Skepticism
Skepticism
November, 2004
A foggy morning in October, around 500 skeptics waited outside the Congress Theatre "Pietro d'Abano" in order to be registered for the congress. Most people did not know each other but stood mostly singly and watched the others. Some of the people who recognised each other were clearly VIP's - Very Important Persons - and you could see that these people had met before at other conferences. Suddenly, there was a motion in the waiting crowd: James Randi had arrived, the absolute superstar of the gathering! Easily recognisable with his large white beard, he turned out to be small of stature with a deep, soothing voice. He was immediately attended to by the groups of VIP's, and everybody else was jealous of their privilege!
After the registration had completed half an hour late, people found seats in the large theatre hall, and the congress could begin.
Opening of the Congress
After a warm welcome by the mayor of Abano, the congress was declared open. Concomitantly with the World Congress, the Italian skeptics organisation CICAP also held its Ninth National Convention, which was one reason why the event was dominated by Italian participants - aside from the obvious fact that it was taking place in Italy.
The meeting was in English, but simultaneous translation was provided for Italian. Only one or two presentations, like the Mayor's speech, were interpreted on the stage. Some language problems did hamper the congress, because when Italians asked questions in Italian, these questions were not translated to English.
The congress was divided into six sessions, two each day. There were two "special events" on two of the nights, and an "Operatic Lunch" on the last day. Each session had its own moderator and panel of illustrious persons, most of which also gave presentations.
Parapsychologists and Skeptics: Is Dialogue Possible?
This was the first event, and the best run in the sense that an initial delay was made up for, and the presenters managed to get through all their material without leaving the impression that there was skipped a lot.
Professor Robert L. Morris of Koestler Institute of Parapsychology, Edinburgh, U.K. was supposed to have held a presentation, but unfortunately he died shortly before the congress, and his associate Caroline Watt, President of the Parapsychological Association gave a presentation instead. It focused on the work of the Koestler Institute and how co-operation with skeptics, such as Richard Wiseman, had been a positive influence. Watt also stated that a lot of skeptic criticism had been unconstructive and unhelpful.
After this session, Professor Richard Wiseman, U.K., gave a very entertaining presentation of his debunking of parapsychology.
Especially memorable was a film where Wiseman tested firewalkers who were in the belief that they are protected by psychic powers when they walk on beds of glowing embers. Wiseman simply constructed a 50 meter long firewalking bed instead of the usual 3 meters, and physics tells us that their feet will be not be able to withstand the heat imparted on such a long walk. Needless to say, physics won out, and the firewalkers jumped off the bed long before the end. Amazingly, this cruelty towards naive people was shown as entertainment on national TV!
Then Professor of Psychology James Alcock from Toronto, Canada, gave a presentation about why parapsychology is not really accepted as a science. The essence was that the parapsychologists had never been able to find anything that indicated that there is anything to study at all! Despite 50 years of research, nothing has been found. Alcock asked, "What will constitute evidence that there is nothing to be found?" The obvious answer is that die-hard parapsychologists will not take no for an answer, and will go on and on and on...
Hoaxes, Fakes and Myths
After lunch, we had a presentation on the Atlantis myth, which was given by Professor Kenneth Feder, USA. It was a bit thin, but the main point came through: when Disney wanted to make an Atlantis film they contacted Professor Feder as an acknowledged Atlantis expert. They wanted to portray Atlantis as being related to the American Indian culture and they wanted their film to be based on science. When Feder told them that Atlantis probably never existed, and definitely not in America, they just found another expert who would support their view. It is interesting to note that so many people regard Atlantis as a model society, but Plato invented it to show a society that had gone wrong!
After this followed lectures on war legends and myths followed by urban legends were the subject of the last presentation of the day. Professor Jan Harold Brunvand, USA, entertained us with these "true stories that are too good to be true".
Solved Mysteries
During lunch breaks, people could visit the lobby where various poster sessions were set up. Here you could read about paranormal cases that had been cracked by different groups. For instance, the French group Observatoire Zététique that tested Therapeutic Touch as described in the July 2004 edition of SkepticReport 
, had their own posters. There were also some interesting posters about old Egyptian magic and medicine, but it was all in Italian, so reluctantly, I had to skip this.
In a side room there was the "Skeptiseum", an exhibition of various projects to highlight non-intuitive aspects of the laws of nature. There was a snooker board designed so that you would always hit the ball at the other end, no matter how you aimed, there were lamps that were lit if you blew at them, there were demonstrations of mathematical artefacts, a do-it-yourself weeping statue workshop, magic show, and much more.
On the ground floor, various booksellers had set up shop.
Special Event: The World of Galilei
For the evening, CICAP had arranged for the famous (in Italy) TV-host Piero Angela to host a talk show about the life and struggle of Galileo Galilei. Now it was my turn to use headphones, because this show was all in Italian! However the translation was fine, and we did get an interesting evening out of it. Interspersed with the various Galilei experts that joined the talks, we saw cuts of a new film on Galilei, and there was a modern re-enactment of a couple of his experiments.
Investigating Mysteries
The next day was all entertainment! CSICOP senior researcher Joe Nickell (the Columbo of skepticism) quickly went through a number of debunking exercises he has performed for CSICOP. He was clearly most proud of the work he did on the 50-year old case of the Mothman. Despite the trail being cold, he managed to unravel the mystery and show the Mothman to be an owl!
Executive Director of CICAP, the youthful and charming Professor Massimo Polidoro, analysed some stories about the Kennedy murder. He started by saying that when he saw the film "JFK", he thought that maybe the conspiracy theories were right after all, but now his research has conclusively shown that these theories are based on completely unreliable witnesses. The object of the lecture was to show that people, who experienced great historical moments but did not actually participate in them, tend to invent a part for themselves.
Mariano Tomatis held a very convincing presentation of the "Da Vinci Hoax". The book "The Da Vinci Code" by Dan Brown is of course fiction, but it perpetuates a number of myths, among others that there has existed a sinister organisation called the "Priory of Sion". Tomatis showed that this is a complete fabrication and he also showed how Brown has built on a number of these fictions, but is giving the impression that there is a truth behind the book.
In a church in Italy there is a sword in a stone, and it is believed that it has been put there by a knight who renounced war to become a saint. The famous Italian debunker, Professor Luigi Garlaschelli, Italy, obtained permission to investigate this more closely. Many of us were quite surprised that it was accepted by the authorities that Garlaschelli could drill holes into the stone, and ultimately wrest out the sword! He told us, however, that until the 19th century, the sword could be taken out of the stone quite easily, but then it was fixed with cement, and some lunatic later broke it in order to get it out, and it has since been glued together again. The sword turned out to be authentic from the medieval period, and ground radar has revealed a possible grave under the church that might contain the remains of the saint. Although this was not real debunking experience, it was nevertheless an interesting piece of historical research, and Garlaschelli connected it with the myths of King Arthur of Britain.
After this, the most famous person of the event, James Randi, entered the stage to give us a lively speech about the kinds of claims and applicants he has to deal with in connection with his 1 million dollar challenge. There were, for instance, the two brothers from Dubai who claimed that they worked together to make the sun rise every day, and there were fraudsters who had been tested by scientific university labs, but who used parlour tricks from beginner's books. But Randi stressed that the most difficult claims to test were those where lawyers were involved! In those cases, the lawyers would twist every detail until it would be impossible to perform the test.
Magic and the Psychology of Deception
The stage was again taken by Richard Wiseman who with his customary energy showed us how unreliable our senses are. The show was liberally sprinkled with various magic acts, but he also showed a film that was a shock to many in the audience. Although they had watched the film carefully, they had not noticed a gorilla crossing the scene, stopping and beating its chest! Wiseman pointed out the consequences for our judicial system, where so much emphasis is put on witnesses, but as we could see, an entire audience had not noticed the gorilla, so how much faith would be put in one witness who had seen it, against so many who had not seen it?
Professor Ray Hyman, USA, showed how a con game worked, and how common psychological factors were used against the victim.
The magician Ian Rowland well known for his book "Cold Reading" held a magic performance that was enjoyed by all. Naturally, Uri Geller's hallmarks, spoon bending and mind reading, were among the tricks that were performed.
Special Event: Randi: That's Amazing!
Clearly, everyone had been looking forward to this event. The conference hall was packed with people, as Massimo Polidoro interviewed James Randi about his long career as the "Amazing" Randi. This was documented with film, some of them amateur recordings of the early years. There were incredible magic acts, and Randi, of course, also performed on the stage. A number of guests, like Joe Nickell and Ray Hyman came to perform some of their own tricks.
Some of the most fascinating stories that Randi told us were about how he outsmarted people who tried to spring a surprise on him, like one TV-host who was an ardent supporter of Uri Geller, and who had wanted Randi to fail doing the same stunts as Geller. That TV-host could hardly hide his surprise when Randi without further ado performed both tricks. He grudgingly acknowledged what Randi had done, but he could still not put him in the same league as Geller!
Randi even revealed some of his tricks, like how he fooled the TV-host, but don't look for the answer here!
What Future for Skepticism?
The third day started with the first part of the international session where speakers from Germany, Scotland, England, Argentina, and Spain gave their view on the state of skepticism in their countries, and what could be done to stop the progress of superstition and ignorance. It seemed to me that only the speaker from England, Professor Chris French, showed some optimism despite the rise in New Age beliefs that we see these years. Most speakers stressed the need for a more concerted effort to bring our viewpoint to the media as necessary.
The second part of the international session had presentations from Russia, China, and Egypt. The Chinese presentation was about witch doctors, and it was held in Chinese with translation provided by an associate. Afterwards this presentation caused some discussion because it turned out the Chinese did not regard acupuncture as witch doctor practice!
The Russian Professor Edward P. Kruglyakov gave shocking picture of woo-wooism in Russia, where all kinds of practices can get official approval through corrupt officials!
After this bleak picture, the Egyptian delegation reported how skepticists are religiously persecuted in the Muslim World. Even claims that have nothing to do with religion are out of bounds, because religious activists want to focus on religious issues. The female member, Mona Abousenna, was fired from one university job, because she had chaired a meeting of global trends in literature. In the religious mind, only Islam can be global!
In the ensuing discussion, it was debated if skeptics should deal with religion at all. Professor Paul Kurtz, CSICOP chairman, mentioned that CSICOP has created a special organisation to investigate religious claims.
Lunch at the Skeptic's Opera House
One of the fun parts of the congress was when five opera singers entertained us at lunch with various "skeptic" arias from Mozart, Bizet, and others. We heard about doctors who healed imagined illnesses with magnetism, and perhaps the best of all was an aria from Mozart's opera "Bastien et Bastienne" where a charlatan had given a patient a fake miracle medicine, and who gets scared when the victim declares that he will tell everybody about the miracle cure.
Alternative Medicine can be hazardous to your health!
The last session of the congress was about alternative medicine, and we heard presentations from a number of speakers. One of these, Professor Barry Beyerstein from Canada, told how the curriculum of the best herbalist college in Canada is below standard, and how they teach complete nonsense under cover of being scientific.
There was also a very interesting presentation on the placebo effect, but the time limit forced the poor Professor Riccardo Luccio to skip over the last 10 or so slides, and clearly the point of the presentation was lost too!
The conference closed with a chilling description of a stealthy revolution that is happening in the USA. Professor Wally Sampson described how truly enormous sums are being diverted to pseudo-scientific purposes, both by public and private funds. Alternative medicines are gaining in respectability, and lawmakers are making laws to protect its practitioners from the lawsuits that real doctors have to endure. Sampson stressed that he did not see it as a conspiracy that all the diverse alternative trends are seemingly working in concert, but that it is a normal sociological behaviour that is manifesting itself.
Reflections
There was a friendly and sociable attitude among the participants, and it was clear that many people enjoyed being together. Whole families with children were present, and it was nice to see that the female half the population was strongly represented, though sadly not with 50%. There was even one non-skeptic present. This flamboyant man, clad in a mixture of mountaineering and military outfit, jumped up at every opportunity to grab the microphone to hold long speeches. During the Q&A sessions there was usually only time for a few people to pose questions, but this man (I believe his name was Mr. Posa) monopolised the time for himself, and soon got very unpopular, especially because he was not interested in answers, just in listening to his own voice. Because these episodes were entirely in Italian, with no translation provided, a large part of the audience had no idea what was going on. I gathered, however, that he complained about James Randi being allowed to speak at the congress, because Randi had no academical credentials! Mr. Posa himself had apparently plenty of credentials; at least he waved a small book that contained a list of all his exams.
Most presenters came in dire trouble because they could not stick to the time schedule. I think it would have been better to have fewer presentations, and to be able to hear the presentations to the end. And there should have been more time for discussions, especially for subjects like the future of skepticism, and the international situation. There was a splendid mix of seriousness and entertainment, and most presenters were very experienced and well prepared.
It could have been interesting if more people without a background in skepticism had been invited too. At this congress we had a presentation from a parapsychologist, but other specialists could be invited too. For instance media-people to evaluate what we do wrong, and what we do well in our effort to spread critical thinking. Perhaps that will be the case at the congress next year in Shanghai!