Category Archives: The Skeptics

Susan Gerbic

Susan Gerbic

Susan Gerbic is a co-founder of the skeptic action groups “Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia” and “Monterey County Skeptics” (California).1

Gerbic bills herself as a “professional portrait photographer who specializes in people who don’t want their
portraits taken”2 (a statement which is an insight into several forms of psychological pathology, including a lack of empathy; a common theme among pseudoskeptics).

According to scientist-author Rupert Sheldrake, whose Wikipedia biography has been a target of her group “Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia”:

“The Guerrilla Skeptics are well trained, highly motivated, have an ideological agenda, and operate in teams, contrary to Wikipedia rules. The mastermind behind this organization is Susan Gerbi[c]. … She now has over 90 guerrillas operating in 17 different languages. The teams are coordinated through secret Facebook pages. They check the credentials of new recruits to avoid infiltration. Their aim is to ‘control information’, and Ms. Gerbi[c] glories in the power that she and her warriors wield. They have already seized control of many Wikipedia pages, deleted entries on subjects they disapprove of, and boosted the biographies of atheists.”3

British journalist Robert McLuhan adds:

“…it’s a pity that this key source for learning and education is so compromised as far as serious parapsychology is concerned. There is of course plenty of information about parapsychology, but little that isn’t gummed up with sceptic disdain. Even aside from that, it looks rather flat and lame. What’s to stop editors giving quotes from credible people – scientists, psi-researchers, experients who are well-known in other fields – that give their own enthusiastic responses? Why are the dullards, ignoramuses and professional nay-sayers getting such a free run?

“We need to make it clear that our evidence counts as evidence. At the very least, if sceptics insert a long section at the end of an entry that promotes their views exclusively, under the heading of ‘Criticism’ or some such, then it seems to me to be perfectly legitimate to add a following section headed ‘Responses to criticism’, in which the key points would be rebutted, at leisure and without constant heckling.”4

Wikipedia is headed by Jimmy Wales, who has indicated support for the skeptical bias and has not, despite complaints, implemented changes to Wikipedia’s editorial policies in order to prevent the pseudoskeptical defacement of entries.

References:

1. Wikapediatrician Susan Gerbic discusses her Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia project
Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, March 8, 2013

2. What is Guerrilla Skepticism?
Edward Clint, February 13, 2013

3. Wikipedia Under Threat
Rupert Sheldrake, October 5, 2013

4. Guerrilla Skeptics
Robert McLuhan, March 26, 2013

Photo source: Wikipedia

Back to Who’s Who of Media Skeptics

Lewis Wolpert, The Skeptics

Lewis Wolpert versus Rupert Sheldrake – The Telepathy Debate

Lewis Wolpert versus Rupert Sheldrake:
The Telepathy Debate

Edward Nugee, QC in the Chair

Reproduced from:
Telepathy Debate Hits London:
Audience Charmed by the Paranormal
John Whitfield, Nature, January 22, 2004

Many people believe there is evidence of the power of the mind.

Scientists tend to steer clear of public debates with advocates of the paranormal. And judging from the response of a London audience to a rare example of such a head-to-head conflict last week, they are wise to do so.

Lewis Wolpert, a developmental biologist at University College London, made the case against the existence of telepathy at a debate at the Royal Society of Arts (RSA) in London on 15 January. Rupert Sheldrake, a former biochemist and plant physiologist at the University of Cambridge who has taken up parapsychology, argued in its favour. And most of the 200-strong audience seemed to agree with him.

Wolpert is one of Britain’s best-known public spokesmen for science. But few members of the audience seemed to be swayed by his arguments.

Sheldrake, who moved beyond the scientific pale in the early 1980s by claiming that ideas and forms can spread by a mysterious force he called morphic resonance, kicked off the debate.

He presented the results of tests of extrasensory perception, together with his own research on whether people know who is going to phone or e-mail them, on whether dogs know when their owners are coming home, and on the allegedly telepathic bond between a New York woman and her parrot. “Billions of perfectly rational people believe that they have had these experiences,” he said.

An open mind is a very bad thing – everything falls out – Lewis Wolpert, University College London.

Wolpert countered that telepathy was “pathological science”, based on tiny, unrepeatable effects backed up by fantastic theories and an ad hoc response to criticism. “The blunt fact is that there’s no persuasive evidence for it,” he said.

For Ann Blaber, who works in children’s music and was undecided on the subject, Sheldrake was the more convincing. “You can’t just dismiss all the evidence for telepathy out of hand,” she said. Her view was reflected by many in the audience, who variously accused Wolpert of “not knowing the evidence” and being “unscientific”.

In staging the debate, the RSA joins a growing list of London organizations taking a novel approach to science communication ¹. “We want to provide a platform for controversial subjects,” says Liz Winder, head of lectures at the RSA.

Reference:

1. Giles, J. “Museum breaks mould in attempts to lure
reluctant visitors”, Nature, 426, 6, (2003).
doi:10.1038/426006a

Further material on the RSA Telepathy debate, including the full text from the meeting and an audio tape of the debate, at Dr. Sheldrake’s website.

The Skeptics

Edzard Ernst

Edzard Ernst M.D., Ph.D.

Edzard Ernst was the UK’s first professor of Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM); the chair was endowed by the Laing foundation at the University of Exeter in 1993.

Ernst was previously professor of physical and rehabilitation medicine at the University of Vienna, where he specialised in investigating venous and arterial blood flow modified by physical treatments such as spa, heat, or massage. At this time he also undertook a basic postgraduate training in homeopathy, but has hardly practiced.

The research facility at Exeter is not involved in any outpatient or inpatient treatment or postgraduate clinical training within the field of CAM or conventional medicine. He has not practiced medicine for some time and is currently not registered or insured to do so. This may explain the major thrust of his research: literature reviews of already extant research making approximately 90% of his voluminous output of several hundred papers and some twenty books.

The fact that he has collated the published literature in the field of CAM has earned him well justified praise. However the reviews and evaluations he publishes have often met with substantial methodological criticism. In situations where reviews were conducted simultaneously by other research groups, other scientists frequently came to entirely different, and usually more positive, conclusions.

Practitioners of CAM and conventional medicine have pointed out that Ernst has almost no first-hand experience of many of the modalities about which he publishes. Compared with the substantial number of literature reviews, meta-analyses and opinion pieces, Prof. Ernst has published little original primary research. His clinical trials have nearly all encountered severe methodological criticism and have often been published in low impact journals. However, some studies conducted by his research fellows, mainly in the field of acupuncture, are of high quality.

More Information:

To CAM or Not To CAM?
Beata Bishop, The Scientific and Medcal Network, 2014

Edzard Ernst’s Website

Photo credit: Institute for Science in Medicine

The Skeptics

David Deutsch

David Deutsch, Ph.D.

David Deutsch works at the Centre for Quantum Computation at the Clarendon Laboratory, Oxford University.

In the autumn of 2001, he denounced a fellow quantum physicist, Brian Josephson, for suggesting that quantum physics might lead to an explanation of “processes still not understood within conventional science such as telepathy”. Deutsch asserted: “It is utter rubbish. Telepathy simply does not exist.” (The Observer, September 30, 2001)

Josephson, a Nobel laureate, made his comment about telepathy in a booklet issued by the Royal Mail about an issue of stamps to mark the 100th anniversary of the Nobel Prizes. Deutsch said: “The Royal Mail has let itself be hoodwinked into supporting ideas that are complete nonsense”.

But Deutsch embodies a curious double standard about the need for scientific evidence. He is a proponent of a theory that there are billions of parallel universes to our own, expounded in his book The Fabric of Reality: The Science of Parallel Universes (1997). He also speculates freely on time travel. There is no evidence for either of these phenomena.

Deutsch highlights the remarkable way in which evidence-free speculation in some areas of science can coexist with dogma in others, while legitimate evidence is dismissed or denied.

Website

Photo:
Department of Physics, Oxford University

Richard Dawkins, The Skeptics

Richard Dawkins

Richard Dawkins, a CSICOP Fellow, was the winner of the CSICOP “In Praise Of Reason” Award in 1992. He is Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University, and a strong supporter of the skeptical conjurer James Randi.

Dawkins is a talented writer with a great gift for metaphor, and is best known for his books on evolutionary theory and in particular for his theory of the selfish gene. Some have compared him to T.H. Huxley, who was known as “Darwin’s bulldog” for his active defence of Darwinism; others call him “Darwin’s pitbull” for his aggressive and uncompromising propagation of materialistic view of evolution. He has also been described as a scientific fundamentalist and a born-again Darwinian.

Dawkins is one of the most zealous opponents of religion in Britain and strives for its eradication. In his acceptance speech for his 1996 “Humanist of the Year” award he said, “I think a case can be made that faith is one of the world’s great evils, comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to eradicate.”

Dawkins is uncompromising in his attitude towards those with whom he disagrees. At a literary festival in Oxford, he was the only featured author not to sign the promotional poster because it also bore the name of Uri Geller. “I’m not joking”, said Dawkins sharply, “I will not sign on the same piece of paper.” (The Guardian, December 8, 1998).

He refuses to take part in debates with advocates of “intelligent design” in evolution. “The question of who would ‘win’ such a debate is not at issue. Winning is not what these people realistically aspire to. The coup they seek is simply the recognition of being able to share a platform with a real scientist in the first place. This will suggest to innocent bystanders that there is something that is genuinely worth debating, on something like equal terms.” (A Devil’s Chaplain, 2003, section 5.5)

More seriously, Dawkins sometimes succeeds in censoring publication of views with which he disagrees. In March 1995, The Times Higher Educational Supplement commissioned a critique of Neo-Darwinism by the writer Richard Milton.

Dawkins contacted the editor and lobbied against the publication of the article, which he had not seen. “She caved in to this unscientific bullying and suppressed the piece.” (Fortean Times, April 2002).

Dawkins habitually dismisses psychic phenomena as illusory, for example: “The paranormal is bunk. Those who try to sell it are fakes and charlatans” (Sunday Mirror, February 8, 1998). Nevertheless, Dawkins concedes that an interest in the subject could have a positive side: “The popularity of the paranormal, oddly enough, might even be grounds for encouragement. I think that the appetite for mystery, the enthusiasm for that which we don’t understand, are healthy and to be fostered. It’s the same appetite which drives the best of true science, and it’s an appetite which true science is best qualified to satisfy.” (1996 BBC Dimbleby Lecture.)

Dawkins’ bestselling book The God Delusion was published in 2006, and he has now become the world’s most prominent atheist. Together with the materialist philosopher Daniel Dennett, he is a leader of the “bright” movement, trying to rebrand atheists as brights. But this campaign has met with little success, perhaps because it seems arrogant to imply that people who are not atheists are dim.

In 2006 Dawkins presented a highly polemical series on Channel 4 television in Britain against religion, called “The Root of All Evil?”

In a sequel broadcast by the same TV channel in 2007, he launched an all-out attack on psychic phenomena and alternative medicine called “The Enemies of Reason”.

Dawkins is often criticized for his dogmatism by fellow scientists; Dr. Robert Winston, Professor of Science and Society and Emeritus Professor of Fertility Studies at Imperial College, London, has said that he “brings science into disrepute”.

More Information

Is Richard Dawkins destroying his reputation?

“The scientist and bestselling writer has become the face of a new crusading atheism. But even his closest allies worry that his online provocations do more harm than good.”

Sophie Elmhirst, The Guardian, 9 June 2015

Why Richard Dawkins ‘is not a scientist’, the survival of the least selfish, and what ants tell us about humans

“No one knows more about ants than E. O. Wilson. Which is why his U-turn on long-held beliefs about their biological altruism has met with outrage from academia. The unrepentant Pulitzer prizewinner and naturalist talks to Steve Connor.”

Steve Connor, The Independent, 10 November 2014

An Ungodly Row: Richard Dawkins Sues His Disciple
Tom Rowley and Alistair Walker, The Independent, October 25, 2010

Richard Dawkins’ Website

Photo credit: Wikipedia

Richard Dawkins is Wrong About Religion

by David Sloan Wilson Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion has become a bestseller through its violent attack on religion. Dawkins theory of the evolutionary origins and development of religion has attracted less attention. In this article, David Sloan Wilson, an evolutionary biologist, offers an analysis of Dawkins’ theory which he finds less than satisfactory. Introduction...

Richard Dawkins Comes to Call

Richard Dawkins Comes to Call by Rupert Sheldrake Originally published in Journal of the Scientific and Medical Network Network Review No. 95, Winter 2007 I said to Russell, “If you’re treating telepathy as an irrational belief, surely evidence about whether it exists or not is essential for the discussion. “If telepathy occurs,...

Richard Dawkins Cops Out

by Guy Lyon Playfair “The paranormal is bunk” according to an article that appeared under the name of Richard Dawkins in the Sunday Mirror (8 February 1998). “Those who try to sell it to us are fakes and charlatans.” And worse: “And some of them have grown rich and fat by taking us for a...

Susan Blackmore, The Skeptics

Susan Blackmore

Susan Blackmore is one of Britain’s best-known media skeptics. A CSICOP Fellow, she was awarded the CSICOP Distinguished Skeptic Award in 1991.

Blackmore started her career by doing research in parapsychology, but has announced on several occasions that she has left the field of parapsychology to devote herself to the study of memes, as proposed by the evolutionary theorist Richard Dawkins.

Despite her repeated departures from the field, she keeps reappearing, and her recent research into belief in the paranormal has been funded by the Perrott-Warrick Fund, a Cambridge-based endowment for promoting psychical research.

She has written several books, including Beyond the Body: An Investigation of Out-of-the Body Experiences (1982) and Dying to Live (1993). She herself has had an out-of-the-body experience, but explains her own experience and those of others as an illusion caused by anoxia in the brain [a discussion of disproof of this and other theories based on materialistic models by scientific researchers].

Blackmore’s controversial bestseller The Meme Machine was published in 1999. Her most recent book is Consciousness – An Introduction, published in 2003.

Blackmore combines her skeptical beliefs with the practice of Zen Buddhism. She used to teach at the University of the West of England in Bristol, but left in October 2001 to pursue a freelance career in the media.

More Information

Review of Dying to Live
by Greg Stone, Near-Death.com

A Critical Examination of the Blackmore Psi Experiments
by Rick E. Berger, Science Unlimited Research Foundation, San Antonio, Texas. The Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, Vol 83, April 1989, 123-144.

Susan Blackmore Doesn’t Get It Right

by Rupert Sheldrake From: Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home Rupert Sheldrake, Broadway Books, 2011 Dr. Susan Blackmore is a CSICOP/CSI Fellow and was awarded the CSICOP Distinguished Skeptic Award in 1991, and used to be one of Britain’s best-known media skeptics. She started her career by doing research in parapsychology, but...

Susan Blackmore’s Research

The Research of the Skeptics by Chris Carter ” …the psi controversy is largely characterized by disputes between a group of researchers, the parapsychologists, and a group of critics who do not do experimental research to test psi claims or the viability of their counterhypotheses.” – Charles Honorton, in “Rhetoric over Substance” Charles Honorton, in...

Susan Blackmore’s Consciousness

A review of Susan Blackmore’s book Consciousness: An Introduction by Guy Saunders There has been a plethora of books on consciousness in the last ten to fifteen years; most of these are recognisably each author’s particular take on the subject. Daniel Dennett’s book Consciousness Explained (1991) was an early example of the genre. Rita Carter’s...

The Skeptics