Committee for Skeptical Inquiry

Volume 26, Number 2, March April

• Buy this back issue
• Bigfoot at 50 - Evaluating a Half-Century of Bigfoot Evidence
• Are Science and Religion Compatible?
• Clear Thinking and the Forces of Unreason
• Book Review: Final Séance: The Strange Friendship Between Houdini and Conan Doyle

Special Reports

Bioterrorism and the NCCAM
The Selling of "Complementary and Alternative Medicine"
Kimball C. Atwood IV, M.D.

'Mothman' Solved!
Joe Nickell

Articles

Bigfoot at 50
Evaluating a Half-Century of Bigfoot Evidence
The question of Bigfoot's existence comes down to the claim that "Where there's smoke there's fire." The evidence suggests that there are enough sources of error that there does not have to be a hidden creature lurking amid the unsubstantiated cases.
Benjamin Radford

Cripplefoot Hobbled
Evidence for Bigfoot gains credibility when the possibility of human fabrication can be ruled out. The trackways of a crippled Sasquatch are said to provide such a compelling case, but examination of this claim suggests that hoaxing the footprints may have been a fairly manageable endeavor.
David J. Daegling

Pseudohistory in Jerry Vardaman's Magic Coins
The Nonsense of Micrographic Letters
An archaeologist claims to find hundreds of microscopic letters on ancient coins and inscriptions that completely rewrite history. Conclusion: bogus.
Richard C. Carrier

Are Science and Religion Compatible?
We need separations between religion and science, ethics, and the state. But there is an appropriate domain for religion, and in this sense science and religion are not necessarily incompati- ble. That domain is evocative, expressive, emotive. Religion presents moral poetry, aesthetic inspiration, and dramatic expressions of existential hope and yearnings.
Paul Kurtz

The Emptiness of Holism
An old psychological controversy concerning the relative merits of clinical and statistical prediction has direct implications for modern-day beliefs in "holism." The notion that one should not consider individual factors, but rather a complex whole, is frustratingly vague and incompatible with all that we have learned about human cognitive limitations and judgmental biases. Despite its seeming compassion, the mantra of holism may constitute empty rhetoric that shields its proponents from the hard work of discovering, assessing, and validly integrating meaningful information.
John Ruscio

Columns

Editor's Note

News And Comment

• 'No Effect' Prayer Study from Mayo Clinic Ignored by Media
• UFO Conspiracist William Cooper Killed in Gunfight with Police
• New Developments in the Thought Field Therapy Saga
• Experiments Demonstrate Social Transmission of Paranormal Beliefs
• Sugar in Meteorites Find Lends Support to Space Origin of Life's Building Blocks
• The Best and Worst of 2001
• Recent Deaths

Conference Report
Science and Religion: The Conference
Benjamin Radford

Investigative files
Undercover Among the Spirits: Investigating Camp Chesterfield
Joe Nickell

Psychic Vibrations
Give Me Disclosure, or Give Me Death!
Robert Sheaffer

New Books

Science Best Sellers

Forum

• It's Life, Captain-But Only As We Know It
  Ralph Estling
• Why Evolution Makes Me Feel Better
  Susan Bury

Follow-Up

• Comments on Martin Gardner's 'Multiverses and Blackberries'
  Bryce DeWitt

Commentary

• Clear Thinking and the Forces of Unreason
  Kendrick Frazier

Letters to the Editor

Book Reviews

No Sense of Obligation: Science and Religion in an Impersonal Universe
By Matt Young
Howard A. Garcia
[Shop for this Book]

Final Séance: The Strange Friendship Between Houdini and Conan Doyle
By Massimo Polidoro
William Harwood
[Shop for this Book]

Calculating God
By Robert J. Sawyer
Barry F. Seidman
[Shop for this Book]

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