Committee for Skeptical Inquiry

Volume 23, Number 1, January/February 1999

• Buy this back issue
• Fears of the Apocalypse: The Escape from Reason
• Testing Dowsing: The Failure of the Munich Experiments
• Book Review: Reincarnation: A Critical Examination
  

Armageddon and the Prophets of Doomsday

The Bible and the Prophets of Doom
Millennialism, which suggests that supernatural powers will soon establish a perfect world, reflects a failure of nerve and the abandoning of hope in human potential to resolve social and ecological problems. Despite the claims of divine revelations, it is possible to trace the social historical evolution of the beliefs that lie behind end-of-the-age theology.
Gerald A. Larue

New Russian Initiative to Defend Science and Reason
Paul Kurtz

Science and Pseudoscience in Russia
With the collapse of the Soviet Union and subsequent profound economic crisis, science in Russia is in a difficult state. The rampant social disruption has been accompanied by a veritable flood of pseudoscience. The rise of irrationality and decline of reason may also be part of a wider global trend.
Sergei P. Kapitza

Testing Dowsing
The Failure of the Munich Experiments
German physicists concluded from their massive experimental study that water dowsers unquestionably have a remarkable, mysterious skill. Those results, however, provide the most convincing disproof imaginable that dowsers can do what they claim.
J.T. Enright

A Fallibilist Among the Cynics
Proponents of the Higher Dismissiveness contend that the concepts of truth, rationality, evidence, and fact are nothing but ideological humbug. Yet there's no need to give up on the objectivity of knowledge, truth, evidence, etc., provided you're fallibilist enough. What's required is a realistic understanding of how difficult and demanding successful inquiry can be.
Susan Haack

Editor's Note

News and Comment

• World's Longest Firewalk: Physicist Leads Hot Trek for Science in Pennsylvania
• Illinois Files Complaint Against Repressed Memory Doctors
• Tapes Said to Show Sybil's Multiple Personalities Bogus
• Host of Paranormal Radio Show Creates a Mystery of His Own
• CSICOP Research Scholarship Set Up at Hertfordshire
• APS Position on EMF Affirmed: 'No Evidence of Health Effects'
• 'Psychic' Sleuth Greta Alexander Dies

Notes of a Fringe-Watcher
The Internet: A World Brain?
Martin Gardner

Investigative Files
The Case of the Petrified Girl
Joe Nickell

Psychic Vibrations
Apocalypse Soon
Rober Sheaffer

New Books

Articles of Note

Science Best Sellers

Forum
Alternative Medicine
The Risks of Untested and Unregulated Remedies
Marcia Angell, M.D. and Jerome P. Kassirer, M.D.

Letters to the Editor

Reincarnation: A Critical Examination
by Paul Edwards
Barry L. Beyerstein

The World's Most Incredible Stories: The Best of Fortean Times
Edited by Adam Sisman
Joe Nickell

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