Our Precautionary UFO “Tips”: Back in June 2021 at the height of the most recent UFO craze, we issued our “Tips for Media in Covering UFO/UAP Claims.” It went out widely to the media. We also published it in our special issue “UFOs (or UAP) Hit the News,” SI, September/October 2021. But it sure didn’t take long for it to appear elsewhere. By early October, a new newsstand “bookazine,” The Complete Guide to Aliens and UFOs (Centennial Media, Miami, Florida), was out and included all eight of our Committee for Skeptical Inquiry’s tips. The tips were highlighted in a two-page spread (pp. 28–29), “Evaluating ET,” prepared by science journalist Pamela Weintraub. “The enduring mystery of UFO reports has required we keep an open mind,” the main, display-type intro began. “At the same time, we’ve got to bring a skeptical mindset to the news. Here’s how to balance wonder with reality.” Weintraub then further introduced the tips: “We’d like to arm you with a few tools for critical thinking. To help us, as journalists, and you, as readers, parse the material [about UFOs], the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry has supplied a checklist of precautions for the close encounters ahead. We would like to share them with you.” Good to see the tips in print in such a book. But you won’t be surprised to learn that the rest of the bookazine was noticeably less skeptical.

Natalia Pasternak’s Honors Multiply: Congratulations to CSI Fellow Natalia Pasternak and Carlos Orsi. In November, they won the Brazilian National Literature Prize for the best science book of 2020 for their book Science in Our Daily Lives. And that was followed in December by word that the BBC has selected microbiologist and science communicator Pasternak as one of “BBC’s 100 Women of 2021,” a list of the 100 “inspiring and influential women from around the world.” BBC’s citation said: “She has brought crucial, life-saving scientific information to millions of people in Brazil during the Covid-19 pandemic, though her press columns, radio, and TV appearances.” Pasternak is now working at Columbia University with the noted neuroscientist and writer Stuart Firestein.

Copperfield-Wiseman Backstory: When David Copperfield and Richard Wiseman got together for an hour on Skeptical Inquirer Presents on November 11, 2021, they had some mind-bending tales. The emphasis was on their new large-format book David Copperfield’s History of Magic (coauthored by Wiseman), which beautifully portrays stories about many prominent magicians and their artifacts as collected in Copperfield’s Museum of Magic—a secret, behind-the-scenes museum he created in Las Vegas. Wiseman revealed at the beginning that the book had its origin at a CSICon conference. Three or four years ago, Wiseman was a speaker at CSICon in Las Vegas, and he suggested to fellow skeptic Massimo Polidoro that they go see a performance down the street by Copperfield, winner of twenty-two Emmy awards for his shows. They did. Copperfield welcomed them backstage and invited them to tour his Museum of Magic the next day. Wiseman did so and was entranced by what he saw. He and Copperfield right then came up with the idea of the book. So as Wiseman said, if it hadn’t been for our skeptical conference in Las Vegas, there’d have been no David Copperfield’s History of Magic.