paranormal

You Have Been Poked By God (2011)

Daniel Loxton (Old) Skepticblog, Posts , , , 0 Comment

This article was originally published at the defunct Skepticblog.org on June 7, 2011. An archived version is available here.

Cover of Isaac Asimov's autobiography "I, Asimov"Skeptical pioneer Isaac Asimov (a founder of CSICOP, now called CSI) produced such a staggering library of books (over 500!) that his multiple autobiographies were merely punctuation. I have three Asimov autobiographies in the Junior Skeptic library. Sometimes, just for fun, I pull one down at random, flip it open, and read the first two pages my eye happens to fall upon. Each time I do this, I inevitably

  1. read something funny;

  2. learn something interesting;

  3. and, feel a blog post spring ready-made to mind.

This certainly happened when I read Asimov’s tale of his personal experience of psychic premonition or divine intervention — in the form of a literal poke on the shoulder.1 Read more

History and Hyman’s Maxim (2015)

Daniel Loxton (Old) Insight blog, Posts , , , , , 0 Comment

This lightly edited article was originally published at the defunct Insight blog at Skeptic.com on May 24, 2015. An archived version is available here.

In a post last year called “The Forgetfulness of Skepticism,” I discussed one of the difficulties that skeptics face as a result of our small community and very broad subject area:

Generations of skeptics have devoted themselves to understanding paranormal and pseudoscientific claims, beliefs, and impostures. But even with those efforts, the fringe has remained radically under-examinded. Because this realm is so vast while the scholars and activists interested in exploring it are so few, our work has often had something of a scrambling quality. In our rush, skeptics have tended to neglect, or at least to set aside for some future time, some of the improvements of better-established fields.

Many other fields benefit from the attention of historical, theoretical, and philosophical spin-off disciplines. Consider, for example, art history, English literature, medical ethics, or philosophy of science. Skeptics, by contrast, are caught in a kind of perpetual startup culture. With so many urgent triage priorities, the considerable task of recording, maintaining, and passing down legacy knowledge becomes a “nice to have”—a luxury for further down the road. As a result, we tend not to remember very well. Read more

“Never Say Anything That Isn’t Correct” (2010)

Daniel Loxton (Old) Skepticblog, Posts , , , , , , , 0 Comment

This lightly edited article was originally published at the defunct Skepticblog.org on Feb 16, 2010. An archived version is available here.

In November of 2007, I heard that an alleged energy healer named Adam McLeod (“Adam Dreamhealer” [archived old Dreamhealer.com website; recent naturopathy practice website]) was scheduled to appear on a popular Canadian Broadcasting Corporation talk show, The Hour with George Stroumboulopoulos. (Watch segment.) I was familiar with the Adam Dreamhealer case, and also uncomfortably aware that media outlets usually treat miracle healers as harmless, untestable human interest stories. I was concerned about the ethical implications of promoting Adam’s claims to a national television audience. (Adam had claimed abilities for “energetically diagnosing illnesses,” and treating cancer “from 3000 miles away.”1 According to his [old Dreamhealer] website, Adam is “uniquely able to influence the health and healing of large groups of individuals at his workshops by joining the auras of all in attendance.”2) Read more

The Complexity of Alien Abduction and the Multidisciplinary Nature of Fringe Claims (2016)

Daniel Loxton (Old) Insight blog, Posts , , , 0 Comment

This article was originally published at the defunct Insight blog at Skeptic.com on June 7, 2016. An archived version is available here.

Looming "grey" alien reflected in close up of a human eye

Image by Daniel Loxton with Jim W.W. Smith and Jason Loxton

In my last post I explained that the teeming menagerie of seemingly dissimilar fringe claims studied by skeptics are unified by the neglect of other scholars, by structural similarities, and (in some cases) by direct interconnection. For this reason, a range of topics can be usefully gathered under the skeptics’ umbrella, and useful insights drawn between them.

Today I’ll ask a related question: why are skeptics a mixed group of magicians, psychologists, doctors, historians, science popularizers, artists, and so on?
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Ghosts, Knowing, and a Lesson at Bedtime (2013)

Daniel Loxton (Old) Skepticblog, Posts , , , ,

This article was originally published at the defunct Skepticblog.org on Sep 11, 2013.
An archived version is available here

Story time is a big deal at the Loxton household. For years, my young son and I have been working through a stack of some of the great adventure novels, just as my dad used to read poetry to me and my brothers. I’m delighted by my son’s edge-of-his-seat immersion in the worlds of hobbits and pirates and talking lions.

On other nights, we lie awake talking about ideas. As Carl Sagan once said, “Kids can understand some pretty deep things.”1 My son has long since discovered the irresistible trick of asking fascinating questions about those deep things right after I turn off the lights. I’m a sucker every time. Recently, our conversation turned to “true” ghost stories related by his young colleagues on the playground.
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