Convivial Conference
1st February 1998
THERE’S no denying it. We’re a strange lot. Sitting in the small hall during the annual Skeptics get-together and listening to the varied, and often colourful, discussion, it struck me how dissimilar we all are.
Which is what it is all about really. Get two skeptics together and you can guarantee they will have strongly opposing thoughts on a range of subjects. What is important is the way they view the world and look for the evidence.
So what emerged from this year’s most singular, important event, the 1997 Skeptics Conference, The Body Skeptic?
For a start, we all had our auras photographed. Explaining this to my six year old was a bit dodgy — she was most impressed with her pretty pink and blue one, and not terribly receptive to the idea that it was an electrical discharge.
The first morning was a remarkably introspective look at medical science, from a number of its practitioners. We learned, for example, that colour therapy is as effective in treating lower back pain as surgery, and has fewer side effects.
Medicine, we were told by Professor Alan Clarke, is a science of uncertainty and an art of probability. More science leads to more uncertainty as research usually leads to more new questions than answers.
In the afternoon Denis Dutton spoke on the cargo cult mentality behind much of UFO mania, and Mike Bradstock gave us some examples of media disinformation.
The highlight of the weekend had to be the Skeptics’ first ever auction, which netted close to $800 for Skeptical causes. The items included a brass plaque commemorating the past president of the British Reincarnation Society, and an authenticated piece of the Wizard’s True Staff, complete with photograph. My six year old daughter Iris opened the bidding on a Nick Kim framed and coloured cartoon. Then there was the weeping icon - a Jonah Lomu Interchangeable, which had its eyes cunningly drilled out and its plastic head filled with glycerine.
What was truly astounding about the auction was watching hardened “skeptics” paying over good money for such items (I wish I’d got the piece of the Wizard’s staff…). Denis Dutton has a new vocation in auctioneering if he tires of academia. The TV3 cameras were there and rolling, but alack, events in Paris the next day nudged any such coverage out of the window (along with any other news for the following week…).
The following day, bright and early, Jay Mann laid to rest the demons of Chinese Restaurant Syndrome — there’ll be an article in the next issue. Then David Novitz looked at how skeptics, while often perceived as intolerant, perform a necessary role in the highly social process of acquiring knowledge — see the main feature in this issue.
Then we had our asses whipped by various media personalities—including George Balani and Debra Nation. Debra passed on some gems gleaned from her colleagues, a few of which brought tears to the eyes. (The exact words have been repressed, but something to do with us being a bunch of space cadets who don’t believe in anything that can’t be stuck in a bottle of preservative).
One interesting observation was that skeptics are seen as extremist, with new agers and fundamentalists on the other end of the spectrum. The reasonable path is perceived to be somewhere between the two. For all that, it was good to note the media increasingly referring to skeptics for comment. Speaking about the media, watch out for the December North and South which is running a piece on our chair-entity, Vicki Hyde.
PS The best cure for lower back pain is still three days’, and no more, bed rest. (All I have to do now is figure out how to get a bad back…)
