I thought skeptics would appreciate this.  Apologies if it's old.  First
time I've seen it.

-cfs


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Cardiac Lecture

A Cardiologist came up with a new operating procedure that would cut
down
the
time that heart surgery would take and would cause less trauma to the
patient.
He was praised by his peers when he presented it at a convention in
Washington
D.C.  He was also paid $50,000 to present his find.   He did a couple
more
of
these presentations and realized that it would be more lucrative to do
lectures on his find than to work as a surgeon.  So he decided to do the
lectures full-time.  He hired a driver and purchased a limousine.

One day, after he'd been doing the lecture circuit for about 6 months,
his
driver turns to him and says:

"You know.... This is completely not fair."

"What do you mean?" asked the surgeon

"Well, you get paid $50,000 everytime you do this lecture and that's
more
than
I get paid in a year" said the driver.

The surgeon explains to him that it is a very complicated procedure and
that
he is the only person that can give this lecture.

"That's not true, I can do your lecture blindfolded.  I have seen you do
your
lecture so many times that I know it by heart." said the driver.

"Well if that's the case, I'll tell you what.  You do this lecture and
you
can
keep the $50,000 if you do it right." said the surgeon.

The driver says "Ok, your on."

So when they arrive at the lecture hall, the surgeon and the driver
change
coats and the surgeon puts on the driver's hat and sits in the back of
the
room.

The driver nails the presentation.  Not only that, he also answers all
the
questions without any problems. Just when the driver thinks he's done,
an
audience member, wearing a lab coat and tape covered glasses stands up
and
asks a complex question that  the driver is not able to answer.

"You know..." says the driver,

"I have done this lecture 287 times and I have never been asked such a
stupid
question. As a matter of fact, that question is SO stupid  that I am
going
to
let my
driver answer it."
_

>From: DoubtTommy@...
>
>On the night of February 23, the University of Georgia's Christian Faculty
>Forum held a presentation on the question "Can We Be Good Without God?"
>Representing them was Dr. Jay Budziszewski, a philosophy professor at the
>University of Texas at Austin.
>
>The Sagan Society, a student-faculty group that promotes skepticism, was
>invited to give a brief response to Dr. Budziszewski's 45-minute talk in which
>we would either support his argument or refute it. We refuted it.
>
>Come see how we did!
>http://members.aol.com/doubttommy/goodgod.html
>
>Thanks,
>Keith Lankford
>President, The Sagan Society
>doubttommy@...
>
Keith,

Your response to Dr. Budziszewski was very good.  You made some valid
points on which Christians disagree that the good doctor has arbitrarily
placed in the outer area.  I hope all subscribers to this mailing list took
time to read your speech.

Regards,

Joe Needham   ICQ : 1674329  AOL Instant Messenger: NetSkeptix
--------
"640K ought to be enough for anybody."
-- Bill Gates, 1981
--------
Business Home Page:  http://members.xoom.com/jneedham
Internet Skeptics:  http://members.xoom.com/jneedham/skeptics.html
Do NOT let them deceive you with the legitimization of their myth!

On the night of February 23, the University of Georgia's Christian Faculty
Forum held a presentation on the question "Can We Be Good Without God?"
Representing them was Dr. Jay Budziszewski, a philosophy professor at the
University of Texas at Austin.

The Sagan Society, a student-faculty group that promotes skepticism, was
invited to give a brief response to Dr. Budziszewski's 45-minute talk in which
we would either support his argument or refute it. We refuted it.

Come see how we did!
http://members.aol.com/doubttommy/goodgod.html

Thanks,
Keith Lankford
President, The Sagan Society
doubttommy@...

Opinion: Stop the Flying Saucer, I Want to Get Off

   By LAWRENCE M. KRAUSS


   There was a great deal of concern expressed during the Monica Lewinsky
scandal that the distinction between mainstream journalism and the
tabloids
had all but vanished. But the public, bombarded day and night with
salacious
and irrelevant revelations, managed to separate the wheat from the
chaff.

   Is it too much to hope that this innate good sense will apply to the
tabloid
fare that television is peddling now, during the ratings sweeps? No
longer
able to rely on Washington to provide a steady supply of sensationalism,
at
least one network has started looking to outer space. I am talking, of
course,
about alien abductions.

   Last Wednesday night, while channel-surfing toward the PBS end of the
spectrum, I was stopped by the title shots of a program called
"Confirmation:
The Hard Evidence of Aliens Among Us?" Grainy images of flying saucers,
aliens' faces and an eerie-looking operating table filled the screen. It
must
be a Fox TV promo for "The X-Files," I thought.

   Then I noticed the NBC peacock in the corner. The two-hour special,
produced
by the network's entertainment division, purported to explore reports of
alien
visitation, from mind-altering implants to abductions.

   Chief among the purveyors of "hard evidence" was the author Whitley
Strieber, whose big-eyed alien abductors snatched him from his home one
night,
injected chemicals into his brain and helped him get onto the
best-seller
lists. NBC presented Mr. Strieber as both an "expert" source and a
journalistic interviewer. I learned later that he was also an executive
producer of the show. Is it unfair to suspect that his personal stake in
the
alien abduction phenomenon biased the presentation?

   I watched what was touted as "the first on-camera removal of an
alleged
alien implant" from the hand of a purported abductee. The operating
physician
noted that there was nothing necessarily extraterrestrial about a small
fragment of metal lodged under someone's skin. But once the blackened
spur
was
extracted, an abductee "expert" on the scene told us excitedly that this
was
the most remarkable piece of metal he had ever seen removed from a
person.
(It
looked to me like a small watermelon seed, but alas I am not an expert
on
alien implants.)

   The fragment was then sent, for reasons unexplained, to be analyzed by
a
geologist. It was magnified by a scanning electron microscope, and we
learned
-- to our amazement! -- that it appeared to be a bit of iron. We were
then
informed that -- even more mysteriously -- although it did indeed
contain
iron, the geologist "couldn't classify it."

   What we were not told was why a geologist should be able to "classify"
an
object removed from someone's finger, or what particular aspect was
unclassifiable. Moreover, we were not told why -- if this supposed
evidence
was so important -- NBC did not have the resources to have it analyzed
by
another laboratory. But, of course, if the fragment had turned out to be
part
of the edge of a car door, or a shard from a metal fence post, it might
have
been somewhat harder to justify its alien origin.

   So we were left to conclude that, yes, extraterrestrials must have
planted a
mysterious device in some guy's hand. Technically, I suppose, the iron
chip
is
hard evidence. But it depends on what the meaning of "is" is.

   This minor bit of yellow journalism and the press coverage of
President
Clinton's problems are related, and in a way I find unnerving.

   After years of watching displays of righteous indignation from
politicians,
the public has become largely immune to them. In fact, it has been
comforting
to see how the moderating effect of popular opinion can silence zealots
on
both the right and the left. When it comes to scientific zealots,
however,
it's a different story.

   When a big network strips away the pretense of journalistic integrity
to
promote alien abduction claims by interested parties, where is the
moderating
influence? The excuse that NBC's special came from its entertainment
division
rather than its news division is a feeble one, because the distinction
is
lost
on most viewers.

   Mountains of statistics suggest that the public is far more
susceptible
to
scientific nonsense than political nonsense. More than half of Americans
are
unaware that the earth orbits the sun and takes a year to do it. Many
people
simply do not have the tools to distinguish charlatans from honest
researchers.

   Still, people crave more information about the scientific
breakthroughs
that
are changing our world, and television is an important source of that
knowledge. But if "science" on network television consists mostly of
either
programs hyping alien visitation or news segments detailing diet
breakthroughs, is it any wonder that the border between sense and
nonsense
becomes blurred?

   The late Carl Sagan called science a "candle in the dark," a method of
inquiry that illuminates the true nature of myths and superstitions. He
also
proved that science -- even televised science -- could be both accurate
and
entertaining.

   If NBC's executives had devoted those two hours to any of the actual
mysteries being faced in medicine, biology, chemistry, astronomy or
physics,
they might have discovered something that everyone who has honestly
explored
the physical universe knows: yes, truth often is stranger than fiction.

   As for me, after getting my fill of NBC's alien "investigation," I
tuned
in
to the more compelling science fiction of "Star Trek."

   Lawrence M. Krauss, chairman of the physics department at Case Western
Reserve University, is the author of ``The Physics of Star Trek'' and
the
forthcoming ``Genesis: The Lives of an Atom.''




Monday, February 22, 1999
<A HREF="aol://4344:104.nytcopy.6445375.574106743">Copyright 1999 The
New
York
Times</A>

Folks,

As a member of the Triad Area Skeptics Club, I recently gave a lecture on
astrology. Those curious about it are welcome to ask for more details (did
anyone on this list see it?).  I received a small number of positive
e-mails, but I also received the response below, from someone who, I am
sure, almost certainly did not attend.  The comments marked with >'s are
theirs, you can see my response in the spaces between.  I have deleted the
person's name.  I chose to not be offensive in my response to this person,
though they clearly had not qualms about being offensive to me.  Any comments?

*********************************************************************

Dear {name deleted},

Thank you for your response.  I have attempted to answer some of your
objections below.  I am not sure what you are responding to.  I am
assuming you are responding to my lecture on astrology, but I don't think
you attended it.

> Mr. Carlson,
>
> In response to your spurious, so-called "scientific method" applied to
> astrology:
>
> Sir, you obviously have not done your research.  If you had conducted
> an objective, rational search of the work already done in this regard,
> you would have noted the works of Michel Gauquelin, who set out to
> disprove astrology, but ended up finding statistically relevant data
> which proved that it does work.

On the contrary, I spent several minutes of my talk discussing the "Mars
effect," though I did not, in fact, discuss the other positive effects
that Gauquelin discovered.  It is difficult to know what his motives were,
though he reportedly later admitted he was hoping to find a positive
effect.  In fact, he did discredit some of the research of his colleagues.
I think Gauquelin was an honest researcher, and I gave my opinion of the
results of his research, and clearly stated that this was my opinion.  But
Gauqelin's motives are almost irrelevant here.  If conducted properly,
scientific research should, in the long run, get the right answer, though
our biases can certainly blind us all and cause us to produce biased
research.

> Furthermore, handing out random "horoscopes" to an audience of people
> and asking them to pick the one that fits them is not a proper,
> scientific, objective method of quantifying astrology's results.
>
> Each person has a specific horoscope which applies only to them, based
> upon their date of birth, exact time of birth, and the latitude and
> longitude of where they were born.  A "real horoscope" takes all of the
> planets into account in this way, not just the placement of the sun
> sign, which I assume you used exclusively.

As I stated during my talk, as well as to my students when I did it in
class, this is a valid scientific test of tropical natal sun-sign
astrology, and nothing more.  I never presented it as anything more.
Millions of people believe that sun-sign astrology is valid, so it seems
reasonable to test such a widely held belief. I also clearly stated during
my talk that my methods say nothing about other astrological systems.  But
I did discuss several other tests of astrology that have been done,
including Gauqelin's.

Your objection seems to be that I have not tested whatever brand of
astrology you happen to believe in.  True enough, but I don't know all the
details of what you believe in.  If you would like me to conduct a test of
your astrological system, that could be arranged. But even astrologers
disagree on the methods that are best to use (for example, do you use
sidereal or tropical signs?  What is the relative importance of angles,
of longitude and latitude, and so on), so that each version of astrology
must be tested separately.

> The only truly scientific method that would yield valid results, if
> that is one's true motive, is to compute the personal exact horoscope
> for each person to be studied and to compare the results with the
> person's real-life personality and experiences.

As I have said, different people have different methods of computing
horoscope.  I can tell you where all the planets and large moons were when
you were born, but to convert this into a personality profile is not
trivial.  If you want to conduct a test, I think that could be arranged.
It would not be very hard to do, I think, though it would take a dedicated
astrologer to do the bulk of the work.  Are you an astrologer?  If so, I
think we could set up a fairly simple experiment that would allow you to
test whatever astrology system you believe in.  I could write up the
results in a way which, I think, would be acceptable to you, keeping my
personal opinion to a minimum.  All we have to do is agree on a protocol,
which shouldn't be too difficult.

> People like you, so-called professors, members of the elite academic
> good old boy's club, who promulgate lies, half-truths, and distortions
> in order to confirm what you want to confirm, not what the facts
> actually present, should be stripped of your honors and be sent back to
> school to learn what you have obviously missed in your previous schooling.

What lies did I promulgate?  It happens that I am a professor of physics,
and teach at a university.  I suppose if you doubt my credentials I could
verify them, but I don't think that is what you doubt.  My talk contained
my opinions, but I clearly delineated between what I thought were valid
statistical tests and my own opinions.

> Remember, Mr. Carlson, one hallmark of a truly scientific study is
> objectivity.  This is something you have blithely ignored.  No doubt the
> religious background and influence of your stupid university supports
> the laughable results of your biased, unscientific, so-called study.
> Good for you and the rest of your narrow-minded ilk.  Ignorance must be
> bliss.

I do not believe my university had anything to do with what I said,
neither the university where I teach, nor either of the universities where
I got my degrees.  My current institution has a Baptist background, and I
think my degree universities had secular and Congregationalist
backgrounds, but I don't see what this has to do with anything.  I do not
think ignorance is bliss; this is why I teach.

> Disgustedly,
>
> {name deleted}


I am sorry that you are "disgusted" with my talk; I really did my best to
be fair to those who believe in astrology. I think it is true that many
skeptics dismiss astrology without knowing the facts.  I know some things,
but not everything, about astrology, though I am hardly an expert. For
example, the criticism that astrologers use the tropical rather than the
sidereal calendar is a rather weak and old criticism.  The lack of a
plausible mechanism I think is a real challenge to astrology, especially
if it wants to be accepted as a science.  Nonetheless, it is possible to
test and even validate astrology without having the mechanism specified.
This is, I think, the approach Gauquelin took.  So I am willing to test
it.

Perhaps if you had heard my talk, you would have been less disgusted.
I talked about the lack of a plausible mechanism in astrology, which is
appropriate, since I am a physicist, but then went on to say that it is
experimental tests that are relevant, more than the absence of a plausible
theory.  I did my best to explain synchronicity, but at the same time,
made it clear that I could not really adequately defend the concept.
I mentioned Gauquelin, I said his results supported astrology, I explained
several criticisms of Gauquelin, and some of his criticisms of those
criticisms.  What was unfair in this?

May I ask why you DON'T believe in simple sun-sign astrology?  Maybe
because you were taught that it is nonsense.  Well, I have evidence that
it is nonsense - I have done valid tests, or at least, they seem pretty
good to me.  If you are an astrologer, or know an astrologer, we could
devise an experiment and do a similar test of this astrologer's ability
or system. I promise to be honest in gathering the data and so on at my
end, and I promise to report the results of the test, whatever the
outcome.  I can do statistics well enough that I think we can reach
agreement about the statistical significance of the results.  I can't
guarantee publication of the results - I don't control any journals - but
I think we could get it published.

Let me know if you are interested in collaborating in this endeavor.

Eric Carlson

RESEARCHERS CHALLENGE CLAIMS LINKING FAITH, HEALTH
"Even in the best studies, the evidence of an association between
religion, spirituality and health is weak and inconsistent..."

                                                                 *

An article in the current issue of the prestigious British medical
journal The Lancet questions claims which attempt to link religious
belief with good health.  While faith and religion may offer comfort
to the ill, say the authors, there is no good scientific evidence that
they cure disease or improve one's medical health.

The study, "Religion, Spirituality, and Medicine" is authored by Dr.
Richard P.  Sloan, a psychologist , and colleagues E.  Bagiella and T.
Powell, all associated with Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in
New York City.  They conducted "a comprehensive, though not
systematic, review of the empirical evidence" concerning claims
linking religion and positive health, and also explored the ethical
dimension of the related issues.  Their conclusions are sure to stir
more controversy in what has become a lively debate in both the
medical and public policy spheres.

>From Bible tales of miraculous healings to the new age claims linking
"spirituality" and "wellness," the role of religion and the human
condition has often divided believers and sober empiricists.  Mary
Baker Eddy founded the Christian Science movement, for example, and taught
the alleged curative benefits of spiritual intercession, even going to
the extreme of claiming "The less we know or think about hygiene, the
less we are predisposed to sickness."  More mainstream claims, though,
linking faith and medical healing avoid that extreme, and suggest that
spiritual faith and wellness are associated and/or causal.

Naturally, there's plenty of misinformation -- a gap between the
claims of those who promote the view that "religion is good for
health" (including some medical professionals) and those who caution
or reject that view altogether, finding empirical evidence of such
assertions to be wanting.  Even so, along with interest in "natural
healing" as an alternative to hard medicine, there is widespread
belief that prayer or other religious ritual can be physical
beneficial.

Dr.  Dale Matthews, author of the popular book "The Faith Factor,"
treks around the country addressing doctors, medical students, nurses
and clergy.  His message is simple: "Doctors need to pay attention to
the fact that having a strong faith has an actual medical benefit."
Matthews and others who agree with that premise often cite studies to
bolster their case, such as the report of 4000 North Carolinians age
65 and over which supposedly found that those who participated in
religious activities were 40% less likely to exhibit high blood
pressure and the associated risks of heart problems.  A "holistic" web
site also claims, "Research has shown that religious people are less
depressed, have healthier immune systems and deal better with
addictions than the non-religious."

There is also an abundance of anecdotal claims, much akin to reports
of "healings" from Lourdes, or even the Sunday televangelist's
broadcasts where people are "slain with the spirit" and cured of their
physical maladies.  Astounding stories of cancer remissions are
popular, although skeptics point out that misdiagnosis can occur.
Even if there are such remissions, is it due to the intervention of a
spiritual being?  Or prayer?  For critics, the claim is indeed a leap
of faith.

But these beliefs linking spirituality and good physical health
persists.  As Sloan and his colleagues note, a recent poll of American
adults found that 79% of respondents believed that religious faith can
assist in recovery from diseases.  63% opined that physicians should
discuss the issue of spiritual faith with their patience (a fact which
the Sloan paper questions from an ethical perspective), while 48% of
those admitted to hospitals "wanted their physicians to pray for
them."  The Lancet article likewise points out that "Nearly 30 US
medical schools include in their curricula courses on religion,
spirituality and health."  Even more astounding are surveys which
claim that physicians themselves seem to exhibit high confidence in
the curative powers of faith.  At an October, 1996 meeting of the
American Academy of Family Physicians, 99% of those responding to a
survey "were convinced that religious beliefs can heal," while another
75% "believed that prayers of others could promote a patient's
recovery."  Even with the possible bias that physician- believers were
more likely to respond to the survey, it is still a significant and
disturbing figure.

                                      Investigating Faith Claims

How good is the evidence for the claims purportedly linking faith and
physical health?

The Lancet article suggests that these assertions are riddled with
errors, and often oversimplify the very issues which need to be
probed.  Variables such as "age, sex, education, ethnicity,
socioeconomic status and health status may have an important role in
the association between religion and health," Sloan and his co-authors
point out.  Reports which support claims of a link between faith and
good health need to present all of these variables in a dispassionate,
empirical way.  "Reports that fail to do this are incomplete and can
be misleading."

One example involves studies on the health of those in directed
religious service -- Catholic priests, nuns, monks and others in the
faith profession -- and an associated reduction in morbidity.  Sloan
argues that any correlation here may be an artifact of researcher
bias, since the subjects of such studies "are inclined to strict
adherence to codes of conduct that proscribe behaviors associated with
risk" like consumption of alcohol or meat, smoking, "psychosocial
stress" or other variables.  It would helpful to see this study
compared to a comparable examination of, say, atheists who engaged in
similar lifestyle choices and did not smoke, or avoided other risky
behaviors.  Would faith and belief still be a significant variable?

Maybe not.  One study discussed in Sloan's paper involved a comparison
between secular and religious Kibbutzim groups which asserted that
"all-case mortality" was higher in the secular group.  This study
controlled variables such as location, use of the same hospital and
age (over 40).  Does that demonstration the kind of link, however,
that many "faith healers" would have us believe?  Sloan urges caution,
saying that these groups "differed with respect to dietary habits,
smoking, blood cholesterol concentrations, and marital status,"
factors which even the study authors acknowledged.  "The multivariate
analysis of mortality did not control for these factors."

   Other medical studies come in for close scrutiny by Sloan and his
associates...

* Surveys in Alameda County and Tecumseh County linked attendance at
religious services with low mortality.  After control "for all
revenant covariates," though, the relation held only for women.  Why?
A similar study tried to link church going with "increased functional
capacity in the elderly."  Again, "after control for all relevant
covariates," the relationship appeared for only 3 of the 7 years of
data which were collected.

* Prosaic reasons rather than divine intervention or some hidden
benefit of religious belief may account for some statistical outcomes.
One can only wince in disbelief over assertions linking church
attendance with "reduced capacity (and poor health)."  Naturally,
those with better health and capacity are probably better able to make
the trek to church or, indeed, any other activity.  This is comparable
to arguing that participation is soccer games immunizes one from
broken legs, because of the low percentage of soccer players on the
field who exhibit such a malady.  Really!

* Under "failure to control for multiple comparisons," the Sloan study
argues that "Many studies on religion and health fail to make an
adjustment for the greater likelihood of finding a statistically
significant result when conducting multiple statistical tests."  One
study, for instance, claimed an association between attendance at
religious services and high levels of interleukin-6 in the elderly.
Sloan notes that the levels of interleukin-6 was only one of eight
possible variables, "and there was no attempt to control for multiple
comparisons."  A subsequent study found no significant association.

* In "Conflicting findings," The Lancet articles notes that published
works in scholarly journals lack "consistency, even among
well-conducted studies."  One study may find "some effects" linking
involvement with religious activities and functional capacity, but no
similar association with the "private, reflective" aspects.  In other
words, prayer itself may not help if it is done in the privacy of
one's home, whereas going to church could produce a different outcome.
What might account for this?  More revealing is that fact that other
studies show no clear relationship between church attendance and
"lower morality," or may suggest that relationship only for one group
such as women.

Experimental replication is a crucial part of the scientific method.
Claims must be testable if they stand any chance of having merit and
passing peer review .  Indeed, the history of psuedoscience and "bad"
science is littered with the debris from "one shot" experiments or
questionable studies involving everything from cold fusion to curative
powers of specific substances.

                          Ethical Concerns: Should Physicians "Push Fai
News accounts of The Lancet article carried by Reuters, Bloomberg or
other media dealt mostly with Sloan's refutation of sloppy empirical
studies and their related claims, but paid scant attention to the
concern over ethical issues.  Sloan and his associates warn, "When
doctors depart from areas of established expertise to promote a
non-medical agenda, their abuse their status as professionals."
Indeed, this same caution should be extended to scientists or others
who exploit their credentials in one area, say biology or astronomy,
to support questionable political or religious positions.  Should
doctors be making inquiries "into a patient's spiritual life" because
of an improperly founded belief linking faith and good health?  Should
a physician "ask patients what he or she can do support their faith or
religious commitment" as one writer advocates?

Along with the issues of exploiting credentials to influence patience
or exceeding the proper limits of medication intervention, Sloan also
raises the possibility of doing actual harm -- a course of action
explicitly proscribed in the Hippocratic Oath.  "Linking religious
activities and better health outcomes can be harmful to patients, who
already must confront age-old folk wisdom that illness is due to their
own moral failure."  We are, as a society, hopefully well beyond the
stage of "blaming the victims" of medical misfortune whether it
involves a broken limb or psychological disorders.  The "faith-
health" nexus threatens to appropriate medical diagnosis in the
service of making unfair moral judgments about patients.

As for discussing religion in the context of health, Sloan agrees that
there is no ethical objection to "co-worshippers" raising these issues
together.  But when one visits a dentist, internist, general
practitioner, specialist or any other medical professional, one does
not expect "spiritual guidance" or a religious lecture.
Unfortunately, The Lancet piece -- published in a British journal --
does not touch on the potential legal problems of turning physicians
(especially those in public hospitals, or paid by public funding such
as Medicare) into religious advocates.  Attention also needs to be
paid to the issue of having public universities or colleges promote
any faith-based healing agendas.  Inevitably, that curriculum would
likely reflect the biases of the predominant religion, Christianity,
or focus on trendy "new age" or "native" claims of spirituality or
wellness.

"Even in the best studies, the evidence of an association between
religion, spirituality, and health is weak and inconsistent,"
concludes Dr.  Sloan's paper.  He and his team find that it is
"premature" to promote religious belief as an adjunct of medical
treatments, though they do admit that belief "can bring comfort to
some people coping with illness."  Measuring somewhat amorphous
concepts like "pain," or "a feeling of well-being," especially in a
clinical and hospital environment, is tricky at best, and highly
subjective.  It may be that people who claim deep religious faith
describe their symptoms and fortunes in a different way from, say, the
non-religious; but that does not automatically translate into
causative agents which relate to measurable levels of blood chemistry
or other findings.

Finally, there are plenty of things which people might do as part of
their "lifestyle decisions" which, divorced from any religious belief
system or context can have positive and therapeutic effects on health.
Sloan cites simple (though not always easy) decisions to stop smoking
or eating a sensible low-fat diet as steps in that direction.  As for
the assertion that religious belief is good for health, The Lancet
article indicates that those who advance the claim have yet to
demonstrate its validity through rigorous empirical evidence.

                                                                 **

(Editor's Note: The Lancet article may be found on the publication's
web site at www.thelancet.com.  In addition, AANEWS readers may wish
to explore this issue further by reading to recent articles by Kevin
Courcey which appeared in the American Atheist Magazine.  "Trying to
Make a Case for Faith Healing" appeared in the Spring, 1997 issue, and
"Touched By a Feeling And High on Believing" was carried in the
autumn, 1998 edition.  Both are online at
http://www.americanatheist.org.

Forwarded message from James Randi-Wizard:
------------------
Last weekend I spoke at a gathering of the CultInfo group, who are
trying to fill the gap left by the loss of the Cult Awareness Network
(CAN) that went bankrupt and then saw their files sold to the Church
of Scientology -- a disaster, by any standards.  Scientology is a
ruthless, destructive, and vindictive organization.  I understand that
the former officials of CAN are trying in the courts to get back the
rights to the title, at least, so that there can be no confusion about
who you're speaking to or dealing with when you contact CAN, which is
careful not to notify you that you're actually in touch with one of
the most dangerous cults that exists today, rather than an
organization that is dedicated to keeping you out of such a group.

I'd always been a bit uneasy with the original CAN, having discovered
that it was prone to switch victims of cult recruitment into a
mainstream religion, rather than into a basic, responsible,
straightforward approach to reality.  Perhaps it was felt that these
unfortunates just needed another approach to mysticism, and that
"organized" religions were less harmful that the philosophy offered by
the "cults."

I discovered that the CultInfo group was of this opinion, and had a
distinct "rescue" mentality that encouraged surrender to Jesus Christ
rather than to any living guru.  Sorry, folks, but the major
differences I see between "orthodox" religions and "cults," are:

         Cults don't always state up front what their agendas are;
         religions usually do.

         Cults are, generally, much more likely to impose tight control
         over their members.

         Cults are blatantly "surrender"-oriented, demanding EVERYTHING
         from the recruits.  Money, freedom, rights of all sorts, are
         given over, and mind-control is imposed.  Religions, in
         general, allow physical and financial freedom.

That's my opinion.  And, right up front, when I addressed the CultInfo
gathering, I made my opinion known.  I knew, without doubt, that I
would alienate a large segment of the organization, and I did.  At one
point, I said to the group, "There are many of you here today who
believe that a man named Moses went up a mountain and later came down
with some stone tablets that had been engraved by a deity, especially
for him, giving ten rules of correct behavior to his Chosen People --
and that this same man also parted the Red Sea with a gesture of his
hand, to allow those same folks to flee an army.  There are others who
believe that a god named Xenu brought all of the criminals from the
galaxy to Earth 75 million years ago, dumped them in volcanos, dropped
in hydrogen bombs, and captured their souls on tape.  [This was a
reference to Scientology, which does make this claim] I ask you, which
is the more believable scenario?"  Well, that brought heavy silence
and frowns from my audience, not to my great surprise.

Immediately after my talk, while some of the listeners boldly pressed
my hand and murmured that they agreed with me, I was confronted by one
woman who upbraided me for having doubted the Moses-on-the-mountain
scene.  "Why, Mr. Randi, there were three million Israelites right
there, and they saw the whole thing happen!" she exclaimed.  "How can
you doubt that many witnesses?"  I will not pursue this argument with
you, but it dismays me to find otherwise bright and capable people
engaging in what they think is actually serious reasoning.

The Sunday morning session of the CultInfo group was, to me, the most
touching part of the whole weekend.  Three former cult members, among
them one who had excoriated me the previous evening, gave their
accounts of escaping from their respective cult associations.  They
brought tears to my eyes, and I was genuinely sympathetic to their
terrible experiences.  They had given up everything, pinned their
lives on quite insane philosophies, and had come out of that captivity
in helpless condition.  They were broken, broke, and injured.  My
heart went out to all of them.

There were two general problems voiced at this conference: how do we
rescue those who have fallen into the cult trap, and how do we prevent
it from happening in the first place?  I observed that there was MUCH
more emphasis on the first situation, which is understandable.  But
their answer to the second problem seemed to be to get people into a
more "acceptable" group, rather than teaching them to think critically
about ALL the philosophies that are offered them.  I have serious
problems with the CultInfo approach, but the results of their efforts,
the solace and real help they are able to give to cult victims,
outweighs the conflicts I may have with their approach.

At JREF, we're proposing that prophylaxis is vastly preferable to
medication.  Young people equipped and encouraged to THINK about
matters, critically but not cynically, will be better able to direct
their lives and face reality.  That's our opinion.

CultInfo shook me up.  They're good people, doing a good job.

                                 Randi


****************************************
Subscribe to SWIFT!
****************************************
SWIFT our quarterly (hardcopy) newsletter, is $10/annum Checks payable
to JREF (address below).  Tax deductible in the USA. Overseas, add $6 for
airmail.

****************************************
SUBSCRIBING/UNSUBSCRIBING:
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****************************************
CONTACTING RANDI
****************************************
James Randi Educational Foundation phone: +1 954 467 1112
201 SE Davie Boulevard 	 fax: +1 954 467 1660
Fort Lauderdale FL  33316-1815  http://www.randi.org
U.S.A.

General questions:  randi@...

Mail directly to Randi:  JamesRandi@...

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****************************************
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ftp.ssr.com is the home of the hotline, but we are very over loaded,
so we are pleased to hear that Anson's archives are back on line:

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Thanks to Anson Kennedy and Massimo Macucci for providing the ftp
sites at netcom and unipi.it.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 18 Feb 1999 11:50:43 -0500
From: "P. A. Lamal" <palamal@...>
To: tasc-owner@onelist.com
Subject: Re: [tasc] meeting tomorrow, and TV show

Fellow TASC members-
Last night's NBC special "Confirmation: The Hard Evidence..." (the title
gives the game away) was indeed not balanced. Does anyone have an e-mail
address so we can respond?
    Peter Lamal

*** Snakebite orphans keep family ties

NEWPORT, Tenn. (AP) - Five children who were orphaned when their
mother and snake-handling evangelist father died of snake bites were
put in the custody Friday of both sets of grandparents, one of whom
is also a serpent-handling preacher. Juvenile Court Judge John Bell
settled a dispute over custody of the youngsters, ages 4 to 12, by
deciding they will spend the school year with grandparents in Georgia
and vacations with grandparents in Tennessee. The judge warned the
grandparents to keep the youngsters away from churches where serpents
are handled. The children's maternal grandparents had argued the
youngsters would be safer with them. They do not belong to a
snake-handling church. See
http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2558430590-10e




Regards,

Joe Needham <Net.Skeptix@...> ICQ UIN: 1674329
Business Home Page: http://members.xoom.com/jneedham/
Internet Skeptics:  http://members.xoom.com/jneedham/skeptics.html
Skeptics Forum blank email to: skeptics-forum-subscribe@onelist.com

At 05:55 PM 2/14/99 -0500, you wrote:
>From: Eric Carlson <ecarlson@...>
>
>Thanks for all the help/responses I have already received requesting help
>writing my essay.  Here is the rough draft of my essay, let me know if you
>have suggestions.  I am sorry I have incorporated only a tiny fraction of
>your suggestions so far, but the Journal is brutal on limiting the length
>of letters to the editor, and I doubt they will publish another guest
>column from me any time soon.  So here it is.
>
>Eric Carlson
>ecarlson@...
>
>*********************************
>
>Frequently we see in this newspaper letters from those who reject most
>Christians because they do not accept the Bible as literally true.
>Literalists feel compelled to reject evolution and accept an Earth less
>than 10,000 years old, disregarding physics, biology, geology,
>paleontology, history, and indeed half of science.  Surely abandoning
>these is a small price to pay for knowing the truth of the Bible.
>
>But why do literalists stop there?  The Bible clearly states that the
>Earth stands still (Ps. 104:5) while the Sun goes around it (Josh.
>10:12-14, Isa. 38:7-8, Job 9:7).  Throw away those astronomy texts!  The
>Earth is also flat, with ends (Deut. 33:17, I Sam. 2:10, Job 28:24, Ps.
>22:27, Ps. 48:10, Is. 40:28) and corners (Job 37:3, Isa. 11:12, Ezekiel
>7:2, Rev. 7:1).  Your globe and map don't show them?  Throw them in the
>fire!  Does Isa. 55:12 really say that trees have hands?  Don't trust your
>lying senses to tell you otherwise.  Does 2 Ch. 4:2 say that pi is equal
>to three?  Forget any math you ever learned.  And what about
>contradictions?  Gen. 1 says the animals were created before people, while
>Gen. 2 says people were created before animals.  Matt. 1:16 says Joseph's
>father was named Jacob, while Luke 3:23 gives it as Heli.  Logic and
>reason dictate that a book that contradicts itself must contain errors.
>So?  Abandon logic and reason, you won't need them.
>
>Surely giving up all rational thought is a small price to pay for
>accepting the Bible as absolutely, literally true.  Otherwise we might be
>forced to love our neighbor as ourselves, rather than despising him for
>not accepting the Truth.
>
>

Eric,
You have done a good job of composing your letter, and I will look up the
references with interest. However, were I in your position, I would be
rather uncomfortable about engaging in such a religious debate. I certainly
do not think that it will endanger your position at Wake, as another writer
suggested, but I am pessimistic about the possibility of engaging
literalists in a rational debate that might convince them to question their
beliefs.  It is more likely that they will simply see this as an attack.

If a productive debate on this issue is possible, and I am not sure that it
is, it seems to me that the first impression that the letter must convey is
one of respect for people's religious beliefs. ( Referring to those with
different beliefs as "fundies" and questioning their education is not a
good starting point, in my opinion.) Perhaps the best second step is simply
an invitation to discuss/explain certain points in the bible that
apparently contradict science as we know it or that contradict the bible
itself. If this second step is not rhetorical or judgemental, but genuinely
asks for a thoughtful response, then perhaps it will encourage people to
think openly about their response. We should not be surprised if some
people will look at the same passages and see no contradiction.

Also, a question that some past writers have asked, that you have not
addressed, is "How is it possible to be a Christian if you do not accept
the bible as the literal word of god?" These writers see it as an all or
nothing proposition. I find it difficult to offer advice on this issue,
since I am not a Christian. Perhaps you do have something thoughtful to say.

Good Luck,
Steve


P.S. Your talk on Astrology was excellent.
----------------------------------------------

Stephen B. Robinson
Department of Mathematics and Computer Science
Wake Forest University

(336) 758-4887
robinson@...
http://www.mthcsc.wfu.edu/~robinson/

Thanks for all the help/responses I have already received requesting help
writing my essay.  Here is the rough draft of my essay, let me know if you
have suggestions.  I am sorry I have incorporated only a tiny fraction of
your suggestions so far, but the Journal is brutal on limiting the length
of letters to the editor, and I doubt they will publish another guest
column from me any time soon.  So here it is.

Eric Carlson
ecarlson@...

*********************************

Frequently we see in this newspaper letters from those who reject most
Christians because they do not accept the Bible as literally true.
Literalists feel compelled to reject evolution and accept an Earth less
than 10,000 years old, disregarding physics, biology, geology,
paleontology, history, and indeed half of science.  Surely abandoning
these is a small price to pay for knowing the truth of the Bible.

But why do literalists stop there?  The Bible clearly states that the
Earth stands still (Ps. 104:5) while the Sun goes around it (Josh.
10:12-14, Isa. 38:7-8, Job 9:7).  Throw away those astronomy texts!  The
Earth is also flat, with ends (Deut. 33:17, I Sam. 2:10, Job 28:24, Ps.
22:27, Ps. 48:10, Is. 40:28) and corners (Job 37:3, Isa. 11:12, Ezekiel
7:2, Rev. 7:1).  Your globe and map don't show them?  Throw them in the
fire!  Does Isa. 55:12 really say that trees have hands?  Don't trust your
lying senses to tell you otherwise.  Does 2 Ch. 4:2 say that pi is equal
to three?  Forget any math you ever learned.  And what about
contradictions?  Gen. 1 says the animals were created before people, while
Gen. 2 says people were created before animals.  Matt. 1:16 says Joseph's
father was named Jacob, while Luke 3:23 gives it as Heli.  Logic and
reason dictate that a book that contradicts itself must contain errors.
So?  Abandon logic and reason, you won't need them.

Surely giving up all rational thought is a small price to pay for
accepting the Bible as absolutely, literally true.  Otherwise we might be
forced to love our neighbor as ourselves, rather than despising him for
not accepting the Truth.

At 09:16 AM 2/14/99 -0500, you wrote:
>From: Eric Carlson <ecarlson@...>
>
>Fellow Skeptics,
>
>I am thinking of writing an essay or letter to the editor to our
>local newspaper here, the Winston-Salem Journal.  Being in the Bible belt,
>there are occasional letters published explaining that if you don't take
>every word in the Bible literally, you aren't Christian.  I was hoping for
>some help from you all on references and so on.  I have a rather different
>perspective, though I consider myself Christian.
>
The fundies will be after your heathen ass if you publish an essay like
that.  Winston Salem is full of fundies who make cigarettes.  There will be
letters to the editor for 6 months.  There will be demands that Wake Forest
University can your butt too.  If you can handle all of that then it might
be fun for you.
>
>I would like help on at least two items, and you are welcome to comment on
>others.
>
>First, I know there are quotes from respected religious leaders (such as
>the pope) explaining that the Bible is not about science and literal
>history.  Anyone know one of those quotes?

I have the full text of the Pope's statement in which he upholds evolution
as God's method of creation.  I will be glad to send it to you if you would
like it.  It is a text file.

I always like it when someone makes an anti-Catholic remark about the
Pope's statement.  I get to use the old Foster Brooks line.  "Sound like
you would be happier where there ain't no Catholics.  Why don't you go to
hell!  Ain't no Catholics there." (Yes, I know I am warped.)

>Second, any quotes from the
>Bible that are clearly contradictory with accepted knowledge and common
>sense would be helpful.

I have a text file of Biblical Contradictions also.  Two verses quoted
together with exactly opposite meanings.  If you would like this file I can
send it also.  I have several other text files of similar nature including
quotes from Martin Luther which are bizzar.

>For example, I think I can find the statements
>that the Sun goes around the Earth and the Earth is flat, that pi is equal
>to three, and I know that Genesis 1 and 2 disagree on whether people or
>animals were made first.  I believe that Moses' father's name is given as
>two different things in different places; anyone know where?
>
All of that is included in the Biblical Contradictions file also.
>
>Thanks for helping me out.
>
I just hope I don't help you out of your position at Wake Forest
University.  I am serious about the fundies going ape when they read (those
that can read) your essay.
>
>Eric Carlson
>reply to: ecarlson@...


Regards,

Joe Needham   ICQ : 1674329  AOL Instant Messenger: NetSkeptix
--------
Success is never final.--Winston Churchill, (1874-1965)
--------
Business Home Page:  http://members.xoom.com/jneedham
Internet Skeptics:  http://members.xoom.com/jneedham/skeptics.html
Do NOT let them deceive you with the legitimization of their myth!

Fellow Skeptics,

I am thinking of writing an essay or letter to the editor to our
local newspaper here, the Winston-Salem Journal.  Being in the Bible belt,
there are occasional letters published explaining that if you don't take
every word in the Bible literally, you aren't Christian.  I was hoping for
some help from you all on references and so on.  I have a rather different
perspective, though I consider myself Christian.

I would like help on at least two items, and you are welcome to comment on
others.

First, I know there are quotes from respected religious leaders (such as
the pope) explaining that the Bible is not about science and literal
history.  Anyone know one of those quotes?  Second, any quotes from the
Bible that are clearly contradictory with accepted knowledge and common
sense would be helpful.  For example, I think I can find the statements
that the Sun goes around the Earth and the Earth is flat, that pi is equal
to three, and I know that Genesis 1 and 2 disagree on whether people or
animals were made first.  I believe that Moses' father's name is given as
two different things in different places; anyone know where?

Thanks for helping me out.

Eric Carlson
reply to: ecarlson@...

Anyone on the Skeptics-forum list who lives in Britain (or is visiting)
is invited to the following event.

_______________

The Association for Skeptical Enquiry (ASKE),
The Skeptical Intelligencer magazine,
and The Skeptic magazine
present

Britain's only regular skeptics event

SKEPTICS IN THE PUB

7.30 pm, Thursday February 18, 1999.

Our speaker for February is the journalist, author, and
founding editor of The Skeptic magazine

WENDY GROSSMAN

'My Life As A Skeptic'

Upstairs in the Florence Nightingale pub,
199 Westminster Bridge Road, SE1, London, U. K.
(junction with York Road, on the roundabout).
Conveniently located near Waterloo station.
Guest ales and food available. Free entry. Non-skeptics welcome.

The talk will be followed by informal discussion in a relaxed and
friendly pub atmosphere.

Skeptics in the Pub is a regular evening (usually on the third Thursday)

for all those interested in science, pseudo-science, the paranormal,
Fortean phenomena, alternative medicine, creationism, aliens, psychic
powers, angels, cult religions, postmodernism, spoon-bending, lost
civilizations, etc.

Upcoming talks:
Thursday March 11: Wayne Spencer - 'Don't Believe Everything You Feel:
     The Need For Critical Thinking & Proper Testing in Alternative
Medicine'.
Thursday April 15: Mike Hutchinson - 'Bizarre Beliefs'.
Thursday May 20: Dr. Richard Wiseman (Dept. of Psychology, Univ. of
     Hertfordshire) - 'Investigating the Paranormal: A Skeptical
Perspective'.

Skeptics in the Pub, ASKE and The Skeptic are all non-profit
organizations.

Further information is available from Dr. Scott Campbell on 0171 862
8686.
E-mail: Scott.Campbell@....

http://linus.mcc.ac.uk/~moleary/ASKE/pub.html
http://www.skeptic.org.uk

Apologies if you receive this notice more than once.



__________________________________
Dr. Scott Campbell, Philosophy Programme,
School of Advanced Study,
University of London, Senate House,
Malet Street, London, WC1E 7HU, U.K.
or: Department of Philosophy,
University College London,
Gower Street, London, WC1E 6BT.
Ph: 0171 862 8686 (Uni); 0181 342 8389 (H)
[Overseas callers add 44 and drop the first 0]
E-Mail: scott.campbell@...
__________________________________

Forward From James Randi, Wizard
----------------------------------------------------
To those of you who are members of the 2000 Club....

Since recently announcing that the 2000 Club would end -- as
originally planned -- on January 1, 2001, I have been overwhelmed with
responses from all over the world.  Here is one representative
example, written by a European couple who have been "aboard" since the
challenge was first suggested:

"I'm dismayed to learn that we won't have the continued opportunity of
participating in the challenge to those out there who offer insult to
our good common sense.  We certainly want to be heard, and we will
miss this chance to be represented."

Well, it appears that we will have to re-establish the challenge --
this time in perpetuity -- to give you all a chance to remain an
integral part of what I propose to rename the "One-Million-Dollar
Psychic Search."  This name will give our Challenge much wider appeal
to the general public.

As you may know, a number of challenge claimants have argued that The
James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF ) is unable to meet the
proposed obligation.  In order to bring stability to the Psychic
Search, an anonymous donor has established a US$1,000,000 account --
specifically for the prize offer -- with Goldman Sachs in the form of
negotiable bonds.  In this way, the account's annual interest is used
for general support of JREF.

I must thank you for your continued loyalty.  Your prompt response to
being told that the 2000 Club would end, was most gratifying, and
brought me great joy in knowing how many of you are so passionate
about your participation.  The 2000 Club will continue now as a
program of The James Randi Educational Foundation.

It occurred to me that we have never issued a report about the
results-to-date of the Challenge.  The number of applicants has been
huge, though eligible claimants have been limited.  All have failed
the tests.  The next issue of SWIFT will feature a summary of current
activities, so that you can read about the impact of your generosity
and support.  And, of course, you are always free to drop by the
Foundation and consult the thick books of claimants.

Thanks!

****************************************
Subscribe to SWIFT!
****************************************
SWIFT our quarterly (hardcopy) newsletter, is $10/annum Checks payable
to JREF (address below).  Tax deductible in the USA. Overseas, add $6 for
airmail.

****************************************
SUBSCRIBING/UNSUBSCRIBING:
****************************************
Send an empty mail message to JREFInfo-help@... for details.

****************************************
CONTACTING RANDI
****************************************
James Randi Educational Foundation phone: +1 954 467 1112
201 SE Davie Boulevard 	 fax: +1 954 467 1660
Fort Lauderdale FL  33316-1815  http://www.randi.org
U.S.A.

General questions:  randi@...

Mail directly to Randi:  JamesRandi@...

****************************************
BACK ISSUES OF THE HOTLINE:
****************************************
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ftp.ssr.com is the home of the hotline, but we are very over loaded,
so we are pleased to hear that Anson's archives are back on line:

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    <ftp://ftp.mindspring.com/users/anson/randi-hotline>

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Thanks to Anson Kennedy and Massimo Macucci for providing the ftp
sites at netcom and unipi.it.

SKEPTICAL INQUIRER ELECTRONIC DIGEST
  February 3, 1999

  SI Electronic Digest is the biweekly e-mail news update of the Committee for
the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP.) Visit
  <A HREF="http://www.csicop.org/">http://www.csicop.org/</A>.  Rated one of
the Top Ten Science Sites on the Web by HOMEPC magazine.

  The Digest is written and edited by Matthew Nisbet and Barry Karr. SI Digest
  has over 3000 readers worldwide, and is distributed via e-mail from the
Center for Inquiry-International, Amherst NY, USA.

  To subscribe for free to the SI DIGEST, go to:
  <A HREF="http://www.csicop.org/list/">http://www.csicop.org/list/</A>

  PERMISSION IS GRANTED TO REPRINT OR REPOST ON THE WEB.  WE ENCOURAGE
TRANSLATION INTO OTHER LANGUAGES.

  PLEASE FORWARD TO YOUR FRIENDS.
  Send comments, media inquiries and news to:
  SINISBET@... (716-636-1425 x219)

  CSICOP publishes the bimonthly SKEPTICAL INQUIRER, The Magazine for Science
and Reason.  The Jan/Feb 1999 issue features a Special Report on Armageddon
and the Prophets of Doomsday.

  To subscribe at the $17.95 introductory Internet price, go to:
  <A HREF="http://www.csicop.org/si/subscribe/">
http://www.csicop.org/si/subscribe/</A>

  In this week's SIDIGEST:

  --CSICOP to Appear on The Learning Channel's "Strange Science"
  --Failed Psychic Predictions Release Gains Widespread Media Attention
  --CSICOP Visits Kansas State, Kansas City, St. Louis and Springfield, IL
  --Joe Nickell Lecture, Book Signing, and Master's Tea at Yale University
  --OPINION: Should Managed Care Cover Alternative Medicine?

  CSICOP TO APPEAR ON THE LEARNING CHANNEL'S "STRANGE SCIENCE"

  This week, the Learning Channel is running a series titled "Strange Science,"
an hour episode appearing each week night from 10-11pm EST.  Check your local
listings.

  The series features several CSICOP fellows and consultants, notably
psychologist Barry Beyerstein in "Bizarre Phenomena," and investigator Joe
Nickell in "Unusual People."  For those that missed the episodes earlier this
week, they will be replayed Sunday afternoon from 1-6pm EST.

  Reviews of the programs can be posted at http://www.csicop.org/cmi.

  2/1 Monday: Bizarre Phenomena
  2/2 Tuesday: Weird Places
  2/3 Wednesday: Mysterious Skies
  2/4 Thursday: Unusual People
  2/5 Odd Sounds

  2/7 Repeat of the entire series from 1-6pm

  _____________________

  FAILED PSYCHIC PREDICTIONS GAIN WIDESPREAD MEDIA ATTENTION

  Coverage of Gene Emery's annual failed psychic predictions has been
overwhelming.  The summary of 1998 failed predictions has been syndicated by
the L.A. Times,  mentioned in an editorial in the San Fran Chronicle,
highlighted by Eric Zorn in his Chicago Tribune column, and covered by many
other newspapers across the country.  Emery has also done over two dozen radio
interviews with the media requests continuing to pour in.

  All this probably pales in comparison to coverage of next year's "End of the
Millenium Failed Psychic Predictions" that Emery hopes to release in the fall.
Stay tuned.

  CSICOP VISITS KSU, KANSAS CITY, ST. LOUIS AND SPRINGFIELD, IL

  CSICOP Public Relations Director Matt Nisbet will be touring parts of the
Midwest February 11-15.  He'll be meeting with college students, members of
local skeptics groups and the local media.  At several venues he will be
giving a presentation titled "Skeptics Versus The X-Files: The Media and the
Paranormal."  Using video clips and slides, Nisbet reviews how the media
portrays science and the paranormal, tackles the immensely popular series The
X-Files, highlights research linking media presentations of the paranormal and
viewer belief and reviews efforts by CSICOP, scientists and skeptics to work
for better media coverage of science and the paranormal.

  --On Thursday evening, February 11, as part of the Skeptical Inquirer Lecture
series offered to colleges across the U.S. and Canada, Nisbet will be
presenting at Kansas State University.  The talk will take place at 7pm in the
Flint Hills Room of the KSU Student Union.  Contact jef4219@... for more
information.

  --On Saturday February 12 at 730pm, Nisbet will be at the Center for Inquiry-
Midwest in Kansas City, MO.  The Center is housed in the United Labor
Building, 6301 Rockhill Rd, Suite 412.

  --On Sunday afternoon, Nisbet will be in St. Louis to present at a meeting
sponsored by the Gateway Skeptics and the Rationalist Society of St. Louis.
You can catch him at 2pm at the University City Library, 6701 Delmar,
University City, MO 63130.

  --On Monday, he'll travel to Springfield, IL to give a presentation sponsored
by the Rational Examination Association of Lincoln Land (REALL).  The talk
will be held at 7pm at the Lincoln Library in Springfield.  Call the REALL
hotline number for more information at 217-726-5354 and check out their
website at www.reall.org.

  Everyone is encouraged to turn out for the events in their area.  It promises
to be a provocative and informative presentation and a great way to find out
more about the international efforts of CSICOP.  For more information, call
716-636-1425 X219.

  __________________


  NICKELL LECTURE, BOOK SIGNING AND MASTERS TEA AT YALE UNIV.

  The following is a press release put out by the newly launched Yale Skeptics
Society, a student group at Yale University.  It details CSICOP Senior
Research Fellow Joe Nickell's visit to the campus Feb. 20-24.
  __________________________________
  PRESS RELEASE
  FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
  Contact:
  Chris Mooney, (203) 436-1725
  Lukas Halim, (203) 436-1085


  "Original Ghostbuster" Visits Yale

  Joe Nickell to Share Tales of his Paranormal Investigations with
  the Yale Community


  New Haven, CT -- Joe Nickell, leading paranormal detective, will be paying a
visit to Yale University later this month.  Popularly known as "the modern
Sherlock Holmes," "the original ghostbuster," and "the real-life Scully,"
Nickell has investigated all varieties of mysteries, frauds, forgeries, and
hoaxes, from the crop circles in Wiltshire, England to the Shroud of Turin.

  A former stage magician and private detective, Nickell serves on the
Editorial Board of Skeptical Inquirer magazine, for which he writes the column
"Investigative Files."  The author of over fifteen books, Nickell has
discussed his investigations in numerous forums, including "Larry King Live,"
"Oprah," the "Jerry Springer Show," "Unsolved Mysteries," "Politically
Incorrect," and "NBC Dateline."

  Nickell will be the guest of the newly formed Yale College Skeptics Society,
Yale's Silliman College, the New England Skeptics Society, the Connecticut
Humanist Association, the Yale Law School Science and Technology Society, and
the Yale College Society of Humanists, Atheists, and Agnostics.

  Yale Skeptics President Lukas Halim commented, "Mr. Nickell is a rare
specimen -- a skeptic and detective celebrity.  He blends the great legacy of
Carl Sagan with that of a Sherlock Holmes."

  A forensics expert, Nickell is also touring to discuss his recent book _Crime
Science_, which discusses the art and science of detective work.  _Crime
  Science_ uses examples from headline-grabbing investigations such as the O.J.
  Simpson case to demonstrate the importance of solid science in building
criminal cases.

  In _Crime Science_, Nickell and co-author John Fischer also discuss the death
  of Marilyn Monroe, the Lindberg kidnapping, the assassination of the Romanovs
and the Atlanta child murders.  They explain how police use fingerprints,
fiber and DNA analysis and casts made from impressions of footprints to
identify suspects.

  Nickell will be in New Haven from February 20-24.  On Monday, February 22 he
will have lunch with the Yale Law School's Science and Technology Society at
12:30 pm, followed by a book-signing for _Crime Science_ at the Yale Bookstore
at 4:00 pm (77 Broadway Avenue, in New Haven).  Monday evening, he will
deliver a lecture on "Investigating the Paranormal" for students, at 8:00 pm
in William L. Harkness Hall, Room 119.

  On Tuesday, February 23 at 4:00 pm, Dr. Nickell will give a Master's Tea at
Yale's Silliman College to discuss his paranormal investigations with
students.

  To arrange interviews with Nickell, or for more information, contact Chris
Mooney, (203) 436-1725.

  _____________________________


  OPINION: SHOULD MANAGED CARE COVER ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE?

  CSICOP fellow Dr. Stephen Barrett is a leading expert on alternative health
claims.  He is the author or editor of some thirty books, a contributing
editor to the Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine and editor of
Nutrition Forum.

  Barrett is creator and manager of the Web's leading source on alternative
medicine htttp://www.quackwatch.com, and has just launched the Web's best
source on chiropractic, http://www.chirobase.org.

  Barrett is profiled in the January, 25 issue of People magazine.  "Doctor No.
Considering Treatments that Sound Too Good to be True?  Quackbuster Stephen
Barrett Has a Word for You: Don't" pg. 119.   http://www.people.com

  In the following commentary, Barrett tackles the important issues surrounding
alternative medicine and managed care.
  _____________________________________________________

  Should Managed Care Companies Cover "Alternative Medicine?"
  Stephen Barrett, M.D.
  http://www.quackwatch.com

  Should "alternative medicine" be incorporated into managed care? Should
  managed-care organizations be free to decide this for themselves, or should
outsiders dictate what gets covered?

  "Alternative medicine" has become the politically correct term for
questionable practices formerly designated as health frauds and quackery. Some
techniques referred to as "alternative" may be appropriately used as part of
the art of patient care. Relaxation techniques and massage are examples. But
procedures linked to
  unscientific belief systems have no place in responsible medicine -- or
managed care.

  Definitional Problems

  The biggest problem in discussing this subject is that "alternative" has many
possible meanings. The dictionary definition is a choice between mutually
exclusive possibilities. Until the late 1980s, in standard medical usage, the
word "alternative" referred to choices among effective treatments. In some
cases they were equally effective (for example, the use of radiation or
surgery for certain cancers); in others
  the expected outcome differed but there were reasonable tradeoffs between
risks and benefits. During recent years, however, the term has been applied to
a multitude of unsubstantiated methods that differ from standard (science-
based) care. Jack Raso, R.D., who edits Nutrition Forum newsletter, has
catalogued nearly a thousand of these.

  The best way to minimize confusion is to classify alternatives as genuine,
experimental, or questionable. Genuine alternatives are comparable methods
that have met science-based criteria for safety and effectiveness;
experimental alternatives are unproven but have a plausible rationale and are
undergoing responsible investigation; and questionable "alternatives" are
groundless and lack a scientifically plausible rationale.

  Whether some approaches are valid depends not only on their methods but
  how they are used and what claims are made for them. Spinal manipulation, for
example, can be useful in properly selected cases of low-back pain. But
manipulating the spine once a month for "preventive maintenance" or to promote
general health -- as many chiropractors recommend -- is senseless. Relaxation
techniques have a limited but acceptable role in the treatment of anxiety
states. But biofeedback for "mind expansion" or meditation for "balancing life
energy" are another matter.

  Managed Care Implications

  Although patient demand is a factor, most managed-care coverage is determined
by evidence of effectiveness and cost-effectiveness. The program that Dean
Ornish, M.D., developed for people with coronary heart disease illustrates how
this selection process should work. Ornish's approach includes smoking
cessation, stress-management techniques, daily exercise, and a 10%-fat
vegetarian diet. This program is novel because its dietary fat level is half
the lowest level the American Heart Association recommends for people
unresponsive to less stringent
  cholesterol-control measures. Ornish has documented his findings in a
scientific manner, using before-and-after measurements of coronary blood flow
and publishing his results in peer-reviewed scientific journals. His work is
sufficiently promising that Mutual of Omaha is testing whether his approach is
an economical alternative to bypass surgery or angioplasty in carefully
selected patients. If his program proves to be cost-effective, you can bet
that third-party payers will embrace it.

  Coverage can also be dictated by state or federal laws. Most states have
"insurance equality laws" requiring chiropractic coverage under various
circumstances. A few require coverage for acupuncture, and the state of
Washington recently ordered inclusion of naturopathy and massage therapy as
well. The impact of such laws depends on how much is covered, who provides it,
and how the coverage is structured. Many insurance companies forced to cover
chiropractic services have been displeased with the results.

  Chiropractic leaders misrepresent the significance of workers' compensation
studies which found that patients treated by chiropractors were more satisfied
and returned to work sooner than patients treated medically. These studies did
not scientifically validate what the chiropractors did and were not designed
for that purpose. Although most contain data appearing to favor chiropractic,
their authors did not evaluate whether the patients had comparable problems.
In addition, the
  duration and costs of disability and time lost from work are influenced by
factors other than effectiveness.

  In 1995, the New England Journal of Medicine published a study comparing the
cost of low-back pain treatment by family physicians, orthopedists, and
chiropractors in North Carolina. The median total charges were $545 by urban
chiropractors, $383 by orthopedists, $348 by rural chiropractors, $214 for
rural primary-care physicians, and $169 for urban primary-care physicians.
Although chiropractors charged less per visit, their treatment was costlier
because they saw their patients about five times as often [1].

  Additional data have been collected at the Group Health Cooperative, a staff
model HMO in Madison, Wisconsin. Dan Futch, D.C., chief of chiropractic
practice, has found that the patients he sees require an average of three
visits per episode, considerably fewer than the average reported for
chiropractors in other settings. Futch is also executive director of the
National Association for Chiropractic Medicine, a small group of medically
oriented chiropractors and chiropractic students who have renounced
chiropractic's unscientific dogma.

  Many chiropractors believe that after a painful condition resolves, patients
should continue indefinitely for "maintenance care." Many also believe that
every spine should be examined and adjusted monthly or weekly throughout life.
No evidence exists that either of these approaches benefits patients. Managed
care can limit overutilization by excluding chiropractors who practice
unscientifically and setting limits on the rest. Rather than raising their
standards, chiropractors are filing lawsuits and asking legislators to break
down managed-care barriers.

  Can Oil and Water Mix?

  Dr. Futch's experience demonstrates that scientifically oriented
chiropractors (a tiny minority of practitioners) can be integrated into
managed care. What about acupuncturists, homeopaths, naturopaths, and
unscientific chiropractors?

  Acupuncture involves stimulation of the skin at designated points.
Traditional practitioners claim to balance the body's "life force" by
inserting needles (or using other modalities) where imaginary horizontal and
vertical lines ("meridians") meet on the surface of the body. These points are
said to represent various internal organs (some of which are nonexistent).
Some practitioners reject the pseudoscientific trappings and postulate that
pain relief occurs through mechanisms such as the production of endorphins. I
do not believe that acupuncture is cost-effective for any purpose or
influences the course of any organic disease.

  Homeopathy is based on the notion that symptoms can be cured by taking
infinitesimal amounts of substances that, in larger amounts, can produce
similar symptoms in healthy people. Homeopaths also claim that the more dilute
the remedy, the more powerful it is. Some "remedies" are said to be so dilute
that no molecule of the original substance remains, only an "essence" that
cures by bolstering the body's "vital force." I do not believe that
practitioners who prescribe only placebos can fit into a science-based health-
care team.

  Naturopathy is based on the belief that diseases are the body's effort to
purify itself and that cures result from enhancing the body's ability to heal
itself. Naturopathic treatments can include "natural food" diets, vitamins,
herbs, tissue minerals, cell salts, manipulation, massage, exercise,
diathermy, colonic enemas, acupuncture, and homeopathy. Like some
chiropractors, many naturopaths believe that virtually all diseases are within
the scope of their practice. I don't see how practitioners involved in so much
nonsense can fit into a science-based health-care team.

  Chiropractic encompasses a broad spectrum of practices related to the false
premise that spinal misalignments ("subluxations") are the cause, or
underlying cause, of most ailments. Chiropractic's founder postulated that the
body's "vital force," which he termed "Innate," expresses itself through the
nervous system. Chiropractors who cling strictly to this notion allege that
subluxations cause most illnesses by interfering with the flow of "nerve
energy" to body organs. Most chiropractors acknowledge the importance of other
factors in disease but tend to
  regard mechanical disturbances of the nervous system as an underlying cause.
Many chiropractors engage in unscientific diagnostic procedures, prescribe
inappropriate food supplements, and utilize homeopathic remedies. Small
percentages denounce chiropractic's basic dogmas, spurn its unscientific
practices, and confine their practice to musculoskeletal problems. Thus while
virtually all chiropractors manipulate the spine as their primary method of
treatment, their rationale and techniques vary considerably. Many homeopaths,
naturopaths, and chiropractors are lukewarm or opposed to immunization.

  Key Questions

  Can unscientific practitioners be subjected to utilization review and other
quality-control measures? Can practitioners immersed in "vital forces,"
"subluxations," and similar concepts provide high-quality care for their
patients? Should practitioners who oppose proven preventive measures be
permitted to practice within a managed-care setting? (Even worse, should they
be permitted to be their own gatekeepers?) If treatments are ineffective, is
there any evidence that allowing subscribers to use them will reduce the
overall cost of their health care?

  My answer to each of these questions is no.

  Reference

  1. Carey TS and others. The outcomes and costs of care for acute low back
pain among patients seen by primary care practitioners, chiropractors, and
orthopedic surgeons. New England Journal of Medicine 333:913-917, 1995.

  --30--


Regards,

Joe Needham <Net.Skeptix@...> ICQ UIN: 1674329
Business Home Page: http://members.xoom.com/jneedham/
Internet Skeptics:  http://members.xoom.com/jneedham/skeptics.html
Skeptics Forum blank email to: skeptics-forum-subscribe@onelist.com

The following is an excerpt from The Real Romance of the Stars, an
article written by zoologist and first holder of the Simonyi Chair of
Public Understanding of Science at Oxford, Richard Dawkins.  This
section deals with the relationship between science and astrology.

The article was originally written for The Independent on Sunday, a
"heavyweight" British national weekly newspaper, and printed on December
31st, 1995.  The article was reprinted in full in The Astrological
Journal Vol 38. No 3, (May/June 1996).  In an editorial explaining the
reprint, Robin Heath, BSc, wrote:

         "There are important reasons why its re-publication is
         necessary: firstly, our overseas members are unlikely to have
         read this important text. Secondly, Dawkins's words need to be
         picked over carefully by astrologers who wish to understand
         better the mind that refutes astrological lore. Finally, the
         article is now presented in a more permanent form than a
         yellowing newspaper cutting."

The full text of the article is at:
http://www.astrologer.com/aanet/jomay.html#dawkins

There is also a rebuttal for astrology by Nick Campion in the document
at that address.

There is a comprehensive archive of Dawkinsiana at:

http://www.spacelab.net/~catalj/

++++
[The numbers 1-4 in brackets in the text refer to footnotes at the end
of the text.]

On a moonless night when the only clouds to be seen are the Magellanic
Clouds of the Milky Way, go out to a place far from street light
pollution, lie on the grass and gaze out at the stars.[1] What are you
seeing? Superficially you notice constellations, but a constellation is
of no more significance than a patch of curiously shaped damp on the
bathroom ceiling. Note, accordingly, how little it means to say
something like "Uranus moves into Aquarius". Aquarius is a miscellaneous
set of stars all at different distances from us, which have no
connection with each other except that they constitute a (meaningless)
pattern when seen from a certain (not particularly special) place in the
galaxy (here). A constellation is not an entity at all, not the kind of
thing that Uranus, or anything else, can sensibly be said to "move
into".

The shape of a constellation, moreover, is ephemeral. A million years
ago our Homo erectus ancestors gazed out nightly (no light pollution
then, unless it came from that species' brilliant innovation, the camp
fire) at a set of very different constellations. A million years hence,
our descendants will see yet other shapes in the sky, and their
astrologer (if our species has not grown up and sent them packing long
since) will be fabricating their oracles on the basis of a different
zodiac.

A far more rapid astronomical shift is the precession of the
equinoxes.[2] My birthday (26 March) is listed in the papers as Aries
but this is the sun sign which somebody with my birthday would have had
when Ptolemy codified all that stuff. Because of the precessional shift
of  approximately one whole zodiacal sign over the AD era, my sun sign
is in fact (if you can call it a fact) Pisces. If astrologers were doing
something that had any connection with reality, this presumably ought to
make a difference. Since they aren't, it doesn't. Scorpio could go
retrograde up Uranus and it wouldn't make any difference.

Actually, of course, only planets can "go retrograde", and even then it
is an illusion. As they, and we, orbit the sun, planets will on occasion
appear to reverse their direction from our point of view. But these
occasions have no significance. From a third planet they would be seen
to "go retrograde" at different times. Planets do not really "wander",
and certainly not remotely near any constellation, which are the distant
backdrops of our viewpoint. Even if "going retrograde" or "moving into
Aquarius" were real phenomena, some thing that planets actually do, what
influence could they possibly have on human events? A planet is so far
away that its gravitational pull on a new-born baby would be swamped by
the pull of the doctor's paunch.[3]

No, we can forget planets going retrograde, and we can forget
constellations except as a convenient way of finding our way around.
What else are we seeing when we gaze up at the night sky? One thing we
are seeing is history. When you look at the great galaxy in Andromeda
you are seeing it as it was 2.3 million years ago and Australopithecus
stalked the African savannah. You are looking back in time. Shift your
gaze a few degrees to the nearest bright star in the constellation of
Andromeda and you are seeing Mirach, but much more recently, as it was
when Wall Street crashed. The sun, when you see it, is only eight
minutes ago. But look through a large telescope at the sombrero Galaxy
and you are seeing a trillion suns as they were when your tailed
ancestors peered shyly through the canopy and India collided with Asia
to raise the Himalayas. A collision on a larger scale, between two
galaxies in Stephan's Quintet, is shown to us at a time when on Earth
dinosaurs were dawning and the trilobites fresh dead.

Name any year in history and there will be a star up there whose light
gives you a glimpse of something happening that very year.  Whatever the
year of your birth, somewhere up in the night sky you could find your
birth star (or stars, for the number is proportional to the third power
of your age). Its light enables you to look back and  see a
thermonuclear glow that heralds your birth. A pleasing conceit, but that
is all. Your birth star will not deign to tell  anything about your
personality, your future or your sexual compatibilities. The stars have
larger agendas, in which the  preoccupation's of human pettiness do not
figure.

Your birth star, of course, is yours for only this year. Next year you
must look to another shell of stars, one light year more distant. Think
of this expanding bubble as a radius of good news, the news of you
birth, broadcast steadily outwards. In the Einsteinian universe in which
most physicists now think we live, nothing can in  principle travel
faster than light. So, if you are 50 years old, you have a personal news
sphere of 50 light years radius. Within that sphere  it is in principle
possible (obviously not in practice) for news of your existence to have
permeated. Outside that sphere you might as  well not exist - in an
Einsteinian sense you do not exist. Older people have larger existence
spheres than younger people, but nobody's  existence sphere extends to
more than a tiny fraction of the universe. The birth of Jesus may seem
an ancient and momentous event to  us. But the news of it is actually so
recent that, even in the most theoretically ideal circumstances, it
could in principle have been  proclaimed to less than one 200-million
millionth of the stars in the universe. Many, if not most, of the stars
out there will be orbited by planets. The numbers are so vast that
probably some of them have life forms, some have evolved intelligence
and technology. Yet the distance and times that separate us are so great
that thousands of life forms could independently evolve and go extinct
without it being possible for any to know of the existence of any other.
The real universe has mystery enough to need no help from obscurantist
hucksters.

Scientific truth is too beautiful to be sacrificed for the sake of light
entertainment or money. Astrology is an aesthetic affront. It cheapens
astronomy, like using Beethoven for commercial jingles. By  existing law
neither Beethoven nor nature can sue, but perhaps existing law could be
changed. If the methods of Astrologers were really shown to be valid it
would be a fact of signal importance for science. Under such
circumstances astrology should be taken seriously  indeed. But if - as
all indications agree - there is not a smidgen of validity in any of the
things that astrologers so profitably do,  this, too, should be taken
seriously and not indulgently trivialised. We should learn to see the
debauching of science for profit as a crime.

I must make the usual defence against a charge of scientific arrogance.
How do I know that there is no truth in astrology? Well, of course I
don't know. I can't prove that there is nothing in horoscopes,  any more
than I can prove that there is nothing in the (rather more plausible)
theory that chewing gum causes mad cow disease. There  just isn't any
evidence in favour (of either theory), and no reason why we should
expect there to be evidence. It isn't as though it  would be difficult
to find evidence for astrology, if there were any to be had. It wouldn't
take anything like that blissful cartoon in  which a newsreader
announces: "In a major breakthrough for the science of astrology, all
people born under Scorpio were yesterday run  over by egg lorries."[4] A
statistical tendency, however slight, for people's personalities to be
predictable from their birthdays, over  and above the expected
difference between winter and summer babies, would be a promising start.

For us to take a hypothesis seriously, it should ideally be supported by
at least a little bit of evidence. If this is too much to ask, there
should be some suggestion of a reason why it might be worth bothering to
look for evidence. Graphology, as a means of reading
personalities, is not supported by evidence either, but here the
possibility that it might work is not hopelessly implausible a priori.
The brain is the seat of the personality and the brain controls
handwriting, so it is not in principle unlikely that style of
handwriting might betray personality. It seems almost a pity that no
good evidence has  been forthcoming. But astrology has nothing going for
it at all, neither evidence nor any inkling of a rationale which might
prompt us to  look for evidence. Astrology not only demeans astronomy,
shrivelling and cheapening the universe with its pre Copernican
dabblings. It is also an insult to the science of psychology and the
richness of human personality. I am talking about the facile and
potentially damaging way in which astrologers divide humans into 12
categories. Scorpios are cheerful, outgoing types, Leos with their
methodical personalities go well with Libra's (or whatever it is). My
wife, Lalla Ward, recalls an occasion when a more than usually brainless
hanger-on approached the director of the film they were working on with
a "Gee, Mr Preminger, what sign are you?" and received  the immortal
rebuff, "I am a do-not-disturb sign." We love an opportunity to
pigeonhole each other but we should resist the temptation. Are you an
introvert or an extrovert? Does your body shape betray an endomorphic, a
mesomorphic or an ectomorphic  personality? "The ectomorph is much more
of an introvert and more shrewd and calculating".

Personality is a real phenomenon and psychologists (real, scientific
psychologists, not Freudians or Jungians) have had some success
in developing mathematical models to handle many dimensions of
personality variation. The initially large number of dimensions can
be mathematically collapsed into fewer dimensions with measurable, and
for some purposes conscionable, loss in predictive power.
These fewer derived dimensions sometimes correspond to the dimensions
that we intuitively think we recognise - aggressiveness,
obstinacy, affectionateness and so on. Summarising an individual's
personality as a point in multidimensional space is a serviceable
approximation whose limitations can be measured and are known. It is a
far cry from any mutually exclusive categorisation, certainly
far from the preposterous fiction of astrology's 12 dumpbins. It is
based upon genuinely relevant data about people themselves, not
their birthdays. The psychologist's multidimensional scaling can be
useful in deciding whether a person is suited to a particular career,
or a couple to each other. The astrologer's 12 pigeonholes are, if
nothing worse, a costly and irrelevant distraction. Lonely hearts
advertisers frequently insert astrological references alongside relevant
information such as musical tastes or sporting interests, and
may even insist that the partner they are looking for must be, for
instance, Taurus. Think of what this means. The whole point of
advertising in such columns is to increase the catchment area for
meeting sexual partners (and indeed the circle provided by the
workplace and by friends of friends is meagre and needs enriching). It
is nothing short of ludicrous then to go out of your way to
divide the available number of potential partners by twelve. Lonely
people, whose life might be transformed by a longed for
compatible friendship, are deliberately encouraged, by their reading of
astrological quacks in the newspapers, wantonly and pointlessly
to throw away 11/12ths of the available population. This is not just
silly, it is damaging, and the quacks concerned deserve our
censure as strongly as their deluded victims deserve our pity.

There are some stupid people out there, and they should be pitied not
exploited. On a famous occasion a few years ago a newspaper
hack, who had drawn the short straw and been told to make up the day's
astrological advice, relieved his boredom by writing under
one star sign the following portentous lines: "All the sorrows of
yesteryear are as nothing compared to what will befall you today." He
was fired after the switchboard was jammed with panic-stricken readers,
pathetic testimony to the simple trust people can place in
astrology.

The American conjuror James Randi recounts in his book Flim Flam how as a
young man he briefly got the astrology job on a Montreal newspaper, making up
the horoscopes under the name Zo-ran. His method was to cut out the forecasts
from old astrology magazines, shuffle them in a hat, distribute them at
random among the 12  zodiacal signs and print the results. This was very
successful of course (because all astrology works on the "Barnum principle"
of saying things so vague and general that all readers think it applies to
them.) He describes how he overheard in a cafe a pair of office workers
eagerly scanning Zo-ran's column in the paper. "They squealed with delight on
seeing their future so well laid out, and in response to my query said that
Zo-ran had been 'right smack on' last week. I did not identify myself as
Zo-ran... Reaction in the mail to the column had been quite interesting, too,
and sufficient for me to decide that many people will accept and rationalise
almost any pronouncement made by someone they believe to be an authority with
mystic powers. At this point, Zo-ran hung up his  scissors, put away the
paste pot, and went out of business.""

My case is that Randi was morally right to hang up his scissors, that serious
newspapers should never give named astrologers the oxygen of publicity, that
astrology is neither harmless nor fun, and that we should fight it seriously
as an enemy of truth. We have a Trade Descriptions Act which protects us from
manufacturers making false  claims for their products. The law has not so far
been invoked in defence of simple, scientific truth. Why not? Astrologers
provide as good a test case as could be desired. They make claims to forecast
the future, and they take payment for this, as well as for professional
advice to individuals on important decisions. A pharmaceuticals manufacturer
who marketed a birth-control pill that had not the slightest demonstrable
effect upon fertility would be prosecuted under the Trade Descriptions Act,
and sued by trusting  customers who found themselves pregnant. If astrologers
cannot be sued by individuals misadvised, say, into taking disastrous
business decisions, why at least are they not prosecuted for false
representation under the Trade Descriptions Act and driven out of business?
Why, actually, are professional astrologers not jailed for fraud?

Footnotes.

1. This is carrying poetic licence too far in a Northern Hemisphere
paper. The Magellanic Clouds are visible only in the Southern
Hemisphere! R.D.

2. Many astrologers are aware of precession but, instead of updating
their methods, they prefer the lazy escape of 'tropical
astrology' in which one uses zodiacal constellations as labels for the
patch of sky where they would have appeared years ago.
R.D.

3. The physics here is more complicated than can be spelled out in a
general article. Two influences could theoretically be
involved, direct gravitational attraction and tidal effects. In terms of
direct gravitational attractions (which obey Newton's Inverse
Square Law), an average doctor would be outweighed by all but the most
distant members of the solar system. Tidal effects are
another matter and they are far more important. They amount to
distortions of the earth's gravitational field and obey an inverse
cube law, instead of the usual inverse square law. The doctor's body
would have greater tidal effects on a new-born baby than
any heavenly body (see I.W.Kelly, J.Rotton & R.Culver, 1985, The
Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. 10, No.2, pp 129-143. R.D.

4. I am aware that this is a joke against `naive sun sign' astrology
which is shunned by other astrologers. It is, of course, sun sign
astrology's well-heeled practitioners in newspapers and on television
that I am attacking as exploitative charlatans. If there is
good evidence (i.e. better than the often quoted but non-robust
Gauquelin attempt) that some other kinds of astrology work, well
and good. I have to say that I'd be extremely surprised. R.D.

Sherilyn
#catch-22 PowerChat: Uncensored channel for astrologers and skeptics
http://www.sidaway.demon.co.uk/astrology/irc/
No ops, no kicks, no bans, no limits.  Just talk.

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This message was posted on sci.skeptic and takes a pot shot at "The Blind
Watchmaker" by Richard Dawkins.  "The Blind Watchmaker" is an excellent
book regarding evolution and citing evidence for evolution.  The person who
posted this message is a biblical literalist with whom I am familiar from
previous encounters.
--------------------------------------------

The Blind Gunman
by David A. Demick, M.D.

http://www.icr.org/pubs/imp/imp-308.htm

>It is held by evolutionists that genetic mutations are an avenue of positive
>change in living organisms. For example, Richard Dawkins' book, The Blind
>Watchmaker, seeks to establish a godless cosmos of chance in which the
>appearance of design in life has occurred by accident, by the incremental
>accumulation of positive changes in genes. His evidence relating to
>biochemical genetics, however, consists of theoretical models of little
>relevance to the real world. Thus, the question remains: What do we actually
>see in the world around us when we use scientific tools of measurement and
>observation? Do we see this "blind watchmaker" at work in any real-life
>examples, or do we see the opposite? The purpose of this article is to
>demonstrate the poverty of evolutionary theory to explain the facts in one
>well-researched area of biology—that is, the area of human genetics. It will
>show how the facts unearthed by this research show mutations to be, not a
>"blind watchmaker," but more truthfully analogous to a "blind gunman."

[snip]

---

David Buckna

This message was posted to the newsgroup sci.skeptic by
mailto:tezza@... (Terry Walters)

Since this is a discussion list and not just an announcement list I thought
I would pass it along to see if it would generate some discussion.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------

Debunkers have one serious problem to overcome.   They must be able to
debunk ALL claims of extraterrestrial existence.

If they can only debunk 99999999 out of 100000000 reported
experiences, then there still remains one experience that defies
explanation.  Conversely, it only takes one experience for each
individual to prove the UFO phenomenon true.

The arrogance of debunkers is astounding.  They can call as many
people as they like to be 'liars' but somewhere, someone is telling
the truth.  Why should anyone HAVE to step forward to prove what they
experienced...? If every debunker across the world is waiting for
'proof' then they might be waiting a long time indeed.   Why should
debunkers assume a superiority of belief that insists unless something
happens to them, it can not happen at all...?

Keep an open mind you debunkers and try researching claims that are
being made.  Remember that you have to prove ALL of them false before
you can truely claim victory.  You need to be the most hard working
and vigilant people on Earth to do this properly. UFO believers only
need to be satisfied with one proof, nothing more.   Thanks.

There are two more of those "please forward to everyone you know" type of email
going around currently.

The first one claims that Congress will be voting on a bill that will allow
phone companies to make a charge each time one connects to the Internet.  This
one is not true.  You can read the article debunking this email urban legend
message at http://snopes.simplenet.com/spoons/faxlore/congress.htm.

The other email urban legend is a warning about the dangers of aspartam.  It
charges that aspartam causes many illnesses and that the government, in cahoots
with the manufacture, is covering it up.  This email urban legend is also
false.  You can read the article debunking this message at
http://snopes.simplenet.com/spoons/faxlore/aspartam.htm.

I guess the thing that amazes me most is that people uncritically believe these
forwarded messages and pass them along to others.





Regards,

Joe Needham  ICQ 1674329  AOL Instant Messenger: NetSkeptix
===================================================
"Throughout the history of mankind there have been murderers and
tyrants; and while it may seem momentarily that they have the upper
hand, they have always fallen. Always" -- Mahatma Gandhi
====================================================
Business Page:  http://members.xoom.com/jneedham/
Internet Skeptics:  http://members.xoom.com/jneedham/skeptics.htm
Skeptics Forum: skeptics-forum-subscribe@onelist.com

SCIENCE MUSINGS

Barred from science

By Chet Raymo, Globe Staff, 01/25/99

No childrens' book author is more revered than Beatrix Potter.

Her name has an almost fictional resonance, as if she were herself a
literary character: Peter Rabbit, Jemina Puddle-duck, Squirrel Nutkin,
Mrs. Tittlemouse, Beatrix Potter.

But she is real enough, and her books continue to be best sellers nearly
a century after ''The Tale of Peter Rabbit'' was first printed at her own
expense after being rejected by six commercial publishers.

Writing and illustrating childrens' books was not Potter's first passion.
Her early enthusiasm was natural history, and in particular the study of
fungi. If she had been born even a half-century later, we might know her
as a mycologist, an expert on mushrooms. She haunted the woods seeking
new specimens, which she represented in beautiful and scientifically
accurate drawings and water colors.

Potter was the first person in Britain, and one of the first in the
world, to recognize that lichens were composed of two organisms, a fungus
and an alga. Her microscopic study of lichens led her to the conclusion
that the two organisms lived in a mutually advantageous relationship:
symbiosis. The alga took care of photosynthe sis for the pair, converting
sunlight to useful nourishment, she believed; the fungus gave the alga a
safe haven, stored water, and drew minerals necessary for photosynthesis
from the anchoring rock or tree trunk.

In the October 1972 issue of Natural History Magazine, Naomi Gilpatrick
said Potter ''would have liked to discuss her growing portfolio of fungus
and lichen drawings with some of the scientists at the Botanic Gardens.
She had questions to ask - small, moot points that weren't touched upon
in any of the books she had consulted... Her own observations, made not
only in her third-floor study but also on frequent holidays to seacoast
towns with her father, a leisure-class photographer, had brought her to
the forefront of what was known about lichens and fungi.''

But getting anyone in the exclusively male scientific community to listen
to her proved difficult. Her appearances at the Royal Botanic Gardens
were met with snubs by the staff. The scientists at the Museum of Natural
History at South Kensinuton gave her short shrift. At best, someone might
make passing comment on her bonnet.

''They do not seem to be half-sharp,'' she wrote of the scientists in her
coded diary.

Admittedly, Potter was not aggressive in her courtship of the experts;
she could be painfully retiring on her visits to their gardens and
museums, and saved her hurt feelings for her diary. Still, there is a
clear sense that it was her gender that barred her way to a full hearing.

At last, through the helpful influence of her uncle, a chemist, she
managed to have a scientific paper presented at a meeting of the Linnean
Society of London: ''On the Germination of the Spores of Agaricineae,''by
Helen B. Potter. Of course, she was not allowed to read it herself; only
men were allowed to attend the meetings.

This was in 1897, and Potter was growing increasing weary of her role as
ignored supplicant in the house of male science. She turned her artistic
talents and careful observations of nature to the production of books for
children, who responded with immediate enthusiasm.

''The Tale of Peter Rabbit,'' and the many books that followed, gave
Potter a substantial independent income. She married late and happily to
a country solicitor who advised her to put her money into land. She
became a sheep farmer in the Lake District of England, where her
agricultural neighbors were less put off by her gender than the gentleman
scientists of London. They elected her president of the Herdwick Breeders
Association, the first time a woman had ever held that post.

>From babyhood, Beatrix Potter had been interested in the workings of
nature. She collected passionately and sketched everything. She wrote:
''I do not remember a time when I did not try to invent pictures and make
for myself a fairyland amongst the wild flowers, the animals, fungi,
mosses, woods and streams, and all the thousand objects of the
countryside.''

Once, with her brother, she found a dead fox; she skinned it, boiled it
down, and examined the skeleton.

With fewer barriers to her advancement, it is easy to imagine that Potter
might have become a professional botanist, or, combining her skills of
careful observation and literary expression, a successful naturalist and
nature writer. But it was not to be; in the age of John Muir and John
Burroughs, nature writing too was an almost exclusively male preserve,
jealously guarded.

A glance at the Norton Anthology of Nature Writing tells the story.
During the years spanning Potter's life, women authors are sparsely
represented, in spite of the best efforts of the editors to be inclusive.
Not until the latter part of the Anthology - well into the 20th century -
is it chock-full of women naturalists, including such wonderful
contemporary writers as Ann Zwinger, Sue Hubbell, Gretel Ehrlich, and
Terry Tempest Williams.

Of course, no one would wish that Potter's delightful books for children
had not been written. Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail, and Peter have certainly
influenced more lives than her abstruse paper on the germination of
mushrooms.

But it is worth remembering that in her choice of career Beatrix Potter
didn't have the opportunities available to many young women today - and
the science of her time was the poorer for it.

Chet Raymo is a professor of physics at Stonehill College and the author
of several books on science.

This story ran on page C02 of the Boston Globe on 01/25/99. © Copyright
1999 Globe Newspaper Company.

GOD DEBATE II

This is another edition of the Skeptic mag hotline. Permission is granted to
reprint, repost, or forward it.

Last night at the Marriott hotel in San Diego I debated Barry Minkow, pastor
of the Community Bible Church in Mira Mesa and former inhabitant of the
Hardbar Hotel for bilking thousands of people out of millions of dollars in
the famed ZZZZ Best carpet cleaning scam. While in the big house Minkow found
God and, of course, he plays this for all he can, with the oft-told standard
"down in the dumps" conversion story, couldn't have made it out without God,
wretched soul without Jesus, without God all morality reduces to "I screw you,
you screw me, we all screw so easily" (hey, maybe there's a song here), and so
on. He wrote a book about it: "CLEAN SWEEP: A Story of Compromise, Corruption,
Collapse, and Comeback. The Inside Story of the ZZZZ Best Scam...One of Wall
Street's Biggest Frauds." The debate subject and format was the same as
before: DOES GOD EXIST? with Minkow taking the affirmative.  There were about
1,200 people there, standing room only.

I went first and asked for a show of hands of who believes in God. Needless to
say nearly every hand in the place went up. I then asked how many people
believe in the Greek god Zeus, the Roman god Jupiter, the Norse god Odin, the
Aztec god Titlacahuan, the Armenian god Tir, the Finnish god Egres, the Roman
god Lactanus, or any of the Hindu gods. Not a hand went up. So, I pointed out,
all of you are atheists when it comes to these gods. They nodded in agreement.
I then noted that an anthropologist from Mars surveying Earth's flora and
fauna, would find roughly 30 million species, one of which evolved a big
enough brain to conceive of incorporeal monsters, beasts, spirits, demons,
gods, and the like. In the past 10,000 years, the Martian anthropologist
discovers after doing his research that this one species had devised roughly
100,000 religions based on roughly 2,500 gods. So, the only difference between
me and the believers in the audience was that I am skeptical of 2,500 gods
whereas they are skeptical of 2,499 gods. We're only one God away from total
agreement. I then read from the book of Mormon (it was in my hotel room next
to the Gideon bible), talked about the golden plates, the 11 witnesses to the
plates and Smith's testimony, etc., and inquired how many believed it. Not one
Mormon in the group. Why not? I then launched into a discussion of how obvious
it is that religion and belief in God is socially constructed, historically
contingent, and psychologically driven. David Koresh, L. Ron Hubbard, Joseph
Smith, Jesus, Moses, what's the difference? They were all egomaniacal,
delusional characters who developed fanatical followers who exaggerated their
claims, mythologized their lives, and canonized their words. (I mentioned the
new L. Ron Hubbard museum on Sunset Blvd in Hollywood, and the new WHAT IS
SCIENTOLOGY? book, all directed toward exaggerating, mythologizing, and
canonizing Elron for posterity.) I pointed out that there are two creation
stories in Genesis 1 and 2, Adam and Eve were created twice, the first time
together and the second time Eve from Adam's rib. I noted that there were a
lot more than four gospels, including the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of
Love, the Gospel of Wisdom, etc. Therefore, the Bible was obviously an edited
volume. (For all their Bible thumping, Born Again Christians tend to be
remarkably ignorant of the Bible. I suspect most have never actually read it
but rather read only selected passages they are told to read.) I wrapped up
with a general plea that they try thinking for themselves and that they should
not allow themselves to be convinced by either Minkow or me.

I fully anticipated that Minkow would be orders of magnitude livelier than my
last debate opponent, who was a theologian and college professor, and that he
would listen to the tape of that first debate and cue off of it. I was spot on
for both assumptions. Minkow walked the dais using the portable mic, was
remarkably histrionic, and had a number of pre-planned jokes, as well as some
rather clever and funny lines that came up spontaneously. He's obviously
skilled in the art of public persuasion, and throughout the evening, when all
else failed, he would simply spout something about how he knows he's right
because the Bible says so, or because Jesus loves us and died for our sins, or
some other born again platitude, and the audience went wild. I mean they
really went wild, hooting and hollering, standing ovations, whistles...the
works. These people reminded me of the scene in the animated film version of
Animal Farm, where the sheep were blathering "four legs good, two legs bad"
over and over. It was almost that bad. Pathetic, closed-minded, bigotted
wretches spouting biblical passages chapter and verse like automatons.

(Okay, there's a little hyperbole here, but not much. It took me nearly
24-hours to recover from the shock of being, in the words of Moses {and later
Heinlein} "a stranger in a strange land." {Yes, it was Moses who first coined
the phrase, if you can call it that, although I suspect the original Hebrew
doesn't have quite the same ring, but I could be wrong.} So let me give this
caveat: Yes, I know most religious folks are decent people equally repulsed by
the holier-than-thou attitude of the Fundies and Thumpers who KNOW they have
the Absolute and Final Truth and want nothing more than to cram it down your
throat. Most people keep their religion to themselves, and with them I have no
bone to pick. So why is it that these decent folks don't go to debates like
this? My guess is that they are not interested in "proving" their faith. They
know damn well that God cannot be proven and that the whole point of faith is
that it is personal and subjective. So, to all you privately religious readers
on this list, my brush is not so wide.)

Back to the debate: What did Minkow actually say? Unbelievably, he debated the
tape of my previous debate! (I knew he would listen to it and plan his
strategy on it, so I intentionally changed my presentation.) Even though I
never once mentioned evolution (I mean it--the "E" word never left my lips),
Minkow said (I wrote it down and it is on tape), that I said "random
evolution" is how life formed, that I said I "know evolution is true," that I
said "if there is a God more intelligent people would believe" (I never said
any such thing and never even mentioned the subject), and that the Panda's
thumb and male nipple are examples of bad design, not good design (again, all
from the first debate, never mentioned here). It was amazing, he just stood up
there and lied. I don't know if he was thinking that his own followers are so
stupid they wouldn't remember I never said those things just minutes before,
or that I was so stupid I wouldn't point that fact out. (So, of course, I
did.) He then fast forwarded through the design argument, the weak anthropic
principle, irreducible complexity, and "intelligent design," then finished
with this absolute gem of a quote (I don't recall the source) with the preface
that this sums up the problem today: "We have educated ourselves into
imbicility."

In my 12 minute rebuttal I pointed out the absurdity of that final quote on
the heels of a string of educated arguments for God's existence and that it
sounded pretty imbicilic to me to make such a contradictory remark. I then
noted that the topic of the debate is God's existence, not the origin and
evolution of the universe. If that was the topic, then the speakers should be
Kip Thorne from Caltech and Stephen Hawking from Cambridge, because the
subject of the origin and evolution of the universe is an important and
fascinating one in science. Ditto the origin and evolution of life, the origin
and evolution of humans, etc. None of these questions have anything at all to
do with God's existence. I asked him to please offer us some positive evidence
of God's existence since we had yet to hear any. I also noted that even if
scientists are completely wrong about the current theories of the origin and
evolution of the universe, life, humans, etc. it is a logical fallacy to then
assume God's existence. A's falsity has nothing to do with B's veracity. But
for the record, I explained, no scientist EVER said evolution was random.
Evolution is anything BUT random. (Oh, and he used the idiotic analogy that
gets passed around faster than an internet conspiracy theory--the 747
spontaneously forming out of a junk yard.) I finished up by encouraging them
all to learn something about a scientific field before passing judgment on it,
and that I hoped in the remaining time that Minkow would tell us what proof he
had for God's existence.

Since there is none, and I trumped him on the cosmology/evolution arguments,
Minkow was reduced to the tautological argument that the bible proves god
exists (but how do we know the bible is right?--because it was inspired by
God, thus the circularity). He said that because Stalin and Hitler
(nonbelievers) killed more people than the Inquisition (believers), there must
be a God (uh?). He quoted G. K. Chesterton who said something like: "skeptics
can't be trusted" and then wrapped up with the old chestnut "without God there
can be no basis for morality."

In my next rebuttal I explained that the only reason Stalin and Hitler killed
more people than the Inquisition is that Torquemada (sp?) didn't have gas
chambers and machine guns. I then nailed him on the "you can't be moral
without God" argument, announcing in my deepest alpha male voice I could
muster, that this was BULLSHIT. This was probably a mistake (there were some
youngsters in the crowd), but I thought I would experiment with strong
language to see how it sounded. In any case, I reiterated that they should
think for themselves, I suggested that they read books--lots and lots of
books, and that, just for fun, try NOT believing in God for a day or two just
to see how liberating it can be. That got the room really, really quiet!
Probably not the most dramatic ending I could have devised, but that was it.
Minkow finished with a dramatic quote from a WWI atheist soldier in a fox hole
who found god. This, I guess, was the long awaited for proof of God's
existence. But then HE blew it by rambling on after the quote, when he could
have gotten the big ovation there. So I don't think either one of us finished
strong.

The Q & A was the best part as far as I was concerned, because this is where
you get to hear people get passionate about their beliefs and hear what they
are thinking (more data on why people believe . . .). And there were some
beauties. One Jewish guy said he knows God exists because of what the Jews
have been put through for 4,000 years. I said that any  God who is supposedly
all good and all powerful would do that to a people, is no God I want any part
of. (God is a Nazi? What can this argument possibly mean? I'm baffled.)
Another guy actually said (I'm not exaggerating) that if he had not found God
and believed in Jesus he would probably kill me after the debate (then he sort
of snickered and said maybe he would have just beaten me up). There is nothing
scarier than a monomaniacal religious fanatic with a mission to rid the world
of perceived evil. That one was enough to make me think I should swear off
doing any more of these debates. However, I was a little encouraged by a
couple of dozen people who filed past after with kind words and encouragement,
and a couple of e-mails today from people who said I got them thinking. So
maybe planting a little seed of doubt is worth something. I don't know. But
for the most part it sure seemed discouraging looking out at so many people so
certain they are right and everyone else is wrong. So at this point I can't
help but wonder if this sort of activism isn't a waste of time and limited
resources.

Michael Shermer

-----------------------------------
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In this week's SI DIGEST:

In this week's SIDIGEST:

  --SKEPTICS NEWS LINE 1-20-99
  --OPINION: Firing of JAMA Editor Wrong Decision
  --NBC "Confirmation: The Hard Evidence of Aliens Among Us", Feb. 17
  --More On York University and Chiropractic
  --CSICOP Visits Kansas State, Kansas City, St. Louis and Springfield, IL
  --Joe Nickell Lecture and Master's Tea at Yale University
  SKEPTIC'S NEWS LINE 1-21-99

  January 21, 1999  For Immediate Release

  Listed below are story ideas from the Committee for the Scientific
Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal(CSICOP), publisher of Skeptical
Inquirer magazine. If you wish to pursue any these story ideas, contact
Matt Nisbet at 716-636-1425 X 219 or SINISBET@....

  Experts Offer Evaluation of Doomsday Prophecies and Millennial Cults

  A range of claimants that include the Denver-based Concerned Christian
cult, UFO Armageddon watchers, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson have begun
to grab headlines with prophecies of doom as hype and hysteria build
towards the arrival of the next millennium. Yet philosopher Paul Kurtz
observes that the year 2000 is nothing more than an arbitrary date peculiar
to Western culture.

  In an article in the Jan/Feb issue of Skeptical Inquirer, he describes
secular, New Age and religious Armageddon prophecies ranging from global
economic collapse to UFO religions. "When apocalyptic faith is intermingled
with ideology, it can have deleterious social, political, and military
consequences" writes Kurtz. "It is at this point that all those committed
to skeptical inquiry have an obligation to carefully examine those claims
being made about our collective future." Kurtz is founding chair of CSICOP,
the author or editor of thirty books, and a professor emeritus of
philosophy at the State University of New York at Buffalo.

  In the same issue of Skeptical Inquirer, biblical scholar Gerald Larue
traces the social and historical evolution of the beliefs that lie behind
end-time theology. "Apocalyptic literature has special appeal when society
is permeated with social pressures, intellectual conflicts, and
frustration," writes Larue, a professor emeritus at the University of
Southern California. He describes millennialism as a failure of nerve and
the abandoning of hope in human potential to resolve social and ecological
problems.

  Physicians and Scientists Gather in Philadelphia in February to Evaluate
Alternative Medicine

  Alternative medicine has grown into a $16 billion dollar industry, and
physicians and health care managers are under increasing pressure from
patients to prescribe and provide a host of unproven alternative therapies.
What are the scientific critiques of such immensely popular therapies as
homeopathy, acupuncture, chiropractic and naturopathy? What are the ethical
issues involved as alternative therapy use and popularity grow? What are
the legal issues? How do we provide consumers with accurate information
about alternative therapies? What should the scientific community do in
response?

  These are some of the questions that will be posed as physicians and
scientists from across the U.S., Canada, and Europe gather at the CSICOP
co- sponsored conference "Science Meets Alternative Medicine", February
26-28, in Philadelphia, PA. Keynote speeches will include George Lundberg
and NEJM executive editor Marcia Angell. Highlighted will be the newly
launched Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine, the only peer-reviewed
science journal to focus exclusively on alternative medicine.

  Pseudoscience Floods Russia, Thirty-Two Russian Scientists Respond

  With the collapse of the Soviet Union and subsequent profound economic
crisis, science in Russia is in a difficult state. The rampant social
disruption has been accompanied by a veritable flood of pseudoscience. The
rise of irrationality and decline of reason may also be part of a wider
global trend.

  In an article in the Jan/Feb issue of Skeptical Inquirer, Sergei Kapitza,
vice-president of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, raises alarm at
Russian popular belief in cold fusion, shamanism and black magic. The
former editor of the Russian edition of Scientific American, Kapitza
explains Russia's decline as a possible result of a "global intellectual
crisis, through which European civilization is now passing."

  Following Kapitza's article, Skeptical Inquirer re-publishes a statement
by prominent members of the Russian Academy of Sciences. "We,
representatives of many sciences and disciplines--astronomers, physicists,
chemists, biologists, philosophers, lawyers, psychologists--are concerned
by the widespread growth of astrology, alternative medicine, palmistry,
numerology, and mystic pseudoscience in Russia and other countries of the
world...."

  Silicon Valley CEO's Alien Encounter Typical of a Waking Dream, Says
CSICOP Researcher. Cites Majestic Twelve Documents as Forgeries and Roswell
Incident as a Crashed Government Spy Balloon

  On January 9, USWeb founder and former CEO Joe Firmage resigned so he
could promote his claim that today's high-tech advancements are the product
of alien technology. Firmage bases much of his belief on a 1997 incident in
which an alien being appeared to him one morning while asleep in bed. His
on-line alien contact manifesto, http://www.thewordistruth.org, also cites
as further evidence the infamous "Majestic Twelve" documents ( including an
alleged memo from President Truman directing government efforts to
investigate extraterrestrials) and the supposed crash of an alien craft at
Roswell, New Mexico. According to news reports, Firmage has spent $3
million in his pursuit of extraterrestrial notions.

  "Firmage's encounter with an alien while laying in bed is typical of what
is known as a waking dream," says CSICOP Senior Research Fellow Joe
Nickell. "Often people see visions of ghosts, aliens and demons when really
they're experiencing a very vivid dream."

  Nickell, a well-known forensic writer and document investigator, also says
that Firmage has been misled by the Majestic Twelve documents. "It's all
part of American mythology. The documents have been shown to be forgeries,
just like evidence reveals that the alleged alien crash at Roswell was
nothing more than the debris of a government spy balloon."

  Many of these claims and topics have been covered in past articles in
Skeptical Inquirer, a fact duly noted by Nickell. "Firmage could save
himself some time and money by reading our magazine."

  --30--

  Founded in 1976, CSICOP is an international organization of scientists and
academics dedicated to the scientific evaluation of claims of the
paranormal and pseudoscience. CSICOP publishes the bi-monthly journal
Skeptical Inquirer, The Magazine for Science and Reason.  __________________


  OPINION: FIRING OF JAMA EDITOR WRONG DECISION

  ____________


  NBC "CONFIRMATION: THE HARD EVIDENCE OF ALIENS AMONG US?"

  Wednesday, February 17 8PM EST  Check your local listings.

  CSICOP Fellows Phil Klass and Joe Nickell will be featured in a two-hour
NBC special on UFOs and alien abductions.  Prompted by the Whitley Streiber
book of the same title, promos for the program highlight interviews with
abduction enthusiasts John Mack and Bud Hopkins, abduction re-enactments,
and UFO sighting cases.

  Let's hope NBC's treatment of the topic is critical and responsible.
Viewers can post reviews on the Council for Media Integrity website at
http://www.csicop.org/cmi.

  For more on the show, go to: http://www.confirmation.net/confirmationnet.html

  ______________

  MORE ON YORK UNIVERSITY AND CHIROPRACTIC

  In the latest encroach of alternative medicine on campus, the Senate at
York University, the third largest university in Canada, has approved
affiliation with the Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College (CCMC),
potentially becoming the first major university in the world to affiliate
voluntarily with a chiropractic college.

  Faculty members and scientists at York who oppose the affiliation have put
together a website.  Go to:  http://www.ndir.com/chiro

  CSICOP is helping to organize opposition to the affiliation.  Look for a
press release next week.

  The York decision, to be finalized this spring, raises alarm among science
faculty who question heavily the scientific integrity of chiropractic, the
lack of a legitimate research culture in the field, the effect on York's
reputation, and the potentially disastrous influence on the schools ability
to attract research monies and recruit top students and faculty.

  "Will the best science researchers come to York if we should be coloured
as 'the chiro-university'?...Will we get the best students?" York physics
professor Michael DeRobertis asks in a recent article in Canada's
Globe&Mail newspaper.

  In a classic example of the culture of antiscience on university campuses,
the York Senate approved the affiliation over the objections of the Faculty
of Pure and Applied Science(FPAS.)  In debate before the Senate vote, many
Senate members spoke derisively of scientists and science.  Scientists were
called "narrow-minded," "biased," "grant-fixated" as well as "elitist and
unable to admit other ways of inquiry than their own."

  Here's the real kicker:  If the York Senate makes final approval this
spring, the science faculty will be given responsibility for teaching the
new chiropractic students.

  A full report on the matter by York University physics professor Michael
DeRobertis appears in a commentary article in the Fall/Winter 1998 issue of
the Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine.  Copies can be obtained by
calling Prometheus Books at 1800-421-0351.

  As DeRobertis points out at the conclusion of his article, if chiropractic
is granted worldwide legitimacy through affiliation with York University,
can other topics like astrology, aromatherapy, homeopathy, or naturopathy
be far behind?

  You can reach DeRobertis at: mmdr@..., 416-736-2100 ext. 77761.

  IF YOU HAVE CONCERNS AND COMMENTS YOU CAN SEND THEM TO YORK UNIVERSITY.

  Phone, fax or address comments to:

   Dr. M. Elliot   Chair, Senate   S883 Ross Bldg.   York University   4700
Keele St.   Toronto, ON M3J 1P3   Fax: 416-736-5769   Phone: 416-736-5012

   Dr. Michael Stevenson   Vice-President, Academic Affairs   S 938A Ross
Bldg.   York University   4700 Keele St.   Toronto, ON M3J 1P3   Fax:
416-736-5876   Phone: 416-736-5012

  ________________

  CSICOP TO VISIT KANSAS STATE, KANSAS CITY, ST. LOUIS & SPRINGFIELD

  CSICOP Public Relations Director Matt Nisbet will be touring parts of the
Midwest in February.  He'll be meeting with college students, members of
local skeptics groups and the local media.  At several venues he will be
giving a presentation titled "Skeptics Versus The X-Files: The Media and
the Paranormal."  Using video clips and slides, Nisbet reviews how the
media portrays science and the paranormal, tackles the immensely popular
series The X-Files, highlights research linking media presentations of the
paranormal and viewer belief and reviews efforts by CSICOP, scientists and
skeptics to work for better media coverage of science and the paranormal.

  --On Thursday evening, February 11, as part of the Skeptical Inquirer
Lecture series offered to colleges across the U.S. and Canada, Nisbet will
be presenting at Kansas State University.  Stay tuned for time and location
information.

  --On Saturday February 12 at 730pm, he'll be at the Center for Inquiry-
Midwest in Kansas City, MO.  The Center is housed in the United Labor
Building, 6301 Rockhill Rd, Suite 412.

  --On Sunday afternoon, Nisbet will be in St. Louis to present at a meeting
sponsored by the Gateway Skeptics and the Rationalist Society of St. Louis.
You can catch him at 2pm at the University City Library, 6701 Delmar,
University City, MO 63130.

  --On Monday, he'll travel to Springfield, IL to give a presentation
sponsored by the Rational Examination Association of Lincoln Land (REALL).
The talk will be held at 7pm at the Lincoln Library in Springfield.  Call
the REALL hotline number for more information at 217-726-5354 and check out
their website at www.reall.org.

  Everyone is encouraged to turn out for the events in their area.  It
promises to be a provocative and informative presentation and a great way
to find out more about the international efforts of CSICOP.  For more
information, call 716-636-1425 X219.

  __________________

  JOE NICKELL MASTER'S TEA AND LECTURE AT YALE UNIVERSITY

  CSICOP Senior Research Fellow Joe Nickell will be visiting Yale University
on Monday and Tuesday, February 22 and 23.  On Monday, Nickell will be
doing a signing at Yale Bookstore of the latest of his fifteen books _Crime
Science_ , a case study review of forensic and criminal investigation.
Monday evening he'll be giving a lecture open to the public.  Stay tuned
for more details.

  On Tuesday, he will be the subject of a prestigious Hilliman College
Master's Tea, as Nickell meets Yale students and introduces them to the
work of CSICOP and skepticism.  His visit is sponsored by the New England
Skeptical Society
and the recently launched Yale Skeptics.

SKEPTICAL INQUIRER ELECTRONIC DIGEST
  January 21, 1999

  SI Electronic Digest is the biweekly e-mail news update of the Committee for
the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP.) Visit
  <A HREF="http://www.csicop.org/">http://www.csicop.org/</A>.  Rated one of
the Top Ten Science Sites on the Web by HOMEPC magazine.

  The Digest is written and edited by Matthew Nisbet and Barry Karr. SI Digest
  has over 2500 readers worldwide, and is distributed via e-mail from the
Center for Inquiry-International, Amherst NY, USA.

  To subscribe for free to the SI DIGEST, go to:
  <A HREF="http://www.csicop.org/list/">http://www.csicop.org/list/</A>

  PERMISSION IS GRANTED TO REPRINT OR REPOST ON THE WEB.  WE ENCOURAGE
TRANSLATION INTO OTHER LANGUAGES.

  PLEASE FORWARD TO YOUR FRIENDS.
  Send comments, media inquiries and news to:
  SINISBET@... (716-636-1425 x219)

  CSICOP publishes the bimonthly SKEPTICAL INQUIRER, The Magazine for Science
and Reason.  The Jan/Feb 1999 issue features a Special Report on Armageddon
and the Prophets of Doomsday.

  To subscribe at the $17.95 introductory Internet price, go to:
  <A HREF="http://www.csicop.org/si/subscribe/">
http://www.csicop.org/si/subscribe/</A>

  In this week's SIDIGEST:

  --SKEPTICS NEWS LINE 1-20-99
  --OPINION: Firing of JAMA Editor Wrong Decision
  --NBC "Confirmation: The Hard Evidence of Aliens Among Us", Feb. 17
  --More On York University and Chiropractic
  --CSICOP Visits Kansas State, Kansas City, St. Louis and Springfield, IL
  --Joe Nickell Lecture and Master's Tea at Yale University

  SKEPTIC'S NEWS LINE 1-21-99

  January 21, 1999
  For Immediate Release

  Listed below are story ideas from the Committee for the Scientific
Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal(CSICOP), publisher of Skeptical
Inquirer magazine. If you wish to pursue any these story ideas, contact Matt
Nisbet at 716-636-1425 X 219 or SINISBET@....

  Experts Offer Evaluation of Doomsday Prophecies and Millennial Cults

  A range of claimants that include the Denver-based Concerned Christian cult,
UFO Armageddon watchers, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson have begun to grab
headlines with prophecies of doom as hype and hysteria build towards the
arrival of the next millennium. Yet philosopher Paul Kurtz observes that the
year 2000 is nothing more than an arbitrary date peculiar to Western culture.

  In an article in the Jan/Feb issue of Skeptical Inquirer, he describes
secular, New Age and religious Armageddon prophecies ranging from global
economic collapse to UFO religions. "When apocalyptic faith is intermingled
with ideology, it can have deleterious social, political, and military
consequences" writes Kurtz. "It is at this point that all those committed to
skeptical inquiry have an obligation to carefully examine those claims being
made about our collective future." Kurtz is founding chair of CSICOP, the
author or editor of thirty books, and a professor emeritus of philosophy at
the State University of New York at Buffalo.

  In the same issue of Skeptical Inquirer, biblical scholar Gerald Larue traces
the social and historical evolution of the beliefs that lie behind end-time
theology. "Apocalyptic literature has special appeal when society is permeated
with social pressures, intellectual conflicts, and frustration," writes Larue,
a professor emeritus at the University of Southern California. He describes
millennialism as a failure of nerve and the abandoning of hope in human
potential to resolve social and ecological problems.

  Physicians and Scientists Gather in Philadelphia in February to Evaluate
Alternative Medicine

  Alternative medicine has grown into a $16 billion dollar industry, and
physicians and health care managers are under increasing pressure from
patients to prescribe and provide a host of unproven alternative therapies.
What are the scientific critiques of such immensely popular therapies as
homeopathy, acupuncture, chiropractic and naturopathy? What are the ethical
issues involved as alternative therapy use and popularity grow? What are the
legal issues? How do we provide consumers with accurate information about
alternative therapies? What should the scientific community do in response?

  These are some of the questions that will be posed as physicians and
scientists from across the U.S., Canada, and Europe gather at the CSICOP co-
sponsored conference "Science Meets Alternative Medicine", February 26-28, in
Philadelphia, PA. Keynote speeches will include George Lundberg and NEJM
executive editor Marcia Angell. Highlighted will be the newly launched
Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine, the only peer-reviewed science
journal to focus exclusively on alternative medicine.

  Pseudoscience Floods Russia, Thirty-Two Russian Scientists Respond

  With the collapse of the Soviet Union and subsequent profound economic
crisis, science in Russia is in a difficult state. The rampant social
disruption has been accompanied by a veritable flood of pseudoscience. The
rise of irrationality and decline of reason may also be part of a wider global
trend.

  In an article in the Jan/Feb issue of Skeptical Inquirer, Sergei Kapitza,
vice-president of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, raises alarm at
Russian popular belief in cold fusion, shamanism and black magic. The former
editor of the Russian edition of Scientific American, Kapitza explains
Russia's decline as a possible result of a "global intellectual crisis,
through which European civilization is now passing."

  Following Kapitza's article, Skeptical Inquirer re-publishes a statement by
prominent members of the Russian Academy of Sciences. "We, representatives of
many sciences and disciplines--astronomers, physicists, chemists, biologists,
philosophers, lawyers, psychologists--are concerned by the widespread growth
of astrology, alternative medicine, palmistry, numerology, and mystic
pseudoscience in Russia and other countries of the world...."

  Silicon Valley CEO's Alien Encounter Typical of a Waking Dream, Says CSICOP
Researcher. Cites Majestic Twelve Documents as Forgeries and Roswell Incident
as a Crashed Government Spy Balloon

  On January 9, USWeb founder and former CEO Joe Firmage resigned so he could
promote his claim that today's high-tech advancements are the product of alien
technology. Firmage bases much of his belief on a 1997 incident in which an
alien being appeared to him one morning while asleep in bed. His on-line alien
contact manifesto, http://www.thewordistruth.org, also cites as further
evidence the infamous "Majestic Twelve" documents ( including an alleged memo
from President Truman directing government efforts to investigate
extraterrestrials) and the supposed crash of an alien craft at Roswell, New
Mexico. According to news reports, Firmage has spent $3 million in his pursuit
of extraterrestrial notions.

  "Firmage's encounter with an alien while laying in bed is typical of what is
known as a waking dream," says CSICOP Senior Research Fellow Joe Nickell.
"Often people see visions of ghosts, aliens and demons when really they're
experiencing a very vivid dream."

  Nickell, a well-known forensic writer and document investigator, also says
that Firmage has been misled by the Majestic Twelve documents. "It's all part
of American mythology. The documents have been shown to be forgeries, just
like evidence reveals that the alleged alien crash at Roswell was nothing more
than the debris of a government spy balloon."

  Many of these claims and topics have been covered in past articles in
Skeptical Inquirer, a fact duly noted by Nickell. "Firmage could save himself
some time and money by reading our magazine."

  --30--

  Founded in 1976, CSICOP is an international organization of scientists and
academics dedicated to the scientific evaluation of claims of the paranormal
and pseudoscience. CSICOP publishes the bi-monthly journal Skeptical Inquirer,
The Magazine for Science and Reason.
  __________________


  OPINION: FIRING OF JAMA EDITOR WRONG DECISION

  Matt Nisbet
  Coordinator, Council for Media Integrity
  http://www.csicop.org/cmi

  Last Friday's firing of George Lundberg, the seventeen-year editor of The
Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), shocked the medical,
science and media world. A statement from the American Medical Association
(AMA), publisher of JAMA, gave as the reason for the dismissal, Lundberg's
decision to publish research that shows 60 percent of college students
surveyed in 1991 did not think that engaging in oral sex was "having sex." The
study appears in this week's edition of JAMA, apparently timed to coincide
with the Senate impeachment hearings and the State of the Union Address. AMA
Executive Vice President Ratclife Anderson condemned the editor for
"inexcusably interjecting JAMA into a major political debate that has nothing
to do with science or medicine. This is unacceptable."

  Media reports, however, speculated that the sex study was just the latest in
a series of editorial decisions on topics of current controversy and public
debate that caused the AMA to shudder. Lundberg devoted a November JAMA issue
to alternative medicine and approved recent controversial articles on
euthanasia, and an eleven year-old's debunking of therapeutic touch.

  Under Lundberg's direction, JAMA not only published research of immediate
social importance, but actively engaged the media, providing weekly doses of
medical and science news to the public. In an era when media coverage of
science is difficult to find, and at a time when scientists have difficulty
attracting media attention, JAMA is a rare success story. Surveys of
journalists find that they are overwhelmingly more likely to read JAMA than
other well-known science publications including Science, Nature or Scientific
American.

  The decision to release Lundberg turns on the relation of society and
science. The AMA's official justification for the dismissal follows from a
century of staid tradition, with science and scientists seeking to maintain
the appearance of impartiality in matters of social importance or conflict.
Many in the scientific and medical communities cling to science journals as
the last bastion of scientific conservatism, striving for a blind impartiality
and artificial political naiveté in editorial selection. But as New York
University sociologist Dorothy Nelkin told the Los Angeles Times, "You can
hardly do a study anymore that doesn't have social ramifications." Should a
medical journal like JAMA "avoid anything that will arouse the anti-abortion
movement? Or should it ignore studies that use lab animals so as not to arouse
the animal rights movement?"

  Absolutely not. Our society has entered an era of unprecedented scientific
and technological advancement. In our daily lives and in government decision-
making, we cannot escape the impact of science. In fact, science has become
our best means for understanding the world around us and, often, the most
effective guide for decision-making.

  Yet we face an alarming crisis of scientific illiteracy and lack of public
appreciation of science. Whether it is the O.J. Simpson jury overlooking DNA
and blood evidence in favor of conspiracy scenarios, the $16 billion dollars
that Americans spend on unproven alternative medicine therapies, or polls
indicating that 31% of the public believes that an alien spacecraft crashed at
Roswell, New Mexico, millions of Americans too often disregard science in
forming opinions and making personal and collective choices.

  Faced with this challenge, the scientific and medical communities, and the
journals they publish, have a responsibility to inform and educate the public
about scientific information pertinent to current public policy and debate.
The Clinton impeachment proceedings may be the most important domestic
political development of the century. Regardless of whether or not it is lost
in the chorus of political rhetoric, if a scientific study can add light and
clearer understanding to the impeachment deliberation, then it should be
published. To say otherwise is socially irresponsible.

  --30--

  Matt Nisbet is coordinator for the Council for Media Integrity, a network of
scientists and members of the media concerned with the balanced portrayal of
science. www.csicop.org

  ____________


  NBC "CONFIRMATION: THE HARD EVIDENCE OF ALIENS AMONG US?"

  Wednesday, February 17 8PM EST
  Check your local listings.

  CSICOP Fellows Phil Klass and Joe Nickell will be featured in a two-hour NBC
special on UFOs and alien abductions.  Prompted by the Whitley Streiber book
of the same title, promos for the program highlight interviews with abduction
enthusiasts John Mack and Bud Hopkins, abduction re-enactments, and UFO
sighting cases.

  Let's hope NBC's treatment of the topic is critical and responsible.  Viewers
can post reviews on the Council for Media Integrity website at
http://www.csicop.org/cmi.

  For more on the show, go to: http://www.confirmation.net/confirmationnet.html

  ______________

  MORE ON YORK UNIVERSITY AND CHIROPRACTIC

  In the latest encroach of alternative medicine on campus, the Senate at York
University, the third largest university in Canada, has approved affiliation
with the Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College (CCMC), potentially becoming
the first major university in the world to affiliate voluntarily with a
chiropractic college.

  Faculty members and scientists at York who oppose the affiliation have put
together a website.  Go to:  http://www.ndir.com/chiro

  CSICOP is helping to organize opposition to the affiliation.  Look for a
press release next week.

  The York decision, to be finalized this spring, raises alarm among science
faculty who question heavily the scientific integrity of chiropractic, the
lack of a legitimate research culture in the field, the effect on York's
reputation, and the potentially disastrous influence on the schools ability to
attract research monies and recruit top students and faculty.

  "Will the best science researchers come to York if we should be coloured as
'the chiro-university'?...Will we get the best students?" York physics
professor Michael DeRobertis asks in a recent article in Canada's Globe&Mail
newspaper.

  In a classic example of the culture of antiscience on university campuses,
the York Senate approved the affiliation over the objections of the Faculty of
Pure and Applied Science(FPAS.)  In debate before the Senate vote, many Senate
members spoke derisively of scientists and science.  Scientists were called
"narrow-minded," "biased," "grant-fixated" as well as "elitist and unable to
admit other ways of inquiry than their own."

  Here's the real kicker:  If the York Senate makes final approval this spring,
the science faculty will be given responsibility for teaching the new
chiropractic students.

  A full report on the matter by York University physics professor Michael
DeRobertis appears in a commentary article in the Fall/Winter 1998 issue of
the Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine.  Copies can be obtained by
calling Prometheus Books at 1800-421-0351.

  As DeRobertis points out at the conclusion of his article, if chiropractic is
granted worldwide legitimacy through affiliation with York University, can
other topics like astrology, aromatherapy, homeopathy, or naturopathy be far
behind?

  You can reach DeRobertis at: mmdr@..., 416-736-2100 ext. 77761.

  IF YOU HAVE CONCERNS AND COMMENTS YOU CAN SEND THEM TO YORK UNIVERSITY.

  Phone, fax or address comments to:

   Dr. M. Elliot
   Chair, Senate
   S883 Ross Bldg.
   York University
   4700 Keele St.
   Toronto, ON M3J 1P3
   Fax: 416-736-5769
   Phone: 416-736-5012

   Dr. Michael Stevenson
   Vice-President, Academic Affairs
   S 938A Ross Bldg.
   York University
   4700 Keele St.
   Toronto, ON M3J 1P3
   Fax: 416-736-5876
   Phone: 416-736-5012

  ________________

  CSICOP TO VISIT KANSAS STATE, KANSAS CITY, ST. LOUIS & SPRINGFIELD

  CSICOP Public Relations Director Matt Nisbet will be touring parts of the
Midwest in February.  He'll be meeting with college students, members of local
skeptics groups and the local media.  At several venues he will be giving a
presentation titled "Skeptics Versus The X-Files: The Media and the
Paranormal."  Using video clips and slides, Nisbet reviews how the media
portrays science and the paranormal, tackles the immensely popular series The
X-Files, highlights research linking media presentations of the paranormal and
viewer belief and reviews efforts by CSICOP, scientists and skeptics to work
for better media coverage of science and the paranormal.

  --On Thursday evening, February 11, as part of the Skeptical Inquirer Lecture
series offered to colleges across the U.S. and Canada, Nisbet will be
presenting at Kansas State University.  Stay tuned for time and location
information.

  --On Saturday February 12 at 730pm, he'll be at the Center for Inquiry-
Midwest in Kansas City, MO.  The Center is housed in the United Labor
Building, 6301 Rockhill Rd, Suite 412.

  --On Sunday afternoon, Nisbet will be in St. Louis to present at a meeting
sponsored by the Gateway Skeptics and the Rationalist Society of St. Louis.
You can catch him at 2pm at the University City Library, 6701 Delmar,
University City, MO 63130.

  --On Monday, he'll travel to Springfield, IL to give a presentation sponsored
by the Rational Examination Association of Lincoln Land (REALL).  The talk
will be held at 7pm at the Lincoln Library in Springfield.  Call the REALL
hotline number for more information at 217-726-5354 and check out their
website at www.reall.org.

  Everyone is encouraged to turn out for the events in their area.  It promises
to be a provocative and informative presentation and a great way to find out
more about the international efforts of CSICOP.  For more information, call
716-636-1425 X219.

  __________________

  JOE NICKELL MASTER'S TEA AND LECTURE AT YALE UNIVERSITY

  CSICOP Senior Research Fellow Joe Nickell will be visiting Yale University on
Monday and Tuesday, February 22 and 23.  On Monday, Nickell will be doing a
signing at Yale Bookstore of the latest of his fifteen books _Crime Science_ ,
a case study review of forensic and criminal investigation.  Monday evening
he'll be giving a lecture open to the public.  Stay tuned for more details.

  On Tuesday, he will be the subject of a prestigious Hilliman College Master's
Tea, as Nickell meets Yale students and introduces them to the work of CSICOP
and skepticism.  His visit is sponsored by the New England Skeptical Society
and the recently launched Yale Skeptics.

  --30--

This will titillate the sociologist in Michigan and the failed NY psychic,
and drive them to the telephone and to the keyboard so that their Master
may be promptly informed....

Many moons ago, I wrote a 13-page letter to Uri Geller (you may remember
him -- used to be a psychic star) and summarized the entire situation that
then existed between us.  I pointed out the many wonders he'd promised the
world, none of which came true.  I listed the many lawsuits he'd brought,
none of which worked.  It was a comprehensive document that was meant as a
private communication, and since it would certainly be an embarrassment to
Geller if it were made public, I specified, in the letter:

         This is a personal, private, letter.  It's entirely your
         business if you show this to anyone else, but be
         advised that, unlike my first letter to you, I am
         preparing and keeping copies of this letter, and
         as I said at the beginning of this document, if any
         part of it is taken out of context and used by you in
         any way, I will insist on making the entire document
         available.  That's a promise.

Well, Mr. Geller has chosen to bring this document to the public by using
selected parts of it in an interview with an author, and that portion has
been published.  I've fired the document off to my lawyer, asking if I may
now -- as promised -- publish the entire document.

I'm in Costa Rica for a lecture/visit.

The special double issue of SWIFT just went into the mail.  It's a fat
little package indeed.  Looks as if we may very soon be getting up there
with other similar publications, and that's the plan.  The delay was
unfortunate, but my medical situation interfered.....  My doctor reports
that I'm (a) completely recovered from the heart condition, and (b) in
remarkable shape for a guy 70 years of age.  That, in some circles, will
not be welcome news.

And another SWIFT is in formation....

PLEASE don't contact me about when and where the Geller documentation will
be available.  I'll keep you informed right here.  All depends upon what
the lawyers say.

                                 James Randi

James Randi Educational Foundation
201 S.E. 12th Street (Davie Blvd.)
Fort Lauderdale, FL 33316-1815
U.S.A.

http://www.randi.org





Regards,

Joe Needham <Net.Skeptix@...> ICQ UIN: 1674329
====================================================
Business Home Page: http://members.xoom.com/jneedham/
Internet Skeptics:  http://members.xoom.com/jneedham/skeptics.html
Skeptics Forum blank email to: skeptics-forum-subscribe@onelist.com
====================================================

Subject: Astrology: Science of the Stars
Date: Tue, 19 Jan 1999 10:56:28 -0700
From: "Robert Templeton" <templer@...>
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic

Okay, let's try to settle this.  By what observable, repeatable,
experimental means can one support the validity of astrological methods and
readings?  What does the position of the known (ancient, yet) planets have
to do with the life of any individual human organism on this hunk of crusty
magma orbitting a star on the outskirts of a galaxy of which there may be
trillions or more?

Beyond a metaphysical explanation, noone has ever profferred evidence of a
connection, beyond human invention and imagination, between planetary
positions at one's birth and subsequent life-events.  Gravitational
influences are so extremely negligible as to be dismissed at once.  Is there
some sort of mysterious, unknowable emmination given off by planets that,
once one is removed from the womb, effects the outcome of the rest of one's
life despite genetic encoding and environmental circumstances, but has no
effect thereafter?  Sounds alot like reading the entrails of a chicken or
throwing the rune stones to me.

Also, someone mentioned the popularity of astrology as a proof of its
validity, or at least a means of encouraging its continued use.  This is by
no means a proper method of determining the validity of anything.  Many
millions once believed that witches existed and burned suspected ones tied
to a stake.  Does that incur validity?

The fate of this entire planet is in our hands and, instead of teaching our
children the value of life, the known laws that govern our world, and
reasoning, we would waste it trying to teach them antiquated means of
finding their "true love".  Now I know why I offer SETI and the Planetary
Society so much success in first contact.  A sufficiently advanced
extraterrestrial species may be able to point us in a better direction or,
failing that, get me off of this loony-bin of a rock.

Robert Templeton

SKEPTICAL INQUIRER ELECTRONIC DIGEST
  January 12, 1998

  SI Electronic Digest is the biweekly e-mail news update of the Committee for
the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP.) Visit
  <A HREF="http://www.csicop.org/">http://www.csicop.org/</A>.  Rated one of
the Top Ten Science Sites on the Web by HOMEPC magazine.

  The Digest is written and edited by Matthew Nisbet and Barry Karr. SI Digest
  has over 2500 readers worldwide, and is distributed via e-mail from the
Center for Inquiry-International, Amherst NY, USA.

  To subscribe for free to the SI DIGEST, go to:
  <A HREF="http://www.csicop.org/list/">http://www.csicop.org/list/</A>

  PERMISSION IS GRANTED TO REPRINT OR REPOST ON THE WEB.  WE ENCOURAGE
TRANSLATION INTO OTHER LANGUAGES.

  PLEASE FORWARD TO YOUR FRIENDS.
  Send comments, media inquiries and news to:
  SINISBET@... (716-636-1425 x219)

  CSICOP publishes the bimonthly SKEPTICAL INQUIRER, The Magazine for Science
and Reason.  The Jan/Feb 1999 issue features a Special Report on Armageddon
and the Prophets of Doomsday.

  To subscribe at the $17.95 introductory Internet price, go to:
  <A HREF="http://www.csicop.org/si/subscribe/">
http://www.csicop.org/si/subscribe/</A>

  In this week's SIDIGEST:

  --NOVA to Air Special on Loch Ness Monster, Tuesday., Jan 12, 8pm EST
  --New Skeptical Web Pages on Astronomy
  --CSICOP Visits Kansas State, Kansas City, St. Louis and Springfield, IL
  --Fall/Winter Edition of the Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine
  --Arnold Relman of NEJM Added to Science Meets Alt. Medicine Conference
  --International Marketing Efforts Expanded for Skeptical Inquirer
  --Senior Research Fellow Joe Nickell to Lecture at Yale University

  NOVA TO AIR SPECIAL ON LOCH NESS MONSTER

  Tuesday., Jan 12 at 8PM EST
  PBS

  NOVA will devote its weekly program to the Loch Ness Monster.
  Check your local listings.

  Reviews can be posted on the Council for Media Integrity website at
<A HREF="www.csicop.org/cmi">www.csicop.org/cmi</A>

  NEW SKEPTICAL WEBPAGES ON ASTRONOMY
  From Andrew Fraknoi, Professor of Astronomy, Foothill College, CA

  Dear Colleague:

         As part of its expanded web pages on astronomy
  education, the non-profit Astronomical Society of the Pacific
  (ASP) now offers a resource guide for examining topics at
  the fringes of astronomy with a skeptical eye.  Subjects
  covered include astrology, UFO's, the so-called "Face on
  Mars", ancient astronauts, disasters from planetary align-
  ments, and more. The site offers annotated lists of books,
  articles, and web links for those who would like the rational
  perspective on these controversial issues.

         The location is:
  www.aspsky.org/html/astro/pseudobib.html

         Also on the ASP site is an article called "Your
  Astrology Defense Kit", which includes ten embarrassing
  questions to ask astrology believers, and reviews some of
  the scientific tests that have failed to bear out the predictive
  power of horoscope analysis.  There are also a series of
  classroom activities that teachers can use to show students
  how they can test astrological claims for themselves.

         This part of the site can be found at:
  www.aspsky.org/html/astro/act3/astrology.html


         We would be grateful if you could let others know
  about these sites and link to them if you find them useful.

         (Founded in 1889, the Astronomical Society of the
  Pacific is now the largest general astronomy organization in
  the U.S.  It has members in all 50 states and over 60 other
  countries, and offers both publications and programs to share
  the excitement of astronomy with teachers, students, and
  the public.)



  CSICOP TO VISIT KANSAS STATE, KANSAS CITY, ST. LOUIS & SPRINGFIELD

  CSICOP Public Relations Director Matt Nisbet will be touring parts of the
Midwest in February.  He'll be meeting with college students, members of local
skeptics groups and the local media.  At several venues he will be giving a
presentation titled "Skeptics Versus The X-Files: The Media and the
Paranormal."  Using video clips and slides, Nisbet reviews how the media
portrays science and the paranormal, tackles the immensely popular series The
X-Files, highlights research linking media presentations of the paranormal and
viewer belief and reviews efforts by CSICOP, scientists and skeptics to work
for better media coverage of science and the paranormal.

  --On Thursday evening, February 11, as part of the Skeptical Inquirer Lecture
series offered to colleges across the U.S. and Canada, Nisbet will be
presenting at Kansas State University.  Stay tuned for time and location
information.

  --On Saturday February 12 at 730pm, he'll be at the Center for Inquiry-
Midwest in Kansas City, MO.  The Center is housed in the United Labor
Building, 6301 Rockhill Rd, Suite 412.

  --On Sunday afternoon, Nisbet will be in St. Louis to present at a meeting
sponsored by the Gateway Skeptics and the Rationalist Society of St. Louis.
You can catch him at 2pm at the University City Library, 6701 Delmar,
University City, MO 63130.

  --On Monday, he'll travel to Springfield, IL to give a presentation sponsored
by the Rational Examination Association of Lincoln Land (REALL).  The talk
will be held at 7pm at the Lincoln Library in Springfield.  Call the REALL
hotline number for more information at 217-726-5354 and check out their
website at www.reall.org.

  Everyone is encouraged to turn out for the events in their area.  It promises
to be a provocative and informative presentation and a great way to find out
more about the international efforts of CSICOP.  For more information, call
716-636-1425 X219.

  FALL/WINTER 1998 EDITION OF THE SCIENTIFIC REVIEW OF AM
  To subscribe or obtain a copy call Prometheus Books at 1800-421-0351

  Launched in the fall of 1997, the Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine
is the only peer reviewed science journal to focus exclusively on alternative
medicine and therapies.  In the latest edition you'll find:

  EDITORIAL
  The Braid of 'Alternative Medicine' Movement

  CORRESPONDENCE
  Epidemic of Renal Failure Due to Herbals, and more

  ANALYSIS
  Nicholas Gonzalez Treatment for Cancer:
  Gland Extracts, Coffee Enemas, Vitamin Megadoses, and Diets

  A Review of the Journal Alternative Remedies

  An Examination of the Media Coverage of a Prayer Study-in-Progress

  Evaluation of a Study on Homeopathy and Its Accompanying Publicity

  COMMENTARY

  The Di Bella Controversy: The University of Popular Delusion

  The Continuing Case of Nicholas Gonzalez

  A Critique of an Official UK View of Complementary Medicine

  Chiropractic Goes to University

  Evaluation of a Study on the Possible Validity of Acupoints

  CASES

  The Allure of Quackpot Theories

  BOOK REVIEWS

  Healing With Homeopathy by Wayne B. Jonas

  The Logic of Medicine by Edmond A. Murphy

  ARNOLD S. RELMAN OF NEJM ADDED TO SCIENCE MEETS ALT. MED. CONF.

  Dr. Arnold S. Relman, Editor Emeritus of the New England Journal of Medicine
has been added to the schedule for the CSICOP-sponsored Science Meets
Alternative Medicine Conference to be held Feb. 26-28, in Philadelphia, PA.

  As part of a panel on "Educating the Consumer", Relman will be speaking on
the topic of alternative medicine guru Andrew Weil.   Read his much-talked
about review and critique of Weil's books in the December 4 New Republic.  Go
to:


<A
HREF="http://www.thenewrepublic.com/magazines/tnr/current/relman121498.html"
>http://www.thenewrepublic.com/magazines/tnr/current/relman121498.html</A>

  The conference features a broad range of panel discussions involving top
scientists and physicians.  Key note addresses will be given by George
Lundberg, editor of JAMA, and Marcia Angell, Executive Editor of the New
England Journal of Medicine.   Call Barry Karr at 716-636-1425 X217 for more
information.

  EXPANDED INTERNATIONAL MARKETING OF SKEPTICAL INQUIRER

  In a continued effort to grow international readership, CSICOP has launched
new marketing efforts in Canada and Germany.  Starting with the March/April
1999 issue, Skeptical Inquirer will be on special display in Chapters
Superstores across Canada.  SI is also now available at Indigo, Canada's
newest super book store chain.

  Last summer, CSICOP started a very succuessful joint marketing effort of
Skeptical Inquirer with the German skeptic magazine Skeptiker.  And coming
soon will be a special advertising campaign in the German edition of
Scientific American.

  JOE NICKELL TO LECTURE AT YALE UNIVERSITY

  Stay tuned for details of an upcoming lecture by CSICOP Senior Research
Fellow Joe Nickell at Yale Univeristy.  Nickell will be reviewing famous cases
in forensic investigation from his latest book _Crime Science_.

Regards,

Joe Needham <Net.Skeptix@...> ICQ UIN: 1674329
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Subject: Critical thought and the educational system
Date: Tue, 19 Jan 1999 23:41:43 +0200
From: Petteri.Sulonen@... (Petteri Sulonen)
Organization: Helsingin yliopisto
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic

The other day I was having coffee and a chat with our resident fundy. We'd
avoided all "touchy" topics until she casually mentioned that she'd done
her level best to get her high school biology teacher to teach creationism
along with evolutionism. This sort of raised my hackles, and we started to
discuss it.

Apparently she'd toned down her politics a bit since then, but still
thought that it was wrong that evolutionism is taught "uncritically". For
example, it's not mentioned that two similar fossils were actually found
in different parts of the world, that there's considerable uncertainty
about where in the "tree" a given species should be placed etc.

It dawned on me that she had a point, although not the one she was
intending to make.

I've been annoyed at the exact same thing about the teaching of history.
Way too many things are taught as "fact" when there is considerable
uncertainty about them, or even when ideas about them have been
fundamentally revised recently.

This, IMO, is a very big problem. The 'scientific world-view' is taught as
a complete body of knowledge, when the _method_, the way of thinking, is
what's important.

It's kind of ironic that the natural sciences (physics, chem, maths) are
taught much more "hands on" than the less exact ones, with experiments and
demonstrations etc. -- when the knowledge of these disciplines is much
more exact and 'certain' than history, or even the life sciences.

It would do a lot more to dispel the uncritical acceptance of stuff like
astrology, homeopathy, or creationism, if kids were helped to build the
apparatus to judge by themselves. They have the capacity: all kids ask
"Why?" a lot. The current "George Washington never lied" method is
self-destructive.

Any ideas on how this could be done?

-- Petteri

--
"I don't deny God, it's just that I don't know if He created
Man, or Man created Him."
    -- Ivan Karamazov, in Dostoevsky's /The Brothers Karamazov/

Subject: Magnets for Aches and Pains
Date: Fri, 15 Jan 1999 14:57:25 GMT
From: feierejm@... (John Feiereisen)
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic

Has anybody else noticed the recent and dramatic increase in the
number of advertisements for magnetic knee and elbow pads, mattress
pads, pillow pads, insoles, bracelets etc.???  I've seen ads in the
paper recently advertising them, numerous segments on the home
shopping network, etc.  The guy down the street from me sells Nikken
magnets (and he *never* fails to steer a chance encounter in the front
yard toward a discussion of his magnets).

The segment I saw last night on the home shopping channel was quite
humorous.  They were selling a whole line of magnetic products, some
of which were going for upwards of $300.  They were constantly saying
"they really work", and they constantly referred to double-blind
studies (but they always left out the fact that they never seem to
perform any better than a placebo).  I particularly got a kick out of
their describing how they "increase the energy flow" to various body
parts, and "energy flow is circulation".  Quackery is alive and well,
and it seems to be going mainstream.

Magnetic products like these have been around for decades, but they
seem to have had a recent surge in popularity.  (And decades-old that
they are, there's still a lack of reliable placebo-controlled
double-blind testing showing they have *any* effect.)  Does anybody
know what's behind this surge in popularity?


--
John

Note:  Email address munged in an attempt (probably futile) to
foil spammers.  There are no digits in the real address.

This is a test message.

Regards,

Joe Needham  ICQ 1674329  AOL Instant Messenger: NetSkeptix
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