues, rather than sticking to its avowed mission of investigating the paranormal? Because anyone who holds those opinions is a pathological Believer. It's reasonable for Skeptical Inquirer to lump them all in the same boat, because all the bad guys think alike anyway. And thus the "Skeptical" ideology is automatically self-reinforcing. Like Penn and Teller say: bigfoot is bullshit, UFO's are bullshit, and, by the way, global warming is bullshit too. Everything that Penn and Teller disagree with is bullshit, so it's perfectly natural for them to get a TV show on which to grind a diverse array of personal axes, having nothing in common except for the fact that Penn and Teller want to grind them. And, to the "Skeptics," the fact that "Skeptics" disagree with something marks it as part of the undifferentiated mass that the "Believers" believe in.
Don't believe me? Look at Barry Fagin's article "Skepticism and Politics" in the May/June 1997 issue of Skeptical Inquirer. It's pure propaganda, and predictably concludes that the only legitimate political belief for "Skeptics" to hold is libertarianism. The real question, though, is why is Skeptical Inquirer devoting space to a discussion of libertarianism at all? Shouldn't they be investigating the paranormal? The answer is simple: Paul Kurtz happens to be a libertarian. So, just as is the case with Penn and Teller, there's nothing unusual about Skeptical Inquirer promoting "skeptical" viewpoints on "skeptical" subjects, and "skeptical" is defined to fit Kurtz's pet issues.
Suppose there were a prominent creationist organization called "the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of Evolution." To celebrate the 25th anniversary of the founding of CSICOE, the founder wrote an essay reminiscing about the history of the Committee.
How do you think the "Skeptics" would respond if he were to write the following? (Which, by the way, I've patched together with sentences taken from Kurtz's essay.)
"It is well known that I am the culprit responsible for the founding of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of Evolution. Why did I do so? Because I was dismayed in 1976 by the rising tide of belief in evolution and the lack of adequate scientific examinations of these claims. I was distressed that my students accepted abiogenesis and other aspects of the theory of evolution without the benefit of a scientific critique.
It is within this cultural milieu as background that I decided to convene a special conference to discuss 'The New Irrationalisms: Evolution and Pseudoscience.' I invited many of the well-known critics of evolution to this opening session- Duane Gish, Michael Behe, and William Dembski among them. Historically, there have been many efforts to examine the claims of evolution, but most of these groups mainly attracted believers who were predisposed to accept evolution; the skeptics in their midst were few and far between. Thus CSICOE was the first body made up predominantly of skeptics, who were willing to investigate the alleged evolutionary phenomena.
There were a number of strategic issues that CSICOE had to address at its founding. First, what would be our approach to such phenomena? Would we simply be debunkers out to show by ridicule the folly of the claims that were made, or would we be serious investigators concerned with research into claims, dispassionate, open-minded inquirers? The answer was clear: Our chief focus would be on inquiry, not doubt. Where we had investigated a claim and found it wanting, we would express our doubt and perhaps even debunk it, but this would be only after careful investigation.
I should say that although most skeptics believed that there was considerable trickery afoot or self-deception in "evolution research," I was not certain whether evolution was true or not. My skeptical colleagues insisted that such phenomena were unlikely, but I decided to investigate for myself, to satisfy my own curiosity. I did this by teaching a course, 'Philosophy, Evolution, and Origins' at the university. My plan was to work closely with students on various experiments in order to test psychic and other claims. I repeated the course four times over eight years, and had over 250 students enroll. They conducted nearly 100 independent tests. The thing that absolutely stunned me was the fact that we never had positive results in any of the many tests conducted. I have never published these findings, for I did them basically to satisfy my desire (and that of my students) to ascertain whether anything paranormal could be uncovered."
By the way- let's also suppose that this creationist had made a career of writing for creationist magazines about his "crusade" against evolution, which he consistently described as an enemy of Christianity and as being a great threat to society.
How likely is it that the "Skeptics" would take his claims at face value? Would they accept that he was genuinely openminded and undecided about evolution at the time he founded CSICOE? Would they accept CSICOE as a genuine research organization, when it has so clearly stacked its membership and its rhetoric towards one side of the debate? And yet, Kurtz describes the founding of CSICOP in precisely those terms- I've done little other than to substitute "evolution" for "paranormal". Look closely at what Kurtz is saying:
* Just as creationists muddy the distinction between abiogenesis and evolution, Kurtz and his fellow skeptics routinely lump together Bigfoot, conspiracy theories, and other non-paranormal issues with psychics and astrology: "I was distressed that my students confused astrology with astronomy, accepted pyramid power, Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster, Kirlian photography, and psychic surgery without the benefit of a scientific critique." According to the Skeptic's Dictionary, "An event or perception is said to be paranormal if it involves forces or agencies that are beyond scientific explanation." You know, like psychic powers, or radiation before Einstein explained it. There's nothing paranormal about a giant ape, or a conspiracy, or for that matter extraterrestrials.
* Kurtz is not a scientist, and has zero published research papers. Nonetheless, he points to his own extensive "research" with his students as proof that paranormal phenomena don't exist. It would be nice if his "research" were subjected to peer review, or if he were even to describe what, exactly, their experiments consisted of. But, alas, Kurtz's work cannot be subjected to a scientific critique, because he won't tell us anything about it, at all, except that it disproved the paranormal.
* "Would we simply be debunkers out to show by ridicule the folly of the claims that were made, or would we be serious investigators concerned with research into claims, dispassionate, open-minded inquirers?" Why was this ever a matter for debate? Who took the position that CSICOP should ridicule claims before investigating them, and why are they in CSICOP, when their position is so clearly antithetical to critical thinking?
* Just like Michael Behe, Kurtz is willing to speak out of both sides of his mouth. On the one hand, he's trying to present himself as an open-minded investigator. On the other hand, he writes articles with titles like, "Two sources of unreason in democratic society: The paranormal and religion." (Annals of the NY Academy of Sciences 775: 493-504 1996) and "Humanists crusade against parapsychology", (Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research 72 (4): 349-357 1978.)
* For that matter, just look at the title of the conference at which he first proposed CSICOP: "The New Irrationalisms: Antiscience and Pseudoscience." Are we really to believe that he was undecided about the paranormal? Or that CSICOP was meant to be devoted to serious, open-minded scientific research?
Most problematic is the fact that when these kinds of statements are made by their own side, the "Skeptics" are unable to see any problem with them. In response to my earlier claim that Skeptics problematically blur the distinction between research and media advocacy, and gerrymander their interests to fit their agenda, I got the following response from Mikkel at factsforum.org:
"Well, most conspiracy theories share a common denominator with magical, paranormal, supernatural, religious and metaphysical claim. They are considered Absolute. That is what denotes Believers. They start with an Absolute and then 'fit' or invent the facts."
And this, of course, encapsulates the entire problem. "Skeptics" view the world as divided betwen themselves and capital-B "Believers." Why does Skeptical Inquirer deal with such a crazy-quilt of issues, rather than sticking to its avowed mission of investigating the paranormal? Because anyone who holds those opinions is a pathological Believer. It's reasonable for Skeptical Inquirer to lump them all in the same boat, because all the bad guys think alike anyway. And thus the "Skeptical" ideology is automatically self-reinforcing. Like Penn and Teller say: bigfoot is bullshit, UFO's are bullshit, and, by the way, global warming is bullshit too. Everything that Penn and Teller disagree with is bullshit, so it's perfectly natural for them to get a TV show on which to grind a diverse array of personal axes, having nothing in common except for the fact that Penn and Teller want to grind them. And, to the "Skeptics," the fact that "Skeptics" disagree with something marks it as part of the undifferentiated mass that the "Believers" believe in.
Don't believe me? Look at Barry Fagin's article "Skepticism and Politics" in the May/June 1997 issue of Skeptical Inquirer. It's pure propaganda, and predictably concludes that the only legitimate political belief for "Skeptics" to hold is libertarianism. The real question, though, is why is Skeptical Inquirer devoting space to a discussion of libertarianism at all? Shouldn't they be investigating the paranormal? The answer is simple: Paul Kurtz happens to be a libertarian. So, just as is the case with Penn and Teller, there's nothing unusual about Skeptical Inquirer promoting "skeptical" viewpoints on "skeptical" subjects, and "skeptical" is defined to fit Kurtz's pet issues.
posted by Wintermute at 9:02 PM
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