Skeptic's Agenda

What's worth a Skeptic's attention? In this issue's Forum, Carl Wyant asks why worry about fraudulent spoon benders when there are far more harmful forms of ignorance and wickedness about, such as Chinese superstitions promoting female infanticide.

Point taken. But there are all sorts of odd jobs available for people interested in ridding the world-of barbarism. Promoting civilised public discourse is one, and that, for the Skeptics, means encouraging informed, critical discussion of current issues.

When the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal was founded in New York in the 1970s, it took on the myriad forms of bogus science then blossoming in the US. The success of modern science has brought in its wake cranks and pseudoscience hucksters, promoting their quack medicines, "scientific" creationism, telekinesis, pyramid power and New Age nonsense. Any society that depends on science and technology needs to be able to recognise pseudoscientific swindles for what they are.

But skepticism is less a set of doctrines than a cast of mind, a klieglight that can be shone upon any subject you wish, including science or even Skepticism itself. Over the last few years here we've often heard the question, "Why don't you Skeptics take on economists?" We resist because few economists seldom invoke paranormal elements in their theories, but if we're tempted to accept the challenge, it's because there are economic dogmas (not all-right-wing) that have acquired the character of religions — passionately held, supported by questionable research and, in the minds of their believers, utterly irrefutable.

Another area where sensible, empirical knowledge becomes tinged with emotion and religious ardour is the environmental movement. Even the presumed majority of Skeptics who approve of the general aims of environmentalists have to admit that some green ideas — such as the Gaia Hypothesis — descend to irrationality, and that environmental fervour occasionally recalls revivalist religion or even, at its most extreme, fascism.

Vincent Gray's contribution to this issue will not please all members, but he raises some issues that need more thoughtful discussion. At-one point he asks of the environmentalists a question almost parallel to Carl Wyant's: why worry so much about the odd beached whale when it is human overpopulation that will inevitably kill the planet?

I'll let the environmentalists speak for themselves, but in answer to Carl, the Skeptics do what they think they can do best: trying to raise the general level of rational thinking and discourse in New Zealand Society. We'd like to see a citizenry that is less susceptible to the wiles of snake-oil salesmen and paranormal promoters.

It's nice to think that we've had some modest success since we were founded in 1985. Compared to infanticide in China, the evils we attack are more modest. Only a few alternative medical practitioners have actually killed their patients since NZCSICOP was formed, and many of the people who've been swindled by paranormalists have been asking for it. Still, these things are going on right here, and we've seen that, in New Zealand, we can make a difference.