From the Skeptical Literature: Thomas Ady on the Role of Mental Illness in Witchcraft Confessions (2014)

admin (Old) Insight blog, Posts March 23, 2025Candle in the Dark, Carl Sagan, skeptical history, skepticism, Thomas Ady, witch hunting, witchcraft 0 Comment

This (lightly edited) article was originally published at the defunct Insight blog at Skeptic.com on Sept 28, 2014. An archived version is available here.

Thomas Ady was an English doctor and critical exposer of both persecutions for alleged witchcraft and the type of faux-paranormal scams, such as fortunetelling, that sometimes led to witchcraft trials. He was especially critical of the use of torture (including sleep deprivation¹) in those trials. But some victims of witch trials confessed without coercion. Ady reflected on those poor souls as follows in his 1655 treatise, A Candle in the Dark:

Some indeed have in a melancholly distraction of minde confessed voluntarily, yea and accused themselves to bee Witches, that could do, and had done such strange things, and wonders by the help of the Devil; but mark well their distemper, and you shall finde that they are deeply gone by infirmity of body affecting the minde, whereby they conceit such things as never were, or can be, as is often proved by experience among Physicians, many of those dying in a very short time, (although they be not put to death) except they be cured by the Physician; and truly if such Doctrins had not been taught to such people formerly, their melancholly distempers had not had any such objects to work upon, but who shall at last answer for their confession, but they that have infected the mindes of common people with such devillish doctrins, whereby some are instigated to accuse their poor Neighbours of impossibilities contrary to the Scriptures, and some drawn to confess lyes, and impossibilities contrary to Christian light?²

Carl Sagan’s Crazy Train (2012)

Daniel Loxton (Old) Skepticblog, Posts March 21, 2025Carl Sagan, crazy, ethics, mental health, mental illness, skepticism, Steven Novella 0 Comment

This article was originally published at the defunct Skepticblog.org on Oct 2, 2012. An archived version is available here. (Questo post è disponibile anche in italiano nella versione online di Query, la rivista ufficiale del CICAP (Comitato Italiano per il Controllo delle Affermazioni sul Paranormale). Potete leggerlo qui.)

Steven Novella’s post last week on the complex topic of the ethics of speech was inspired by consideration of the ethics of “colloquial use of the term ‘crazy.’” This is an area of interest to me. I have often argued both for professional restraint in the things skeptics say and the manner in which we say them; and, for the importance of ongoing conversation on the ethics and efficacy of skeptical practice. But Novella’s post also had excellent timing, as I was already planning on touching on some of the thorny ethics at the intersection between skepticism and mental illness. Read more

The Forgetfulness of Skepticism (2014)

admin (Old) Insight blog, Posts March 13, 2025Carl Sagan, exceptionalismism, Joseph Rinn, skeptical history, skepticism 0 Comment

This article was originally published at the defunct Insight blog at Skeptic.com on Dec 17, 2015. An archived version is available here.

Skeptic Joseph Rinn, demonstrating mediumistic trickery for a press syndicate in 1920. (From Daniel Loxton’s collection.)

Scientific skepticism has a long history—roughly 40 years in its most modern organized form, and centuries (arguably millennia) as a more or less recognizable tradition. (See my “Why Is There a Skeptical Movement?” for a discussion of this lengthy intellectual thread—PDF.) Read more

Carl Sagan and the Dangers of Skepticism (2015)

Daniel Loxton (Old) Insight blog, Posts March 9, 2025books, Carl Sagan, history of skepticism, Junior Skeptic, skepticism 0 Comment

This article was originally published at the defunct Insight blog at Skeptic.com on May 19, 2015. An archived version is available here.

This is an excerpt from Junior Skeptic 50 (published in 2014 inside Skeptic magazine Vol. 19, No. 1), which is a ten-page biography of Sagan emphasizing his work in scientific skepticism. Junior Skeptic was written for (older) children, and did not include endnotes. Here, I’ve included some relevant citations here for your interest.

Carl Sagan cared a lot about kooky, far out, pseudoscientific topics. He knew this was quite unusual. He introduced a book section on these fringe science topics by saying, “The attention given to borderline science may seem curious to some readers. … The usual practice of scientists is to ignore them, hoping they will go away.”¹ He wished other scientists would care more, and that they were more willing to share their criticisms in public:

I believe that scientists should spend more time in discussing these issues…. There are many cases where the belief system is so absurd that scientists dismiss it instantly but never commit their arguments to print. I believe this is a mistake.²