Home : Skeptical Inquirer magazine

Volume 27, Number 5
September/October 2003

• Buy this back issue
• The Ongoing Problem with the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine
• Faking UFO Photos for the Twenty-First Century
• They See Dead People - Or Do They?
• Psychic Vibrations: UFOs Hot and Cold

Articles

The Ongoing Problem with the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine

In spite of statements to the contrary by its director, the NCCAM continues to fund and promote pseudoscience. Political pressures and the Center's charter would seem to make this inevitable. Ethics and the public interest are compromised.

Kimball C. Atwood IV, M.D.

What Does Education Really Do?

Educational Dimensions and Pseudoscience Support in the American General Public, 1979-2001

A study using national survey data over twenty-three years and examining four pseudoscience topics untangles some seeming conundrums about the relationship between education levels and belief in pseudoscience. It identifies more precisely just which aspects of education influence pseudoscience beliefs.

Susan Carol Losh, Christopher M. Tavani, Rose Njoroge, Ryan Wilke, and Michael Mcauley

Nostradamus's Clever `Clairvoyance'

The Power of Ambiguous Specificity

How did a French astrologer, dead for over 400 years, become a premier commentator on world events in 2001? The authors' research shows that Nostradamus's dark prophecies are ambiguous enough to "work" for events selected at random and even when they are scrambled.

Maziar Yafeh and Chip Heath

They See Dead People--Or Do They?

An Investigation of Television Mediums

The hosts' charm and style, a pliable audience conditioned to readily overlook misses, and some judicious editing of the videotape are all that's really necessary to explain the seemingly impressive results of TV shows like John Edward's Crossing Over and James Van Praagh's Beyond.

James Underdown

Energy, Homeopathy, and Hypnosis in Santa Fe

Skeptics get called closed-minded. As an experiment, why not immerse oneself in the mindset and environs of the believers? Santa Fe, New Mexico, is an easy place to do it.

Todd Seavey

Faking UFO Photos for the Twenty-First Century

For a modern planetarium show, an astronomer/program producer created a variety of fake UFO images as a way of showing audiences how easily such photos can be done.

Tom Callen

Columns

Editor's Note

News and Comment

• James Ossuary Verdict: Ossuary Genuine, Inscription Fake
• One Nation's Victory for Sanity Over Alternative Medicine
• Russian Academy of Sciences Waking up to False Science
• Druyan, Loftus Head CFI-West Opening Conference on the `Assault on Reason'
• Ghosts in the Physics Lab
• Spirited Protest

Investigative Files

Haunted Plantation

Joe Nickell

Psychic Vibrations

UFOs Hot and Cold

Robert Sheaffer

Thinking About Science

When Bias is Good, When Bias is Bad

Massimo Pigliucci

Notes on a Strange World

The Lost Messiah: Secrets on Psychical Research Emerge from a Stack of Forgotten Documents

Massimo Polidoro

Forum

An Old Refutation of Divining

Steven Abbott

Science Best Sellers

Guide for Authors

Letters to the Editor

Book Reviews

What's Wrong with the Rorschach?

James M. Wood, M. Teresa Nezworski, Scott O. Lilienfeld, and Howard N. Garb

Read the excerpt published in Skeptical Inquirer, July 2003.

Terence Hines

Love at Goon Park: Harry Harlow and the Science of Affection

Deborah Blum

Greg Martinez

Psychomythics: Sources of Artifacts and Misconceptions in Scientific Psychology

William R. Uttal

Peter Lamal

L'Imposture Scientifique en Dix Leçons

Michel de Pracontal

Neil Inglis