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Has CSICOP lost the 30-years war? |
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Paranormal & Unexplained,
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Written by Administrator
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 By Guy Lyon Playfair
CSICOP (Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal)
came into existence at the 1976 convention of the American Humanist
Association (AHA) held in Buffalo, NY, from 30 April to 2 May. Its two
principal begetters, Professors Marcello Truzzi (sociology, Eastern
Michigan University) and Paul Kurtz (philosophy, State University of
New York) were both resolute sceptics with good track records as
campaigners against the rapid spread of interest in occult and
paranormal subjects that took place in the early 1970s following the
publication of Colin Wilson’s best-seller The Occult (1971) and the dramatic appearance on the scene of Uri Geller.
In 1972, Truzzi had begun to publish an occasional newsletter, Explorations, renamed The Zetetic
in 1974, and the following year he announced the formation of RSEP -
Resources for the Scientific Evaluation of the Paranormal.( Truzzi and Anomalistics ) “I never really got off the ground beyond the announcement,” he would recall later, “because of what happened next.”
This was an offer from Kurtz, whom he had not
yet met, to collaborate on a major new venture. Kurtz, editor of the
American Humanist Association (AHA) journal The Humanist, had
published a strongly worded manifesto 'Objections to Astrology' (1974)
signed by 186 scientists including an impressive total of 18 Nobel
laureates, copies of the document being sent to every newspaper and
magazine in the U.S.A. and Canada. Kurtz clearly knew and approved of
Truzzi’s fledgling journal and RSEP, and asked him to become
co-chairman of CSICOP and first editor of The Zetetic as the official CSICOP journal. Truzzi accepted the offer.
So far, so good. Following the highly successful Buffalo meeting,
CSICOP was up and running fast in all directions, especially towards
the media which generally gave it favourable coverage. Then things
began to go badly wrong.
It soon became evident that Truzzi and Kurtz did not see eye to eye on
ways of combatting the rising tide of occultism. As Truzzi put it
later, “the problem with CSICOP is that it has made debunking more
important than impartial inquiry” (personal communication, 25 June
1987) and it seemed clear right from the start that while Truzzi was
all in favour of impartial inquiry, Kurtz wasn’t. There were already
signs that CSICOP was becoming what Robert Anton Wilson called The New
Inquisition in his book (1986) of that name. There were even genuine
sceptics like the astronomer Carl Sagan who refused to sign the
anti-astrology manfesto on the grounds that
“statements contradicting borderline, folk or pseudoscience that appear
to have an authoritarian tone can do more harm than good”.
Read complete article from Skeptical Investigations
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