Home : Skeptical Inquirer magazine

Volume 29, Number 4
July/August 2005

• Buy this back issue
• Carl Sagan Takes Questions
• Fakers and Innocents
• The Case of the ‘Psychic Detectives’

Articles

Carl Sagan Takes Questions

More From His ‘Wonder and Skepticism’
CSICOP 1994 Keynote

When the late Carl Sagan delivered his keynote address “Wonder and Skepticism” before a large audience at the CSICOP Conference in Seattle in 1994, a lively question- and-answer session followed. We published Sagan’s adaption of his talk in the January/February 1995 SKEPTICAL INQUIRER. The Q/A session had been transcribed at the time along with the talk but put away and never published. It was recently relocated, and Ann Druyan, Sagan's wife and collaborator, agreed that we should publish it.

The Great Turning Away

Our culture seems to be engaged in a great turning away from reality, seeking refuge in discredited myths and magical thinking.

ANN DRUYAN

How Do You Solve a Problem Like a (Fritjof) Capra?

Fritjof Capra’s popular books purport to expound modern thinking in science by promoting “system thinking.” Really, they are naïve and misleading, ignoring the success of detailed “mechanistic” explanations, especially in biology.

BURTON S. GUTTMAN

Fakers and Innocents

The One Million Dollar Challenge and Those Who Try for It

James Randi describes some of the difficult, innocent, and impossible people who apply to be tested for his foundation’s $1 million challenge for evidence of paranormal powers.

JAMES RANDI

What Should We Do with Skepticism?

The word skeptic has negative connotations: naysayer, refuter, debunker, spoilsport. . . . So why do we stubbornly continue to call ourselves skeptics? There are good reasons for avoiding this label.

ALEJANDRO J. BORGO

Special Report

Voodoo Science and Voodoo Politics in Florida

GREG MARTINEZ

Columns

Editor's Note

Time for Science to Go on the Offense

News and Comment

• Tsunami Rumors Cause Ongoing Waves of Fear
• Bigfoot Video Surfaces in Manitoba
• Randi’s Pigasus Awards Go to Prayer Study, Psychic Travel, Ramtha ‘Bleep’ Film
• Police, Psychics Search for ‘Abducted’ Runaway Bride
• Our Lady of the Underpass
• Postal Service Gives Scientists Stamps of Approval
• ‘World’s Most Documented Psychic’ Fails to Find Abducted Granddaughter
• NASA Comet Collision to Disrupt Earth’s ‘Psychic Environment,’ Says Russian Astrologer

Investigative Files

The Case of the ‘Psychic Detectives’

Joe Nickell

Thinking About Science

Are the Historical Sciences Sciences?

Massimo Pigliucci

Notes on a Strange World

The Story of a ‘Greata’ Medium

Massimo Polidoro

Psychic Vibrations

Where the UFO Conspiracy Theories Roam

Robert Sheaffer

The Skeptical Inquiree

Seeking a Sixth Sense

Benjamin Radford

Science Best Sellers

New Books

Letters to the Editor

Book Reviews

Copeland’s Cure: Homeopathy and the War between Conventional and Alternative Medicine

By Natalie Robins

AVI DOV KLEIN

Bounded Choice: True Believers and Charismatic Cults

By Janja Lalich

KARLA MCLAREN

Thoughts on Thought Control

By Kathleen Taylor

JOE SZIMHART