Committee for Skeptical Inquiry

[SkeptInq@aol.com]

 Skeptical Inquirer Electronic Digest 12-20-99

 Visit the CSICOP and Skeptical Inquirer Magazine website at
http://www.csicop.org. Receiving over 200,000 hits per year, the CSICOP site
was rated one of the top ten science sites by HOMEPC magazine.

 In this week's SI DIGEST:

 --The Learning Channel: Unexplained Mysteries
 --The Save Our Schools(SOS) Campaign for Science Education
 --Detroit Free Press Columnist Blasts Skeptical Inquirer
 --NY Times Book Review: The Missing Moment
 --Atlantic Monthly: Interview with Wendy Kaminer
 --NY Times: Interview with Stephen Jay Gould
 --Skeptical Inquirer Seeks Volunteer Transcriber

 THE LEARNING CHANNEL: "UNEXPLAINED MYSTERIES"

 "Unexplained Mysteries"
 Jan. 2, 2000 at 10pm EST
 Jan. 8, 2000 at 7pm EST

 Several consultants, fellows, and staff of CSICOP provide on-camera
commentary in an upcoming Learning Channel special on history's top ten
paranormal claims. CSICOP Chair Paul Kurtz, Senior Research Fellow Joe
Nickell, Public Relations Director Matt Nisbet, Skeptical Inquirer Managing
Editor Ben Radford, Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine (SRAM) editor
Lewis Vaughn, and University of Toronto astronomer Michael DeRobertis provide
evaluations of various claims including spiritualism, psychic surgery, alien
abductions, the Shroud of Turin, UFO sightings, and alternative medicine.

 THE SAVE OUR SCHOOLS (SOS) CAMPAIGN FOR SCIENCE EDUCATION

 The Save Our Schools (SOS) Campaign is an Internet-based petition drive
urging state boards of education to uphold the teaching of evolution, and
other sciences threatened by the recent attacks from creationists. The Campus
Freethought Alliance (CFA), a network of college student groups across the
U.S. and Canada, is the chief sponsor of the campaign.  Numerous other
national organizations have signed the petition or assisted the campaign,
including Americans United for Separation of Church and State, The American
Geophysical Union, Freedom to Read Foundation, Freedom From Religion
Foundation, Kansas Citizens for Science, Americans for Religious Liberty, and
CSICOP.

 In addition to a massive online petition drive, electronic and print
resources have been distributed to CFA campus groups and individual student
members, urging them to engage in pro-evolution activities in their
communities.  A number of campus groups are hosting lectures by Massimo
Pigliucci, professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Tennessee.

 Just before Charles Darwin's birthday on February 12, 2000, collected
petition signatures will be submitted to all 50 U.S. State boards and
departments of education.

 To sign the petition or get involved in the campaign, visit

 http://www.campusfreethought.org/sos

 or contact CFA Coordinator Amanda Chesworth at 1-800-446-6198 ext. 223.

 DETROIT FREE PRESS COLUMNIST BLASTS SKEPTICAL INQUIRER

 Back in October, the Detroit Free Press' Ellen Creager blasted the Nov./Dec.
1999 issue of Skeptical Inquirer in her regular "Magazine Rack" column.  As
Creager wrote: "The Skeptical Inquirer is so efficiently mean its staff is
capable of dumping a bucket of ice water on an angel, then plucking apart her
frozen wings to see what she is made of.  Dedicated to the admirable goal of
stomping out rampant pseudoscience, this magazine has turned logic into a
form of fanaticism...Until people want to live in a world without angels or
mysteries, this bossy know-it-all magazine will be talking to itself."

 It seems that her remarks did not pass without protest from several members
of the Detroit Free Press readership.  In a follow-up a month later, Creager
printed in her column a reply from John Blum: "I am sorry to tell you this,
but we do live in a world without angels (and) I, for one, would love to live
in a world without mysteries.  Personally, I prefer to learn the truth, even
if it hurts."

 Creager responded to Blum's comments with the mystifying: "His point is well
taken, yet I remain wary of any magazine or individual who claims to have a
corner on truth.  Seeing is believing, but by believing, we see.  That
conundrum cannot be solved.  Now everyone go tend to your own knitting."

 Creager welcomes comments via e-mail at creager@freepress.com .

 NY TIMES BOOK REVIEW: THE MISSING MOMENT

 The Missing Moment
 How the Unconscious Shapes Modern Science.
 By Robert Pollack.
 240 pp. Boston:
 Houghton Mifflin Company. $25.
 [Amazon]

 For the full review, go to:
http://www.nytimes.com/books/99/12/19/reviews/991219.19halllt.html

 "It's hard not to admire Pollack's attempt to reassert the primacy of human
values in biomedical research and his lifelong effort to encourage greater
social responsibility among his fellow scientists. Any book that reminds us
of the plight of infectious disease victims, that urges us to view the purely
genetic interpretation of illness (and health) with skepticism, that asserts
the moral imperative of vaccine research, without making the usual
free-market apologies, deserves everyone's gratitude and respect. Thus I kept
wanting to like 'The Missing Moment' more than I did, to be convinced by its
intuitively appealing arguments. There is, after all, nothing like an
enlightened apostate to get our attention, and Pollack makes for a very
reasonable contrarian. I just wish he had taken more to heart his own
distinction between knowledge and wisdom; he knows a great deal about the
biomedical research enterprise, but he must also know at some level how
unwise it is to ascribe unconscious motives to thousands of imperfect but
usually earnest researchers and practitioners. Such a simplistic and blanket
indictment undermines the very wisdom he works so hard to convey."

 ATLANTIC MONTHLY: INTERVIEW WITH WENDY KAMINER

 Wendy Kaminer, the author of Sleeping With Extra-Terrestrials, sees a
disturbing decline of reason in our public life

 From the Atlantic Monthly web site
 www.atlanticmonthly.com
 November 3, 1999

 To read the full interview go to
http://www.atlanticmonthly.com/unbound/interviews/ba991103.htm


 "Americans today are transfixed by the supernatural. Television shows like
Touched by an Angel and The X-Files soar in the ratings, books about guardian
angels and near-death experiences find tremendous readerships, and savvy
politicians flaunt their religious faith, each proclaiming a special
relationship with God.

 In her new book, Sleeping with Extra-Terrestrials: The Rise of
Irrationalism and Perils of Piety, Wendy Kaminer argues that although this
preoccupation with the unearthly is relatively harmless -- for many people
belief in God, angels, or the teachings of Deepak Chopra offers comfort and
meaning -- there is cause for concern when our private irrational convictions
begin to spill over into the realm of public life and public policy. 'Other
people's personal religious beliefs and reading habits,' she explains, 'are
none of my business (and surely don't require my approval). But the possible
public consequence of their inclination to believe is everyone's business and
merits everyone's concern.' She spoke recently with Atlantic Unbound's Sage
Stossel."

 NY TIMES: INTERVIEW WITH STEPHEN JAY GOULD

 A Conversation with Stephen Jay Gould
 Primordial Beasts, Creationists and the Mighty Yankees

 For the full article, go to
http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/122199sci-paleo-gould.html

 By Claudia Dreifus
 " It was a sunny afternoon in SoHo and the paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould
-- president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the
Vincent Astor visiting research professor of biology at New York University
and the Alexander Agassiz professor of geology at Harvard -- was sitting
around his loft, ruminating about the pleasures of finally living in
Manhattan.  Dr. Gould, 58, has spent much of his life circling Manhattan. He
grew up in 1950's Queens in a working-class family, in a time when Manhattan
was the ever-distant 'city.' In 1967, Dr. Gould got his Harvard appointment,
which meant, of course, living in Cambridge and being one of the few Yankees
fans in all of Harvard Yard.  Four years ago, Dr. Gould, who was divorced,
married a sculptor and art historian, Rhonda Roland Shearer of Manhattan, now
45, and together, they set up housekeeping in SoHo, in a vast urban spread
filled with Tiffany lamps, good art and first-edition scientific tomes. In
his 19 books and in essays for Natural History magazine, Dr. Gould has become
perhaps the most eloquent and best-known proponent of the view that evolution
and natural selection are responsible for the origin and diversity of
species. But earlier this month he came under criticism in The New Yorker,
which suggested that his emphasis on chance in the evolutionary process had
unwittingly aided the cause of creationism. Dr. Gould declined to respond to
the New Yorker article, by the journalist Robert Wright, saying that he did
not believe did believe that such personal attacks merited a response and
that his work spoke for itself. The Harvard paleontologist did, however,
speak about other aspects of the ongoing political struggle between
creationists and evolutionists."

 SKEPTICAL INQUIRER SEEKS VOLUNTEER TRANSCRIBER

 SI editor Kendrick Frazier is looking for someone who can reliably
transcribe lengthy interview tapes.  He has a standard-sized audiocassete
tape of a two-hour interview
 with a prominent skeptical researcher that he would like to convert into an
 interview article for SI.

 Volunteers, please e-mail Barry Karr at skeptinq@aol.com

 _________________________

 SI Electronic Digest is the biweekly e-mail news update of the Committee for
the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP.)

 Visit http://www.csicop.org/.

 Rated one of the Top Ten Science sites on the Web by HOMEPC magazine.

 The Digest is written and edited by Matthew Nisbet and Barry Karr. SI Digest
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 Physics behind amazing feats, famous curses, and the Star of Bethlehem.

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