Team Dubious

Part 5

by Ellen Barry

The skeptics themselves say partisan politics is the farthest thing from their minds. Science is by definition apolitical, the thinking goes; and the skeptics attack examples of fuzzy thinking regardless of ideological slant. So if L. Ron Hubbard is a skeptical target but Leviticus is not, it's because Hubbard makes claims that involve "testable hypotheses." And if the skeptics find factual holes in Afrocentric curricula, but not in other textbooks, it's because extreme Afrocentrism is particularly "prevalent" in society, Novella says. (It's not very prevalent in Danbury, but "if multiculturalism tried to get into the Connecticut public schools, I'd be there," he says.) He adds that the skeptics have gone after cold fusion and Holocaust denial, neither of which points to a consistent political agenda.

"This is apolitical," says Novella. "If we were around 50 years ago, we would be attacking the portrayal of the Indians."

Whether or not that is the case, Novella would be the first to admit that there are larger social concerns at the center of skepticism. In The Demon-Haunted World, Sagan argues that a rejection of established science frequently accompanies cultural upheaval and the unraveling of centralized authority. Sagan's book suggests that the only solution is to teach science better in schools and in the media -- in effect, to make it public property.

"The danger is that science becomes a priesthood, a religion, that it becomes so complex that you have to go to medical school to understand it," says Novella. "If we let the gap [between scientists and the public] get too big, they'll get chucked aside like every priesthood."

That's the long-term idea. In the short term, the skeptics are left railing at a society with an abiding love for the improbable. In a newsletter last year, Robert Novella recounted a case study from a few years ago: for a Halloween promotion, the New Haven radio station KC101 offered $5000 for verification of a haunted house in the area, and the skeptics were called in as the ultimate expert witnesses. Seven skeptics and five representatives of the Warrens' ghost-seeking organization spent the night in the house, all on the lookout for anything unusual.

When they compared notes in the morning, the Warrens' representatives reported "glowing balls of light" and "a cluster of blue lights that formed into a cigar-shaped cloud-like figure roughly the shape and size of a person." The Skeptics, who were standing in the same room, saw nothing. "I pointed out that sincerity should never be confused with authenticity," relates the dutiful Robert Novella.

In short, the ghosts evaded census. The money stayed in the bank -- which came as no surprise to Glenn Beck, the DJ who promoted the Halloween event, and who felt, after talking to the skeptics, "that God could have come down and burned everybody's eyes out and they would have said it was a toaster oven."

That made it less risky for KC101 to offer $5000 despite a budget Beck estimates at "a buck ninety."

"Both sides would have had to agree," he says. "That was never going to happen."

What we believe

Ellen Barry can be reached at ebarry[a]phx.com.