"Science in the Age of (Mis)Information" was the theme of CSICOP’S(Committee for Scientific Investigation of Claims Of the Paranormal) twentieth annual Congress held June 20-23 at their headquarters in Amherst, NY and at the nearby State University at Buffalo. More than one thousand persons attended, many of them from foreign countries.
Several speakers criticized the media for printing or broadcasting sensational stories of the paranormal as a means of boosting their audiences. Other speakers ranged over a wide range of subjects.
CSICOP founder Paul Kurtz pointed out that in an age of dazzling scientific achievements there is a surprisingly large undercurrent of anti-science and pseudo science. A typical "balanced" TV program consists of three long talks by believers in the paranormal followed by one or two minutes allotted to the lone skeptic on the panel.
Piero Angelo, Italian journalist, reported on the results of a skeptical TV program that ran for two hours on five different evenings. A survey of a panel of a thousand listeners showed that the program had greatly reduced panelists belief in such phenomena as Uri Geller and remote viewing, although two months later the same viewers showed an increased belief in the paranormal. He concluded that (1) TV programs can strongly influence viewer beliefs, (2) a single program is not enough to change these beliefs significantly, and (3) science must be made clear and interesting.
Philip Adams, an off-beat TV commentator from Australia, came up with such notable one-liners as: "People are attracted by the impossible, convinced by the absurd." "People need to believe something, New Agers need to believe everything." "Doubting Thomas was the only rational man at the Last Supper." "On the Road to Damascus I'm going in the opposite direction." "We're asking people to accept science on faith." "The situation is hopeless; we must take the next step."
In a discussion of homeopathy Professor Whim Betz of Belgium explained that it originated with the discovery that large amounts of some drugs produced symptoms, whereas very small amounts of the same drug took away the symptoms. The homeopathic physician, in order to determine which natural drugs to use, asks the patient scores of questions, such as "Do you dream of rabbits?" Crushed cockroaches are one remedy occasionally used. Homeopathy is quite popular in Europe, less so in America. The British royal family has a homeopathic doctor on its staff. In France ordinary drugs must be accepted as effective by a body similar to our FDA; homeopathic drugs are exempted from this requirement.
The study of chiropractic is a hobby of Stephen Barrett, a psychiatrist from Allentown, PA. He has collected ten thousand documents and two hundred books on the subject. Chiropractors have a very wide following, but there have been no investigative reports by the media. Although there is wide variation among the beliefs of individual chiropractors, their basic belief is that all ailments are caused by nerve disorders resulting from a pinched nerve in the spine, and that spinal manipulation will help the body increase its natural disease resistance. Many chiropractors recommend that their patients come back for three treatments a week for an indefinite time, whereas osteopaths, whose training is similar to an MD's, usually recommend three to five follow-ups. In two tests, patients with an illness went to a number of chiropractors and got a different diagnosis and treatment from each one.
One "believer" on the program was Jessica Utts, Professor of Statistics at the University of California in Davis. In a thought transference experiment, sender and receiver looked at a panel of four photographs. The sender selected one and the receiver tried to identify which it was. In her experiments, the receiver named the correct picture 35 percent of the time, as compared with a 25 percent result expected by mere chance. I would think, if one of the four pictures was more pleasant or otherwise distinctive than the other three, might not both sender and receiver select it more often than the others?
Steve Allen was the speaker at the closing dinner. He kept the audience in stitches for an hour. Example: in Steve's old TV program, a seer was given an answer and had to come up with the question. Such as the answer is "chicken teriyaki;" what is the question? The question is: "Who's the oldest living aviator in the Japanese air force?"
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