Category: From the Editor

People do things in groups that they wouldn’t as individuals. Understanding human behavior requires attention not just to individuals but to the social groups that influence them, notes Jeffrey A. Victor. As author of our cover article, “The Social Dynamics of Conspiracy Rumors,” the retired sociology professor brings his perspective to help us understand the …

Are you continually surprised at the lengths intelligent people will go to rationalize belief systems contrary to good science? Even to common sense? I still am, and I’ve been involved in science-based skepticism for a very long time. So even if you are a longtime reader of SI, where we repeatedly explore the psychology of …

We are all afloat—and some of us are drowning—in a sea of misinformation. In our cover article, Melanie Trecek-King throws us a life preserver. A community college biology professor, Trecek-King follows up on her previous SI article, “Teach Skills, Not Facts” (January/February 2022), with a guide to evaluating claims and keeping us afloat. It is …

Why do facts and evidence so seldom sway people from deeply held ideas? It is because we have armament to prevent that from happening. Over the past decade, our pages have been filled with mentions of this problem. In this issue, David Robert Grimes takes a deep dive into the psychological concept that explains it: …

Every generation, it seems, must have its own UFO “flap.” (“That’s the technical term,” I once heard Carl Sagan wryly observe.) We had flaps in the 1950s, 1970s, and 1990s (the SI anthology The UFO Invasion: The Roswell Incident, Alien Abductions, and Government Coverups, Prometheus Books, 1997, chronicled our coverage of that one). After a …

We all want to protect our planet: our land, water, air—all life itself. Environmentalists bring passion and dedication to that cause, to enormous positive effect. But there is another aspect. As David Mountain writes in our cover article, “Environmentalism has been shaped by a range of fringe beliefs that have nurtured a tradition of unscientific thinking …

Our three lead articles continue examining our current crisis in America. Evident throughout the tumultuous year of 2020 and early 2021, from our skeptics’ viewpoint we see far too many people unable (or unwilling) to separate fantasy from reality, see through obvious conspiracy theories, and make decisions based on evidence rather than emotion. In our …

When podcaster/journalist Stephanie Kemmerer proposed our cover article on QAnon, I knew little about the phenomenon except for occasional mentions. Once she researched, reported, and submitted it (she interviewed former QAnon followers, and her article by then had expanded to a two-part series), I read the result, “Life, the Quniverse, and Everything,” in disturbed amazement. …

Vaccines are back in the news big time in this dreadful year of 2020. The coronavirus pandemic has demonstrated how vital vaccines are. Without a vaccine for COVID-19, we have all been in peril this year. The world needs a vaccine badly—a safe and effective one—so that we can all get back to normal living. …

Well, here we are. Our country in chaos. The COVID-19 pandemic wreaks havoc across the planet, and the United States, without leadership, fares worse than any other nation. Just as cases were going nicely down, cities, states, beaches, and bars reopened. We ignored all scientific advice and fell right back into full pandemic once again. …

Over the course of human history, pandemics have repeatedly knocked civilization back on its heels. Many thought they were ancient history. Now we find ourselves amid a pandemic in our own time. Life everywhere has changed. After months of restrictions, countries and states have eased their stay-at-home orders, and we head into a more open …

A long, long time ago when I was a young staff member at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C., I found myself sitting at a small office table opposite Nobel laureate physicist William Shockley. Normally, this would be an exciting moment—he was coinventor of the transistor. But it was not. It was awkward. …

Conversion stories—from people who held unsubstantiated beliefs but changed their minds—are a powerful tool for skeptics. It makes sense that a former believer in a pseudoscience who publicly renounces that belief can be more persuasive to many people than the rest of us who may have been harping about it for years. The unique power …

Perhaps it’s the season. Perhaps it’s the start of a new year, a new decade. Whatever the reason, I find myself full of gratitude.             It sometimes may seem as if everyone has gone bonkers and that fake news, factless assertions, disinformation, and misinformation have taken over our public discourse. …

Two issues ago, we published without comment here an important special report with the provocative title “Why the Claims of Parapsychology Cannot Be True.” Scientists are generally loathe to make absolute statements, for good reason. But our article’s authors, Arthur S. Reber and James E. Alcock, both respected psychological scientists and longtime critical observers of …

We present in this special, expanded issue seven timely articles on “The Health Wars: In the Trenches against Alternative Medicine.” So-called alternative medicine (or SCAM, the telling acronym used by medical scientist Edzard Ernst as the title of his most recent book) is all around us. It has managed to imbed itself into medical institutions, …

We have published several recent articles arguing that to be persuasive in changing the minds of people who believe pseudoscientific claims and appealing misinformation, scientists and skeptics need some better tactics. In a way, Troy Campbell’s cover article, “Team Science,” is the culmination of this informal, continuing counseling course. Campbell, a social psychologist, is a …

Carl Zimmer is an award-winning science journalist whose insightful reporting on the frontiers of biology appears regularly in the New York Times. Of his thirteen books about science, one of my favorites is an early one, Evolution: Triumph of an Idea, a large-format, very enjoyable guide and companion to a PBS series on evolution. Stephen …

My father was a small-town pharmacist, and he always told us that vitamins beyond what our bodies need are excreted out of our systems. So why now, many decades later, is that commonsense lesson so little known and heeded? Billons of dollars are spent on unneeded and worthless megavitamin therapy, and the craze continues. In …

It is hard to believe three decades have passed. This March will be the thirtieth anniversary of cold fusion. In case you think that debacle—that icon of pathological science—is all in the past, think again. Two articles in this issue provide scientific perspective and report on a new related device. In “Cold Fusion: Thirty Years …

People are weird about aliens and UFOs. The topic is perennially fascinating, I know. I have been involved with it nearly my entire career. But it’s one of those subjects where hope, wishful thinking, and unfettered speculation seem to overwhelm reason, facts, and evidence. The gap between what we know scientifically and what devout enthusiasts …

For scientists and scientific skeptics, the most powerful word is why. Why is nature like it is? Why do people behave they way they do? Wondering why initiates all inquiry and leads to all new knowledge. In the Skeptical Inquirer we have articles that investigate and articles that explain. Investigations may find new answers to …

We were on a walking trek in wilderness Tanzania. Our guide, Thad, had obtained a special license for us to trek and camp in a part of the eastern Serengeti miles from any road, far from the areas most visitors see. Suddenly our tiny group came across a freshly abandoned poachers’ camp. Thad, an American …

I grew up in the 1950s when, for the most part, people seemed optimistic and positive about the world (if we didn’t blow ourselves up with atomic bombs). All things seemed possible. Today, in stark contrast, we seem immersed in a sour milieu in which many think the world is worse than ever and things …

When CSICOP and the Skeptical Inquirer were founded in 1976, the nation was awash in credulous paranormal belief, so much so that our organizing conference was called “The New Irrationalisms.” It is now 2018, and a whole new set of anti-rationalist, antiscience, anti-intellectual concerns confront us. These are of a much broader and deeper danger. …

Racial issues continue to plague us. After every new incident (the deadly KKK march and confrontations with protestors in Charlottesville this past August a blatant example), we rehash all the arguments for how best to combat racism and racial division. In his introduction to our special section in this issue, Deputy Editor Benjamin Radford notes, …

We lead off this issue with a two-article section on Conspiracy Theories and Incredible Tales, a timely look at thinking and behaviors that are at the root of many modern claims and confusions. Nearly every day’s news brings new evidence of conspiratorial thinking or word of someone embellishing the truth about their own lives and …

The concerns of scientific skeptics cover an astonishingly wide range of issues, with an equal variety of emphases and approaches. The articles in this issue typify that. Jeanne Goldberg’s cover article, “The Politicization of Scientific Issues,” is as timely as today’s headlines, but she approaches the subject with deep philosophical and historical context. In her …

You have to hand it to the creationists, especially the “young-Earth” variety. They are endlessly creative in concocting new rationales for their worldviews. Even when they have to twist into mental contortions, they manage to say it all with a straight face. For example, if, as they contend, the Earth is only six thousand years …

We could say that the whole reason the Skeptical Inquirer exists is to counter misinformation. And in this era of ubiquitous social media and electronic outlets, that is an increasingly tall order. Everybody now has the equivalent of their own printing press, and nearly everyone seems to think they are an expert. One result is …

In this space last time I promised coverage in this issue of our CSICon 2016 Las Vegas conference. And here it is. We have an extended conference section. In addition, the feature articles by Ron Lindsay (“Why Skepticism?”), Carol Tavris (“Why We Believe—Long After We Shouldn’t”), and Paul A. Offit (“God’s Own Medicine”) are derived …

The 2016 presidential election campaign—one of the most bizarre in American history—is finally over. It preoccupied people in this country and worldwide for months. Deep healing and a return to some semblance of civility are essential. Whether or not that can be achieved, there are now other issues demanding our attention. One that deserved discussion …