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Vol. 21, No. 1, January/February 1997

The X-Files Meets the Skeptics: Chris Carter, creator and executive producer of The X-Files, was the invited luncheon banquet speaker for the first day of the World Skeptics Congress and CSICOP Twentieth Anniversary Conference in Amherst, New York. We present here essentially the transcript, only slightly edited for brevity, of that fascinating event, which consisted of informal introductory remarks by Carter followed by an extensive question-and-answer session.

The Significance of the Millennium: The millennium has no natural terrestrial, sidereal, or cosmic basis or importance. But the last years of the twentieth century are the first in human history in which there has been a worldwide recognition that a millennium measured by a universally accepted calendar is about to end and a new one begin.
Lee Loevinger
Quantum Quackery: Quantum physics is claimed to support the mystical notion that the mind creates reality. However, an objective reality, with no special role for consciousness, human or cosmic, is consistent with all observations.
Victor J. Stenger
Bias and Error in Children's Nonfiction Books on the Paranormal: An analysis of five children's books claiming to be factual and nonfiction found that 85.2 percent of the passages either explicitly confirmed certain events as paranormal, failed to present alternative explanations, or dismissed such explanations as implausible.
Richard Wiseman and Clive Jeffreys
The Mysterious Placebo: One of the most significant but widely misunderstood phenomena is the placebo effect. Research shows that the placebo effect can be greater and is far more ubiquitous than commonly thought.
John E. Dodes