How do you judge the strength and health of this new organization known as the Bay Area Skeptics? Let me count the ways:
Public reaction has been enthusiastic. People come forward wanting information, wanting to participate, wanting to meet other people interested in our organization and in our ideas, and wanting to do something -- anything -- to further the interests of the organization.
This enthusiastic reaction has been supported by words, deeds, and money. And it includes people in the Bay Area, throughout the country, and around the world.
Organizations have contacted us for information and for speakers.
The media have reacted warmly and are much interested in covering the views and progress of Bay Area Skeptics. When mystics come along, the media have shown a considerable inclination to contact us: for appearances, for confrontations with the mystics, and for information regarding mystical claims.
People contribute both letters and articles to "BASIS".
Many people have come forward volunteering their time, skill, and information in examining the claims of mystics. We have been able to build a cadre of skilled scientific consultants and investigators in a wide variety of fields.
When the founders found ourselves inundated with paper and short of money, a cry for help went out. It is a healthy organization when that cry is answered. Mike McCarthy has agreed to be Editor of "BASIS". I've known Mike for some time now. He has participated in presentations to the public, on skepticism as well as on other topics.
Mike is a Scientific Consultant for BAS, and is a skeptic by any definition of the word. Speaking of words, Mike has considerable skill and experience in their use, both spoken and written, and in the editing of them. With the increased contacts with the media and the public demanding my time, and with the increased correspondence that crosses my desk concerning Bay Area Skeptics, it is indeed a comfort to find such an able person willing to do the editing of "BASIS". Mike's considerable knowledge of and access to a computer/word processor is the icing on the cake.
Earl Hautala, a skeptic, subscriber, and alert thinker, has stepped forward to share some of the burden and joys of handling much of the paper that comes our way. Earl has been instrumental in bringing Bay Area Skeptics to the attention of many, including having it and me introduced at a meeting in San Francisco where a "clairvoyant" was the speaker.
Others have also volunteered their help. Hang in there -- we'll find a use for your talents.
The Board members and others continue to contact the media with ideas and reactions about the possible existence of mystical powers, and about the positive existence of Bay Area Skeptics.
And, happily, people have replied to the request for money. With the time made available by the volunteers, we will shortly embark upon finalizing our recognition as a tax-exempt subsidiary of THE COMMITTEE FOR THE SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATION OF CLAIMS OF THE PARANORMAL (CSICOP). When this finally comes through, contributions to Bay Area Skeptics FROM INCEPTION will be recognized as a tax-deductible charitable contribution.
CSICOP, and its excellent magazine, "The Skeptical Inquirer", have been supportive to Bay Area Skeptics, its first local chapter.
The word of our organization and reactions to it have produced such good, uh, vibes that we will shortly be seeing other local groups springing up, and subsequently affiliating with CSICOP.
All of the above, with the considerable contribution of time, effort, and money of you folks who are reading this right now, have enabled us to make the inroads on behalf of reason that we have made in the past several months.
And that, friends, is how you can judge the strength and health of this new organization, Bay Area Skeptics. Thank you all for that!
The end.
We have all seen the sensationalized treatment that UFOs have received on TV, even from "responsible" news organizations, with their exciting but unsubstantiated claims of dramatic UFO encounters. A refreshing change was the season opener for NOVA (actually a production of the BBC) telecast on PBS stations October 12 and 13.
This past February, John Groom, writer and producer of the show, was at my house to discuss approaches to the subject and sources of information, and at that time I became aware that he would not dish up just another piece of journalistic trash. I was not disappointed.
Not only were many of the most famous UFO incidents on record discussed and recreated, but, significantly, a special effort was made to seek out natural explanations wherever possible to account for the alleged UFOs sighted. Both UFO believers and skeptics appeared on the program, although the balance seemed to weigh in favor of skepticism, as I think must necessarily be the case when we faithfully adhere to the scientific method.
I would say that the show's greatest weakness was not in excess belief of skepticism, but in a failure to be able to discern APPROPRIATE skeptical explanations. Not ALL prosaic explanations have equal merit. In my view, far too much time was spent on Dr. Persinger's hypothesis that UFOs are somehow the result of "earthquake lights", or balls of light supposedly caused by strains in the earth's crust.
Persinger says that the many weak earthquakes in the U.K. cause luminous displays. Rubbish, I say; here in California we have weak earthquakes every few days, and in the Bay Area we would see UFOs nightly. If Persinger's theory were true, UFOs would correlate with fault lines; we could go up in the Santa Cruz mountains, and photograph UFOs aplenty. Yet in fact, California does not lead the country in UFOs. Sorry, folks, but UFOs correlate with population, not with earthquakes.
Persinger even attributes the Travis Walton "UFO abduction" to the effects of these geological fuzzballs on poor Travis's brain! Far more convincing was the finding of polygraph operator Jack McCarthy about Travis: "gross deception" -- a finding that the "National Enquirer" and APRO tried to cover up, but that was brought to light by Philip J. Klass of CSICOP.
If you missed the show, try to catch it when it is rerun. We will also try to have a showing of it at a future BAS social gathering.
We finish 1982 on a distinctly upbeat note for an organization less than six months old. Bay Area Skeptics has already had a good impact in our area and is expanding with all due speed.
We have over 150 subscribers at the moment, and pass out another few hundred copies of the newsletter each month, both to the interested and the hostile. The Skeptic's Challenge is making the rounds, and may yield interesting results in the future. The Bay Area journalist community is now aware of our existence and has already found several occasions to turn to BAS for skeptical counterbalance to credulous claims. This is a remarkable record for such a young group.
Best of all, people like me have somewhere to turn for confirmation that, yes indeed, there IS good reason to be skeptical when faced with dazzlingly fatuous tales of modern wonders.
Last year, I attended a psychic demonstration, and found to my surprise that fully a third of the audience were not true believers. Apparently, they were dragged along by believing friends. As the show progressed, they grew more and more uncomfortable, both at the ludicrous tricks of the psychic and at the credulous enthusiasm of their friends. When the psychic revealed himself as simply a stage magician, the sense of relief from these skeptics was palpable. Unaware that others like themselves in the audience felt the same way, they had begun to fear that the world was turning upside down; that it was they who were unreasonable for being rational, while their friends were quite reasonable in insisting that nonsensical card tricks
constituted evidence of otherworldly powers.
When the wildly improbable is marketed on every supermarket counter as the conventional wisdom, reasonable men and women can start feeling pretty lonely. BAS has been formed, in part, to counter that feeling.
There is certainly a combative element to our charter, for we do have our subscribers who enjoy a good tussle with the forces of unreason. But there is also for many of us the social element.
It is a relief to spend a little time among people who will agree when you say that rationality is not a cruel weapon devised by conspirators to put shackles on the minds of men; that the "National Enquirer" is not, in fact, a reliable source of information about spacemen, talking plants, or magical medical breakthroughs; that it is not unreasonable to believe that Las Vegas survives not merely because true psychics are unwilling to use their powers for monetary gain; and that a few clever card tricks do not necessarily constitute evidence of mystical powers beyond the ken of science simply because the trickster says so.
Our plans for 1983 consist of continuing and multiplying our present activities: challenging gullible media reports of paranormal occurrences; persuading journalists that BAS is a valuable resource for information about and experts on paranormal claims; further persuading journalists that it is irresponsible to treat claims of paranormal events as harmless "fun" stories not subject to the normal rules of journalistic ethics.
We are trying to collect information on the careers, predictions, and flaws of local "psychics", in hopes that at least some people will be impressed by a record of failure. And we continue to seek opportunities to speak and debate on the side of reason and common sense in the media, and before schools and community groups.
To accomplish our goals, we are fortunate to have many subscribers who are experts in various fields of the paranormal, who are familiar with the personalities and literature of everything from UFOs to psychic surgery, and who can handle themselves ably in a public forum.
But let us not neglect our many subscribers who may not be experts on UFOs or the Bermuda Triangle, but who would like to learn more, and who would like to make a contribution to our efforts against the tidal wave of irrationality.
Many of us are eager to support the purposes of this group, and there is much we can do, even though we are not experts or technical specialists. We can perform and assist in research; we can give moral support as members of the audience at speeches and debates to counterweigh heavy representation from true believers; we can watch for opportunities for action. We can, in other words, serve as a valuable resource for BAY AREA SKEPTICS.
That is one reason why the December 1st BAS meeting was scheduled to include expert information on a common object of our attentions: the use of psychics in police work. Future meetings will likewise include expert discussions.
This kind of theme meeting will help bring the subscribers up to date on an area of study; let us know what BAS has done and decide what to do in the future in this area; and to suggest ways in which the general subscribership can offer support.
I want to urge you to try to make it out to at least one BAS event in the near future. You will find your fellow subscribers, board members, consultants to be bright, convivial, rational, mildly anarchic, and definitely stimulating.
-- The Editor