My friend and colleague Scott O. Lilienfeld died on September 30, 2020, far too soon, at the age of fifty-nine (see obituary in January/February 2021 Skeptical Inquirer, 10–11). Scott wrote an amazing twenty-five articles for Skeptical Inquirer and in total more than 350 articles before his untimely death. Readers can come to appreciate his many important contributions to psychology and the skeptical movement through his clear, incisive, and entertaining writing, just as I did.

I first encountered Scott’s writing in an article on the dangers of pseudoscience in clinical practice that he had written in honor of his winning an early career achievement award (Lilienfeld 1998). However, I did not meet him until 2005 at a national conference on the teaching of critical thinking in psychology. He was friendly and gave my students and me some encouraging words about research on decision making that we were presenting.

Throughout his life, Scott was a great reviewer, editor, and collaborator. After serving as an editor of the prestigious Journal of Abnormal Psychology, he became the founding editor of The Scientific Review of Mental Health Practice, a journal featuring articles on pseudoscience in relation to evidence-based practices in psychology. In one of his many productive collaborations exposing the dangers that pseudoscience and low-quality science pose for clinical practice, he discussed problems with the Rorschach Test, a widely used—but poorly supported—projective test (Wood et al. 2003). His eleventh SI article, on projective tests, continued in this vein (Garb et al. 2003). He followed this by editing his influential book Science and Pseudoscience in Clinical Psychology, which reviewed numerous pseudoscientific clinical practices. Perhaps more importantly, it also reviewed evidence-based alternatives (Lilienfeld et al. 2015). In 2007, he wrote a comprehensive and shocking review of scientific studies showing that certain mental health practices could harm (and in rare cases actually kill) the people they were supposed to help. For instance, ten-year-old Candace Newmaker’s therapists smothered her during a “rebirthing” procedure in which they wrapped her in a blanket to simulate the birthing process. They falsely assumed that this pseudoscientific treatment would attach her to her new guardian the way natural birth was thought to (Lilienfeld 2007).

Although I followed Scott’s work during this time, I did not talk to him again until after the publication of his wonderful little book 50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology (Lilienfeld et al. 2010). The book discusses many common misconceptions, including the mistaken belief that people use only 10 percent of their brains; that venting your anger is a good way to reduce aggression; and that raising students’ self-esteem is a good way to improve their academic performance. Scott and his coauthors convincingly debunked these and many other myths with reviews of high-quality scientific research. That book revealed not only the breadth of Scott’s psychological knowledge but also his gift for making psychology informative and fascinating while helping readers improve their critical thinking skills.

When I next saw him at the annual meeting of the Association for Psychological Science, I told him that I thought we could develop a test of psychological misconceptions based on the 50 Great Myths book. He encouraged me to start, and our nine-year collaboration was launched, as we developed the Test of Psychological Knowledge and Misconceptions and other measures. Our first study with the new test showed that students who tended to endorse more psychological misconceptions also tended to rate more highly the scientific basis of pseudoscience and poorly supported practices, as well as endorse more paranormal beliefs. They also tended to endorse a more intuitive and less rational scientific thinking style, while scoring lower on a critical thinking skills test (Bensley et al. 2014). More recently, we added measures of belief in conspiracy theories to our research, showing that people who tend to believe in false and fictitious conspiracy theories also tend to endorse more psychological misconceptions, pseudoscience, and paranormal claims (Bensley, Lilienfeld, et al. 2020).

Working with Scott was both fun and instructive. At each stage of our projects, he provided new ideas and useful feedback. If I sent him the draft of an article, he assured me that he would return comments within a few days. To me, this would have meant I would have it done at the end of a few days; for Scott, it meant returning his comments in about two days. Yet his comments provided detailed and constructive criticism. I especially appreciated how he expanded the development of our theoretical explanations of our findings.

Collaborating with Scott led to a great increase in my productivity. But it amazed me that at the same time he was also collaborating with many other scholars on research projects that differed greatly from ours. These included his important work on the psychology of personality and psychopathology and his warnings with Sally Satel about the dangers of uncritical evaluation of neuroscience (Satel and Lilienfeld 2013a; Satel and Lilienfeld 2013b). In his last few years, he was editor of Clinical Psychological Science, the flagship clinical psychology journal of the Association for Psychological Science. All the while, he greatly supported the teaching of psychology, publishing in teaching journals, giving presentations at national teaching conferences, and consulting with psychology programs. Notably, he was first author of an innovative introductory psychology textbook that incorporated strategies for improving critical thinking and the rejection of pseudoscience and psychological misconceptions (Lilienfeld et al. 2009). He also coauthored an entertaining book to help students think critically about pseudoscience (Heinzen et al. 2016).

Needless to say, Scott was an indefatigable worker. While sick, during the last year of his life, he coauthored an article with me on assessment of unsubstantiated beliefs (Bensley and Lilienfeld in press). He also collaborated with us on a large study predicting endorsement of psychological misconceptions, paranormal beliefs, and conspiracy theories from various thinking dispositions, such as intuitive thinking style, scientific skepticism, and cynicism (Bensley, Watkins, et al. 2020). Despite my urging him not to overdo it and only contribute as much as he was comfortable, two weeks before his death, he asked me if there was anything else he could do to help with the article.

At the same time, Scott coauthored with his students two Skeptical Inquirer articles, one (“The Nobel Disease”) published in the May/June 2020 issue and the second in the September/October issue. In this last article, they made two important points: that intellectual humility should be a guiding principle of the skeptical movement and that psychological research on this individual difference could inform us about the nature of modern skepticism (Lilienfeld et al. 2020).

Few if any other psychologists have done more to bring psychology to the skeptical movement and warn psychologists about the dangers of pseudoscience. The skeptical movement and psychology have lost an influential scholar, researcher, colleague, mentor, and friend. The good news is that his far-reaching influence lives on in his writings and in the fond memories of his students, colleagues, and collaborators. If you were not fortunate enough to know Scott Scott in life, you can still meet him in the many fine written works he left us. Readers can search for his SI articles at skepticalinquirer.org.

References

Bensley, D. Alan, and Scott O. Lilienfeld. In press. Assessing belief in unsubstantiated claims. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology.

Bensley, D. Alan, Scott O. Lilienfeld, and Lauren Powell. 2014. A new measure of psychological misconceptions: Relations with academic background, critical thinking, and acceptance of paranormal and pseudoscientific claims. Learning and Individual Differences 3: 9–18. Available online at http://doi.10.1016/j.lindif.2014.07.009.

Bensley, D. Alan, Scott O. Lilienfeld, Krystal A. Rowan, et al. 2020. The generality of belief in unsubstantiated claims. Applied Cognitive Psychology 34(1): 16–28, Available online at http://doi:org/10.1002/acp.3581.

Bensley, D. Alan, Cody T. Watkins, Scott O. Lilienfeld, et al. 2020. The generality of dispositional predictors of belief in unsubstantiated claims. Manuscript.

Garb, Howard, James M. Wood, M. Theresa Nezworski, et al. 2003. The Rorschach inkblot test, fortune tellers, and cold reading. Skeptical Inquirer 27(4).

Heinzen, Thomas. E., Scott O. Lilienfeld, and Susan A. Nolan. 2015. The Horse That Won’t Go Away: Clever Hans, Facilitated Communication and the Need for Clear Thinking. New York, NY: Worth Publishers.

Lilienfeld, Scott O. 1998. Pseudoscience in contemporary clinical psychology: What it is and what we can do about it. The Clinical Psychologist 51(4): 3–9.

———. 2007. Psychological treatments that cause harm. Perspectives on Psychological Science 2(1): 53–70.

Lilienfeld, Scott O., Steven J. Lynn, John Ruscio, et al. 2010. 50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology. Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.

Lilienfeld, Scott O., Steven J. Lynn, and Jeffrey Lohr. (Eds.). 2015. Science and Pseudoscience in Clinical Practice (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Guilford Press.

Lilienfeld, Scott O., Steven J. Lynn, Laura L. Namy, et al. 2009. Psychology: From Inquiry to Understanding. London: Pearson Education.

Lilienfeld, Scott O., Adelle. N. Strother, Shauna M. Bowes, et. al. 2020. Intellectual humility: A guiding principle for the skeptical movement. Skeptical Inquirer 44(5): 32–37.

Satel, Sally, and Scott O. Lilienfeld. 2013a. Brainwashed: The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience. New York, NY: Basic Books.

———. 2013b. Losing our minds in an age of brain science. Skeptical Inquirer 37(6).

Wood, James M., M. Teresa Nezworski, Scott O. Lilienfeld, et al. 2003. What’s Wrong with the Rorschach? Science Confronts the Controversial Inkblot Test. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.