skeptical history

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

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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 An archived version is available here.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

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A Rope of Sand (2015)

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This article was originally published at the defunct Insight blog at Skeptic.com on Sept 8, 2015. An archived version is available here.

Astronomer Richard Anthony Proctor. For general details about Proctor’s life and career, read this brief biographical sketch published in 1874.

If my explorations of skeptical history have revealed an overall theme, it is that things don’t change that much. Always there are scoundrels, scams, and misapprehensions; always there are those who probe mysteries and push back against paranormal fraud. Throughout history, those skeptics have repeatedly reached for the same tactics, claimed the same (scant few) rewards, and faced the same challenges of burnout and cynicism.

English astronomer and science popularizer Richard Anthony Proctor (1837–1888) makes an interesting case study. He weighed in as a skeptic against (surprisingly popular) Flat Earth advocates (see Junior Skeptic 53), quackery, and a range of pseudoscientific ideas connected to astronomy. His debunking book Myths and Marvels of Astronomy was a 19th century version of Phil Plait’s Bad Astronomy. Originally published in 1877 (my copy dates to 1880), Myths and Marvels of Astronomy is available to read for free in several editions online. Read more

The Forgetfulness of Skepticism (2014)

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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

Things Skeptics Knew a Century Ago About How Thinking Goes Wrong (2014)

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This article was originally published at the defunct Insight blog at Skeptic.com on Dec 29, 2014. An archived version is available here.

American psychologist and skeptic Joseph Jastrow. Image courtesy US National Library of Medicine, via Wikimedia Commons.

When better than the final days of the year to reflect on lessons of the past? Today, I’d like to share a small selection of quotes, each written over a century ago, which seem to me to bring the skepticism of our time and that of previous generations into a thought-provoking resonance. These passages employ concepts and jargon that are frequently used by skeptics today. This may strike us as prescient; however, I would argue that this apparent prescience is largely an illusory artifact of our own forgetfulness. In any event, these are a tiny sampling of conversations which were current in skepticism long before any of us were born.

I invite you to gaze into these passages, and reflect for a moment that in some ways the conceptual tools for skeptical examination of paranormal claims have changed little more in a century than the nature of imposture and superstition. Read more

History and Hyman’s Maxim (2015)

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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

Gotcha! Thinking About Skeptical “Stings” (2015)

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This article was originally published at the defunct Insight blog at Skeptic.com on February 23, 2015. An archived version is available here.

In my last post I outlined a small recent stir caused by sharp comments about skeptics from former Ghost Hunters cast member Amy Bruni. I promised to dig further into the issues of skeptical undercover work and “sting”-type traps designed either to expose the roots of claims or, in the most striking cases, to catch charlatans red-handed.

These tactics can be extremely hard hitting, when they hit their mark. A well-known case involving both deceptive undercover work and a shocking reveal is “Project Alpha,” organized by James Randi. Under his direction, teenaged magicians Steve “Banachek” Shaw and Michael Edwards posed as psychics in a laboratory setting, where they successfully bamboozled parapsychological researchers. When the skeptical conspirators eventually held a press conference and revealed their years of deception (video), the world was compelled to consider parapsychology’s vulnerability to fraud. The ripples from that hoax are still being felt, as Randi’s contemporary Ray Hyman predicted more than 30 years ago: “There’s going to be an argument from now until doomsday about what the whole thing showed.” [For a nuanced and detailed update on that case, check out Season 3 of the World’s Greatest Con podcast, hosted by magician and YouTuber Brian Brushwood.] Read more

James Randi, Skeptic Extraordinaire (2020)

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This article was originally published in Skeptic magazine (US), and in the defunct eSkeptic newsletter at Skeptic.com on Oct 24, 2020. An archived version is available here. (I submitted the piece with a placeholder title. This title was chosen by the editors.)

The skeptical world has lost a towering figure in James Randi, stage magician, lightning rod, and co-founder of the modern skeptical movement. In 1976, Randi joined philosopher Paul Kurtz, astronomer Carl Sagan, psychologist Ray Hyman, science writer Martin Gardner, and other motivated science advocates and critics of fringe claims to establish North America’s first formal skeptical organization, then known as CSICOP—the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (now called CSI, the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry).

Randi may be the single most influential person in the history of skepticism from the 1970s through the first decade of the 21st century. His classic book Flim-Flam! is a defining text for scientific skepticism. He pioneered many of skepticism’s investigative techniques, and many of the arguments and attitudes of skeptical activists. While much of the skeptical literature consists of historical sleuthing and critical analysis, Randi was known for his distinct activist approach to confronting paranormal and pseudoscientific claims. His dramatic public exposé of televangelist Peter Popoff remains one of the clearest modern examples of a fringe proponent unmasked by evidence gathered in the field. Most skeptics would describe Randi as a powerful inspiration for their own work, myself included. Read more

Same Darkness, Same Light (2013)

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This (lightly edited) article was originally published at the defunct Skepticblog.org on Jan 22, 2013. An archived version is available here.

Black and white photo of Father C. M. de Heredia

Father C. M. de Heredia shows two séance props—a false finger and a comb with a hollow spine—from which “ectoplasm” could be “materialized.”

I had a post ready to go for this morning on the topic of early twentieth century skeptical activist Joseph F. Rinn; but at a couple of thousand words, I thought it might be more appropriate for next week’s eSkeptic. [Read that article, republished here.] Like my last post on the surprisingly complicated history of the skeptical slogan “extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence,” my current Junior Skeptic article about second century Roman debunker Lucian of Samosata, and my next Junior Skeptic about two especially hard core early twentieth century skeptical investigators who happened to be women, the new Rinn piece is part of larger exploration I’ve been doing of the skeptical work of the decades, centuries, and even millennia prior to 1976 (the year of the formation of CSICOP, now called CSI—a moment which is usually considered the birth of the fully modern skeptical movement).

The skeptics of previous eras faced a few wrinkles unique to their contexts. How could they not? Yet the more striking thing is how very much repeats over time. The mysteries are the much same, decade after decade, and often identical. The arguments, the exposés, the scams, the rhetoric, and the sense of unique moral urgency—of sliding into a new Dark Age—all these echo across generations. For all the fine mustaches of the early twentieth century skeptical scene (and man, those were some damn fine mustaches) these were people whose mission and challenges were much the same as my own. The sense of continuity this historical perspective brings is—palpable? illuminating? remarkable? Read more